***1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Greg Kinnear, Willem Dafoe, Rita Wilson, Maria Bello, Kurt Fuller, Michael E. Rodgers, and Michael McKean
Directed by Paul Schrader & written by Michael Gerbosi, from the book by Robert Graysmith
2002 R
Dozen-or-So Best Films of 2002
REVIEW BY THE F&SN CRITIC WITH HELP FROM HIS DAMN WIFE.
Paul Schrader’s “Auto-Focus,” based on the real-life rise, fall, and murder of TV star Bob Crane of “Hogan’s Heroes,” is a little bit like “A Clockwork Orange” (1971). Both films feature top-notch filmmaking, but there’s an awfulness to what’s taking place on the screen—the debauchery, the immorality—that makes them difficult to watch, even if both films ultimately condemn the black-hearts of their protagonists. “Auto-Focus” is the powerful story of how a nice guy turned into a sex-addicted degenerate, and his frequent disrespect for his marital vows is, by the end, shown as no different than a drunk going through delirium tremens. The starkness of these episodes renders sex so ugly that, even though it’s been two days since we’ve seen the movie, my wife and I are still sleeping back-to-back.
“Auto-Focus” is very clear about what it thinks of Bob Crane. He begins the movie as a cardigan-wearing, admirable family man, but little temptations turn into big temptations and soon a small chink in his moral armor has given way to a flood. Fame, Crane’s friends, and society’s expectation of men play their role in his downfall, but the movie knows that the fault is ultimately Crane’s. Again and again he is offered the chance to do the right thing but he makes excuses, justifications, or worst of all, refers to his appetites as “normal.” When Crane tells his priest that he’s been going to strip clubs after work to “unwind and play drums with the band,” the padre makes a very good piece of advice: if you want to deny temptation, don’t go anywhere near it, and even suggests that Crane plays with the padre’s band to unwind in the afternoons instead. Crane nods but nothing comes of it.
We first meet Crane (Greg Kinnear) as a radio personality in the 1950s. His wife of fifteen years is his high school sweetheart, he has several cardigan-clad sons, and they go to church. His flaws are his ego and the dirty magazines he keeps hidden in the garage. Fresh from the short-lived “Donna Reed Show,” he’s hungry for dramatic film roles and wants to be the next Jack Lemmon. At first weary he’s weary when his agent offers him the lead on a comedy set in a German POW camp. But the script wins Crane over, the show is a sensation, and Crane is famous enough to get any floozy he wants.
Exposing him single-handedly to the floozies is Willem Dafoe as John Carpenter (an early pioneer of VHS technology, not to be confused with the “Halloween” director of the same name). Crane is at first wary of Carpy and the strip clubs, and when he’s alone with his first of Carpy’s bimbos he nervously tries to dodge her and make assertions of being a one-woman man. “I’m married,” he says. “So am I,” says the floozy. Soon Crane and Carpy (or the Lone Ranger and Tonto as they call themselves) are regularly luring bar girls back to Carpy’s dimly-lit house to seduce them with drinks, charm, and primordial video technology. Things go from bad to worse when “Hogan’s Heroes” ends and Crane and Carpy hit the road with Crane’s traveling dinner theater, which funds their nonstop tour of America’s swinger, orgy, and domination undergrounds.
It’s tempting to say the chief relationship in “Auto-Focus” is between Bob Crane and John Carpenter (obviously men who use so many women can’t form a strong bond to any particular one). Carpy is at Crane’s side throughout his rise and fall, bringing video equipment to make the homemade pornography Crane lusts after even more than meaningless sex. Carpy seems attracted to Crane and fulfills his desires vicariously through their many conquests, and even adopts feminine mannerisms when bringing him a drink. Crane is off-and-on aware of Carpy’s attraction to him, but ignores it not just so he can get his hands on Carpy’s video equipment but because he needs an audience wherever he goes and whatever he does. And what he does is crash and burn, like so many other famous addicts; “Auto-Focus” follows the same downward spiral as movies about stars who drink and do drugs, whose debauchery gets in the way of their careers. Photos and rumors about Crane leek out; in his fifties no one wants to go near him, professionally or otherwise. “Auto-Focus” may cut closer than movies about substance abuse because more people have sex than do drugs, although not the way Crane had sex.