Celebrity: Web Sites And TV Talk Shows Puncture Holes In The Cloak Of Invisibility

Celebrity culture so hates a vacuum that reclusive geniuses have created some ideal opportunities for cons.

Stanley Kubrick on the set of "Eyes Wide Shut."

Howard Hughes in 1936.

Alfred Molina, at left, and Richard Gere as Clifford Irving in “The Hoax.”

John Malkovich, as the real-life, perfectly named Alan Conway in the sly film Color Me Kubrick, brazenly insists, I am not a recluse, while masquerading as the secluded Stanley Kubrick in the 1990s.

A magazine headline calls Howard Hughes Invisible Billionaire in The Hoax, about how Clifford Irving (Richard Gere) convinced publishers he was collaborating on Hughess autobiography in the 1970s.

Beneath their gleeful frauds, though, these films reveal a serious cultural shift. Those cons probably couldnt happen today; in a time when no public record or paparazzi snap is likely to stay hidden from snoopy Web sites, the cult of the invisible celebrity has become all but obsolete.

The best evidence of that change comes with Oprah Winfreys recent announcement that the brilliant, press-shy novelist Cormac McCarthy will do his first television interview on her show (sometime this spring). Telling viewers that his post-apocalyptic novel, The Road, would be her latest book club choice, Ms. Winfrey took a mild jab at a 2005 Vanity Fair interview with Mr. McCarthy (itself a rarity), which ran under the heading, He doesnt do blurbs, book tours or even Oprah. She added, Until now.

Mr. McCarthy has been akin to Kubrick: not personally reclusive, yet all but hidden from public view. His Oprah gambit makes authors like J. D. Salinger and Thomas Pynchon, who have cultivated an aura of privacy as a trademark, seem like dinosaurs in a changing culture.

That shift is happening so fast that even a movie about fame set in the 90s seems like a period piece. In Color Me Kubrick Conway craftily assumes the identity of a director whose name is better known than his face and who can open doors to show business.

The idea that people will do anything to break into movies is hardly original, but this film depicts silly, star-struck behavior with such exuberance that the observation seems fresh. (This small movies release in theaters two weeks ago was strategically followed by the DVD days later.) The humor comes partly from Mr. Malkovichs daffy yet controlled performance as a flamboyant gay man who, the slightest research might have revealed, was nothing like the buttoned-down, heterosexual Kubrick. Conway is an improbable figure with red nail polish, a wardrobe of bandanas and plaid jackets, and an accent that veers from vaguely British to exaggerated flat American.

But his victims are the targets of the films satire, because they are so starved for fame that they ignore all the signs of deception. A man who wants to be a costume designer sleeps with the fake Kubrick; a comedian who wants his help breaking into Las Vegas nightclubs (Kubrick and Las Vegas?) treats him to a seaside vacation. Willingly gullible, they deserve the bilking they get.

The ultimate victim, Stanley Kubrick, is never seen here. But the films tone of harmless fun is fostered by the knowledge that Color Me Kubrick was made by two of his longtime associates: the director, Brian W. Cook, was his assistant director, and the screenwriter, Anthony Frewin, his personal assistant.

We do see black-and-white film of a younger Howard Hughes in The Hoax (which opened on Friday). By the 70s, Hughes had become so eccentrically isolated that the Irving character says, Hes a lunatic hermit and I am the spokesman for the lunatic hermit, so the more outrageous I sound the more convincing I am. That strategy wouldnt go far today. (Keith Richardss tale of snorting his fathers ashes lasted less than 24 hours before his damage-controlling denial kicked in; entire sections of Web sites are devoted to refuting falsely reported celebrity deaths, like the comedian Sinbads.) Yet Mr. Irvings publishers give him a lucrative book deal on the basis of his word, some sham telegrams and a dubious handwriting analysis. Like Mr. Conways victims, they want to believe.

Although The Hoax is a larger film than Color Me Kubrick and Mr. Irving a more complicated figure than Mr. Conway, it is less successful because the director, Lasse Hallstrom, allows the tone to veer. Satiric at first, the movie becomes earnest about Irvings downward spiral, and he is a thoroughly unlikable character who callously draws his betrayed wife (Marcia Gay Harden) and his loyal best friend (Alfred Molina, terrific comic relief) into his scheme.

For Irving, fame is a means to money and power. Too bad the film allows him to announce heavy-handedly how much he wants power and to let his girlfriend, Nina Van Pallandt (Julie Delpy), state the obvious when she tells him: My greatest desire is to be an American movie star. How shallow is that?

The desire for fame is not always so simple, as Irvings panicked fear of failure suggests. And as the culture of celebrity evolves, the trade-offs that private people make grow more intriguing. Ms. Winfreys interview with Mr. McCarthy will not bring him before a studio audience, but will take place at the Santa Fe Institute, the research center in New Mexico where he has been a fellow for years. Still, his decision is a startling turn.

Mr. McCarthy has given no interview about the interview, but we know that Ms. Winfrey offers authors great respect for their work, along with a huge new readership. (Vintage Books has printed 950,000 copies of the paperback edition, enormous for a literary novel.) She often challenges her audience to read daring works. The Road is fraught with emotion between a father and his young son, but it also asks readers to follow them on a somber journey for survival through a decimated landscape.

And Ms. Winfrey usually makes the phone call about the book club selection to the author herself, a persuasive touch. Whatever she said to Mr. McCarthy, she has the ability to draw private authors out of the shadows, into a whole new glare of fame, into the very center of 21st-century celebrity.

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