Review By: Damaris Olivo
DamarisOlivo@TheCinemaSource.com

In my childhood, when watching Saturday morning cartoons, there were times when I would question my loyalties to the characters everyone else seemed to love. Why was I so annoyed by Bugs Bunny while I secretly rooted for Elmer Fudd? Why would I, sometimes impatiently, watch television merely so that I would see the day when Tom finally ate Jerry’s sneaky little tail?

Some might have called me a backwards child, but I think these kinds of wonderful little thoughts are what make films like The Hoax so fun to watch. In the film, Clifford Irving (Richard Gere) is one of these lying, cheating, overall scum-of-the-earth guys who we just can’t help but feel completely charmed by. Let’s call him the Tom to the publishing industry’s Jerry.

It’s 1971, and amid Vietnam War protests and political tension, Clifford Irving, a writer whose novel has recently been rejected by McGraw Hill feels cheated by the publishing industry, who continuously gives him the cold shoulder. Beginning as a sort of upbeat comedy, the film follows Clifford from the inception of his plan to pull the most outrageous hoax ever perpetrated on the media. Along with his best friend and fellow writer, Dick Susskind (Alfred Molina), and his Swiss wife Edith (Marcia Gay Harden), Irving embarks on the hugely impossible task of convincing the media that he has obtained exclusive interviews and the coveted memoirs of reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes. Furthermore, Irving tells the big-shots at McGraw Hill that “Howard” (as Irving so affectionately calls Hughes) wants him to write the biography of the extremely private billionaire. Irving relies on the belief that Howard Hughes is so obsessed with his privacy that he will not make a public statement even after the book goes public.

Counting on the billionaire’s hermitic nature and suspected history of mental illness, and forging all kinds of letters, documents, and even faking recorded interviews, Irving intends to prove to the skeptics that he has indeed met with Howard Hughes, and that he and Hughes deserve to be paid a record amount to produce the biography. After analyzing handwriting samples, and interrogating Irving thoroughly, the publishers, who will do whatever it takes to have a best selling book, accommodate Clifford right away so that he may begin writing the biography that is sure to take the nation by storm. All the while the suave, quick-thinking Clifford and his not so suave, not so quick thinking friend Dick are doing everything they can to keep up the ruse, from stealing top-secret documents from government agencies to staging the helicopter arrival of Hughes.

We enjoy watching Irving every time he is almost caught; as these are the times he comes up with the most unbelievable lies, and makes the head honchos of publishing feel like blubbering idiots. “The more outrageous I sound, the more convincing I am,” he says. At one point he concocts a message from Hughes in ...