Auto Focus

Auto Focus

Bob Crane was once told by Eddie Cantor that “likability is 90 percent of the battle.” For Bob Crane, it is 100 percent of the battle; there is nothing else there–no values, no self-awareness, no judgment, no perspective, not even an instinct for survival. Just likability. And the need to be liked in a sexual way every single day. Paul Schrader’s “Auto Focus,” based on Crane’s life, is a deep portrait of a shallow man, going through the motions of having a good time.

We know the broad outlines of Crane’s rise and fall. How he was a Los Angeles DJ who became a TV star after being cast in the lead in “Hogan’s Heroes,” a comedy set in a Nazi prison camp. How his career tanked after the show left the air. How he toured on the dinner theater circuit, destroyed two marriages and was so addicted to sex that his life was scandalous even by Hollywood standards. How he was found bludgeoned to death in 1978 in a Scottsdale, Ariz., motel room.

He is survived by four children; sons from his first and second marriages who differ in an almost biblical way: The older appears in this movie, the younger threatens a lawsuit against it but runs Web sites retailing his father’s sex life.

So strange were Crane’s views of his behavior–and so disconnected from reality that I can almost imagine him seeing nothing wrong with his second son’s sales of photos and videotapes showing dad at work.

“It’s healthy,” says Crane Sr., defending promiscuity; we’re just not sure if he really thinks that or really thinks anything.

This film is hypnotic. The director (Paul Schrader) has never been much interested in stories about men who have sex when they shouldn’t: He wrote “Taxi Driver” and wrote and directed “American Gigolo.” Here he sees Crane as an empty vessel, filled first with fame and then with desire. Because he was on TV, women want to sleep with him, and he seems to oblige them out of good manners. There is no lust or passion in this film, only mechanical courtship followed by desultory sex.

You can catch the women looking at him and asking themselves if there is anybody at home. Even his wives are puzzled.

Greg Kinnear gives a creepy, brilliant performance as a man lacking all insight; he has the likability part down pat. There is a scene in a nightclub where Crane asks the bartender to turn the TV to a rerun of “Hogan’s Heroes.” When a woman realizes that Hogan himself is in the room, notice how impeccable Kinnear’s timing and manner are as he fakes false modesty and pretends to be flattered by her attention. It is true that Crane was not a complex man–but it should not blind us to the subtlety and complexity of Kinnear’s performance here.

Willem Dafoe is a co-star of this film, he plays John Carpenter who is a technology enthusiast. During his time around the sets, this character flatters the actors while lending them new Sony gadgets. Furthermore, he wires their cars with powerful stereo systems and their dressing rooms with instant replay capabilities. He may be seen as more than just Mephistopheles because he offers Crane what he wants most.

The turning point in Bob Crane’s life happens one night when Willem Dafoe invites him to a strip club; proud of his drumming skills, Willem suggests that the star “sit in” on drums with house band at such venue. Afterward, Bob starts sitting-in at strip clubs six nights per week before not coming home until very late or not at all for days on end which upsets his first wife Anne (played by Rita Wilson). The next morning over breakfast with priest whom he meets due sensing something wrong within himself but feeling no interest even when priest asks if might want to “sit in” on parish musical group together sometime.

Dafoe portrays Carpenter as ingratiate/complimentary/sly/seductive/enigmatically needy type person; is there something gay between them despite their denials? When other people aren’t around these two spend all time with each other except for brief argument during which Crane looks at video where he sees Carpenter’s hand placed incorrectly says “It’s an orgy!” then they go back out hunting again.

Does it occur merely coincidentally that certain aspects about video equipment used coincide w/ sexual activity? From inception home videos always had hidden connection w/ sex; Tommy Lee & Pamela Anderson should ask themselves why ever recorded wedding night movie might provide some answers.

Sexual throughout walls everything filled up by it yet lacking any kind of eroticism whatsoever; women never quite come into focus drifting past some men’s vision while those guys page through swinger magazines visit swinging parties sit in strip clubs and troll themselves across bars as bait if there’s shadow over this paradise it lies within Crane’s condescension toward Carpenter without understanding latter’s desperate need for validation.

It gets everything right with its decorations, music, costumes, automobiles, dialogue content. This movie takes place during those years when people were living from one sexual revolution to another invention of birth control pills leads into era characterized by fear over AIDS epidemic; men who grew up reading Playboy then found some their dreams come true.

Celebrity shows what women are available availability becomes inevitable when certain types of males can’t say “no” no matter how hard they try; these individuals have been programmed so deep down inside that reason doesn’t stand chance against desire. We might pity Bob because he’s dumb but on other hand.

The movie’s moral opposite comes in the form of Crane’s manager, Lenny–portrayed by Ron Leibman. Lenny gets him a job on “Hogan’s Heroes”, and later even manages to secure for him the lead role in a Disney film called “Superdad.” But Crane is careless with the way he lets photographs and tapes of his sexual performances leak out into the world. One day, while they are on set at Disney, Lenny comes to visit Crane; he wants to warn him about his reputation, but Crane cannot hear him. He doesn’t listen. Instead he moves towards destruction unconscious, adrift in a sexual haze.

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