Themes: Double Life, Faltering Friendships, Rise and Fall Stories
Main Cast: Greg Kinnear, Willem Dafoe, Rita Wilson, Maria Bello, Ron Leibman
Release Year: 2002
Country: US
Run Time: 105 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
The life and sordid, untimely death of Hogan's Heroes star Bob Crane are explored by director Paul Schrader in this biopic, which marks one of the few times the filmmaker has not scripted his own film. Auto Focus chronologically traces the meteoric rise of Crane's show business career, beginning with his early success as a jokey deejay on Los Angeles morning radio in the early '60s. A devout family man, Crane lives in Southern Californian comfort with his wife Anne (Rita Wilson) and their young children, relishing the modicum of celebrity his job provides him. His life begins to change, however, when his agent Lenny (Ron Leibman) proposes that he take a breakthrough role on the CBS POW-camp sitcom Hogan's Heroes. Initially reluctant to take the job, Crane signs on with the production and, to his and everyone else's surprise, the show becomes a smash hit. With celebrity comes a new set of friends, and Crane falls in with audio-visual guru John Carpenter (Willem Dafoe), a Sony sales rep who spends his days setting up home entertainment systems for the Hollywood elite, and his nights cruising strip clubs for anonymous sexual encounters. Already a pornography buff, Crane starts using his fame to secure him and Carpenter an endless parade of affairs, which they videotape and then obsessively review. It isn't long before Anne demands a divorce, and Crane marries his Hogan's co-star Patti Olsen (aka Sigrid Valdis, here played by Maria Bello), who's more accepting of his escapades. When the sitcom is canceled, however, Crane has trouble securing acting jobs, and recedes further and further into his life of amateur porn with Carpenter. Auto Focus premiered at the Telluride and Toronto Film Festivals before its art-house run in the fall of 2002. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
Review
Though Paul Schrader isn't often tapped to direct scripts other than his own, his touch proves essential to Auto Focus, a true-life tale of sex, celebrity, and videotape that seems tailor-made to the man who dreamed up Taxi Driver and American Gigolo. Schrader's clinical, detached directorial style proves well-matched to the genial, humorous tone of Michael Gerbosi's script; it's like Hardcore without all the proselytizing (and without the sight of George C. Scott in a campy porn-producer costume). What Auto Focus is most interested in is not the narcotizing effects of anonymous sex -- though that's undeniably a big part of it -- but the latent homosexuality lurking behind Bob Crane and John Carpenter's buddy-buddy sexcapades. Finally cast in a role that successfully sends up and subverts his All-American charm, Greg Kinnear perfectly captures Crane's kid-in-a-candy-store sexual awakening; meanwhile, Willem Dafoe underlines the desperation at the heart of the swinging lifestyle. Schrader overplays his hand in the film's "downward spiral" sequences, switching to hand-held camera and bleached-out film stock, but even those minor technical miscalculations don't detract from the film's portrait of Crane as a man whose determination to lead the unobserved life ultimately led to his death. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
Kurt Fuller - Werner Klemperer/Klink; Ed Begley, Jr. - Mel Rosen; Michael E. Rodgers - Richard Dawson; Michael McKean - Video Executive; Christopher Neiman - Clary; Bruce Solomon - Feldman; Lyle Kanouse - John Banner/Schultz; Nikita Ager - Julie
Credit
Seth Reed - Art Director, Wendy Kurtzman - Casting, Brian Olivier - Co-producer, Julie Weiss - Costume Designer, Aaron Barsky - First Assistant Director, Paul Schrader - Director, Kristina Boden - Editor, James Schamus - Executive Producer, Trevor Macy - Executive Producer, Rick Hess - Executive Producer, Angelo Badalamenti - Musical Direction/Supervision, G. Marq Roswell - Musical Direction/Supervision, Joel Harlow - Makeup Special Effects, Rob Hinderstein - Makeup Special Effects, James Chinlund - Production Designer, Fred Murphy - Cinematographer, Alicia Allain - Producer, Scott Alexander - Producer, Larry Karaszewski - Producer, Todd Rosken - Producer, Pat Dollard - Producer, Gene Serdena - Set Designer, Sam Pope - Set Designer, Steve Aaron - Sound/Sound Designer, Michael Gerbosi - Screenwriter, Andrew Barrett - Additional Music, Joel Harlow - Prosthetic Makeup Effects, Rob Hinderstein - Prosthetic Makeup Effects, Steve Munro - Supervising Sound Editor, Robert Graysmith - Book Author
Devo was from Ohio, as was Brainiac and so is Stylex.The latter has obviously been influenced largely by both. They have some of the wacky sense of humor of both bands while also maintaining more of a techno dance sound than the aforementioned acts. The lyrics may be strange but they're also slightly redundant within some of the songs, which might explain why they're also quite catchy. The beats laid down are infectious and have great grooves. Unfortunately, a good portion of this album seems too much like a techno version of Devo to come across as original, but at the same time it can't be denied that the sound is catchy and the album seems over way too soon. Fans of the genre should check out this album, but its interest to those outside quirky dance-punk may be limited. ~ Kurt Morris, All Music Guide
Auto Focus is a 2002Americanbiographical film directed by Paul Schrader. The screenplay by Michael Gerbosi is based on the book The Murder of Bob Crane by Robert Graysmith. It tells the story of actor Bob Crane, an affable radio show host and amateur drummer who found success on Hogan's Heroes, a popular television sitcom about a prisoner of war camp during World War II, and his dramatic descent into the underbelly of Hollywood after the series was cancelled.
The film concentrates on Crane's secret personal life, focusing on his relationship with John Henry Carpenter, an electronics expert involved with the nascent home video market. Encouraged by Carpenter and enabled by his expertise, Crane — a church-going, cleancut family man — becomes a sex addict obsessed with sleeping with as many women as possible and recording those encounters with video and photographic equipment, usually with Carpenter participating. Auto Focus depicts Crane's life from his sitcom success through his post-Hogan's Heroes efforts to sustain a viable career — mostly in dinner theatre — until his murder.
Crane's murder remains unsolved to this day. Although Carpenter was tried and acquitted of the crime, he remained the subject of suspicion even after his death in 1998.
The DVD release includes a 50-minute documentary, Murder in Scottsdale, delving into the initial murder investigation and the reopening of the case some 15 years later.
The film met with a largely positive reception from critics. A.O. Scott of the New York Times said the film "gets to you like a low-grade fever, a malaise with no known antidote. When it was over, I wasn't sure if I needed a drink, a shower or a lifelong vow of chastity ... there is [a] severe, powerful moralism lurking beneath the film's dispassionate matter-of-factness. Mr. Schrader is indifferent to the sinner, but he cannot contain his loathing of the sin, which is not so much sex as the fascination with images ... To argue that images can corrupt the flesh and hollow out the soul is, for a filmmaker, an obviously contradictory exercise, but not necessarily a hypocritical one. There is plenty of nudity in Auto Focus, but you can always glimpse the abyss behind the undulating bodies, and the director leads you from easy titillation to suffocating dread, pausing only briefly and cautiously to consider the possibility of pleasure."[2]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called the film "a hypnotic portrait ... pitch-perfect in its decor, music, clothes, cars, language and values ... Greg Kinnear gives a creepy, brilliant performance as a man lacking in all insight ... Crane was not a complex man, but that should not blind us to the subtlety and complexity of Kinnear's performance."[3]
Edward Guthmann of the San Francisco Chronicle called it "a compelling, sympathetic portrait ... Kinnear undercuts the seaminess of the Crane story, and shows us a man with more dimension and complexity than his behavior might suggest."[4]
Peter Travers of Rolling Stone awarded it 3½ ot of 4 stars and added, "Schrader, the writer of Taxi Driver and the director of American Gigolo, is a poet of male sexual pathology. Shot through with profane laughs and stinging drama, Auto Focus ranks with his best films."[5]
Todd McCarthy of Variety called it "one of director Paul Schrader's best films, and like Boogie Nights ranks as a shrewd expose of recent Hollywood's slimy underside ... Schrader directs with a very smooth hand, providing a good-natured and frequently amusing spin to eventually grim material that aptly reflects the protagonist's almost unfailing good humor ... Pic overall has an excellent L.A. period feel without getting elaborate about it, and musical contributions by Angelo Badalamenti and a host of pop tunes are tops."[6]
Awards and nominations
Paul Schrader was nominated for the Golden Seashell at the San Sebastián International Film Festival. Willem Dafoe was nominated for Best Supporting Actor by the Chicago Film Critics Association but lost to Tim Robbins for Mystic River.
