Who knew that George Clooney had this in him? I certainly didn't. This past year, in my opinion, has been his most successful one. Clooney, along with Steven Soderbergh, executive produced "Insomnia," "Far From Heaven," and "Solaris" (which Soderbergh directed and Clooney starred in). Now, to top it all off, he makes his debut behind the camera and succeeds admirably. He gets a lot of help from screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation). Kaufman's script is exactly what you'd expect from him: brilliant, twisted, and hilarious. "Confessions" is a daring first choice for Clooney, but he delivers the material with intelligence and a visually unique style. It is great fun to watch.
Today, we live in an age of "reality TV." Apparently watching "regular" people in ridiculous situations, doing ridiculous things is prime entertainment. You see it everywhere: people eating bugs to "overcome their fear," women being auctioned off to millionaires, people who obviously can't sing auditioning to be on a musical show. Many people are willing to embarass themselves just to get on TV. Chuck Barris caught onto this fact a long time ago. Creating such shows as "The Dating Game" and "The Gong Show," Barris gave the public what they wanted - people like themselves to watch. Watching normal people make asses of themselves is entertaining to the masses. It gives the viewer reassurance that they are not as much of a loser as that guy on TV.
Someone referred to Barris as the "cause of the decline of Western civiliazation," well he certainly contributed to it. The fact that he knew this drove him to write his "unauthorized autobiography" of the same name. In the book, Barris claims to have "murdered 33 human beings" as a spy for the CIA; much speculation has been made about the validity of this claim.
Luckily, the film doesn't indulge his double-life as reality. Barris (Sam Rockwell) begins as an ambitious guy, dreaming of making it big in TV. He wants to give people what they want to watch. When he becomes successful, he is recruited by Jim Byrd (George Clooney) to be a spy because he "fits the profile." The scenes with Chuck as a spy are all over-done on purpose. Cold War paranoia is built into Chuck, making him extremely paranoid. He has no reservations about killing people as long as he's been instructed to do so by the government. There is a hilarious scene where Barris has been informed that there is a KGB spy after him. He begins to suspect people working on "The Gong Show," including "the unknown comedian." Barris finally has a breakdown, shutting himself in a hotel room for weeks to write his memoir.
Rockwell steals this film. He deserves a nomination and great roles are sure to come his way. His decline from mania to paranoia to eventual despair is both astonishing and hilarious. Barris is charming and obnoxious, confident and frightened. He changes his personality depending on the situation. One woman describes him as "a nice guy who happened to be a prick." Rockwell's performance amazingly inhabits these two sides of him.
It is apparent that Barris' self-loathing and regret caused him to fantasize about what his life could've been. The sick part is that he imagined himself as a murderer, that this was his way of countering his deplorable career in TV. Maybe it actually was a literary parallel; a way of exaggerating his effect on society. Murdering people may represent his part of the destruction American culture, a way of life that was worse than the one he chose.
