The Hoax
''The Hoax'' is a 2006 American comedy-drama film starring Richard Gere, directed by Swedish filmmaker Lasse Hallström. The screenplay by William Wheeler is based on the book of the same title by Clifford Irving. It recounts Irving's elaborate hoax of publishing an autobiography of Howard Hughes that he purportedly helped write, without ever having talked with Hughes. The screenplay was considerably different from the book. Hired as a technical adviser to the film, Irving was displeased with the product and later asked to have his name removed from the credits. It nonetheless earned a positive critical reception, but was a box office bomb, grossing only $11.7 million against a budget of $25 million. Plot In 1971, publishing executives at McGraw-Hill express an interest in Clifford Irving's novel, ''Rudnick's Problem.'' ''Fake!'', his previous book about art forger Elmyr de Hory, had sold poorly. Irving believes he has a breakout work, but the publisher decides against releasing ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lasse Hallström
Lars Sven "Lasse" Hallström (; born 2 June 1946) is a Swedish film director. He first became known for directing almost all the music videos by the pop group ABBA, and subsequently became a feature film director. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director for ''My Life as a Dog (Mitt liv som hund)'' (1985) and later for ''The Cider House Rules'' (1999). His other celebrated directorial works include ''What's Eating Gilbert Grape'' (1993) and '' Chocolat'' (2000). Early life Hallström was born in Stockholm, Sweden. His father Nils Hallström was a dentist and his mother was the writer Karin Lyberg (1907–2000). His maternal grandfather, Ernst Lyberg, was the Minister of Finance in the first cabinet of Carl Gustaf Ekman (1926–1928) and leader of the Liberal Party of Sweden (1930–1933). His father was also enthusiastic about film and made a film called ''Sommarstad'' in 1939. Career Hallström attended Adolf Fredrik's Music School in Stockholm. He made his dir ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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William Wheeler (screenwriter)
William Almon Wheeler (June 30, 1819June 4, 1887) was an American politician and attorney. He served as a United States representative from New York from 1861 to 1863 and 1869 to 1877, and the 19th vice president of the United States from 1877 to 1881. Born in Malone, New York, Wheeler pursued a legal career after attending the University of Vermont. After serving in various local positions, he won election to the New York State Legislature. He served in Congress from 1861 to 1863 and from 1869 to 1877. He was widely respected for his integrity, and refused his salary increase after Congress passed an 1873 pay raise that he opposed. After the 1876 Republican National Convention settled on Rutherford B. Hayes as the party's presidential nominee after seven ballots, the delegates nominated Wheeler for vice president. Nominated by Congressman Luke P. Poland, Wheeler surged into an early lead over Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, Marshall Jewell, and Stewart L. Woodford to clinc ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Christopher Evan Welch
Christopher Evan Welch (September 28, 1965 – December 2, 2013) was an American TV, film, and stage actor. He is best known as the narrator in Woody Allen's ''Vicky Cristina Barcelona'' and his role as Peter Gregory in the HBO series ''Silicon Valley''. He died due to complications from lung cancer in Santa Monica, California in 2013. Early life Welch was born in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. He attended the University of Dallas on a full scholarship and was a graduate of the school's drama program. He attended graduate school at the University of Washington School of Drama in Seattle, under the direction of Jack Clay. Career In 1999, Welch appeared in NBC’s Third Watch he appeared in the television series '' Law & Order: Special Victims Unit'', the short film ''Custody'', and the television film ''Hamlet''. He then appeared in an episode each of ''The Practice'', ''Law & Order: Criminal Intent'', and '' Whoopi''. Welch had an extensive stage career. He appeared in several noted ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Eli Wallach
Eli Herschel Wallach (; December 7, 1915 – June 24, 2014) was an American film, television, and stage actor from New York City. From his 1945 Broadway debut to his last film appearance, Wallach's entertainment career spanned 65 years. Originally trained in stage acting, he became "one of the greatest character actors ever to appear on stage and screen" and ultimately garnered over 90 film credits. He and his wife Anne Jackson often appeared together on stage, eventually becoming a notable acting couple in American theater. Wallach initially studied method acting under Sanford Meisner, and later became a founding member of the Actors Studio, where he studied under Lee Strasberg. He played a wide variety of roles throughout his career, primarily as a supporting actor. For his debut screen performance in ''Baby Doll'' (1956), he won a BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer and a Golden Globe Award nomination. Among his other most famous roles are Calvera in ''The Magnificent Seven'' (196 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nina, Baroness Van Pallandt
Nina, Baroness van Pallandt (born Nina Magdelena Møller; 15 July 1932) is a Danish retired singer and actress. Acting Van Pallandt acted on television and in films. From 1969 to the early 1970s, she appeared as a guest on several episodes of the BBC comedy sketch series ''The Morecambe & Wise Show (1968 TV series), The Morecambe & Wise Show''. In 1975, she appeared in the ''Ellery Queen (TV series), Ellery Queen'' episode "The Adventure of Colonel Nivin's Memoirs", and in 1988 she appeared in the ''Tales of the Unexpected (TV series), Tales of the Unexpected'' episode "A Time to Die". In 1982, she appeared in the ''Taxi (TV series), Taxi'' episode List of Taxi episodes#ep86, "Elegant Iggy". She appeared in several Robert Altman films during the 1970s, including ''The Long Goodbye (film), The Long Goodbye'' (1973), ''A Wedding (1978 film), A Wedding'' (1978), and ''Quintet (film), Quintet'' (1979). She had mild sex scenes with Richard Gere in ''American Gigolo'' (1980) and Jeff ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Watergate Scandal
The Watergate scandal was a major political scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Richard Nixon from 1972 to 1974 that led to Nixon's resignation. The scandal stemmed from the Nixon administration's continual attempts to cover up its involvement in the June 17, 1972, break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Washington, D.C., Watergate Office Building. After the five perpetrators were arrested, the press and the Justice Department connected the cash found on them at the time to the Committee for the Re-Election of the President. Further investigations, along with revelations during subsequent trials of the burglars, led the House of Representatives to grant the U.S. House Judiciary Committee additional investigative authority—to probe into "certain matters within its jurisdiction", and led the Senate to create the U.S. Senate Watergate Committee, which held hearings. Witnesses testified that Nixon had approved plans t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Immunity From Prosecution
Legal immunity, or immunity from prosecution, is a legal status wherein an individual or entity cannot be held liable for a violation of the law, in order to facilitate societal aims that outweigh the value of imposing liability in such cases. Such legal immunity may be from criminal prosecution, or from civil liability (being subject of lawsuit), or both. The most notable forms of legal immunity are parliamentary immunity and witness immunity. One author has described legal immunity as "the obverse of a legal power":Dudley Knowles, Political Obligation: A Critical Introduction' (2009), p. 26. Criticism Legal immunities may be subject to criticism because they institute a separate standard of conduct for those who receive them. For example, as one author notes: Types Immunity of government leaders Many forms of immunity are granted to government leaders to rule over the world, continent, nation, province, urban area and rural area without fear of being sued or charged wit ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was the 36th vice president from 1953 to 1961 under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. His five years in the White House saw reduction of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, détente with the Soviet Union and China, the first manned Moon landings, and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency and Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Nixon's second term ended early, when he became the only president to resign from office, as a result of the Watergate scandal. Nixon was born into a poor family of Quakers in a small town in Southern California. He graduated from Duke Law School in 1937, practiced law in California, then moved with his wife Pat to Washington in 1942 to work for the federal government. After active duty ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Noah Dietrich
Noah Dietrich (February 28, 1889 – February 15, 1982) was an American businessman, who was the chief executive officer of the Howard Hughes business empire from 1925 to 1957. (Even though these dates have been recorded as the official period of employment, Noah Dietrich continued to oversee and make executive decisions for the Hughes industries as late as 1970.) According to his own memoirs, he left the Hughes operation over a dispute involving putting more of his income on a capital gains basis. The manuscript of his eventual memoir, ''Howard: The Amazing Mr. Hughes'', may have been a key, if inadvertent, source of novelist Clifford Irving's infamous fake autobiography of Hughes. Early life Dietrich was born on February 28, 1889 in Madison, Wisconsin, the son of German-born evangelical Lutheran minister John Dietrich, and the former Sarah Peters. He graduated from Janesville High School in 1906, married in 1910, and became a bank cashier in Maxwell, New Mexico for the next six m ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the List of United States cities by population density, most densely populated major city in the United States, and is more than twice as populous as second-place Los Angeles. New York City lies at the southern tip of New York (state), New York State, and constitutes the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban area, urban landmass. With over 20.1 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and 23.5 million in its combined statistical area as of 2020, New York is one of the world's most populous Megacity, megacities, and over 58 million people live within of the city. New York City is a global city, global Culture of New ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Howard Hughes
Howard Robard Hughes Jr. (December 24, 1905 – April 5, 1976) was an American business magnate, record-setting pilot, engineer, film producer, and philanthropist, known during his lifetime as one of the most influential and richest people in the world. He first became prominent as a film producer, and then as an important figure in the aviation industry. Later in life, he became known for his eccentric behavior and reclusive lifestyle—oddities that were caused in part by his worsening obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), chronic pain from a near-fatal plane crash, and increasing deafness. As a film tycoon, Hughes gained fame in Cinema of the United States, Hollywood beginning in the late 1920s, when he produced big-budget and often controversial films such as ''The Racket (1928 film), The Racket'' (1928), ''Hell's Angels (film), Hell's Angels'' (1930), and ''Scarface (1932 film), Scarface'' (1932). He later acquired the RKO Pictures film studio in 1948, recognized then as one ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Richard Suskind
Richard Suskind (May 2, 1925September 14, 1999) was a children's author who participated with author Clifford Irving in creating a fraudulent autobiography of the reclusive entrepreneur Howard Hughes. Suskind was incarcerated for five months of a six-month prison sentence for his role in collaborating with Irving on the hoax. He died in 1999, aged 74, in Woodland Hills Los Angeles County, California, USA. He was portrayed in the 2007 film '' The Hoax'' by Alfred Molina. Biography Richard Suskind was born in New York City and attended public schools there. In 1943, he joined the Army and served in the 8th Armored Division as a machine gunner in the Battle of the Bulge, in the Netherlands and in Germany. After the war he continued his education on the G.I. Bill in such schools as Columbia University, the University of Florence, the University of Paris, the Juilliard School of Music, and the Paris Conservatory of Music. In 1948, Suskind served with the Israeli Army during ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |