Interview: Richard Gere and The Hoax

By Colin MacLean Apr 3, 2007, 5:29 GMT

Richard Gere EPA/STEFAN ZAKLIN

There is no doubt that Richard Gere is a star.

Sure, he’s a fine actor but as he walks down the hotel hallway, with his gun metal grey hair and impeccable tailoring trailing a retinue of handlers and studio reps, he is much more than just a journeyman actor.

Gere disappears into the interview room in the posh hotel and then pops out to regard the line of journalists waiting to speak with him about his new film, ‘The Hoax.’ Observes Gere in that familiar silky voice, “Well, it’s going to be a long day but with your help, we’ll make it together.”

Not only a star but a class act as well.

Geer, whose notable debut was Terrence Malick’s ‘Days of Heaven’ back in 1978, has a long line of hits behind him ranging from ‘An Officer and a Gentleman,’ through ‘Pretty Woman,’ to his career capping, Golden Globe winning turn as Billy Flynn, the charming shyster of the film, ‘Chicago.’

Actually when it comes down to it, Flynn and the character Geer plays in his new movie, Clifford Irving, have a lot in common. Both are consummate con men who know how to work the system. 

Except that Irving is a real person.

And as an actor, Gere is an actor whose melting brown eyes always held a glint of the rascal.

Back in 1971, Clifford Irving was a small time author whose latest work had just been turned down by his publisher McGraw-Hill. Desperate to come up with an idea, any idea, he blurted out that he had been contacted by the reclusive, immensely powerful, superstar billionaire, Howard Hughes, to write his biography.

It was a lie. Hughes, who was succumbing to his life-long neuroses, was holed up in a big hotel in the Caribbean and talked to no one.

But Irving was persuasive and Hughes was not about to comment on anything, so McGraw-Hill went for it.

“Lasse (director Lasse Hallstrom – ‘The Cider House Rules,’ ‘Chocolat’) phoned me and said ‘I’ve found a script and I want you to do it,’” remembers the actor. “I read it immediately and phoned him back and said ‘yes, I want to do this.”’

Gere is well known for his Buddhism and support for activist causes. “I don’t think I would have done the film before, (In reality, Gere had seen the script several years before but turned it down) but in this world where so many of our leaders and authority figures are proving to be liars, the script had more resonance than it once did.”

Irving attempted to pull off his master coup in 1971. “We are in similar times,” suggests the actor. “In 1971 we had the Viet Nam war. We had a president that was not telling the truth. We were bombing in Laos and Cambodia and telling the American people that we were not. These were lies that were causing a lot of human misery and suffering.”

The actor’s heart must have leapt when he read the script. What a character Irving was. Charismatic and larger than life, he started the hoax of his relationship with Hughes and then rode it even when it went wildly out of control. “It was a lark for him,” says Gere. “Back in the ‘60’s people were playing more. I think there was an element of that. He was a prankster and I think (his publishers) really wanted to believe he had talked with Hughes and they suspended their natural disbelief. They desperately wanted it to be true.”

Irving almost made it. He was offered the highest advance ever by the people who wanted to publish the story - $1 million. But after months of silence, Hughes himself finally spoke – albeit only on the telephone and only to some members of the press he had known in his early years as a Hollywood buccaneer.

Looking back now, Gere is amazed at how gullible people were. Irving had presented a series of documents to his publishers – supposedly written to him by Hughes. “They were really horrible forgeries. I’ve seen them. They are scribbled out like a child. The paper is damaged. The ink is smeared like when you try to write with ink and it spreads too thick.” 

Gere has never met Clifford Irving. He had the opportunity but declined. “Frankly, I thought he would be disruptive to what I wanted to do with the part. He’s clearly a very manipulative guy and I didn’t want to be part of that manipulation.”

Actually Irving was supposed to be part of the press junket for the film. He never showed.

In ‘The Hoax,’ a master charlatan from over three decades ago reaches across the years to provide the role of a lifetime for Richard Geer - master actor and certifiable movie star.