Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #49424 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-09-29
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 101 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Auto Focus captures the scandalous private life of Bob Crane, best known as the star of German POW camp sitcom Hogan's Heroes. Greg Kinnear plays the affable comic actor, who nursed an obsession with sex--specifically pornography, strippers, swinging, domination, and especially the videotaping of his own sexual exploits. His behaviour led to the downfall of two marriages and enmeshed Crane in a strangely symbiotic relationship with a video equipment salesman named John Carpenter (Willem Dafoe); Carpenter provided the technology, and Crane (through the power of his fame) provided the girls. Their friendship ultimately wore thin and may have led to Crane's gruesome death. Auto Focus is a lot like an episode of VH-1's Behind the Music, but with sex in the place of the usual downfall-causing drugs; though elegantly filmed, it doesn't delve too deeply into Crane's joy, and so never gets a genuine feel for his pain either. --Bret Fetzer

Special Features
Greg Kinnear and Willem Dafoe commentaries
Director, Producer and Writer commentaries
"Murder in Scottsdale" documentary
Making of featurette
Deleted scenes
Theatrical trailer
Weblink

1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen
Dolby Digital 5.1
Languages: English, French
Subtitles: Arabic, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, English hard of hearing, Finnish, French, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Norwegian, Polish, Slovene, Swedish, Turkish.

Synopsis
AUTO FOCUS is the story of Bob Crane (Greg Kinnear), who was the star of the American television series Hogan's Heroes in the 1960s. Before he achieved that particular fame, Crane was a popular radio talk show host in Hollywood. His television work brought him a level of visibility and notoriety that he turned directly into sexual opportunity. Gallivanting with sleazy audiovisual salesman John Carpenter (Willem Dafoe), Crane built a life as a desperately addicted sex maniac. As the first home video cameras were invented, Carpenter and Crane began a prolific hobby of coercing girls to appear on tape while engaging in lewd sexual acts. The more intensely obsessed Crane became with his habit, the less his acting career mattered. He divorced his wife, allowing her custody of their two children, and remarried, having another son, only to divorce again. Meanwhile, his relentless sexual exploits became increasingly impersonal and mean-spirited. His public image suffered as he shamelessly made tasteless, sexualized remarks and got a reputation for openly displaying photographs of himself receiving oral sex. Paul Schrader's powerful, deeply effective, and darkly disturbing film makes a 180-degree transition as its story rolls out. What begins as a happy, colorful, naive portrayal of the entertainment industry becomes the nightmare of one man's disintegration in the face of temptation, money, and power.

Customer Reviews

Interesting........................................
A biopic on the story of the unsolved murder of Hogan's Heroes star, Bob Crane. Bob lead the double life of happy, family man but behind the scenes he was well into sex. With him, it was an addiction. His companion was the VCR guy, John Carpenter, later arrested for the murder.Both were dedicated photography buffs and wasted no time by photographing their sexual exploits and watching them afterwards. The film tracks Bob's rise to fame through his famous TV series which ran for six seasons, and his decline afterwards when it became known, through his open indiscretions, that he was bad news.
His decline is marked by his hallucinations and blackouts, but there may have been drugs involved, though this is not openly shown in the film. However, there is the odd suggestion, if you look closely.
Sadly, Bob resorted to working on stage in dinner theatre, and believing himself to be broke, degenerated and sank lower and more desperate, ably depicted in the film. It was later explained in the excellent extras on the DVD, that he was in for a 25% cut of the profit from "Heroes" amounting to 22.5 million dollars.
His first wife, Anne, divorced him and he married his co-star from "Heroes" but that marriage failed as well.
It is interesting to track the invention of video and its progressing effect on photography. Greg Kinnear and Daniel Dafoe, give stirring performances as the two main characters, the efforvescent Crane, and the insecure Carpenter. Carpenter makes much of Bob's fame to "pull the birds", but comes across as a lonely man, fired because he was colour-blind. They would not get away with that nowadays.
Bob Crane, was undoubtedly addicted to sex, now regarded as an illness. Finally he is battered to death in his sleep and Carpenter was arrested. The investigation was somewhat of a fiasco and was reopened ten years later with the advent of DNA testing.
This is a very good film, with excellent extras.
Well worth watching, but do not let the children see it.

Another Hero goes down in flames
As a teenager, I loved watching HOGAN'S HEROES, a late 1960's sitcom starring Bob Crane. Ah, the innocence of youth.

AUTO FOCUS depicts the professional self-immolation of Bob Crane (Greg Kinnear). And caused by what? Drugs? Booze? Gambling? Twinkie over-indulgence? Nope, just sex. Lots and lots of it. (Come to think of it, isn't that every teenage boy's fevered fantasy?)

As the film opens, Bob is a talented, radio talk-show host on the Los Angeles airwaves. His (apparently) happy family includes a pretty wife and kids. They're devout Catholics, going to Mass every Sunday.

Bob's agent (Ron Liebman) lands him the starring role as Colonel Hogan in the WWII prisoner-of-war farce, HOGAN'S HEROES. It's during this period that Bob befriends John Carpenter (William Dafoe), an obsequious salesman who haunts the studio lot trying to interest stars in the emerging technology of home video taping/playback. Bob, an avid photographer, is hooked. John, a sexual satyr, introduces Crane to his world of promiscuous women. Bob's growing fame as Col. Hogan attracts even more. For Crane, a typical night on the town with pal John soon involves having sex with multiple partners, all the action recorded with still or video cameras for Bob's later enjoyment. Crane even begins a torrid affair with the Hilda character (Marla Bello) of HOGAN'S HEROES. (Remember Klink's secretary, Hilda? She was a Babe.) Needless to say, Bob's marriage fails. And then things get progressively worse.

Kinnear is wonderfully creepy and as the self-destructive Hero who jeopardizes everything he holds dear just because he can't keep it zipped. (As Crane asserts, "A day without sex is a day wasted.") Even then, he might have gotten away with it if he'd been the least bit discreet. But soon, the rest of the Hollywood entertainment Biz regarded him as nothing better than a porn star. And porn stars don't get "legitimate" gigs. Crane's only good luck was that this was pre-AIDS.

Dafoe's performance as the sleazy, pimping Carpenter is chillingly good. With a friend like that, who needs enemies?

Crane's sordid end in a Scottsdale hotel room remains one of Tinseltown's greatest enigmas.

The film contains full-frontal female nudity, and certain scenes miss an X rating by the narrowest of margins. It's probably not a movie you'd pop into the DVD player to show the extended family after next Thanksgiving's feast.

I'll never again watch a HOGAN'S HEROES rerun from the same perspective.

Another gem from Dafoe
This dark biopic charts the career of Bob Crane (Greg Kinnear) from cheeky disc-jockey in 1964, desperate to break in to serious films and be the new Jack Lemmon; through the high-life years he spent in the title role in 60’s US tv smash, ‘Hogan’s Heroes’ to his untimely death. Kinnear is well cast in the role of the initially insecure but amiable Hogan, who believes that likeability is 90% of the battle, which is good news as he sees himself as the typical likeable guy, always wanting to make an impression. Kinnear manages admirably to break down the image that his hard-to-beat performance as Jack Nicholson’s gay neighbour in the vastly under-rated, ‘As Good As It Gets,’ by putting everything into his portrait of Crane. Even in scenes where he is filming ‘Hogan’s Heroes,’ he manages to convey both the part he is playing and the actor he is playing in tandem through his quietly expressive face. Bob is ultimately a good man, tee-total, devoted to his family although not spending enough time with them through work, who has a small skeleton in the pornographic magazines he keeps in the garage (due to an interest in photography, he tell his wife.) It is his friendship with John Carpenter (Carpy) played with restrained magnificence by the gorgeous Willem Dafoe, that sees Bob slowly fall off the rails. Carpy is a technical expert, working for Sony, doing a good line in selling expensive hi-fi’s and video tape recorders to the rich and famous. Pretending to be a fan of the show, he takes Bob to a local strip club, where Bob, apprehensive at first, is soon adopted as drummer by the resident band, accompanying the girls’ routines. This quickly leads to double dates with Carpy, and the recording of their exploits for them both to drool over afterwards. His marriage soon collapses and Bob leaves Anne for his co-star on Hogan’s Heroes, Patty (Maria Bello) who tells him she understands him and is willing to put up with the other women. With this encouragement, and Carp pushing him further into excess, Bob’s real life, acting and fantasy life start to collide in a series of blackouts/hallucinations. Bob tries to spend less time with Carp, but he is already hopelessly addicted to their excessive lifestyle. Carp keeps him interested by showering him with better and improved video cameras. Their post mortem of each orgy afterwards as they masturbate in front of each other, watching the previous night’s events, becomes almost as important as the orgies themselves. For Bob they are proof of his versatility on screen. They are his acting taken to its next stage. As the friendship between the two men deteriorates due to Bob’s increasing disrespect of Carp, his life spirals towards its bloody end. This downbeat, voyeuristic take on success and its temptations really hits the button. Greg Kinnear in possibly his best form ever is almost upstaged by Dafoe, who beneath the sliminess, really makes you care about his character, despite his unscrupulous immorality. A suitably creepy screenplay from Paul Shraeder and a subtle homo-erotic undertow make this seedy take on ‘A Star is Born’ uncomfortably compulsive viewing