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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A long night's journey into addiction, April 19, 2003
"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.
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by Robert Graysmith
DVD ~ Mariel Hemingway
DVD ~ William H. Macy
DVD ~ Willem Dafoe
DVD ~ Drew Barrymore
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