The Hoax

The Hoax (2006) is a fact-based comedy-drama directed by Lasse Hallström — watch it online on iFILM. Richard Gere plays Clifford Irving, the writer who, in the early 1970s, convinced a top New York publisher that he had secretly recorded the memoirs of Howard Hughes — a billionaire recluse who communicated with his own staff only by handwritten note and had not spoken publicly in years.

Irving recruits his friend Dick Suskind (Alfred Molina) and the two men build an elaborate fiction from scraps of archive material, rumour and guesswork. The advance reaches a million dollars. The media are captivated. But each new claim demands another, and the chain of invention keeps growing until Irving finds out, to his horror, that his fabrication has somehow caught the attention of the Nixon White House. The tagline nails it: never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Marcia Gay Harden, Hope Davis and Stanley Tucci round out the cast. Hallström pitches the tone between sharp farce and genuine unease. Stream The Hoax (2006) full movie on iFILM.