One of my favorite movies is a one most people haven't seen, the true life-based drama Shattered Glass, starring Anakin Skywalker - I mean Hayden Christensen - as journalist Stephen Glass, who famously made up a bunch of stories to make himself famous. With that in mind, I was drawn into seeing The Hoax, a Richard Gere-starring drama with a similar theme, even though it didn't look nearly as good.The Hoax is a true story (how true, I don't know) about journalist and writer Clifford Irving, who managed to trick a major publishing house into paying him a million dollars for a groundbreaking biography based on personal interviews with billionaire recluse Howard Hughes, a man who hadn't been seen in public in years. The only problem is that Irving never actually spoke with Hughes to get his permission, and in fact his entire piece of work is based on fabrications.
The Hoax is one of those movies where it's hard to fathom them ever being true. How a man could think that he'd get away with writing a fake biography about someone still alive - especially with someone as many resources as Howard Hughes - is pretty unbelievable. And furthermore, to risk everything by running up a publishing company for a million dollars in the process? And yet, Clifford Irving did it. That alone makes The Hoax worth watching.
Read the full The Hoax movie review.
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