Auto Focus

TIFF [2002]

Capsule Review Only Our full coverage and more indepth reviews will be published after the Festival has ended Receive email when this page changes

(USA 2002)
Written by Michael Gerbosi
Based upon the book “The Murder Of Bob Crane” by Robert Graysmith
Directed by Paul Schrader
Cast: Greg Kinnear, Willem Dafoe, Maria Bello, Rita Wilson, Ron Liebman

Few will admit it, but the evolution of any communications medium can be directly linked to its ability to provide consumers easy access to porn. The printing press, the motion picture loop, and yes, even the modern miracle that is currently allowing you to read these oh-so-insightful musings owe much of their staying power (sorry) to their transmission of nudie “art studies” and depictions of amorous acrobatics. But it was the VCR and the home video camera that took smut out of seedy grindhouse districts and put it in middle-class living rooms (seedy or otherwise). One of the early pioneers of homemade erotica was none other than vanilla sitcom star Bob Crane, best known for Disney’s “Superdad’ and of course, the recent TV Guide “Worst TV Show Of All Time” winner “Hogan’s Heroes” (placing #5). Crane’s bland, nice-guy exterior masked an unbridled sexual addiction that lead to his unsolved murder at the age of 47.

When Bob Crane (Kinnear), a successful DJ and devoted family man, is offered the pilot for “Hogan’s Heroes” in 1964, he is initially troubled by the show’s premise of POW’s vs. “funny Nazis”. But his agent (Liebman) and wife (Wilson) echo his rationale that a network series would be a major career step, and he signs on. “Hogan” is an immediate, if controversial, success, and through costar Richard Dawson, Crane hooks up with video technician John Carpenter (Dafoe), an oily smooth-talker who claims to have outfitted the likes of Elvis with the latest in Japanese innovations, most notably, the reel-to-reel videotape recorder. Carpenter’s persuasive nature leads the star from family dinners to drumming in strip joints, and when the ladies begin to notice blandly handsome and more importantly, famous, Col. Hogan out and about in LA’s many happening nightspots, the actor conceives of another use for his latest toy, the portable video camera. Crane soon turns a new leaf and devotes his every waking minute to realizing his X-rated fantasies, re-marrying a comely costar, and after “Hogan’s Heroes” gets canned, envisioning a new career as a big-time porno film producer with Carpenter as his partner. Of course, as in “Boogie Nights”, the party can’t last forever.

Talk Back

By the time Crane sought reparations to his career, the world that once loved him had moved on. Low-rent dinner theatre, two bad Disney movies, and an embarrassing appearance on the Canadian TV series “Celebrity Cooks” (a surprising and bang-on recreation for Canucks in the audience) are all he can get (his failed 1975 network TV comeback, “The Bob Crane Show” is never acknowledged), and at eventually, Crane admits to himself that he must sever his relationship with Carpenter if there is any chance left at salvation.

Director Paul Schrader specializes in subjects of extreme male psychology —his screenplays for “Taxi Driver”, “American Gigolo”, “Affliction”, “Raging Bull” each offering corrosive “Chicken Soup For The Misanthropic Soul”—but if “Auto Focus” fumbles as an examination of the Hefner Era alpha-male gone awry, it’s only because Crane and Carpenter took their secrets to their respective graves, and on the surface, seem complete polar opposites. Schrader confessed in his intro that he sought to stick to the known facts, and admitted that while all evidence points to Carpenter as Crane’s killer, because he was acquitted, it was necessary to keep murder unsolved. One does wish he and Gerbosi had shown the fearlessness in which Oliver Stone accused Clay Shaw of plotting Kennedy’s assassination in “JFK”, lawsuits be damned, in the service of a more dramatically-satisfying coda than the abrupt (but factually correct) rug-pull we’re given here. Crane’s “Sunset Boulevard” styled narration doesn’t work at all, appearing randomly here and there to do little more than reinforce the actor’s more-than-apparent cluelessness. It’s only during the final, fatal act where vintage Schrader reappears to record Crane’s downward spiral with desaturated colours and disorienting handheld camerawork

But overall, “Auto Focus” rewards with its vivid recreation of an era, disarming tone, and for providing its talent a chance to stretch. Schrader is required to incorporate a lighter touch than usual and handles the “Hogan’s Heroes” recreations and Crane’s deluded amiability well, thanks mostly to having the good sense to let Greg Kinnear, displaying remarkable range, carry the show. Only Willem Dafoe stays true to form here, complementing Kinnear as Carpenter (no, not the filmmaker to whom I’ve devoted an awful lot of space in this forum), a sort-of reptilian Jiminy Cricket/Mephistopheles oozing pervo enthusiasm.

Bob Crane Jr. was in attendance at the Special Presentations screening and seemed to be thrilled with the film, but I’m somewhat troubled by his trumpeting of this often raw and unflattering film, to be followed by a book of his father’s many “art studies”. He seemed intoxicated by being in the company of esteemed Hollywood A-list talent despite the film’s subject, and that, for me, added substance to “Auto Focus” already meaty moral questions.

- Robert L

Talk Back