OUT OF 'FOCUS' - Thanks to CS (sometime) contributor Eric Baker for sending me the link to this article in Salon about Scotty Crane, who has launched a pretty massive media campaign (including graphic web site) against Sony Pictures Classics and director Paul Schrader for alleged inaccuracies in the movie 'Auto Focus' (opened in NY/LA on Oct. 18). The movie stars Greg Kinnear as Bob Crane, the TV star of Hogan's Heroes, and chronicles Crane's disintegration into sex addiction and his ultimate mysterious death in his Scottsdale, Ariz., apartment in 1978. The article presents a pretty interesting dilemma that almost always arises when movies are based on true events, which is the question of how much responsibility a filmmaker has to be 100% accurate in portraying certain events or individuals (assuming that is even possible, which I would argue it isn't). What complicates Crane's story -- both Scotty's and Bob's -- is the fact that Scotty's version of his father's life conflicts completely with that of his half-brother, Bob Jr., who served as a consultant on the movie and, apparently, loathes Scotty's mother, Patricia, who was Crane's second wife. Enough of the tabloid stuff though, I've been looking forward to this movie for awhile. Schrader is, of course, the legendary screenwriter who collaborated with Scorsese on 'Taxi Driver' and 'Raging Bull', and the director of a handful of movies including 'American Gigolo' and 'Affliction'. The subject matter is obviously fascinating -- or, at least, titillating, -- and I'm curious to see Kinnear, who vacillates between showing some real depth as an actor in certain movies and being totally shallow and smug in others. Once again, Slate's David Edelstein and Salon's Stephanie Zacharek are in complete disagreement. On Kinnear's performance, Zacharek writes: "In "Auto Focus" Kinnear pulls off the feat of making us feel something for Crane...And considering how sensitively calibrated Kinnear's performance is, you don't need him to. Crane knew that his big selling point, as a human being and as a commodity, was his likability. Kinnear riffs on that without milking it." While Edelstein says, "But in the last third, Kinnear has no depths as an actor to plumb; even in the movie's best scenes, with Ron Leibman (in top form) as his brusque but softhearted agent, he looks fatuously dazed." Overall, the reviews have been mostly positive. Edelstein starts his review with an interesting and, I think, mostly accurate assessment of Schrader as a director:

Almost every time I see a film by Paul Schrader, I think about what a sensational subject he has gotten hold of and how I wish that someone else had stepped in to bring it to life. As a screenwriter, he's drawn to volcanically conflicted protagonists, but the movies he builds around them are austere, even clinical. His script of Taxi Driver (1976) was a smashing success because Martin Scorsese, a voluptuous Expressionist, brought it to a boil: It entered your bloodstream like a drug. Scorsese cooks; Schrader freeze-dries. I think his asceticism is meant to seem classical and contemplative (he once dismissed Taxi Driver as juvenilia), but it feels more like a failure of sympathetic imagination. He won't—or can't—go all the way.

Schrader's 'Affliction' (1997), based on the novel by the brilliant Russell Banks, earned James Coburn a best supporting actor Oscar for playing a hellishly abusive father, but I can't think of any better description for the film as a whole than "austere" and "clinical." I felt throughout that Schrader was keeping the audience deliberately at a distance. As Edelstein says, "He won't—or can't—go all the way." With the exception of a few scenes, Schrader only hints at the real emotional explosiveness of the story and never seems to completely commit. I plan to see 'Auto Focus' this week and will have some comments posted soon.

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