"Guys
just gotta have fun" is the final line, a posthumous
and doubtless apocryphal voiceover of Bob Crane (played by
Greg Kinnear) in the biopic Auto Focus,
directed by Paul Schrader. Based on the book The Murder
of Bob Crane by Robert Graysmith, the film is about the
rise and fall of a talented actor from Connecticut who descended
into oblivion in Hollywood. After marrying his high school
sweetheart, the talented Crane became a successful radio disc
jockey in Bridgeport, and then went to Hollywood in 1964.
Although also successful as a KNX radio disc jockey, Crane
pressed his agent for better acting parts. One day his agent
brought him a pilot script of the weekly TV show "Hogan's
Heroes," and in 1965 he began the first of six moneymaking
seasons as Colonel Hogan. While walking within the CBS back
lot, where the show was filmed, he one day ran into John Carpenter
(played by Willem Dafoe). Carpenter was then peddling the
latest electronic equipment, at first hi-fi car stereo systems
and later videotaping systems. Carpenter then entices Crane
into going to strip joints. With the sexual revolution then
in full swing in Hollywood and elsewhere, Crane overcomes
initial prudishness and eventually compulsively enjoys the
company of big-breasted women at various "parties"
arranged and videotaped by Carpenter, who tries but fails
to entice Crane into a bisexual lifestyle. Crane and Carpenter
become coproducers of some of the earliest video porn; hence
the film's title. Crane's wife Anne (played by Rita Wilson)
is neglected, so she divorces him. Crane then marries Patricia
(played by Maria Bello), the actress playing the part of secretary
to Colonel Klink in "Hogan's Heroes." But when the
series ends, his reputation for sexual promiscuity deprives
him of lucrative acting roles, so Carpenter becomes his agent.
Crane then plays a role in a sex comedy performed as "dinner
theater," which goes on tour, giving him a chance to
sample female company all over the country along with Carpenter,
including an intoxicating encounter with a dominatrix. Once
again, Crane's wife is neglected while he is having fun, though
more by viewing the videotaped orgies than by participating.
In 1978, Crane is found murdered in his Scottsdale motel room.
Crane's voiceovers then end the film by informing us that
Carpenter was prosecuted for the crime some years later but
exonerated for lack of evidence. All that talent went to waste,
as is so often in Hollywood, ending tragically. Auto
Focus reveals how a star can rise and fall amid
the temptations of Tinseltown, but did the sleazy story really
need to be told as a feature film? Crane's documentary biography,
presented on the cable channel Arts & Entertainment earlier
this year, at least spared us of the sordid details. MH
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