Obliviously
addicted characters have fascinated writer-director Paul Schrader since his
early screenwriting days. Most comfortable when focusing on hedonistic figures,
whose stories end in inevitable tragedy, Schrader has the skill to elicit
audience sympathy from the most repulsive of characters. With Auto Focus,
a film about the sordid sexual life of TV-icon Bob Crane, Schrader takes this
ability to another level.
Revolving
around the seemingly wholesome Crane, a man many consider one of television’s
most charismatic actors, the maverick filmmaker takes full advantage of flipping
our perception on his subject’s celebrity. Schrader does so not by exploiting
Crane’s dark and explicit behavior, we’ve all seen those sexual escapades on
the E! True Hollywood Story or some tabloid magazine, but by subtly
tracking his transition from all-around nice guy to perverted creep.
Auto Focus
doesn’t dwell much on Hogan’s Heroes, the hit show that brought Crane
recognition and acclaim, but how his celebrity created an uncontrollable
addiction to promiscuous sex; well-documented and available online. Stunningly
portrayed by Greg Kinnear, the same man who once hosted the cheesy Talk Soup
show for E!, Crane comes off as Peter Brady with a pornography addiction.
He acts well mannered in public, a seemingly happily married man, so when
we see him receiving oral sex, it’s like seeing…well, it’s Col. Hogan
getting head. And that is how Auto Focus shocks. The sex scenes
aren’t groundbreaking or extreme, but they’re performed by someone the
public perceived as an admirable fella.
Beginning in 1964, the year CBS premiered its first season of Hogan’s
Heroes, the film starts-off humorously enough. We see Crane’s Hollywood
agent (Ron Leibman) pitch him the plot for a sitcom about American troops
trapped in a German POW camp. “Oh, with the funny Nazis”, Crane replies
after learning the show is a comedy. As we all know, Hogan was an instant
hit and ranked fifth out of ninety-eight prime time programs. According to Auto
Focus, all was fine until John Carpenter (Willem Dafoe), a smarmy electronic
technician who sold revolutionary equipment such as VTR’s (Video Tap
Recorder’s), befriended Mr. Crane. When Crane starts hanging-out with
Carpenter, spending most of their time in strip-clubs and bars, the two form an
unbreakable alliance and even create their own motto; “A day without sex is a
day wasted”. Soon, both men begin videotaping their romps with the hundreds of
willing women.
While Schrader experiments with the aesthetic and reality of his film (a first),
Auto Focus bears many of his trademarks. A scene where Crane and
Carpenter casually masturbate to one of their self-made porn tapes strikes
similar nerves as when Robert De Niro ices his hard-on before a boxing match in Raging
Bull. Screenwriting credit may go to Michael Gerbosi, but the brotherly
relationship between Crane and Carpenter is vintage Schrader.
Cinematographer Fred Murphy plays with the film’s color-saturation so by the
final act, when our protagonist reduced to a sleazier version of Larry Flynt,
the color is heavily desaturated.
Delving into the private life of Bob Crane is no
cheery ordeal. This is someone who viewed his rabid sexual appetite as healthy
and completely normal. As the film reaches his later years, when picking up
women isn’t easy and Crane stoops pretty low to score, our sympathy turns to
disgust. And as expected, Schrader never sprinkles any pity on Crane’s habit
or his unsolved murder. This is one cold film.
-Shaun Sages
GRADE: A-
-Copyright
2002 by Shaun Sages