Bare Bob

PAUL SCHRADER EXPOSES THE SECRET LIFE OF BOB CRANE IN AUTO FOCUS

HOT REELS

Bob Crane, the star of the 60s-and-early-70s sitcom Hogan's Heroes, was bludgeoned to death in an Arizona motel room in 1978. The murder weapon is thought to have been a tripod, likely one that Crane, the Samuel Pepys of amateur pornography, had used while documenting his numerous sexual encounters. A Man Has to Have a Hobby could have been the title for the new Crane biopic; Auto Focus is. But if that sounds clinical—and the director is the often clinical Paul Schrader—this funny, sordid, sometimes messy picture is anything but. Greg Kinnear gets the wry, processed charm of the star's public veneer just about right. More important, he captures the internal disconnect of a man who even in his most intimate moments can't stop performing, if only for an audience of one—Narcissus with a video camera (and playmate as prop). It's a wonderfully off-balance performance, a voyage of queasy self-discovery that inverts Hollywood's usual follow-your-dream puffery. Co-starring is Willem Dafoe, thrillingly sycophantic as the video salesman who became Crane's partner in debauchery, or, as we would now say, his enabler. Together, they throw off the same ambiguous sparks Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo did in Midnight Cowboy—it's the two actors' chemistry that really makes the movie hum, because, as with most biopics about people whose lives come to abrupt conclusions, the climactic violence can't cover up the fact that Auto Focus is driving down a narrative dead end. But that's life. This being a movie, you still get to see Colonel Klink go wild in a group grope.(Rating ****)

(And if you want to learn more about the real Bob Crane, be sure to visit bobcrane.com. It's run by one of his sons and offers streaming XXX videos of Dad. Major credit cards accepted!)

BRUCE HANDY