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Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
"Auto Focus" director Paul Schrader on the banality of sexual obsession, Crane's kinky male pal and why he had to cut out a sex scene that would have flown on "The Sopranos."
Oct 18, 2002 | Bob Crane, the '60s sitcom star and subject of writer-director Paul Schrader's new movie, "Auto Focus," often boasted that he never had to pay for sex. But Crane's all-consuming appetite for flesh and his habit of documenting his exploits on camera would cost him his marriage, his career and, ultimately, his life. In 1978, the man best known for playing the unflappable leading character in "Hogan's Heroes" was found in a motel room, bludgeoned to death with one of his own tripods. (No one was ever convicted in the case.)
"Auto Focus" follows Crane's rise and demise, but it shows only a perfunctory interest in "Hogan's Heroes," the popular comedy about Allied troops cavorting under the noses of their hapless captors in a German POW camp (which was recently voted the fifth-worst show of all time by TV Guide). Instead, Schrader, who specializes in unflinching portraits of men whose lives are spiraling out of control, concentrates on what lies behind Crane's slick black hair and white-picket-fence grin. Specifically, he zooms in on the actor's dangerous liaison with John Carpenter, the video technician who was tried for Crane's murder. (Carpenter was acquitted, although Schrader implicates him almost to the point of slapping on handcuffs.)
Schrader sets up Crane (Greg Kinnear) and Carpenter (Willem Dafoe) as a sort of Lone Ranger and Tonto of do-it-yourself pornography. Socially worlds apart (Dafoe's ravaged features seem like a hall-of-mirrors distortion of Kinnear's clean-cut looks), they share a similar makeup: equal parts tech geek and super-freak. Crane's the type of guy whose play button is always switched on, yet who operates his emotions by remote control. He comes into focus only in front of a camera, while Carpenter comes fully alive only in the reflection of Crane's gaze.
Schrader chips away at the pair's shagadelic veneer to reveal desperately lonely men whose screwing around is clearly symptomatic of something lacking in their lives. By the movie's bloody climax -- showing brain tissue splattering on Schrader's camera lens like the obligatory "money" shot in a hardcore porn flick -- we are left as drained as Crane must have felt after yet another soulless one-night stand.
Yet "Auto Focus" is more than a chilling autopsy report or a cautionary tale about excess: It's a fascinating, tightly wound and occasionally hilarious take on small-time celebrity, which if not quite Schrader's best work, is easily one of his most accessible. Schrader uses Crane's example to explore larger themes: the evolution of male sexuality through the free-love era, the sacrifice of self on the altar of personality, and the devastating effect of long-term addiction. The film is held together by compelling central performances and a strong supporting cast that includes Rita Wilson, Maria Bello and Ron Leibman.
Dafoe, who has previously appeared in Schrader's films "Affliction" and "Light Sleeper," as well as Martin Scorsese's "Last Temptation of Christ" (which Schrader co-wrote), is so raw and needy as Carpenter that it's almost unbearable to watch him. His awkward body language and are-we-having-fun-yet grimace conveys his character's mix of vulnerability and latent rage. Kinnear, in a career-defining role, captures Crane's emotional tics. The vaguely puzzled expression Kinnear wears in all his films works here to underline Crane's lack of self-awareness.
Kinnear bears a passing physical resemblance to his character but actually looks more like Crane's youngest son, Scotty, who is generating controversy (and helping sell movie tickets) through a Web site denouncing Schrader's film as lies. On Scotty's site, you can read the "real truth," including "proof" -- in a pop-up window -- that his father had no need for penile implants, as "Auto Focus" claims. Further, Scotty maintains that there was no shame in Bob's game and that if daddy were alive today he'd probably be running his own pay-per-view porn site.
Indeed, in the aftermath of Rob Lowe, R. Kelly and the Pam and Tommy show, Crane's sexcapades are hardly headline news. What makes "Auto Focus" more than a big-screen peepshow is Schrader's obvious relish for his material (even the Crane family response entertains him) and his adept handling of familiar territory. Although religion in "Auto Focus" is restricted to a brief exchange between Crane and his priest (he's a lapsed Catholic, wouldn't you know), it's hard not to read a biblical subtext in this tale of temptation, transgression and reaping what you sow.
Schrader concedes that elements of his own deeply religious background creep into all his work. "You never outrun your childhood," says the director, although he spent much of his adulthood trying to do precisely that. Raised in Grand Rapids, Mich., in a strict Calvinist community where watching films was forbidden, Schrader rebelled in his late teens, giving up a future in the clergy for a lifetime devoted to the art of motion pictures. His first love was foreign cinema, and at 22, while studying for his master's at UCLA, he wrote what is still regarded as a seminal text on the transcendental style in film, focusing on the works of Robert Bresson, Carl Theodor Dreyer and Yasujiro Ozu.
Starting out as a critic (he was fired by one newspaper for panning "Easy Rider") Schrader switched to fiction with "The Yakuza," sharing a co-writing credit with his brother Leonard ("Kiss of the Spider Woman"). In the early 1970s, while living through a period of homelessness, drug abuse and suicidal despair, he wrote the script for "Taxi Driver" in 10 days. Although Scorsese, the film's director, described it as "too much Good Friday and not enough Easter Sunday," this blistering urban parable had a therapeutic effect on Schrader and sealed his reputation as one of Hollywood's most important screenwriters.
