.:clifford irving was a genius:.
does this guy look like a genius?
he is.
we went and saw ‘the hoax’ last friday, and i was pretty darn impressed. i liked the movie, but i think i’m pretty fascinated witht he fact that this guy lied his way into one-million dollars. he conned a major publisher…multiple high-up people…into giving him that kind of money. back in the 70s, that was some pretty incredibly hefty cash. hell, that’s a pretty hefty amount of cash now!
the movie was pretty great. richard gere played clifford irving. and for those of you that don’t know who he is…the quick and dirty is something like this…
cliff was a down-and-out author. he had published a few books that didn’t sell so great. he decided that he was going to really try to do something great…and that something great was to write the biography of howard hughes, the eccentric (read TOTALLY ‘effing crazy) billionaire who was a pilot and a movie producer first and foremost…and also a massive playa’. he set a bunch of speed records in aviation and he dated hot women of the good ol’ days like katherine hepburn and ava gardner. oh yeah…he was crazier than the added population of approximately 12 looney bins combined with his massive case of OCD. so he disappeared from the public eye…
…and that’s where the public facination with him came into play.
nobody had seen or heard from him in quite a number of years, and cliff decides, ‘hey, i’m going to go ahead and lie about being commissioned by him to write his biography. it’ll be sweet’.
mcgraw hill, his publisher, buys it…literally…and forwards him one-million dollars.
now this dude clifford irving FORGES handwriting, which is analyzed by experts and is found to be ‘authentic’. he records fake conversations in which he plays the voice of mr. hughes…and they are passed off as authentic. he even goes so far as to steal a number of government documents, writes their contents into his novel, and they pass. the whole thing is completely made up…and of course, everone believes him because howard hughes is flipping crazy…so if he says cliff is lying about this stuff, well…he’s just saying that because he’s crazy…..right? right. it’s pretty messed up.
eventually, cliff gets caught because he too is apparently fairly crazy.
but imagine it…imagine pulling off a giant lie like that. imagine having the public by the balls, having them hang on your every words, knowing that everything coming out of your trap is completely made up. and then, finally, you not only talk your shit to them have them believe it…but you turn right back around and SELL it to them! GENIUS!
who’s dumber…him for trying to pull something like that off or the public for falling for it?
