My favorite story about Howard Hughes barely involves Howard Hughes. Clifford Irving an author best known, in 1971 or so, for penning an extremely groovy (and I mean that as a reflection on his writing, not my opinion of the book) bio of the infamous art forger Elmyr de Hory, called Fake! (Orsen Welles' movie F for Fake documents the affair). To put an extremely fine point on it, I think the most faking that Elmyr did was to collaborate with a film maker and an author to create a mostly fictional legend of a forger, and thus (due to his outrageous claim to just how many masterpieces hanging in museums were his) to cast a shadow on the entire art establishment. It was a post-modern prank of mammoth proportion, in the sense that it really dealt with one issue: what is the worth of the hand that creates, as opposed to another hand that creates the exact same thing? It's really worship of an aristocracy that a Picasso is worth so much more than Braque. Appropriate, then, that Elmyr claimed to be descended from Hungarian royalty (Zsa Zsa Gabor, supposedly, once said of Elymr "Never trust a Hungarian. They're all liars." Problem being, she's Hungarian too).
Anyway, fresh with a bit of notoriety, Irving approached a McGraw-Hill with evidence--a signed contract, hand-written pages--that Howard Hughes had agreed to let Irving pen his autobiography. A larger book could not be imagined at the time, since Hughes was then a mythic hermit, living in Las Vegas in a hotel he bought so that he wouldn't be evicted watching a television station he bought so that it would show movies through the night for his consumption. Irving won a large advance, $750,000 or so, but Hughes made contact with the outside world via telephone just long enough to denounce the author as bogus. Those interested parties will find a wealth more information here (including a good overview of the real Hughes' life), and I also recommend reading Fake! It's quite amusing.
It's my favorite story about Hughes in the same way that I love the story about Elmyr. It's not whether or not he's telling the truth, it's the uncertainty that is the crux of the issue. To confuse things, long after doing his time (two-and-a-half years) in federal prison, Irving published 'The Autobiography of Howard Hughes' through an online publisher. Of course, the device of calling something an autobiography by another author is not unknown (hello Gertrude Stein!), but I know of no other author who published a fake autobiography of a man that the author was arrested for conning people about.
Irving claims, that through his research and allegedly stealing another manuscript, that he knows more about Hughes than anybody. He claims that the autobiography is real--or at least as real as humanly possible. Certainly, when dealing with a man as large and known as Hughes, the legend becomes the persona.
Smart, then, of the makers of the Aviator to focus on the legend. After all, the legend has enough sub-stories that could have been standalone movies: 1) A radical movie producer story. 2) An obsessive starlet collector movie. 3) A man degraded by OCD and, so it appears, syphilis story. 4) A radical aviation pioneer story. 5) A businessman who bucked trends and made a mint story.
It's a fast paced, deliberately visual film (something that can't be said of many movies these days). Scorsese uses the classic film language to tell a story not of truth, but of impression and metaphor. He does it in an seemingly effortless way, marrying stunning visuals with emotional resonance. Extremely well crafted.
The question of whether or not Blanchett captured Hepburn, or Beckinsale Gardner (who, Beckinsale that is, should keep the 20 lbs she put on for the role) is immaterial. I think Blanchett outdid herself. Same for Leo, who has completely redeemed Titanic, in my eyes. The cast is great, and the cameos fun--especially the befuddled performance of the great Ian Holm.
We were going to try to see as many Oscar contenders as possible. I'm very glad we picked this one and got to see it projected rather than on the small screen.
Where we saw it: Movie Theater | We deign to rate it: 90 outta 100