I just saw 'Auto Focus' last night - how accurate?

davbot wrote -

"No offense to Willem Dafoe, but John Carpenter was certainly too ugly to be landing women on his own..."

Your right, but John wasn't "landing" women on his own. He was only getting them through his connection to Bob Crane.

Don't stop Believin'

Where did you find pics of the actual crime scene?

I'm watching Auto Focus now on HD Movies.
I can't escape the quote from Dennis Miller on Willem Defoe's performance in Auto Focus:
"Christopher Walken, then add water".

While not an Academy choice, all actors nailed their roles.
Great addition to the home library.

Anyway, the scene of the CBS conference?
Was that filmed at the former Safari Resort in Scottsdale?
IMDb is very vague.
At one time, I worked for a company that provided cleaning services for the Safari (including the Brown Derby coffee shop), where Crane would hang after his performance at the Windmill Theatre.




"You can run me, you can starve me and you can beat me and you can kill me. Just don't bore me."

It's entertaining, but its accuracy is questionable since it's based on an unathorized biography. According to Scotty Crane, Bob was always happy, not some down and out moody actor. He worked steadily after Hogan's Heroes. He wasn't the church going family man as portrayed, and never had a priest who was a family friend. Patricia Olsen was not an orange juice and vodka drinking lush who was jealous of Crane's fame. She retired from acting after Hogan's Heroes.

MM

Back in the early 80's I knew a woman who worked with Crane in the dinner theatre circuit. She loathed him. She told me of one incident in a small town where they were doing dinner theatre. He & the cast were out having dinner & a local farmer came up to him all excited to meet his favorite TV star. He asked 'how's your lovely wife?' & Bob responded by telling this poor man what a great f&#@ she was. She said that farmer left their table in utter shock. She said Crane was consumed with sex & he didn't have a clue that what he said to that man was offensive in any way. From the things she told me I think that portrayal was quite accurate.

https://www.quora.com/What-were-the-most-awful-disasters-in-TV-due-to-copyright-licensing-issues

Crane’s estate was never approached or consulted for Schrader’s movie project; Crane’s family loudly protested the movie’s insinuation that Crane was a church-going sadomasochist, among other things, as well as the film’s jumbled and inaccurate timeline of Crane’s life and death.

Paul Schrader himself admitted to the New York Times:

“My intent with Auto Focus is not to be true or definitive. People's actual lives are not really that interesting. And with Crane I wanted to get at something meaty. Otherwise, who cares?"

That’s where the clusterfuck began: Paul Schrader based the movie on Robert Graysmith’s 1993 book, “The Murder of Bob Crane,” and so depicted Crane’s work on Hogan’s Heroes strictly in terms of incidents described in the book, with no other input from Crane’s estate or the series producers. It was a bad move, crossing the line into slander, libel and property-rights infringement; but any attempt to tell Crane’s story without including Hogan’s Heroes would be futile, so Schrader went ahead with his project anyway.

Yet, the finished film’s Hogan’s Heroes scenes seemed neutered and generic and not-at-all representative of a No.1 hit TV series, rather like a weak and amateur parody of the series that made Bob Crane a star. Even the TV series’ excellent instrumental theme song, Hogan’s Heroes March, was completely omitted from the film “Auto Focus,” making it more than obvious that Paul Schrader had run into a licensing brick wall during production.

What happened? Hogan's Heroes is still a highly protected universe, and original co-creator Al Ruddy now co-owns the rights to the plot, characters, and setting (along with co-creator Bernard Fein's widow). The rights to the original production were originally owned by Bing Crosby Productions and Rysher Entertainment.