The bigger the lie, the easier it is to be believed. Clifford Irving not only believed it, he lived it. After watching this film, I came to realize that Irving's real ambition should have been to be a politician. Cutting out all the middle men, he could have supplemented his bank account with real money. You can't really know how much of the story presented here actually happened that way, the sequences of Irving's delusions about being kidnapped by Hughes' men and thrown out an upper story window is one such example. But he was a con man, that's for sure, and if you were around during the era this occurred, you might have gotten caught up in the drama of Irving's fantasy. Even the real life rebuttal by Howard Hughes didn't do much to dissuade the hustler from trying to cash in even more on his fakery. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on what side of the fence you're on, Clifford Irving (Richard Gere) wound up spending time for his hoax, and as the closing segment resonates with the words to the Stones song, "You Can't Always Get What You Want", you'd have to pretty much agree that the guy wound up getting what he deserved.
Review of The Hoax
The Hoax
(2006)
"A man walks in, he says something completely implausible, and for that reason, he is believed."
21 December 2019
Warning: Spoilers