Pun Salad

Geek God Larry Wall discusses the difference between programming and scripting:

Suppose you went back to Ada Lovelace and asked her the difference between a script and a program. She'd probably look at you funny, then say something like: Well, a script is what you give the actors, but a program is what you give the audience. That Ada was one sharp lady...

I thought this had some promise, because (as you see) gracefully-aging fine actor Richard Gere is staring out from the DVD box with an impish twinkle in his eye. And the subject of the movie is Clifford Irving's attempt to publish a phony "autobiography" of reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, which I was actually alive for in the early 70's and I remembered it as kind of a hoot.

So I was set up for a kind of light-hearted caper movie. Bzzzt! Wrong answer!

Although there's some of that at the beginning, as Gere and his schlumpy assistant, played by Alfred Molina, concoct and execute their wacky scheme, appealing to the greed and vanity of their publisher, deceiving sources, lying to friends, associates, spouses, etc.

But the filmmakers eventually go the "honest" route themselves: as it turns out, living a life of fraud and deception has its negative consequences!

I'm enough of a conservative to appreciate that, but it wasn't very interesting as a movie.

Also, the movie gets kind of tricky with reality near the end, it's unclear how much of what's onscreen is real, and how much is out of Irving's eventual self-delusion. A far-fetched Nixon/Watergate tie-in is attempted—ho-hum.