Product Details

• Actors: Greg Kinnear, Willem Dafoe, Rita Wilson, Maria Bello, Ron Leibman
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Subtitles: Spanish
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Sony Pictures
• VHS Release Date: July 8, 2003
• Run Time: 106 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (75 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000087F7P
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #704,683 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Auto Focus captures the scandalous private life of Bob Crane, star of the German P.O.W. camp sitcom Hogan's Heroes. Greg Kinnear plays the affable comic actor, who nursed an obsession with sex--pornography, strippers, swinging, domination, and especially the videotaping of his own sexual exploits. His behavior led to the downfall of two marriages and enmeshed Crane in a strangely symbiotic relationship with a video equipment salesman named John Carpenter (Willem Dafoe); Carpenter provided the technology, and Crane (through the power of his fame) provided the girls. Their friendship ultimately wore thin and may have led to Crane's gruesome death. Auto Focus is a lot like an episode of Behind the Music, but with sex in the place of the usual downfall-causing drugs; though elegantly filmed, it doesn't delve too deeply into Crane's joy, and so never gets a genuine feel for his pain either. --Bret Fetzer

From The New Yorker

Grim. In the late sixties, Bob Crane (Greg Kinnear), the real-life star of the TV series "Hogan's Heroes," links up with a video-technology salesman and hanger-on named John Carpenter (Willem Dafoe). In effect, the two men pimp for each other: Crane, the TV star with the devilish smile, attracts endless girls, some of whom sleep with Carpenter, and Carpenter, taping the proceedings, attracts a few girls with the cameras, too. The men, scoring night after night, engage in what you might call Old Sex-breast-fixated, impersonal, and brief. The director, Paul Schrader, doesn't try to turn us on; the movie is completely lacking in sensuality. Working from a script by Michael Gerbosi, Schrader jumps through vignettes of mirthless fun and bland debauchery. Despite their extraordinary intimacy, the men loathe each other-there's nothing holding them together but queasy, unfulfilled homoerotic feelings. Kinnear is good as the smug, shallow Crane, but Dafoe is so creepy that it's hard to imagine anyone speaking, much less sleeping, with him. Rita Wilson and the talented Maria Bello play Crane's wives. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Performances. Incisive Portrait of Compulsion., March 21, 2003

By 

mirasreviews (McLean, VA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Auto Focus [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Autofocus is the story of actor Bob Crane's rise to popularity as Colonel Hogan on Hogan's Heroes through his fall from grace in Hollywood and eventual murder, based on the Book 'The Murder of Bob Crane' by Robert Graysmith. Bob Crane (Greg Kinnear) is a supremely likable guy with a family and a popular prime time sitcom, but also with a penchant for pornography and casual sex when he meets a man named John Carpenter (Willem Dafoe) on the set of Hogan's Heroes. Carpenter was a sales representative for Sony's cutting edge technologies when they were developing VTR technology, a precursor to videotape. Crane, a lifelong photography enthusiast, was quite taken with this new technology. Also being a huge fan of pornography, he took the opportunity that VTR provided to make an astounding number of pornographic 'home movies' of anyone who would let him. Bob Crane's philandering and sexual obsession, often encouraged and facilitated by John Carpenter, became pathological and seemingly out of his own control, eventually costing him his first marriage and damaged his ability to get roles in Hollywood. Bob Crane was murdered in 1978 . The movie asserts the most popular hypothesis as to who committed the crime. But the circumstances surrounding his murder actually remain unclear.

Greg Kinnear gives the performance of his life as the affable, compulsive Bob Crane. I only know Bob Crane from television, but, based on what I've seen, Kinnear nailed Crane's mannerisms perfectly. Willem Dafoe is superb as bright, needy, and sleazy John Carpenter. Rita Wilson is admirable in her supporting role as Bob Crane's first wife Anne. Maria Bello plays his second wife, actress Patricia Olson. I don't like director Paul Schrader's decision to overdub a narration that is supposed to be Bob Crane speaking (even speaking from the grave at one point!). It is unnecessary, corny, and takes Bob Crane's words too far out of their context, I think. That is a minor point, since the overdubbing is only occasional.

Bob Crane's elder son by his first marriage, Robert David Crane, cooperated with the making of this film. His younger son by his second marriage, Robert Scott Crane -young "Scotty" in the movie- did not and has voiced strong objections to how his father is portrayed in the film. He cites a long list of what he claims are the film's inaccuracies. (You can read his objections if you search for Autofocus on the Internet Movie Database.) I am not inclined to take his criticisms of the film seriously because, having seen the movie, I can say that the film simply does not imply many of the things that Robert Scott Crane claims that it does. He seems to think that Autofocus paints an overwhelmingly negative picture of his father without showing the positve aspects of Bob Crane's life and character. I disagree. Autofocus is not unsympathetic to Bob Crane. He is portrayed as a likable and extremely gregarious man who cared for his family and was a talented comic actor...but who had an addiction that destroyed at least one of his marriages and his career and may have caused his premature death. He would never admit that he had problem and so never tried to change his behavior. I don't think that that characterization of Bob Crane is in dispute. But the issue of accuracy which Robert Scott Crane raises is a legitimate one. Unless the subject of a biographical film cooperates in writing the film, the screenwriters and scriptwriters cannot possible know the details of what went on behind closed doors or what was said in private conversations. So they make it up. They write scenes and put words in the characters' mouths that move the story along and support (hopefully) accurate character development. So viewers have to take the details with a grain of salt, not literally.

I recommend Autofocus for Greg Kinnear's great performance, and for its excellent portrait of someone who has crossed the line between self-indulgence and self-destruction and never really figures that out.

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A long night's journey into addiction, April 19, 2003

By 

Samuel McKewon (Lincoln, NE) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Auto Focus (DVD)

"You tell them Bob Crane is normal. Tell them sex is normal." -- Bob Crane in "Auto Focus"

Sex addictions typically invite a smile, and maybe envy. "Auto Focus," which chronicles the traveling sexual misadventures of the television star Crane, is a very funny movie, but, to its credit, inspires none of the latter emotion. If Bob Crane's life was perfectly normal, as Crane seemed to believed for a time, than "normal" is one hell of a raw, tiring deal.

In a year of virtuoso male performances, Greg Kinnear was overlooked for his portrayal of the "Hogan's Heroes" star, but Kinnear delivers the performance of his still young career. He has Crane's look, his bemusement, his bewilderment, his shallowness and his greed.

But at the outset of "Auto Focus," Crane is still a LA radio disc jockey and a bit of a goof -- a "cut up" as he calls it -- and still a reasonably devoted-if-vacant family man.

And then Crane lands the "Hogan's" gig. He meets the 1960s version of a tekkie in John Carpenter (Willem Dafoe), who hangs around stars and peddles new gadgets, like the Sony Video Tape Recorder. Crane, it turns out, is a gadget man himself. Together, they use the VTR to record one another having sex with women.

Carpenter is the creep to end all creeps, but Crane is so locked into being affable that he bypasses the unseemliness for Carpenter's universal interests in naked women and booze. When he starts drumming late nights at a strip club, it's clear that his high school sweetheart-turned wife, Anne (Rita Wilson) won't be seeing him much any longer. There is one break when Crane discovers Carpenter is probably gay -- "It was a group grope!" Carpenter pleads -- but the rift is mended when Crane's home VTR player breaks, and only one man can fix it. It's a match made in porn from that moment forward.

I mentioned the movie is funny, and it is: Crane is likable but halfway hapless, and certainly dim-witted. Upon discovery of Carpenter's gay tendencies, Crane affects a deep hurt and betrayal he actually buys into. It's a sad joke, but humorous nonetheless, that Crane thinks he's operating with a full deck of cards: He knows charm like the back of hand, but not any other kind of deception -- he has pictures of naked women on his car seat for any passerby to see. He delves so deep into his addiction that he meticulously films and catalogues his escapades, only to watch every other aspect of his life crumble around him; he can't find work because his addiction is the murmur of the town, and the addiction puts him into a fog of bliss that neither his first wife, nor his second, Patti (Maria Bello) can ever bust through.

Carpenter can hang out, because he's the equipment guy, although at some point, Crane sees him as a drag, too. And then Crane sees the women as a drag, existing mainly to be filmed and viewed later, while Crane and Carpenter masturbate on the couch.

The movie's final act is a predictable, long ugly spiral toward Crane's mysterious murder in 1978. The world, aside from Carpenter and faceless women, has shut him out. A day without sex has become a day wasted, so much of the night is spent fulfilling the "mission."

Paul Schrader directs, and after his brilliant "Affliction, the cinematic equivalent of a icewrap around your head, "Auto Focus" is a film, though entirely different in source material, essentially in the same vein: Bob Crane is not without talents or virtues, but his delusions are stronger. Schrader's movies are a little cool to the touch, which has put off some critics (David Edelstein of Slate) but I like the approach -- "Auto Focus" is hardly your run-of-the-mill addiction movie. It's a little less hopped up and a lot more creepy.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Bob Crane's addiction makes his life spin out of control., May 30, 2003

By 

Linda Linguvic (New York City) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Auto Focus (DVD)

This 2002 film explores the world of Bob Crane, the TV star of Hogan's Heroes in the 60s. Based on the true story of his addiction to videotaping himself in erotic encounters with hundreds of women, we watch his life spin out of control. His two marriages fail. He can't get jobs in Hollywood anymore. And he's all alone.

Greg Kinnear stars as Bob Crane. His performance is excellent for its depiction of the shallowness of the man. And Willem Dafoe, as John Carpenter, his best friend who entices Crane into a wanton lifestyle, gives an outstanding performance. Carpenter works for SONY and introduces Crane into the world of home video. He also brings him to strip clubs, sets Crane up with women, and flatters him incessantly. Crane gets hooked into this lifestyle and this leads to an inevitable violent outcome.

The script is somewhat lacking but the actors still manage to get into the skin of the characters. However, it makes these two men seem somewhat different from those around them and never captures the real whirl of the early 70s, when the freedom of the times was gripping America. Also, I wish that every woman depicted in the film didn't come off as a lightweight bimbo.

The DVD had some long extras about Bob Crane's murder. This was the era before DNA testing and so, even though there was a trial, nothing was ever proved. There were just too many questions. And too many people who might have had a motive.

I enjoyed the film and the theme. It held my interest and kept me watching.