The Hoax (2006)

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Richard Gere gives one of the best performances of his career in Lasse Hallstrom`s vastly entertaining THE HOAX, based on true events. Gere stars as Clifford Irving, a struggling writer desperate to be a famous bestselling author. After his novel gets rejected, he concocts a crazy plot in which he convinces McGraw-Hill that he has been contacted by Howard Hughes in order to tell the official life story of the reclusive billionaire. With the help of his friend, nervous writer Dick Suskind, and Irving`s artist wife, Edith, he attempts to get away with one of the greatest literary hoaxes of the 20th century. He goes to elaborate lengths to pull the wool over the eyes of his editor, Andrea Tate, as well as his publisher, Shelton Fisher, and the managing editor of Life magazine, Ralph Graves, who is offering big bucks to serialise the book. As Irving gets deeper and deeper into the lies, he begins to embody Hughes, mimicking the way he looks and talks. The film features excellent performances all around, including star turns by Eli Wallach as longtime Hughes employee Noah Dietrich (a part played by John C. Reilly in Martin Scorsese`s THE AVIATOR) and Julie Delpy as Nina Van Pallandt, a former flame of Irving`s whom he can`t shake loose. Director Hallstrom (MY LIFE AS A DOG, CHOCOLAT, THE CIDER HOUSE RULES) shows a deft hand with the complex material; William Wheeler based the script in part on Clifford Irving`s own memoir.