The Hoax (2006) on Netflix
In 1971, McGraw-Hill rejects Clifford Irving's manuscript. He tells Andrea Tate, his contact there, that Howard Hughes has asked him to write his autobiography, though the two have never met.
- Netflix3.3/5
- IMDb6.6/1017,799 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes86%
Trailer
Plot summary
Clifford Irving, an author in 1971, learns that McGraw-Hill will not publish his latest manuscript, and Andrea Tate, his contact at the house, seems ready to cut him off. He claims his next project is the century's most important book, and the book he names is a fabrication: Howard Hughes, the reclusive billionaire, has supposedly hired him to write the autobiography. Irving has never met Hughes and has never heard from him, and he counts on Hughes staying out of public view, as Hughes has done in a court case involving TWA. McGraw-Hill is interested. Irving's friend and researcher, Dick Suskind, joins the work, and Irving's wife, Edith, an artist, takes the name Helga R. Hughes so that checks made out to H. R. Hughes can be deposited.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Hoax (2006)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Clifford Irving, the writer whose Howard Hughes hoax the film depicts, was hired by the producers as technical adviser but was unhappy with the changed screenplay, and asked to have his name removed from the movie credits.
- Clifford Irving said scenes of him feuding with his co-conspirator Dick Suskind, getting him drunk and hiring a bargirl to seduce him were invented, and that Hughes's people mailing him the files was also made up.
- The film eliminates every scene set in Ibiza, where the real Clifford Irving owned a farmhouse and wrote much of the book it adapts.
