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Auto Focus
***
Cinema
Reviews - Week of March 21, 2003
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 15. USA.
107 minutes. Directed by Paul Schrader. Written by Michael Gerbosi; based
on "The Murder of Bob Crane" by Robert Graysmith. Starring Greg Kinnear,
Willem Dafoe, Maria Bello, Rita Wilson, Ron Leibman, Bruce Solomon, Michael
E. Rodgers, Kurt Fuller, Christopher Neiman, Lyle Kanouse, Ed Begley Jr.,
Michael McKean.
Some men become relaxed by success; it quenches
their need for validation, and they live forever with smiles, knowing they
can leave behind the daydreams of childhood and focus on becoming good people.
Most people, I imagine, do not -- to fall out of celebrity seems embarrassing,
rather than something natural to be shrugged off, and the process of becoming
famous creates a desire to keep making money, keep meeting interesting people,
keep being treated as important. How many washed-up stars look back on former
glory with joy at the time, and relaxed shrugs about the fact that it's long
gone? Not nearly as many who in retrospective interviews are desperate to
tell you about the importance of their new work, no matter how few fans may
still be buying.
Bob Crane had major fame, for a time, as the star
of the American TV show "Hogan's Heroes". It turned him, claims Paul Schrader's
"Auto Focus", from an affable family man with a moderately
successful radio show into someone whose insides were filled with desperate
confusion about how he was supposed to be acting. Craving for comebacks,
uncertain about his home life for no good reason, he turned into a sex addict
and emotional wreck -- but he was born good-natured, and strained to keep
a smile on his face no matter what. That's the saddest part.
The movie stars Greg Kinnear as Crane, and the
actor reaches levels of darkness that have not been hinted at in his previous
work. Kinnear has a charming and upbeat persona, to the extent of seeming
cheesy, some might say. He has played anger and sadness before, but never
a man so clearly degenerate or so eager to hide it. I saw this movie at its
North American premiere, and asked Schrader how he came to pick Kinnear.
"Sometimes you just get a feeling about someone," he said -- a plain enough
answer, but methodically reeled off, and with a smile that let me know he
thought it was a boring question. Perhaps it was. Kinnear's cheerfulness
can at times seem like sycophantic diplomacy; put it in a dark context, and
turn on the heat, and perhaps it's natural that we see a new side to the
actor, one that is almost unbearable.
The story moves from the 1960s to the late 70s,
and early on in the timeline Crane finds himself hooked up with a guy named
John Carpenter -- not the movie director, but a small time electronics salesman
with the knack to know that this crazy videotape thing all the tech-heads
have heard about might really have the potential to take off. Both men are
fascinated by the technology; they start hanging around together and gazing
at it in awe, at the same time Crane is becoming famous. Fame attracts crowds
of beautiful women, and videotaped sex parties are, for these guys, the
inevitable result.
The problem with behaviour like this, especially
when you've got the illusion of societal and financial freedom, is that it
can become a way of life before it seems engulfing or even frequent. One
event becomes two and three, and if you start to lose count it's probably
because you're busy rather than doing it too much, and what the hell, this
must be what famous people get up to. The trajectory of addiction can be
seen here -- Crane and Carpenter are having an adventure, and although they
don't get hooked on substances, they overindulge on escapism, and get into
a co-dependent friendship that gets more unhealthy and extreme the longer
it goes unadmitted.
Why? Why does Crane, so previously satisfied in
marriage, sleep with the first girl and let the rest happen? Maybe it's because
men are programmed to never miss an opportunity, unless the situation announces
itself as inappropriate by thunderbolts from God. Maybe he's desperate to
please, and turning girls down would be impolite. Maybe he needs the ego
boost. Maybe he didn't have a clue himself -- he just did what he did, and
ended up crumbling.
Step by plain and linear step, "Auto Focus" follows
the downfall, through photography that opens with the bright colours of a
happy comedy and ends with death in the murkiest of shadows. This is not
a masterpiece; Schrader wrote a better film about career disintegration and
the pathetic sexual lives of insecure men, and that film was "Raging Bull".
But the movie is powerful. It is one of two films this season to deal with
the desperate lives of TV personalities, the other being George Clooney's
"Confessions of a Dangerous Mind". Clooney gave us more style and wit, but
he couldn't keep it up. "Auto Focus" knows where it wants to go, takes us
there dramatically, and at the end we walk out shaking our heads and thinking,
jeez, is it that easy to become that much of a loser?
Rest in peace, Bob.
COPYRIGHT©
2003 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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