by MATTHEW HAYS

Gossip ran fast and free through the Montreal film loop last year, when über-sexpot George Clooney was in town to shoot his directorial debut, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. The words that I received, from various folks on and off the set, was that Clooney didn’t seem very bright but had surrounded himself with an entourage sycophantic enough that whenever he cracked a joke, people laughed - no matter how bad it was.

There is a pleasing surprise to report then. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, based on the autobiography of game-show nutjob Chuck Barris, is actually quite well directed. Clooney mixes inspired recreations of Barris’s ludicrous idiot-box concoctions - from The Dating Game to The Newlywed Game to (my personal fave) The Gong Show - with scenes from his love life (one of his wives here played by Drew Barrymore) and espionage sequences. If that sounds odd, it’s because it is; for those out of the loop, Barris was a ’60s and ’70s creator, producer and host of various bits of what were generally regarded as pop culture waste. After falling out of favour, Barris wrote a book in which he detailed his moonlighting assignment as an international spy and assassin.

Among the most intriguing and inspired bits on Clooney’s part are the documentary interviews, fleetingly cut in at key moments in the film, with people like the Unknown Comic and Dick Clark. All of these interviews are captured in ultra-washed-out shots, beautifully evoking the foggy, elusive and often questionable sense of memory and truth which lies at the heart of the film.

Clooney called in the favours for this film, and the talent is impressive. Julia Roberts plays a mysterious lover and spy liaison for Barris (played by Sam Rockwell). Brad Pitt and Matt Damon have hilarious ironic cameos.

But here’s the trouble: the screenwriter of the season, Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation), has been handed a very delicate task, one that’s virtually insurmountable. As we leap from tacky-TV staple to undercover murder, we find ourselves a bit lost in a lopsided movie. The trouble is, it’s so completely and utterly obvious that Barris is full of bullshit on the assassin front that those bits of the movie feel completely superfluous. I mean, murder, gunfire, espionage - these are all fun, but when we know that none of it is even remotely true, it basically undermines that fun. (Barris admitted to Connie Chung that he made up the assassin stuff several years ago in a TV interview; he’s since taken back that confession, saying it was true after all.)

What I really wanted to see more of was the trashy TV stuff. We know that was real, and it was really quite bizarre, all of it. In particular, the need for average Americans to get on the boob tube and make complete boobs of themselves in The Gong Show was a fascinating landmark in American cultural history. I would have liked to have seen more about Barris’s creative genius, his ability to pull these wackos together, and what, precisely, happened to him in the end. It’s that part of Barris’s hardcore desperate imagination that I find infinitely more intriguing. :

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind opens Friday, Jan. 24

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