**/****
starring Greg Kinnear, Willem Dafoe, Rita Wilson, Maria Bello
screenplay by Michael Gerbosi, based on The Murder of Bob Crane by Robert Graysmith
directed by Paul Schrader
by Bill Chambers I find it curious that, in my experience, TIFF-goers keep mishearing or misspeaking Auto Focus as "Out of Focus," what with either title applying to some degree. The former speaks to the self-centredness of the movie's subject, "Hogan's Heroes" star Bob Crane, the latter the shambles his life became, and aye, there's the rub: it's too easy to tie a bow on Auto Focus. Greg Kinnear is affable as Crane, who used his fame and fortune to get laid as often as possible, documenting it all with a newfangled technology called videotape supplied him by bottom-feeder John "Carpy" Carpenter (Willem Dafoe, sparkling as usual). In the latest issue of CREATIVE SCREENWRITING, script doctors Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (self-appointed kings of the biopic as the writers of Ed Wood, The People vs. Larry Flynt, and Man on the Moon) touch on a difference in philosophy they had with Auto Focus director Paul Schrader that boils down to Schrader's controversial belief that addicts are born not made. By imposing this thinking on Michael Gerbosi's screenplay (adapted from the Robert Graysmith book The Murder of Bob Crane), Schrader imbues the early frames of Auto Focus with a sad inevitability: Chided by his highschool-sweetheart wife (Rita Wilson) for keeping a collection of skin mags in the garage, he makes excuses as desperate as those of an alcoholic, and we intuit that the celebrity he'll achieve through "Hogan's Heroes" will just enable his compulsions on a much grander scale. But once the fall from grace comes to pass, Auto Focus bears out as your typical junkie opera with tits instead of needles, right down to the proverbial pledges of going straight. Though sociopathic, Carpy emerges as the real tragic figure here–a wingman whose thirsts aren't quite so easily quenched. One pines for a glimpse of his life post-Crane as a parasite without a host, but it's prohibited by the picture's abrupt ending. Auto Focus, too, is only interested in the star. PROGRAM: SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS
