Auto Focus (2002)

DVD, Somerville, MA

May 07, 2007

** / ****

Addiction is the cause of many ruined lives. It often materializes in the form of obesity, drug abuse, gambling compulsion, and alcoholism. Infrequently do we hear about other, less charitable manifestations, equally detrimental but for whatever reason less media friendly. Auto Focus tells the tale of one such taboo, sex addiction, and in particular how it changed Hogan’s Heroes’ television star Bob Crane from a man of carefree whimsy to a complete and total obsessive.

Greg Kinear stars as Bob Crane, an empty vessel of a man whose one joy in life is being well liked. Marrying his high school sweetheart, fathering three children, and working as a successful radio host and part time drummer, Crane’s storybook life gets even better when he secures the title role in television’s Hogan’s Heroes. With fame and fortune thrust upon him, Crane however begins a descent from white picket fences to “group grope” orgies exposing the man-within-the-man as a person unable to say “No.”

Combining his desire to be well liked, an obsessive personality, and star power recognizability (consummate Hollywood superstar traits) women literally throw themselves at Crane and he accepts them all. With his new friend, video geek John Carpenter, along for the ride (literally!), the two dabble in everything from group sex to domination to their favorite sexual decadence of all: video taping their every encounter.

Crane quickly establishes an enormous video library of his exploits and fills numerous scrapbooks with self-made provocatives. A decade later his marriage falls apart, a second marriage likewise crumbles, his career vanishes in a cloud of sexual proclivity, and at the age of 49 he meets his untimely demise in a crime that has never been solved. It is a tragic yet unmoving end for a man who, for all his lascivious endeavors, never seemed to comprehend anything beyond the superficial.

The film, like its portrayal of Crane, is empty and unfulfilling. Devoid of moralizing or making any particular point, the movie just kind of “is” in a way that we never feel anything. Vulgar in its language, fairly graphic in its frequent sex scenes, and precisely accurate in late ‘60s/early ‘70s look and tone, it still seems more clinical than riveting and nothing amounts to anything beyond surface level.

As we hear Crane repeat over and over throughout the film, “A day without sex is a day wasted,” we begin to understand that the depth of both the man and the film is never more than surface level. Nothing Crane experiences seems in focus save his obsession with his libido, and even that eventually becomes by the numbers. Is this a man as truly uncomplicated as the film portrays? Was there no other level to Bob Crane than sexual obsession? The film seems to believe this and in saying so leaves us as hollow and empty as the film and the man whose demise it unceremoniously chronicles.