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1
00:00:27,021 --> 00:00:30,650
For my next experiment,
ladies and gentlemen...
2
00:00:30,758 --> 00:00:34,922
I would appreciate the loan of any small
personal object from your pocket-
3
00:00:35,029 --> 00:00:37,725
a key or a box of
matches, a coin.
4
00:00:37,831 --> 00:00:43,030
Ah, a key it is. Good sir. Hold
it up 10 feet over your head.
5
00:00:43,137 --> 00:00:47,938
And watch out for the slightest
hint of hanky-panky.
6
00:00:48,042 --> 00:00:51,910
And behold, before
our very eyes...
7
00:00:52,012 --> 00:00:53,912
a transformation.
8
00:00:54,014 --> 00:00:56,141
We've changed your key...
9
00:00:58,652 --> 00:01:00,279
into a coin.
10
00:01:00,387 --> 00:01:02,855
What happened to the key?
It's been returned to you.
11
00:01:02,956 --> 00:01:06,892
Look closely, sir.
You'll find the key...
12
00:01:06,994 --> 00:01:08,894
back in your pocket.
13
00:01:08,996 --> 00:01:10,896
May we see it, please?
14
00:01:12,900 --> 00:01:14,595
Up to your old tricks, I see.
15
00:01:14,701 --> 00:01:17,295
Why not? I'm a charlatan.
16
00:01:17,404 --> 00:01:19,497
What's that, sir? Did I
used to be a magician?
17
00:01:19,606 --> 00:01:22,006
Sir, I'm still working on it.
18
00:01:22,109 --> 00:01:27,240
As for the key, it was not
symbolic of anything.
19
00:01:27,347 --> 00:01:29,247
This isn't that kind of movie.
20
00:01:29,349 --> 00:01:31,340
You'll find the coin now
in your pocket, sir.
21
00:01:31,452 --> 00:01:34,080
Keep your eyes on
that coin, sir...
22
00:01:34,188 --> 00:01:37,589
while it's returned
to you as your key.
23
00:01:37,691 --> 00:01:41,320
Shall we return you to your mother? Is
this your mother? No, of course not.
24
00:01:41,428 --> 00:01:43,521
Open your mouth, wide...
25
00:01:43,630 --> 00:01:46,690
and we'll return you your money.
26
00:01:46,800 --> 00:01:49,792
And by the way, have you
ever heard of Robert-Houdin?
27
00:01:50,838 --> 00:01:54,274
Speaking of magicians, I mean?
No, of course not.
28
00:01:54,374 --> 00:01:56,694
But of course you do know my
partner, François Reichenbach?
29
00:01:56,718 --> 00:01:57,135
Hello.
30
00:01:57,159 --> 00:02:00,875
Houdin was the greatest
magician who ever lived.
31
00:02:00,981 --> 00:02:02,915
And do you know what he said?
32
00:02:08,122 --> 00:02:10,396
- "A magician," he said,
"is just an actor."
33
00:02:10,420 --> 00:02:12,718
- Well, good luck to you.
34
00:02:12,826 --> 00:02:16,626
Just an actor playing
the part of a magician.
35
00:02:24,004 --> 00:02:27,496
- Very nice.
- And she's fabulously rich too.
36
00:02:27,608 --> 00:02:30,008
- There's a good story about it.
- Do you want to tell it?
37
00:02:30,110 --> 00:02:32,374
We'll come to that one later.
38
00:02:32,479 --> 00:02:34,379
No, it's time for
an introduction.
39
00:02:41,855 --> 00:02:44,380
Ladies and gentlemen, by
way of introduction...
40
00:02:44,491 --> 00:02:49,121
this is a film about
trickery and fraud...
41
00:02:49,229 --> 00:02:52,164
about lies.
42
00:02:52,266 --> 00:02:56,134
Tell it by the fireside or in a
marketplace or in a movie...
43
00:02:56,236 --> 00:02:58,898
almost any story is
almost certainly...
44
00:02:59,006 --> 00:03:00,906
some kind of lie.
45
00:03:02,342 --> 00:03:05,470
But not this time. No,
this is a promise.
46
00:03:05,579 --> 00:03:09,242
During the next hour, everything
you'll hear from us is really true...
47
00:03:09,349 --> 00:03:11,249
and based on solid facts.
48
00:03:12,719 --> 00:03:15,882
You don't talk about
Napoleon or Julius Caesar.
49
00:03:15,989 --> 00:03:18,890
- You're talking about Elmyr.
- Elmyr?
50
00:03:18,992 --> 00:03:20,857
- Elmyr?
- Who is Elmyr?
51
00:03:20,961 --> 00:03:24,590
That question has yet to be
answered with any real precision.
52
00:03:24,698 --> 00:03:27,792
- Can I kiss you too?
- Certainly.
53
00:03:27,901 --> 00:03:30,369
Anybody want to eat?
54
00:03:30,470 --> 00:03:33,962
In the world of the jet-setters,
among us beautiful people...
55
00:03:34,074 --> 00:03:37,407
everybody knows Elmyr,
but Elmyr what?
56
00:03:37,511 --> 00:03:39,911
- He has about 60 time the same name.
- De Hory?
57
00:03:40,013 --> 00:03:44,882
He's called his name Hory, Heury, Bory,
Sury, Kury, Bury, Dury-All the -
58
00:03:46,853 --> 00:03:48,718
With put U-R-Y. Sixty names.
59
00:03:48,822 --> 00:03:52,952
- His real name was Elmyr Ferenc Huffman.
- Then 60 personalities...
60
00:03:53,093 --> 00:03:55,118
as much lies and as much real.
61
00:03:55,195 --> 00:03:58,892
Well, it sounds very Jesuitical.
62
00:04:01,068 --> 00:04:03,628
Yes, his world is a
world of make-believe.
63
00:04:05,672 --> 00:04:09,130
- I'm not an actor.
- Not an actor? Elmyr?
64
00:04:09,243 --> 00:04:11,177
I'm not an actor.
65
00:04:12,546 --> 00:04:15,947
- I am not a professional actor.
- He's a leading actor in this movie.
66
00:04:16,049 --> 00:04:19,246
His profession, it's true,
is painting-painting fakes.
67
00:04:19,353 --> 00:04:22,322
Among all fakers,
Elmyr is number two.
68
00:04:22,422 --> 00:04:25,050
Once I saw a man from Ibiza...
69
00:04:25,158 --> 00:04:28,184
writing a book on fake, who
came to see me to Paris.
70
00:04:28,295 --> 00:04:31,492
He said, "I heard you are the
first man who bought an Elmyr."
71
00:04:31,598 --> 00:04:35,967
- And that man's name was-
- Clifford Irving.
72
00:04:39,306 --> 00:04:43,174
The important distinction to make
when you're talking about...
73
00:04:43,277 --> 00:04:47,338
the genuine quality
of a painting...
74
00:04:48,382 --> 00:04:51,613
is not so much whether it's
a real painting or a fake.
75
00:04:54,955 --> 00:04:57,014
It's whether it's a good
fake or a bad fake.
76
00:07:47,160 --> 00:07:50,027
Her name...
77
00:07:50,130 --> 00:07:53,725
is Oja, Oja Kodar.
78
00:07:53,834 --> 00:07:56,234
And this, by the way, is
from quite another film...
79
00:07:56,336 --> 00:08:01,899
a sequence on the fine outdoor
sport of girl-watching.
80
00:08:02,008 --> 00:08:07,878
Our sneaky crew of cameramen hidden away
in camouflaged trucks and packing boxes...
81
00:08:07,981 --> 00:08:10,040
arranged for her
to act for them.
82
00:08:10,150 --> 00:08:12,710
To act as bait.
83
00:08:17,023 --> 00:08:18,923
You see how it worked.
84
00:08:21,061 --> 00:08:23,086
The entire cast...
85
00:08:23,196 --> 00:08:26,097
all the performers,
except one...
86
00:08:26,199 --> 00:08:29,225
acting away like crazy for us
without getting paid for it...
87
00:08:29,336 --> 00:08:31,056
without even knowing
they were movie actors.
88
00:08:31,080 --> 00:08:31,702
Mama mia.!
89
00:08:31,805 --> 00:08:34,740
- Simple larceny. Well, maybe not simple.
- Mama mia.!
90
00:08:34,841 --> 00:08:36,775
That year nothing was simple...
91
00:08:37,811 --> 00:08:39,711
least of all the larceny.
92
00:08:39,813 --> 00:08:41,906
Now in this little gag,
Lawrence Harvey...
93
00:08:42,015 --> 00:08:44,677
our leading man from
yet another movie...
94
00:08:44,784 --> 00:08:48,652
couldn't arrange space for
Miss Kodar on a plane.
95
00:08:48,755 --> 00:08:51,952
Well, there's no room in this movie
to tell you why in that other one...
96
00:08:52,058 --> 00:08:55,516
we squeezed Miss Kodar into a more
convenient size for travelling...
97
00:08:55,629 --> 00:08:57,756
by a magical illusion.
98
00:09:00,800 --> 00:09:04,566
But you really must believe that
what comes afterwards is solid fact.
99
00:09:04,671 --> 00:09:08,038
Yes, after this bit of hocus-pocus,
the next thing we heard about her...
100
00:09:08,141 --> 00:09:10,041
was not as an actress...
101
00:09:10,143 --> 00:09:14,136
but as the leading figure
in a notorious swindle.
102
00:09:19,686 --> 00:09:21,813
I took another plane,
grew another beard...
103
00:09:21,922 --> 00:09:24,652
made another movie and
well before Miss Kodar-
104
00:09:26,560 --> 00:09:30,257
We'll leave Miss Kodar
aside for the moment.
105
00:09:30,363 --> 00:09:32,763
But in case that mumbojumbo
might make it seem...
106
00:09:32,866 --> 00:09:36,199
that there's going to be some trickery
in this film about trickery...
107
00:09:36,303 --> 00:09:38,737
we'll repeat our promise...
108
00:09:38,838 --> 00:09:40,829
in writing.
109
00:09:40,941 --> 00:09:45,071
The girl-watching was evidence of
how much of all this was filmed...
110
00:09:45,178 --> 00:09:48,875
in blissful ignorance
of the facts...
111
00:09:48,982 --> 00:09:50,950
about some of the
various characters...
112
00:09:51,051 --> 00:09:53,485
who found their way in
front of our cameras.
113
00:09:53,587 --> 00:09:57,284
Well, Clifford Irving told
the story in the book.
114
00:09:57,390 --> 00:09:59,187
Maybe.
115
00:09:59,292 --> 00:10:03,126
Well, by now, you understand,
I'd fallen in with François.
116
00:10:03,229 --> 00:10:05,220
And on the island of Ibiza...
117
00:10:05,332 --> 00:10:08,301
we'd fallen smack into the
biggest series of scandals...
118
00:10:08,401 --> 00:10:10,198
in the whole history of hoaxing.
119
00:10:10,303 --> 00:10:13,363
It was a pretty queer experience to
start making yet another movie...
120
00:10:13,473 --> 00:10:16,271
and end up making yet another...
121
00:10:16,376 --> 00:10:20,176
with a story line rotten
with coincidence.
122
00:10:20,280 --> 00:10:23,681
For instance, that the author of Fake!
A book about a faker...
123
00:10:23,783 --> 00:10:29,153
was himself a faker and the author
of a fake to end all fakes-
124
00:10:29,255 --> 00:10:31,951
and that he must have been cooking
it up when we were filming him.
125
00:10:32,058 --> 00:10:35,152
- Well.
- Quiet, please. Edith Irving.
126
00:10:35,261 --> 00:10:38,190
Take three.
127
00:10:38,214 --> 00:10:41,166
Look, you've known Elmyr longer
than anyone else on this island.
128
00:10:41,267 --> 00:10:43,895
Do you really believe
he did all those fakes?
129
00:10:44,004 --> 00:10:46,370
- No, I really don't believe it.
- Sorry.
130
00:10:46,473 --> 00:10:49,033
I've been jumping around like this
because that's the way it was.
131
00:10:49,057 --> 00:10:50,475
Clifford Irving, take two.
132
00:10:50,577 --> 00:10:53,307
Let's pull ourselves together if
we can and begin at the beginning.
133
00:10:53,413 --> 00:10:57,247
Now, on this tablecloth, which is decorated
with a map, is where everything-
134
00:10:57,350 --> 00:11:00,251
Which I've just loused
up with some wine.
135
00:11:00,353 --> 00:11:04,312
But I understand wine brings
good luck behind the ear.
136
00:11:04,424 --> 00:11:06,722
Well, we can use a
little luck anywhere.
137
00:11:06,826 --> 00:11:09,852
And here is - I'll
have to mark it in.
138
00:11:09,963 --> 00:11:14,730
On this tiny island is where the two
great hoaxes were hatched - Ibiza.
139
00:11:17,937 --> 00:11:22,271
One island, two Ibizas.
140
00:11:22,375 --> 00:11:24,400
The serious, indeed,
the very sober part...
141
00:11:24,511 --> 00:11:26,911
is part of Spain.
142
00:11:27,013 --> 00:11:31,916
And the other, "An island in the
sun," Life magazine calls it...
143
00:11:32,018 --> 00:11:34,953
"where restless souls
may find each other."
144
00:11:36,156 --> 00:11:38,886
The restless souls
being, I guess...
145
00:11:38,992 --> 00:11:41,552
Cliff Irving, over there-
146
00:11:41,661 --> 00:11:44,425
and Elmyr.
147
00:11:44,531 --> 00:11:48,695
Coincidence number one: That these
two world leaders in fakery...
148
00:11:48,802 --> 00:11:52,101
operated, quite separately,
on the same tiny island.
149
00:11:53,873 --> 00:11:58,105
That's Mrs. Irving. Elmyr and Mrs.
Irving.
150
00:11:58,211 --> 00:12:00,236
Clifford Irving, who
declared that he himself...
151
00:12:00,346 --> 00:12:02,871
had delivered to Howard
Hughes or his aides...
152
00:12:02,982 --> 00:12:06,281
the quarter of a million
dollars publisher's advance...
153
00:12:06,386 --> 00:12:09,378
suddenly confessed today that Mrs.
Irving...
154
00:12:09,489 --> 00:12:13,152
is the same Helga R. Hughes
wanted by the police -
155
00:12:21,134 --> 00:12:24,262
"If Clifford dragged Edith
into this, "said Elmyr...
156
00:12:24,370 --> 00:12:26,964
"I spit on his face."
157
00:12:27,073 --> 00:12:30,304
This was later, of course, when
everything was finally hanging out...
158
00:12:30,410 --> 00:12:33,004
or as much of it as I guess any
of us will ever get to see.
159
00:12:33,113 --> 00:12:38,278
And then we had to stop these Moviolas,
use them as time machines...
160
00:12:38,384 --> 00:12:40,147
and then roll back
and come in again...
161
00:12:40,253 --> 00:12:43,450
to the days when Clifford Irving,
as far as any of us knew...
162
00:12:43,556 --> 00:12:47,754
was just a researcher into
someone else's fakery.
163
00:12:47,861 --> 00:12:49,886
And now for the truth, Clifford.
164
00:12:51,064 --> 00:12:54,124
We'd like to ask you
a few question.
165
00:12:54,234 --> 00:12:58,967
My personal feelings about Elmyr are...
very mixed.
166
00:12:59,072 --> 00:13:01,370
He has developed a fiction
about his life...
167
00:13:01,474 --> 00:13:03,374
and to destroy that fiction...
168
00:13:03,476 --> 00:13:07,674
would tear down the whole
castle that he's built...
169
00:13:07,781 --> 00:13:09,681
of his illusions.
170
00:13:09,783 --> 00:13:12,809
The illusion, for example, that
he has not broken any law.
171
00:13:12,919 --> 00:13:14,819
As long as people enjoy it...
172
00:13:14,921 --> 00:13:17,481
and it gives them pleasure,
why shouldn't they have it?
173
00:13:17,590 --> 00:13:21,617
The illusion that the world has
always taken advantage of him.
174
00:13:21,728 --> 00:13:24,526
- Why they shouldn't have it? Why?
- If you were to put it to Elmyr...
175
00:13:24,631 --> 00:13:26,565
that he had taken
advantage of the world...
176
00:13:26,666 --> 00:13:28,896
that he had cheated people,
he'd be horrified.
177
00:13:29,002 --> 00:13:32,836
These two have made
each other famous.
178
00:13:32,939 --> 00:13:35,806
They have much in common:
179
00:13:35,909 --> 00:13:38,776
One of them is talent.
180
00:13:38,878 --> 00:13:40,937
Well, let's start again.
181
00:13:42,115 --> 00:13:44,549
We'll patch this
film together...
182
00:13:44,651 --> 00:13:49,520
and we'll try to patch together
Elmyr's version of this story.
183
00:13:49,622 --> 00:13:51,988
I came to Ibiza in 1959...
184
00:13:52,091 --> 00:13:56,858
after I found certain aspects
of my life in America...
185
00:13:56,963 --> 00:13:59,158
becoming too difficult.
186
00:13:59,265 --> 00:14:02,029
I wandered around
Europe for a time.
187
00:14:02,135 --> 00:14:05,502
I eventually came here.
I liked life here.
188
00:14:05,605 --> 00:14:09,666
I liked the island. I liked the atmosphere.
I liked the people.
189
00:14:09,776 --> 00:14:13,542
And so I decided that is the
place where I want to settle.
190
00:14:13,646 --> 00:14:17,582
The island is, uh, simpatico...
191
00:14:17,684 --> 00:14:19,948
as they say in Chinese.
192
00:14:20,053 --> 00:14:23,887
There is always a group of
interesting people here.
193
00:14:23,990 --> 00:14:27,756
Uh, I find the people amusing.
194
00:14:27,861 --> 00:14:30,295
Sandy, come and say
something witty.
195
00:14:30,396 --> 00:14:33,263
Ibiza is not a place
for snobbish society.
196
00:14:33,366 --> 00:14:36,699
It's not London. It's not Paris.
It's not Omaha.
197
00:14:36,803 --> 00:14:40,000
It is Ibiza, and that's
the charm of Ibiza.
198
00:14:40,106 --> 00:14:42,802
That's what makes Ibiza
why we like to live here.
199
00:14:42,909 --> 00:14:46,072
Ibiza is Ibiza, and here people
are themselves, you know...
200
00:14:46,179 --> 00:14:49,637
doing rather strange things
all the time, you know.
201
00:14:49,749 --> 00:14:51,580
So they shouldn't
really be shocked.
202
00:14:51,684 --> 00:14:56,815
And, uh, everybody minds everybody
else's business very intensely.
203
00:14:56,923 --> 00:15:01,121
Several months ago, I
read an article...
204
00:15:01,227 --> 00:15:03,718
about Elmyr de Hory...
205
00:15:03,830 --> 00:15:06,390
and I was so impressed...
206
00:15:06,499 --> 00:15:09,593
that I decided to come
from Minnesota...
207
00:15:09,702 --> 00:15:11,602
to Ibiza...
208
00:15:11,704 --> 00:15:13,604
in the hope of meeting Elmyr.
209
00:15:13,706 --> 00:15:16,937
And now I have become...
210
00:15:17,043 --> 00:15:18,943
his bodyguard.
211
00:15:19,045 --> 00:15:22,537
That's Mark speaking,
Elmyr's friend.
212
00:15:22,649 --> 00:15:24,549
He takes his duties seriously.
213
00:15:24,651 --> 00:15:29,281
Elmyr himself swears that he goes
in daily dread of being murdered.
214
00:15:29,389 --> 00:15:31,914
This takes us into
murky waters...
215
00:15:32,025 --> 00:15:34,994
where the lawyers tell us
we'd be rash to go fishing.
216
00:15:35,094 --> 00:15:38,996
In Fake! there's just a hint or two
about this violence and danger...
217
00:15:39,098 --> 00:15:42,363
as a result of which, Irving, on
top of all his other troubles...
218
00:15:42,468 --> 00:15:47,929
is being sued for $55
million worth of slander.
219
00:15:48,041 --> 00:15:52,444
Interesting question: Is Clifford Irving
being sued for telling the truth?
220
00:15:52,545 --> 00:15:54,706
What makes a slight
legal difference -
221
00:15:54,814 --> 00:15:58,841
Well, if you buy the notion that
Cliff Irving turned to forgery...
222
00:15:58,952 --> 00:16:01,147
before he turned to Elmyr...
223
00:16:01,254 --> 00:16:04,018
then I guess you can keep right
on through the looking glass...
224
00:16:04,123 --> 00:16:08,457
and believe that his book about
Elmyr is a pack of lies.
225
00:16:08,561 --> 00:16:10,461
I'm sorry. A lie about what?
226
00:16:10,563 --> 00:16:13,964
That Fake.! is a fake,
and Elmyr himself...
227
00:16:14,067 --> 00:16:16,535
is a fake... faker.
228
00:16:16,636 --> 00:16:19,537
- Fake fakes!
- Fake, nothing.
229
00:16:19,639 --> 00:16:21,573
Elmyr's a true faker.
230
00:16:21,674 --> 00:16:25,405
Here, for instance, is
a van Dongen by Elmyr.
231
00:16:25,511 --> 00:16:27,411
Van Dongen studied
it carefully...
232
00:16:27,513 --> 00:16:30,038
and then swore that he'd
painted it himself.
233
00:16:30,149 --> 00:16:32,913
He's now known as the greatest
art forger in the world.
234
00:16:33,019 --> 00:16:35,817
Well, I don't admit anything,
I just talk about it.
235
00:16:35,922 --> 00:16:39,688
'Cause he's scared. You know, there could
be a jail sentence hanging over his head.
236
00:16:39,792 --> 00:16:41,817
"Elmyr," cries a
French newspaper...
237
00:16:41,928 --> 00:16:44,362
"has sold his soul
to the devil."
238
00:16:44,464 --> 00:16:46,184
They said that about a
wizard of the fiddle.
239
00:16:46,265 --> 00:16:48,495
Elmyr's another wizard of
another sort of fiddle-
240
00:16:48,601 --> 00:16:50,592
a true Paganini of the palette.
241
00:16:50,703 --> 00:16:54,935
It's no wonder that a
faker like Elmyr...
242
00:16:55,041 --> 00:16:57,942
can get away with
it for 22 years.
243
00:16:58,044 --> 00:17:01,411
If you hang them in a museum or your
collection of great paintings...
244
00:17:01,514 --> 00:17:04,449
and if they hang long enough
there, they become real.
245
00:17:04,550 --> 00:17:06,450
Because there's always
a market for it.
246
00:17:06,552 --> 00:17:08,884
How much is that drawing
worth on the market today?
247
00:17:08,988 --> 00:17:12,617
Probably around
$8,000 till $10,000.
248
00:17:12,725 --> 00:17:15,091
To my knowledge, he has
never made a mistake...
249
00:17:15,194 --> 00:17:17,992
when identifying a painting.
250
00:17:18,097 --> 00:17:22,591
- What period is that Matisse?
- Uh, '36.
251
00:17:22,702 --> 00:17:25,762
I, uh, feel that
we should burn it.
252
00:17:25,872 --> 00:17:29,035
When he looks at a painting-
a Matisse, a Chagall-
253
00:17:29,142 --> 00:17:32,839
and says, "That's mine, I did
it," he is always right.
254
00:17:32,945 --> 00:17:35,140
Elmyr.
255
00:17:35,248 --> 00:17:38,046
There is just no way of
talking about Elmyr...
256
00:17:38,151 --> 00:17:40,278
and leaving out Cliff Irving.
257
00:17:40,386 --> 00:17:42,411
Not any longer. Right
up to the finish...
258
00:17:42,522 --> 00:17:47,391
Elmyr plays a very important role
in his biographer's own story.
259
00:17:47,493 --> 00:17:50,860
Now, just here, of course,
he's stage center.
260
00:17:50,963 --> 00:17:52,954
Willkommen! Willkommen.
261
00:17:53,066 --> 00:17:55,091
And Irving, who, I'll
have to admit...
262
00:17:55,201 --> 00:17:57,669
is a much better
magician than I am...
263
00:17:57,770 --> 00:18:01,331
has yet to transform himself
before our very eyes...
264
00:18:01,441 --> 00:18:04,001
into a superstar.
265
00:18:04,110 --> 00:18:08,513
François, you know, we talk
about your shirt, Reichenbach.
266
00:18:08,614 --> 00:18:10,912
It was indecently ugly.
267
00:18:11,017 --> 00:18:15,010
I can assure you.
268
00:18:19,158 --> 00:18:21,318
I must tell you something. I
went to the airport today.
269
00:18:21,342 --> 00:18:22,616
Oh.
270
00:18:22,728 --> 00:18:26,630
I picked up a copy of the
London Daily Express.
271
00:18:27,667 --> 00:18:29,567
And there was an article:
272
00:18:29,669 --> 00:18:32,797
"Exposed: A Man Who Holds
the Art World to Ransom."
273
00:18:32,905 --> 00:18:34,705
Exposed.! Darling, we
can't have you exposed.!
274
00:18:34,729 --> 00:18:36,349
"Sitting in the sunny studio -"
275
00:18:38,811 --> 00:18:42,338
And then it goes on to tell the story
of how I took the Modigliani...
276
00:18:42,448 --> 00:18:45,076
- to the Metropolitan Museum of Art"-
- There's a big article!
277
00:18:45,184 --> 00:18:49,211
"A profound embarrassment
to them all."
278
00:18:49,322 --> 00:18:53,622
Elmyr is a profound
embarrassment to them all.
279
00:18:57,997 --> 00:19:00,795
The art world, as it
were, has been...
280
00:19:02,101 --> 00:19:04,001
a huge confidence trick.
281
00:19:04,103 --> 00:19:08,403
"Exposed: A Man Who Holds
the Art World to Ransom."
282
00:19:10,843 --> 00:19:13,003
- "Sitting in the sunny studio
of his £60,000 villa..."
283
00:19:13,027 --> 00:19:14,904
- It's fantastic.
284
00:19:15,014 --> 00:19:17,073
"On the Mediterranean
island of Ibiza...
285
00:19:17,183 --> 00:19:20,778
"it took Elmyr Dory-Boutin, the
world's greatest art forger...
286
00:19:20,887 --> 00:19:24,220
just one hour to draw an
original Modigliani."
287
00:19:24,323 --> 00:19:27,417
Today, on a sale, it would
bring somewhere around...
288
00:19:29,028 --> 00:19:30,655
$15,000.
289
00:19:30,863 --> 00:19:33,388
There was really no time when
he ever could have done it.
290
00:19:33,499 --> 00:19:36,866
And also as a man,
how I knew him...
291
00:19:36,969 --> 00:19:38,869
it was all much more a joke.
292
00:19:38,971 --> 00:19:42,873
The world has yet to hear a word about
that wig she wore in the Swiss bank.
293
00:19:42,975 --> 00:19:45,535
There hasn't been a breath
about funny passports...
294
00:19:45,645 --> 00:19:48,375
or phony signatures,
and here's Edith...
295
00:19:48,481 --> 00:19:50,949
telling Clifford Irving that
she can't believe Elmyr...
296
00:19:51,050 --> 00:19:53,041
had anything to do with fakery.
297
00:19:53,152 --> 00:19:55,950
Therefore I never could think
or will even think now...
298
00:19:56,055 --> 00:19:59,547
that he sat down and
did those paintings.
299
00:19:59,659 --> 00:20:01,739
- It's a good drawing.
- If he did it, my compliment.
300
00:20:01,763 --> 00:20:04,441
Should we burn it?
301
00:20:04,465 --> 00:20:07,167
And I only hope there are
more people who do them.
302
00:20:09,035 --> 00:20:12,596
Irving's book about Elmyr...
303
00:20:12,705 --> 00:20:14,564
is the story of a man
of talent taking the
304
00:20:14,588 --> 00:20:16,471
mickey out of those who
had rejected him...
305
00:20:16,576 --> 00:20:20,034
translating disappointments
into a gigantic joke.
306
00:20:20,146 --> 00:20:25,140
You think I should keep
it for my old age?
307
00:20:28,821 --> 00:20:32,882
All right, I will.
So I put it back in.
308
00:20:32,992 --> 00:20:35,961
You're a painter. Why do you
want people to do fakes?
309
00:20:36,062 --> 00:20:38,189
Because the fakes are as
good as the real ones...
310
00:20:38,297 --> 00:20:40,663
and there's a market,
and there's a demand.
311
00:20:40,766 --> 00:20:44,964
If you didn't have an art market,
then fakers could not exist.
312
00:20:46,839 --> 00:20:50,605
- So, the more, the better. No?
- If you say so.
313
00:20:50,710 --> 00:20:53,144
Here's another
little coincidence.
314
00:20:53,246 --> 00:20:55,146
A peculiar moment
during a lunch party.
315
00:20:55,248 --> 00:21:00,049
And in Switzerland,
checks are not accepted.
316
00:21:00,152 --> 00:21:03,918
You pay cash on the table.
317
00:21:04,023 --> 00:21:07,151
That's Switzerland.
You are Swiss.
318
00:21:07,260 --> 00:21:09,353
And you know it.
319
00:21:09,462 --> 00:21:11,828
If you did those
paintings, my compliments.
320
00:21:11,931 --> 00:21:15,867
And I only think it's a pity that
there are not more people like you.
321
00:21:15,968 --> 00:21:20,405
And we only pray that he
doesn't exist again.!
322
00:21:20,506 --> 00:21:23,771
Mrs. Irving now claims Mr. Hughes
himself asked Mrs. Irving...
323
00:21:23,876 --> 00:21:27,368
to deposit the money in a Swiss
bank and then draw it out.
324
00:21:27,480 --> 00:21:30,176
The manuscript
itself, however...
325
00:21:30,283 --> 00:21:32,183
he maintains is genuine.
326
00:21:33,386 --> 00:21:35,786
I've known Elmyr for
about eight years.
327
00:21:35,888 --> 00:21:38,755
We met when I was broke -
328
00:21:38,858 --> 00:21:42,225
when I was writing fiction and
wasn't selling it very well.
329
00:21:43,496 --> 00:21:45,259
His fiction didn't sell.
330
00:21:45,364 --> 00:21:48,231
Elmyr's biographer is a
highly gifted writer.
331
00:21:48,334 --> 00:21:50,427
Does it say something
for this age of ours...
332
00:21:50,536 --> 00:21:53,801
- that he could only make it big by fakery?
- Je crois.
333
00:21:53,906 --> 00:21:56,379
That a hoax has made him the
most famous writer in the world?
334
00:21:56,403 --> 00:21:58,900
La grande suprise.
335
00:21:59,011 --> 00:22:01,331
Cliff Irving's caper may well
be the hoax of the century...
336
00:22:01,355 --> 00:22:06,174
but really, this is not, you know,
in any way, the century of the hoax.
337
00:22:06,285 --> 00:22:08,981
We hanky-panky men have
always been with you.
338
00:22:09,088 --> 00:22:11,488
- That's a fact.
- What's new are the... The experts.
339
00:22:11,590 --> 00:22:14,184
- The experts.
- The so-called experts.
340
00:22:14,293 --> 00:22:18,093
- Experts are the new oracles.
- While greatly pretentious -
341
00:22:18,197 --> 00:22:21,496
They speak to us with the absolute
authority of the computer.
342
00:22:21,600 --> 00:22:23,500
Pretend to know something...
343
00:22:23,602 --> 00:22:26,901
what they only know
very superficially.
344
00:22:27,006 --> 00:22:28,974
And we bow down before them.
345
00:22:29,075 --> 00:22:31,407
They're God's own
gift to the faker.
346
00:22:31,510 --> 00:22:34,946
All the world loves to see...
347
00:22:35,047 --> 00:22:38,813
the experts and the
establishment made a fool of.
348
00:22:38,918 --> 00:22:40,909
Let's say we could find...
349
00:22:41,020 --> 00:22:44,751
a Modigliani made by Kisling...
350
00:22:44,857 --> 00:22:47,883
a Modigliani by Elmyr...
351
00:22:48,928 --> 00:22:51,522
and one Modigliani
by Modigliani.
352
00:22:51,630 --> 00:22:57,466
It could be anyone from Knoedler to
Paris or any of the great ones...
353
00:22:57,570 --> 00:23:01,597
who consider themselves
great and experts.
354
00:23:01,707 --> 00:23:05,973
If any of them recognize
which one is which -
355
00:23:06,078 --> 00:23:07,978
And if the lawyers
would just let us...
356
00:23:08,080 --> 00:23:11,379
we could name you one
highly respected museum...
357
00:23:11,484 --> 00:23:15,386
which boasts of an important
collection of Postimpressionists...
358
00:23:15,488 --> 00:23:19,254
every single one of which
was painted by Elmyr.
359
00:23:19,358 --> 00:23:23,021
Elmyr, as the great faker
of the 20th century...
360
00:23:23,129 --> 00:23:26,428
becomes a modern folk hero
for the rest of us...
361
00:23:26,532 --> 00:23:29,592
who have a bit of
larceny in ourselves...
362
00:23:29,702 --> 00:23:34,469
but simply don't have the courage
or the opportunity to express it.
363
00:23:34,573 --> 00:23:39,010
When you wrote his biography, you don't
think you've been a little hard on him?
364
00:23:39,111 --> 00:23:42,808
Some people even say, "After I did read
the book of Clifford Irving about you..."
365
00:23:42,915 --> 00:23:44,815
I like you even
more than before."
366
00:23:44,917 --> 00:23:50,150
You exploded the myth
of the infallibility...
367
00:23:50,256 --> 00:23:53,657
of the art dealers and
museum directors...
368
00:23:53,759 --> 00:23:57,024
in that you exposed
their crookedness...
369
00:23:57,129 --> 00:23:59,791
their evilness and viciousness.
370
00:24:01,867 --> 00:24:04,700
I went around to
the art galleries.
371
00:24:05,905 --> 00:24:08,999
Not with my book...
372
00:24:09,108 --> 00:24:12,077
but with a catalog...
373
00:24:12,178 --> 00:24:14,908
which included a great
many paintings...
374
00:24:15,014 --> 00:24:17,278
that had been sold over
the past few years.
375
00:24:18,317 --> 00:24:21,616
In this catalog was
this Modigliani...
376
00:24:21,720 --> 00:24:24,211
which is a Modigliani by Elmyr.
377
00:24:24,323 --> 00:24:26,883
He worked very little.
He died very early...
378
00:24:26,992 --> 00:24:31,292
so if they're added to a few
paintings, a few drawings...
379
00:24:31,397 --> 00:24:33,991
it's not going to
destroy his oeuvre.
380
00:24:34,099 --> 00:24:35,999
I would say, "This is a fake"...
381
00:24:36,101 --> 00:24:38,695
and the art gallery owner would
say, "Well, yes, of course."
382
00:24:38,804 --> 00:24:40,965
"I mean, you can see it's a
fake, because Modigliani...
383
00:24:41,073 --> 00:24:43,234
"would never have drawn
the line of the arm...
384
00:24:43,342 --> 00:24:45,936
"parallel to the line
of the dress that way.
385
00:24:46,045 --> 00:24:49,845
And the background is very badly done,
and the signature isn't right."
386
00:24:49,949 --> 00:24:54,613
In the next gallery, I would show them
this Modigliani in the catalog and say...
387
00:24:54,720 --> 00:24:57,018
- "That's a genuine Modigliani."
- Possibly, yes.
388
00:24:57,122 --> 00:25:00,990
And they would look at it and say, "Yes,
you can see it's one of his finest."
389
00:25:01,093 --> 00:25:03,391
"It's a portrait of
Mademoiselle Hébuterne,"
390
00:25:03,496 --> 00:25:06,056
and "We know it very well," and
"It's reproduced everywhere."
391
00:25:06,165 --> 00:25:08,633
After that, I must say...
392
00:25:08,734 --> 00:25:12,830
I lost my faith in the
concept of expertise.
393
00:25:12,938 --> 00:25:16,601
I don't feel bad for Modigliani.
I feel good for me.
394
00:25:18,511 --> 00:25:20,706
You name them. He paints them.
395
00:25:20,813 --> 00:25:22,610
He'll do you a Dufy,
a van Dongen...
396
00:25:22,715 --> 00:25:26,845
a Derain, a Braque, a
Bonnard, a Vlaminck.
397
00:25:26,952 --> 00:25:30,786
- Would you like a nice Matisse?
- Many of these drawings...
398
00:25:32,358 --> 00:25:34,349
are very weak.
399
00:25:34,460 --> 00:25:37,623
Matisse's lines were
never that sure as mine.
400
00:25:37,730 --> 00:25:41,860
He was hesitant when he
made the drawing, you know?
401
00:25:41,967 --> 00:25:46,301
He added to it a little
more and a little more.
402
00:25:46,405 --> 00:25:50,136
It wasn't as flowing, it
wasn't as sure as mine.
403
00:25:50,242 --> 00:25:52,210
I had to hesitate...
404
00:25:54,513 --> 00:25:57,175
to make it more Matisse-like.
405
00:25:58,517 --> 00:25:59,984
Et voilà.
406
00:26:00,085 --> 00:26:03,612
I would like to
see any expert...
407
00:26:03,722 --> 00:26:06,953
or any museum director,
or any art dealer...
408
00:26:07,059 --> 00:26:11,120
who'd know which one
is a Matisse...
409
00:26:12,865 --> 00:26:15,231
and which one is by Elmyr.
410
00:26:18,137 --> 00:26:21,334
And I am ready to
accept the challenge.
411
00:26:22,441 --> 00:26:24,341
One nod from an expert...
412
00:26:24,443 --> 00:26:26,502
and that piece of canvas
would be worth...
413
00:26:26,612 --> 00:26:29,638
maybe a couple of hundred
thousand dollars.
414
00:26:29,748 --> 00:26:34,947
And now, with your permission,
a bit of verse... by Kipling.
415
00:26:39,592 --> 00:26:44,291
"When first the flush of a newborn
sun fell on the green and gold..."
416
00:26:45,431 --> 00:26:50,198
"our father, Adam, sat
under the Tree..."
417
00:26:50,302 --> 00:26:54,568
"and scratched with a
stick in the mold."
418
00:26:58,944 --> 00:27:04,041
"And the first rude sketch
that the world had seen...
419
00:27:04,149 --> 00:27:06,709
"was joy to his mighty heart.
420
00:27:07,786 --> 00:27:09,720
"Till the Devil...
421
00:27:09,822 --> 00:27:12,723
"whispered behind the leaves...
422
00:27:14,126 --> 00:27:17,562
"'It's pretty, but is it Art?"'
423
00:27:19,665 --> 00:27:23,863
It's pretty, but is it art?
Well, how is it valued?
424
00:27:23,969 --> 00:27:27,735
The value depends on opinion.
Opinion depends on the experts.
425
00:27:27,840 --> 00:27:31,901
A faker like Elmyr makes fools of
the experts, so who's the expert?
426
00:27:33,012 --> 00:27:35,742
- Who's the faker?
- I know one thing.
427
00:27:35,848 --> 00:27:39,477
I never offered a
painting or a drawing...
428
00:27:39,585 --> 00:27:42,383
to a museum who didn't buy it.
429
00:27:42,488 --> 00:27:46,049
They never refused one. Never.!
430
00:27:46,158 --> 00:27:50,026
What's he up to now?
This-This isn't a forgery.
431
00:27:50,129 --> 00:27:53,428
No, not this time. This
is a portrait by Elmyr...
432
00:27:54,533 --> 00:27:58,128
- Et voilà.
- Of another famous art forger.
433
00:27:58,237 --> 00:28:01,035
- Michel-Ange.
- Michelangelo, no less, signed-
434
00:28:01,140 --> 00:28:03,438
I must say I'm honored.
435
00:28:03,542 --> 00:28:07,342
My signature, forged by
Elmyr on a real Elmyr...
436
00:28:07,446 --> 00:28:09,346
is really something.
437
00:28:09,448 --> 00:28:12,975
You know, art forgery used
to be admired as an art.
438
00:28:13,085 --> 00:28:17,317
And though Michelangelo even used smoke
on some of his fakes to antique them...
439
00:28:17,423 --> 00:28:20,153
like some of the rest of us,
he finally went straight.
440
00:28:20,259 --> 00:28:22,159
Et voilà.
441
00:28:22,961 --> 00:28:26,397
Elmyr, reformed...
442
00:28:26,498 --> 00:28:29,763
and exposed-in the
reverse order-
443
00:28:29,868 --> 00:28:33,463
was till just recently the
island's number-one celebrity.
444
00:28:33,572 --> 00:28:36,700
But now the crown has passed from
the old emperor of the hoax...
445
00:28:36,809 --> 00:28:38,709
to the pretender.
446
00:28:38,811 --> 00:28:40,711
Tomorrow at the party.
There's a big party.
447
00:28:40,813 --> 00:28:43,577
- Don't miss it. Tomorrow at 8:00.
- What time?
448
00:28:43,682 --> 00:28:48,483
The ex-grand master of fakery, not
only unmasked, but eclipsed...
449
00:28:48,587 --> 00:28:50,487
by his own biographer...
450
00:28:50,589 --> 00:28:52,614
is putting a brave face on it...
451
00:28:52,725 --> 00:28:55,751
- and giving another party.
- Eight o'clock.
452
00:28:55,861 --> 00:28:57,658
At your house?
453
00:28:57,763 --> 00:29:00,561
- And here...
- I come to invite you for a big party.
454
00:29:00,666 --> 00:29:02,600
Yet another painter from Ibiza.
455
00:29:02,701 --> 00:29:06,660
Life hired him to illustrate
the tale as Irving told it.
456
00:29:06,772 --> 00:29:10,674
Nice to see you. Great.
Hello, David.
457
00:29:10,776 --> 00:29:12,937
David Walsh.
458
00:29:13,045 --> 00:29:15,843
And this is his impression,
based on Irving's report...
459
00:29:15,948 --> 00:29:19,406
of that secret meeting on the
Mexican pyramid with Howard Hughes.
460
00:29:19,518 --> 00:29:22,009
Here's how he's supposed
to have looked...
461
00:29:22,121 --> 00:29:25,454
based on Irving's reports of those secret
meetings which in fact never happened.
462
00:29:25,557 --> 00:29:27,457
But who cared about facts?
463
00:29:27,559 --> 00:29:30,687
Was Mr. Hughes a vegetable?
A spook?
464
00:29:30,796 --> 00:29:33,594
A gibbering lunatic? Was his
hair down to his knees?
465
00:29:33,699 --> 00:29:35,826
Were his fingernails
nine inches long?
466
00:29:35,934 --> 00:29:38,334
Did Howard Hughes exist?
467
00:29:38,437 --> 00:29:42,498
Irving insisted that he did. Hughes
denied the existence of Irving.
468
00:29:42,608 --> 00:29:45,042
No, and I never saw him. I
never even heard of him.
469
00:29:45,144 --> 00:29:46,839
"Don't believe a word
of it," said Irving.
470
00:29:46,945 --> 00:29:49,311
And believe it or not,
almost nobody did.
471
00:29:49,414 --> 00:29:52,383
Why, they were partners, Hughes
and Irving, said Irving.
472
00:29:52,484 --> 00:29:56,318
They were doing a book together. Now
the Hughes mystery would be solved.
473
00:29:57,956 --> 00:30:02,052
Now, of course Irving knew very well
that whatever made Hughes a mystery...
474
00:30:02,161 --> 00:30:05,062
was whatever had made Hughes
himself a born mystery maker.
475
00:30:05,164 --> 00:30:10,192
Here in the smoggy wonderland of Hollywood
is where I last had to talk to him.
476
00:30:10,302 --> 00:30:12,293
It was 5:00 in the
morning 25 years ago.
477
00:30:12,404 --> 00:30:16,340
And I found him, as usual, very
bright, and pleasant, and polite.
478
00:30:16,441 --> 00:30:19,740
Well, now this is like most
of the Hughes legends.
479
00:30:19,845 --> 00:30:22,143
It's just something you hear,
and nothing you can prove...
480
00:30:22,247 --> 00:30:25,512
but for what it's worth, it
seems that hotel bungalow...
481
00:30:25,617 --> 00:30:30,611
was supposedly the H.Q. Of that rather
spooky brigade of midnight minions...
482
00:30:30,722 --> 00:30:33,691
we used to call "Howard's
secret police."
483
00:30:35,694 --> 00:30:37,662
That's where that tree comes in.
484
00:30:37,763 --> 00:30:41,290
Just precisely there, at 1:30 every
morning, for who knows how many years...
485
00:30:41,400 --> 00:30:45,496
some chosen operative placed,
at precisely the same angle...
486
00:30:45,604 --> 00:30:49,938
a small and very carefully
wrapped package.
487
00:30:50,042 --> 00:30:54,570
Howard Hughes in his nocturnal
wanderings never once paused there...
488
00:30:55,614 --> 00:30:59,573
but it was always ready for
him in case he should.
489
00:30:59,685 --> 00:31:04,145
What was it that that
mystery package contained?
490
00:31:05,757 --> 00:31:07,657
A ham sandwich.
491
00:31:12,831 --> 00:31:14,731
How can we believe that is true?
492
00:31:14,833 --> 00:31:16,562
François is referring,
of course, to Elmyr.
493
00:31:16,668 --> 00:31:18,659
But about Hughes...
494
00:31:18,770 --> 00:31:20,965
well, who could blame Cliff
Irving for believing...
495
00:31:21,073 --> 00:31:25,908
that Hughes himself wanted us
to believe almost anything?
496
00:31:26,011 --> 00:31:30,277
Look where we are now. When the old
Hollywood swinger turned hermit...
497
00:31:30,382 --> 00:31:33,818
this is the hermitage he
picked-his hideaway...
498
00:31:33,919 --> 00:31:36,149
his desert retreat.
499
00:31:36,255 --> 00:31:38,155
The desert had retreated
first, of course...
500
00:31:38,257 --> 00:31:41,954
to make room for the slot
machines and the crap tables.
501
00:31:42,060 --> 00:31:46,292
Then came Hughes. He chased out or
bought off most of the mafia...
502
00:31:46,398 --> 00:31:49,890
bought up most of the hotels,
and settled down up there...
503
00:31:50,002 --> 00:31:52,800
in a few rooms in the
top floor of that one.
504
00:31:52,905 --> 00:31:55,237
And all through
the long years...
505
00:31:55,340 --> 00:31:59,106
not a shadow was seen
moving in that window.
506
00:31:59,211 --> 00:32:02,908
The good people of Las Vegas kept
their eyes peeled, saw nothing...
507
00:32:03,015 --> 00:32:05,142
and believed everything
they told each other.
508
00:32:05,250 --> 00:32:08,185
More than one
bemused observer...
509
00:32:08,287 --> 00:32:10,812
claims to have seen the
whimsical tycoon...
510
00:32:10,923 --> 00:32:14,051
at 4:00 in the morning,
promenading this highway...
511
00:32:14,159 --> 00:32:16,184
with no socks on...
512
00:32:16,295 --> 00:32:19,093
and wearing, instead of shoes...
513
00:32:19,197 --> 00:32:23,258
a pair of empty Kleenex boxes.
514
00:32:23,368 --> 00:32:25,336
Do I believe that?
515
00:32:25,437 --> 00:32:29,703
But people pretend to be shocked.
They like to be shocked, you know.
516
00:32:29,808 --> 00:32:31,969
It's in their nature. It's
in human nature, you know.
517
00:32:32,077 --> 00:32:34,511
What was he doing up there?
518
00:32:34,613 --> 00:32:37,980
What were they doing to him?
519
00:32:41,887 --> 00:32:44,355
If he broke his silence,
would it be a...
520
00:32:46,291 --> 00:32:48,919
cry for help?
521
00:32:50,963 --> 00:32:54,126
Well, if Hughes couldn't
speak, or wouldn't...
522
00:32:54,232 --> 00:32:56,632
then somebody- and why
not Clifford Irving-
523
00:32:56,735 --> 00:32:59,067
could do the speaking for him.
524
00:32:59,171 --> 00:33:03,073
Nobody got near the man. Just a
tiny band of mystery Mormons...
525
00:33:03,175 --> 00:33:05,075
were admitted to his presence.
526
00:33:05,177 --> 00:33:07,338
Even high executives in
the Hughes empire...
527
00:33:07,446 --> 00:33:09,346
never so much as
laid eyes on him.
528
00:33:09,448 --> 00:33:13,009
One man alone laid claim to having
made it into that fortress...
529
00:33:13,118 --> 00:33:15,143
and you can guess who that was.
530
00:33:15,253 --> 00:33:18,711
How had Irving got to Hughes in the
first place? "Simple, said Irving."
531
00:33:18,824 --> 00:33:22,282
He'd just mailed him a copy of Fake!
With a friendly, sincere dedication...
532
00:33:22,394 --> 00:33:24,294
and the partnership was formed.
533
00:33:24,396 --> 00:33:27,263
And if you can believe the ham
sandwich and the Kleenex boxes...
534
00:33:27,366 --> 00:33:29,596
I guess you can swallow that.
535
00:33:29,701 --> 00:33:32,226
I mean, this episode is
just so fantastic...
536
00:33:32,337 --> 00:33:35,864
that it taxes your
imagination...
537
00:33:35,974 --> 00:33:38,306
to believe that a thing
like this could happen.
538
00:33:38,410 --> 00:33:42,608
Was that the voice of
the real Howard Hughes?
539
00:33:42,714 --> 00:33:44,614
I only wish I was still
in the movie business.
540
00:33:44,716 --> 00:33:46,547
Well, now he's on television...
541
00:33:46,651 --> 00:33:50,451
and a committee of journalists
are interviewing his voice.
542
00:33:50,555 --> 00:33:52,614
No, I don't remember
any scripts...
543
00:33:52,724 --> 00:33:55,716
as wild or as stretching
of the imagination...
544
00:33:55,827 --> 00:33:58,796
as this yarn has
turned out to be.
545
00:33:59,064 --> 00:34:02,898
Now remember how this went. Irving
announced that Hughes had decided...
546
00:34:03,001 --> 00:34:05,629
that Irving was just the
writer he could trust...
547
00:34:05,737 --> 00:34:08,205
not only with his book, but
with the money for it.
548
00:34:08,306 --> 00:34:10,885
And this involved an advance of some
three-quarters of a million dollars...
549
00:34:10,909 --> 00:34:13,309
and he had notes, memos and
manuscripts in what he claimed...
550
00:34:13,333 --> 00:34:15,211
was Hughes's own
handwriting to prove it.
551
00:34:15,313 --> 00:34:17,543
Now they brought in the
handwriting experts.
552
00:34:17,649 --> 00:34:21,278
Now just here Irving should have
been feeling a bit nervous.
553
00:34:21,386 --> 00:34:24,719
Well, maybe he was just
as cool as he acted...
554
00:34:24,823 --> 00:34:27,223
remembering what he'd learned
from the old maestro himself.
555
00:34:27,325 --> 00:34:29,225
Elmyr was a good teacher,
if only by example...
556
00:34:29,327 --> 00:34:31,795
and his most valuable
lesson was this:
557
00:34:31,897 --> 00:34:34,092
Don't be spooked by the experts.
558
00:34:34,199 --> 00:34:36,960
My opinion about experts is that it's
something far too overestimated.
559
00:34:37,002 --> 00:34:39,766
It's a métier which
shouldn't even exist.
560
00:34:39,871 --> 00:34:41,498
And how right he was!
561
00:34:41,606 --> 00:34:46,771
It should not exist that one
single person makes a decision...
562
00:34:46,878 --> 00:34:48,778
about what's good or what's bad.
563
00:34:48,880 --> 00:34:50,780
Sure enough, after much
study and analysis...
564
00:34:50,882 --> 00:34:54,579
the experts on handwriting
handed in their verdict.
565
00:34:54,646 --> 00:34:57,526
The forgeries were genuine. The proof,
and I quote, was "irresistible..."
566
00:34:57,550 --> 00:34:59,882
unanswerable, and overwhelming."
567
00:35:01,193 --> 00:35:05,027
Thus Irving's papers,
like Elmyr's paintings...
568
00:35:05,130 --> 00:35:07,598
were authenticated.
569
00:35:07,699 --> 00:35:10,127
I wanted to find out
what it was really like
570
00:35:10,151 --> 00:35:12,602
to try and get an
expertise on a fake...
571
00:35:12,704 --> 00:35:14,831
and I asked Elmyr to do
three drawings for me:
572
00:35:14,940 --> 00:35:16,840
Two Matisse and a Modigliani -
573
00:35:16,942 --> 00:35:19,035
which he did before lunch...
574
00:35:19,144 --> 00:35:21,772
and put a little coffee stain on
the edge of the Modigliani...
575
00:35:21,880 --> 00:35:26,214
to make it look really as if Modigliani
had done it in some Paris café.
576
00:35:26,318 --> 00:35:30,015
I then took the three drawings
to the Museum of Modern Art.
577
00:35:30,122 --> 00:35:33,614
The museum examined
them for two hours...
578
00:35:33,725 --> 00:35:36,785
and came back with the verdict that
they were absolutely genuine...
579
00:35:36,895 --> 00:35:39,591
and, in fact, were horrified
that I wanted to sell them.
580
00:35:39,698 --> 00:35:42,929
Besides, it's a true story.
The story's absolutely true.
581
00:35:44,236 --> 00:35:47,205
Well, Mr. Irving pretends
that he destroyed them.
582
00:35:47,305 --> 00:35:49,205
I don't think that Mr.
Irving's character...
583
00:35:49,307 --> 00:35:52,799
is exactly a character who
would destroy something...
584
00:35:52,911 --> 00:35:55,903
what he got an offer of 15,000.
585
00:35:56,014 --> 00:35:59,506
I think it's a nice
security in a bank vault...
586
00:35:59,618 --> 00:36:02,644
what could be unwrapped
in 15 years again.
587
00:36:02,754 --> 00:36:04,654
All the tales he tells now...
588
00:36:04,756 --> 00:36:07,816
are things that he has built up in
his imagination over the years...
589
00:36:07,926 --> 00:36:09,826
and come to believe as true.
590
00:36:09,928 --> 00:36:12,954
"The tale is as old
as the Eden Tree-
591
00:36:13,064 --> 00:36:15,032
"and new as the new-cut tooth-
592
00:36:15,133 --> 00:36:18,899
"For each man knows ere
his lip-thatch grows...
593
00:36:19,004 --> 00:36:22,701
he is master of Art and Truth."
594
00:36:22,807 --> 00:36:27,710
This created in him, I
think, the ability to live-
595
00:36:27,812 --> 00:36:31,270
I hesitate to say, a criminal life, because
I don't think of him as a criminal.
596
00:36:31,383 --> 00:36:35,012
He doesn't think of
himself as a criminal.
597
00:36:35,120 --> 00:36:40,456
To fool, once in a while,
somebody very, very pompous...
598
00:36:40,559 --> 00:36:42,493
- or somebody very-
- Pretentious.
599
00:36:42,594 --> 00:36:44,858
Pretentious, that, I like.
600
00:36:44,963 --> 00:36:47,022
Now that it's out in the open...
601
00:36:47,132 --> 00:36:50,192
that the world knows who Elmyr
is and what he's done...
602
00:36:50,302 --> 00:36:53,965
and now that Elmyr accepts
it and says to the world...
603
00:36:54,072 --> 00:36:58,008
"Yes, it's me. I am the great art
forger of the 20th century."
604
00:36:58,109 --> 00:37:02,739
Now I think he can recapture
that personal honesty.
605
00:37:02,847 --> 00:37:06,283
- Good-bye, Matisse.
- I think Elmyr's problem for years...
606
00:37:06,384 --> 00:37:10,514
and the reason why he could not succeed
as a painter in his own right...
607
00:37:10,622 --> 00:37:14,080
was that the type
of life he led...
608
00:37:14,192 --> 00:37:17,320
prohibited him from
having a personal vision.
609
00:37:17,429 --> 00:37:20,296
"And each man hears as
the twilight nears..."
610
00:37:20,398 --> 00:37:23,697
"to the beat of his
dying heart..."
611
00:37:23,802 --> 00:37:26,464
"the Devil drum on
the darkened pane:"
612
00:37:29,040 --> 00:37:31,008
"'It's pretty...
613
00:37:31,109 --> 00:37:34,101
but was it Art?"'
614
00:37:34,212 --> 00:37:36,680
Art. Take two.
615
00:37:36,781 --> 00:37:38,681
And when an artist has
no personal vision...
616
00:37:38,783 --> 00:37:40,648
what can he communicate
onto the canvas?
617
00:37:44,389 --> 00:37:46,653
Et voilà.
618
00:37:48,893 --> 00:37:52,954
It's pretty, but is it rare?
619
00:37:53,064 --> 00:37:55,999
Lots of oysters,
only a few pearls.
620
00:37:56,101 --> 00:37:57,101
Rarity.
621
00:37:58,236 --> 00:38:02,673
The chief cause and encouragement of
fakery and phoniness in everything...
622
00:38:02,774 --> 00:38:05,106
even what we're given to eat-
623
00:38:05,210 --> 00:38:07,804
an awful lot of forgery is committed
these days in the kitchen.
624
00:38:07,912 --> 00:38:10,676
Oja?
625
00:38:13,885 --> 00:38:17,821
The seafood isn't phony
in here, thank God.
626
00:38:17,922 --> 00:38:19,856
You can take the
word of an expert.
627
00:38:19,958 --> 00:38:23,394
Three friends from the old days who
used to eat here were real painters:
628
00:38:23,495 --> 00:38:26,464
Jean Cocteau, the
poet and filmmaker-
629
00:38:26,564 --> 00:38:28,532
Well, you might call
him a Monday painter.
630
00:38:28,633 --> 00:38:31,625
He drew the picture on the menu and
signed his name, as you know...
631
00:38:31,736 --> 00:38:33,704
to a whole epoch.
632
00:38:33,805 --> 00:38:36,171
Here on the walls are samples
of the famous charm...
633
00:38:36,274 --> 00:38:38,174
of Christian Berard-
"Baby, as we called him."
634
00:38:38,276 --> 00:38:41,575
And speaking of charm,
here's Vertès all around us.
635
00:38:41,680 --> 00:38:46,344
Vertès had to be charming.
He was Hungarian.
636
00:38:46,451 --> 00:38:49,147
He started his career- and he told
me this right here at this table-
637
00:38:49,254 --> 00:38:53,918
"As a charlatan. I painted
fake masterpieces.
638
00:38:54,025 --> 00:38:57,688
I began," he said, "as Lautrec."
639
00:38:57,796 --> 00:39:01,232
A woman, a titled
English woman...
640
00:39:01,333 --> 00:39:03,233
walked in one day to my room...
641
00:39:03,335 --> 00:39:06,532
and she saw on the wall -
pinned on the wall, a drawing.
642
00:39:06,638 --> 00:39:09,539
Say, "Hey, where you
got that Picasso?"
643
00:39:09,641 --> 00:39:11,905
I say, "Well, do you
think it's a Picasso?"
644
00:39:12,010 --> 00:39:15,844
"And there was this art dealer"
- I won't give you his name -
645
00:39:15,947 --> 00:39:17,847
"turning down everything
I showed him" -
646
00:39:17,949 --> 00:39:21,180
this is Vertès speaking-"when
something caught his eye.
647
00:39:21,286 --> 00:39:23,516
"'Where did you get that?
' he said.
648
00:39:23,621 --> 00:39:25,521
"'That nice little Lautrec. '
649
00:39:25,623 --> 00:39:28,057
"I told him it was a
very nice little Vertès.
650
00:39:28,159 --> 00:39:31,356
"'I'll take the
Lautrec, 'he said.
651
00:39:31,463 --> 00:39:35,923
'And If you happen to find
any more, bring them in. "'
652
00:39:36,034 --> 00:39:38,628
She said, "Would you sell it?"
I said, "Well, delighted."
653
00:39:38,737 --> 00:39:41,968
And I suddenly realize I
can sell something...
654
00:39:42,073 --> 00:39:46,908
absolutely unexpectedly for
quite a great deal of money...
655
00:39:47,011 --> 00:39:51,141
in a time when I was unable,
but absolutely unable...
656
00:39:51,249 --> 00:39:53,149
to sell any of my paintings.
657
00:39:53,251 --> 00:39:56,049
"How could you blame me? I
had no money in my pocket...
658
00:39:56,154 --> 00:39:59,453
no socks in my shoes, no real
painting style of my own."
659
00:39:59,557 --> 00:40:04,256
Even the amount of five dollars
meant that am I going to eat.
660
00:40:04,362 --> 00:40:07,798
I don't meaning go home
and be full, but to eat.
661
00:40:12,837 --> 00:40:16,329
I would like to see that
poor Hungarian refugee...
662
00:40:16,441 --> 00:40:20,275
who would have resisted
of that temptation.
663
00:40:21,379 --> 00:40:23,279
Well, Vertès didn't either.
664
00:40:23,381 --> 00:40:26,441
Like all Hungarians, he told
the best Hungarian jokes.
665
00:40:26,551 --> 00:40:28,815
The omelet, you know
that, don't you?
666
00:40:28,920 --> 00:40:31,081
Sure. It's a classic.
667
00:40:31,189 --> 00:40:34,681
An omelet, it's in our
Hungarian cookbook.
668
00:40:34,793 --> 00:40:37,387
"To make an omelet," it says...
669
00:40:37,495 --> 00:40:40,259
"first, steal an egg."
670
00:40:40,365 --> 00:40:43,129
Well, naturally, to be Hungarian
is not a nationality.
671
00:40:43,234 --> 00:40:45,225
It's a profession.
672
00:40:45,336 --> 00:40:47,856
But the truth about Hungarians,
which they do try to cover up...
673
00:40:47,880 --> 00:40:50,273
is that they're not any more
crooked than the rest of us.
674
00:40:50,375 --> 00:40:53,655
But not the way they like to tell it. Of
all the Hungarian friends I've ever had...
675
00:40:53,679 --> 00:40:56,705
I can't remember one who didn't
want me to think of him...
676
00:40:56,815 --> 00:40:58,715
as a king of con men.
677
00:40:58,817 --> 00:41:02,253
As for this Hungarian's own
tales of his own lurid past...
678
00:41:02,353 --> 00:41:04,617
they don't, according
to his biographer...
679
00:41:04,722 --> 00:41:07,657
jive exactly with versions
of the same events...
680
00:41:07,759 --> 00:41:12,128
as told by certain art dealers.
681
00:41:12,230 --> 00:41:14,596
I do think art dealers...
682
00:41:14,699 --> 00:41:16,860
are crooked.
683
00:41:16,968 --> 00:41:18,868
Ladies and gentlemen
of the jury...
684
00:41:18,970 --> 00:41:22,462
I put it to you that
between such witnesses...
685
00:41:22,574 --> 00:41:25,668
your choice, to phrase
it nicely, is not easy.
686
00:41:25,777 --> 00:41:31,079
Even if Clifford Irving
mentions in his book that -
687
00:41:31,182 --> 00:41:35,209
I must insist that I
never sell to privates.
688
00:41:35,320 --> 00:41:37,720
Some friend of mine say you
should buy a fantastic drawing...
689
00:41:37,755 --> 00:41:39,655
that own a refugee of Budapest.
690
00:41:39,757 --> 00:41:42,954
"Budapesht. " It's not with a
"pest." It's with a "pesht."
691
00:41:43,061 --> 00:41:46,519
He want to sell 10 Modigliani
and 10, uh, Matisse.
692
00:41:46,631 --> 00:41:49,259
At that time, when I
sell to François...
693
00:41:49,367 --> 00:41:52,165
he was not a movie director.
694
00:41:52,270 --> 00:41:54,397
He was an art dealer.
695
00:41:54,506 --> 00:41:56,866
I tried to put it in art gallery.
Then it was an occasion...
696
00:41:56,890 --> 00:42:00,451
- because they were to sell for $200.
- "Occasion is a bargain."
697
00:42:03,281 --> 00:42:05,181
Our whole story really
starts, you know...
698
00:42:05,283 --> 00:42:08,377
with two famous
collections of paintings.
699
00:42:08,486 --> 00:42:11,284
One belonged to the
Reichenbachs and was real...
700
00:42:11,389 --> 00:42:14,517
the other Elmyr was supposed to
have smuggled out of Hungary.
701
00:42:14,626 --> 00:42:17,754
- From his family.
- Oh, no, that's a complete fabrication.
702
00:42:17,862 --> 00:42:20,387
I can tell you
exactly who he was.
703
00:42:20,498 --> 00:42:22,738
After the book was published
I got a letter from a man...
704
00:42:22,800 --> 00:42:26,600
who had known him in a
concentration camp in Hungary.
705
00:42:26,704 --> 00:42:28,729
And he said he was not
from the aristocracy...
706
00:42:28,840 --> 00:42:33,573
but that he was from a normal
lower middle-class home...
707
00:42:33,678 --> 00:42:36,374
and since then has
refused to discuss it.
708
00:42:36,481 --> 00:42:39,211
He just evades the subject
whenever it's brought up.
709
00:42:39,317 --> 00:42:41,877
It's terribly convenient,
beside everything else!
710
00:42:41,986 --> 00:42:44,853
François bought some of
Elmyr's paintings...
711
00:42:44,956 --> 00:42:48,084
and sold them again in his art
gallery for a couple of fast bucks.
712
00:42:48,192 --> 00:42:49,625
For double the price.
713
00:42:49,727 --> 00:42:51,687
You sold them for double
what you bought them for?
714
00:42:51,711 --> 00:42:52,207
Exactly.
715
00:42:52,231 --> 00:42:56,964
Before he did pay me for
the drawings he did buy...
716
00:42:57,068 --> 00:42:59,764
he sold it already
before he paid me.
717
00:42:59,871 --> 00:43:02,237
Then the third year,
I went back and -
718
00:43:02,340 --> 00:43:04,500
He came to see me. He said,
"I have other Modigliani."
719
00:43:04,524 --> 00:43:06,902
- I was a little suspicious.
- Elmyr said he has more.
720
00:43:07,011 --> 00:43:09,285
- More, but you see, last time -
- And you thought
721
00:43:09,309 --> 00:43:11,607
maybe that's a little
too many Modigliani.
722
00:43:11,716 --> 00:43:14,879
Because the last time he say,
"It's my last one. Take it."
723
00:43:14,986 --> 00:43:17,216
Then, when he had others...
724
00:43:17,322 --> 00:43:20,587
I say, "Where they come from?" But I
didn't try to investigate too much.
725
00:43:20,692 --> 00:43:22,592
- But I kept - - Why didn't you?
726
00:43:22,694 --> 00:43:26,755
Like everyone.
727
00:43:26,864 --> 00:43:28,764
Because they were very-
I didn't want to -
728
00:43:28,866 --> 00:43:31,426
- You didn't want to know.!
- Not too much.
729
00:43:31,536 --> 00:43:34,403
The year after, he call me.
He say, "I have three mores."
730
00:43:34,505 --> 00:43:37,133
- Three more Modigliani.
- I say, "I have already 10 in my rooms."
731
00:43:37,241 --> 00:43:40,438
"I'm not a collector
of Modigliani.
732
00:43:40,545 --> 00:43:42,877
"Of course, if you had a dessin-
733
00:43:42,981 --> 00:43:45,347
A portrait of Soutine. I
love so much Soutine."
734
00:43:45,450 --> 00:43:47,130
But why did you want a
portrait of Soutine?
735
00:43:47,154 --> 00:43:48,250
Because I like Soutine.
736
00:43:48,286 --> 00:43:50,754
- I see.
- And I asked to Elmyr if he had one.
737
00:43:50,855 --> 00:43:53,119
He say, "I don't have any
Soutine by Modigliani. Why?"
738
00:43:53,224 --> 00:43:55,283
Soutine was a friend
of Modigliani.
739
00:43:55,393 --> 00:43:57,293
- Exactement.
- You asked him if he had it.
740
00:43:57,395 --> 00:43:59,271
He say, "I don't have it.
" I say, "Then keep
741
00:43:59,295 --> 00:44:01,215
your three others, even
if they were very cheap."
742
00:44:01,239 --> 00:44:03,559
They were the double price, but
they were still very cheap.
743
00:44:04,402 --> 00:44:07,394
Then the night, during
the night, he call me.
744
00:44:07,505 --> 00:44:10,565
He say, "François, you are a genius.
You guessed I had one."
745
00:44:12,677 --> 00:44:15,339
"How could you know? I
found one in my drawer.
746
00:44:15,446 --> 00:44:19,109
A beautiful portrait of
Soutine by Modigliani."
747
00:44:19,217 --> 00:44:22,084
And now there's something else
again what I'm doing here.
748
00:44:22,186 --> 00:44:24,677
That is Picasso.
749
00:44:26,290 --> 00:44:28,281
And now the scene changes...
750
00:44:28,393 --> 00:44:30,520
from New York to Pamplona.
751
00:44:30,628 --> 00:44:33,096
This deep in the
Hemingway country...
752
00:44:33,197 --> 00:44:35,392
you might not expect
to find Elmyr.
753
00:44:35,500 --> 00:44:38,128
And he said, "I'm going
to reimburse you."
754
00:44:38,236 --> 00:44:40,276
- I said, "What are you" -
- Reimburse you for what?
755
00:44:40,378 --> 00:44:43,098
- For the fake I sold you.
- Yeah, but you made a lot of money on it.
756
00:44:43,181 --> 00:44:45,271
- Yes, but he didn't know.
- I see.
757
00:44:45,376 --> 00:44:47,503
And you know what he did?
758
00:44:47,612 --> 00:44:51,173
He gave me a check, and the
check had no money in the bank.
759
00:44:51,282 --> 00:44:52,943
- He gave you a false check.
- Yes.
760
00:44:53,051 --> 00:44:54,484
- For a false painting.
- Yes.
761
00:44:54,585 --> 00:44:56,246
There's a certain justice.
762
00:44:56,354 --> 00:44:58,185
Well...
763
00:44:58,289 --> 00:45:01,053
good-bye, Picasso.
764
00:45:01,159 --> 00:45:04,595
It's a fact of record
that art dealers-
765
00:45:04,696 --> 00:45:08,928
Would you take this away, please, and
- and bring me the steak au poivre?
766
00:45:09,033 --> 00:45:13,094
Thanks a lot. That art dealers,
either in ignorance...
767
00:45:13,204 --> 00:45:15,263
innocence, or simple greed...
768
00:45:15,373 --> 00:45:18,706
have made themselves fortunes
on the paintings of Elmyr.
769
00:45:18,810 --> 00:45:21,779
I have not the vaguest
idea the money they got.
770
00:45:21,879 --> 00:45:24,439
Those paintings must
have been pretty good...
771
00:45:24,549 --> 00:45:28,280
or the dealers must have been...
pretty bad.
772
00:45:28,386 --> 00:45:32,083
I could not estimate if it
was 10 million, 20 million -
773
00:45:32,190 --> 00:45:36,149
dollars, pounds, uh, zlotys.
774
00:45:36,260 --> 00:45:38,620
A whole lot of them
anyway made profits of a
775
00:45:38,644 --> 00:45:41,027
hundred percent and more
on these affairs...
776
00:45:41,132 --> 00:45:43,623
and Elmyr himself has
really made very little.
777
00:45:43,735 --> 00:45:48,900
All I got was a little television
of that size for the $250,000.
778
00:45:49,006 --> 00:45:52,407
Even that handsome house
of his, that isn't his.
779
00:45:52,510 --> 00:45:54,569
A dealer has a deal with him.
780
00:45:54,679 --> 00:45:58,945
Somebody must have made
some kind of strange -
781
00:45:59,050 --> 00:46:01,245
- Deal.
- Deal.
782
00:46:01,352 --> 00:46:03,650
I was fooled.
783
00:46:03,755 --> 00:46:05,655
I was used.
784
00:46:05,757 --> 00:46:10,524
And I was squeezed out-squeezed
out like the last drop.
785
00:46:19,470 --> 00:46:24,271
Because even the roof of that
house doesn't belong to me.
786
00:46:24,375 --> 00:46:27,970
I don't have a dime to my name.
787
00:46:29,514 --> 00:46:31,539
So after all these long
years on the run...
788
00:46:31,649 --> 00:46:37,281
even now, after his final
reformation as a forger...
789
00:46:38,389 --> 00:46:41,881
Elmyr can't feel much real
security in this last refuge...
790
00:46:41,993 --> 00:46:44,461
in what people like to call...
791
00:46:44,562 --> 00:46:47,292
"the golden years."
792
00:46:47,398 --> 00:46:50,196
- A little bit of luck.
- And a dash of larceny.
793
00:46:50,501 --> 00:46:52,492
You've been freely owning
up to your own past.
794
00:46:52,603 --> 00:46:54,662
I'd better do some
confessing myself.
795
00:46:54,772 --> 00:47:00,301
François was an art dealer,
and I-well, I was an artist.
796
00:47:00,411 --> 00:47:05,178
I thought I was anyway. Like Elmyr,
I too was once a hungry painter.
797
00:47:05,283 --> 00:47:08,514
But not here in France. No,
I was hungry in Ireland.
798
00:47:08,619 --> 00:47:11,747
I'd come there to paint,
bought a donkey and cart...
799
00:47:11,856 --> 00:47:16,225
filled the cart with paints and
canvases and went travelling.
800
00:47:16,327 --> 00:47:19,023
At night I slept under the cart.
801
00:47:21,065 --> 00:47:23,158
It was a very nice summer.
802
00:47:24,202 --> 00:47:26,534
But then when I got to Dublin...
803
00:47:26,637 --> 00:47:28,901
the donkey had to
go up for auction.
804
00:47:29,006 --> 00:47:31,406
And so did I. My
paintings were gone...
805
00:47:31,509 --> 00:47:34,205
all given away to the Irish
farmers who'd given me food.
806
00:47:34,312 --> 00:47:37,679
I'd run out of paint and money.
807
00:47:37,782 --> 00:47:40,910
I was 16 years old, and my
career, as you might say...
808
00:47:41,018 --> 00:47:42,952
was at the crossroads.
809
00:47:43,054 --> 00:47:45,113
Winter was coming in.
810
00:47:48,025 --> 00:47:50,755
Oh, I guess I could have found
myself an honest job...
811
00:47:50,862 --> 00:47:53,763
as a dishwasher or something,
but, no, I took the easy way.
812
00:47:53,865 --> 00:47:56,197
I went on the stage.
813
00:47:56,300 --> 00:47:58,700
I'd never been on the stage,
but I told them in Dublin...
814
00:47:58,803 --> 00:48:02,239
I was a famous star from New York,
and somehow got them to believe me.
815
00:48:02,340 --> 00:48:04,365
That's how I started.
816
00:48:04,475 --> 00:48:07,000
Began at the top, and have been
working my way down ever since.
817
00:48:07,111 --> 00:48:10,672
If acting is an art, cooking up
that bogus Broadway career...
818
00:48:10,781 --> 00:48:13,272
was a fine case of art forgery.
819
00:48:13,384 --> 00:48:17,115
And then later, on the radio - Well,
we've seen how Elmyr started.
820
00:48:17,221 --> 00:48:19,189
In my past there
aren't any Picassos.
821
00:48:19,290 --> 00:48:25,058
No. My next flight into
fakery was by flying saucer.
822
00:48:32,703 --> 00:48:35,137
We interrupt this program to
bring you a news bulletin.
823
00:48:35,239 --> 00:48:38,140
High government sources
have ceased to deny...
824
00:48:38,242 --> 00:48:41,075
the presence in many parts of the
country of nonterrestrial objects.
825
00:48:41,178 --> 00:48:44,614
We return you now to the Starlight Terrace
of the Hotel Glory in Scranton...
826
00:48:44,715 --> 00:48:49,778
to the singing strings of
Laszlo Gabor and His Melodeons.
827
00:48:49,887 --> 00:48:53,015
On the radio, I got my first
job from Paul Stewart...
828
00:48:53,124 --> 00:48:55,957
and we were lucky enough to have
him join us later in the Mercury.
829
00:48:56,060 --> 00:48:59,188
Paul was a real capo mafia
in the Martian caper.
830
00:48:59,297 --> 00:49:02,664
"The War of the Worlds" was
before World War II, remember.
831
00:49:02,767 --> 00:49:05,292
Before television, in the
great days of radio.
832
00:49:05,403 --> 00:49:07,667
Maybe that's what
made it all possible.
833
00:49:07,772 --> 00:49:09,501
Another bulletin,
ladies and gentlemen.
834
00:49:09,607 --> 00:49:12,132
The latest word on the
monsters from outer space.
835
00:49:12,243 --> 00:49:13,938
Correction, from Mars.
836
00:49:14,045 --> 00:49:18,106
Sorry, folks, that's what experts
are saying. They are Martians.
837
00:49:18,215 --> 00:49:21,207
TV would have shown us up.
Half the population...
838
00:49:21,319 --> 00:49:23,639
got the screaming jeebies just
because they couldn't see...
839
00:49:23,663 --> 00:49:26,546
how silly it all
would have looked.
840
00:49:26,657 --> 00:49:29,455
We said that the Martians were
releasing a noxious gas...
841
00:49:29,560 --> 00:49:33,621
across the Jersey meadows that
was drifting towards New York.
842
00:49:33,731 --> 00:49:35,858
So, people took to the hills.
843
00:49:39,904 --> 00:49:42,065
I met a welfare
worker years later...
844
00:49:42,173 --> 00:49:46,234
who told me he spent weeks trying to woo
some of the refugees back to civilization.
845
00:49:46,344 --> 00:49:49,040
The entire state of New Jersey
has now been cordoned off.
846
00:49:49,146 --> 00:49:51,706
State highways-Uh, yes?
847
00:49:51,816 --> 00:49:54,136
Ladies and gentlemen, a special
news flash from Washington.
848
00:49:54,160 --> 00:49:56,383
Any moment now, President
Roosevelt will be receiving...
849
00:49:56,487 --> 00:49:58,512
a delegation from Mars.
850
00:49:58,622 --> 00:50:01,056
From Mars. Peace
talks are expected-
851
00:50:05,196 --> 00:50:06,925
A woman-you just have
to believe this-
852
00:50:07,031 --> 00:50:11,730
rushed into a police station out in San
Francisco with her clothes in tatters...
853
00:50:11,836 --> 00:50:15,499
to report that she'd been
repeatedly attacked by Martians.
854
00:50:17,975 --> 00:50:19,875
She tried to take poison
for the shame of it...
855
00:50:19,977 --> 00:50:22,002
and they stopped
her just in time.
856
00:50:22,113 --> 00:50:24,343
Were they little
green men, or what?
857
00:50:26,784 --> 00:50:30,276
"I can't describe it, she said.
"It's hell."
858
00:50:30,388 --> 00:50:32,686
Somebody down in
South America...
859
00:50:32,790 --> 00:50:35,918
did an imitation of
that broadcast...
860
00:50:36,027 --> 00:50:37,619
and he ended up in prison.
861
00:50:37,728 --> 00:50:41,129
So I shouldn't
complain, I guess.
862
00:50:41,232 --> 00:50:43,200
I didn't go to jail.
863
00:50:44,668 --> 00:50:46,568
I went to Hollywood.
864
00:50:46,670 --> 00:50:49,935
And to testify to yet another coincidence,
here's a leading film director.
865
00:50:50,041 --> 00:50:52,486
All those years ago, he
went west with the rest
866
00:50:52,510 --> 00:50:54,978
of us to make our first movie.
Richard Wilson.
867
00:50:55,079 --> 00:50:57,104
Our first movie?
868
00:50:57,214 --> 00:51:01,173
Well, among the first of our
projects was to be a story...
869
00:51:01,285 --> 00:51:04,482
based on the fictionalized life
of a certain famous tycoon.
870
00:51:04,588 --> 00:51:07,182
Joe Cotten was to
have played the part.
871
00:51:07,291 --> 00:51:11,057
That certain famous tycoon, yes. But
when the character was changed...
872
00:51:11,162 --> 00:51:13,722
to the famous newspaper
tycoon, it became obvious...
873
00:51:13,831 --> 00:51:16,356
that Orson should play the part,
which, of course, he did.
874
00:51:16,467 --> 00:51:18,162
Oh, I'm not complaining.
875
00:51:18,269 --> 00:51:21,295
No. I had a fine part
in Citizen Kane.
876
00:51:21,405 --> 00:51:24,340
But I was just wondering.
877
00:51:24,442 --> 00:51:27,639
That original concept
may have been fun.
878
00:51:29,013 --> 00:51:30,913
Yes, I was just wondering...
879
00:51:31,015 --> 00:51:34,143
if I would have been the
first or the last...
880
00:51:34,251 --> 00:51:36,276
to impersonate...
881
00:51:36,387 --> 00:51:38,287
Howard Hughes.
882
00:51:48,032 --> 00:51:51,195
This week, as it must to
all aviation's pioneers...
883
00:51:51,302 --> 00:51:53,668
the great heart of a
welcoming nation went out...
884
00:51:53,771 --> 00:51:57,298
to handsome, well-heeled
hero, Howard Hughes.
885
00:51:57,408 --> 00:52:01,208
Broken for speed are all records
for round-the-world solo flights.
886
00:52:01,312 --> 00:52:05,772
Broken, too, is the garbage man's record
for sheer tonnage in ticker tape.
887
00:52:05,883 --> 00:52:09,512
Well noted by observers is the
appropriate nature of ticker tape...
888
00:52:09,620 --> 00:52:12,612
as a tribute to the high-flying Mr.
Moneybags himself.
889
00:52:12,723 --> 00:52:14,623
Why did we change our minds?
890
00:52:14,725 --> 00:52:18,161
Change tycoons? Of course,
we'd have to change his name.
891
00:52:18,262 --> 00:52:21,288
And as a character in fiction...
892
00:52:21,398 --> 00:52:24,856
who could believe that a man
like Howard Hughes could exist?
893
00:52:24,969 --> 00:52:29,133
I put the sweat of my life into this thing.
I have my reputation rolled up in it.
894
00:52:30,474 --> 00:52:33,875
Hughes fighting here for the future
of a controversial airplane...
895
00:52:33,978 --> 00:52:37,607
an all-wood behemoth,
the Spruce Goose.
896
00:52:37,715 --> 00:52:39,808
Other inventions
had more success.
897
00:52:39,917 --> 00:52:41,817
One example, the brassiere.
898
00:52:41,919 --> 00:52:44,080
Hughes's design for a
Hughes-directed hit movie...
899
00:52:44,188 --> 00:52:46,088
was, for mammary America...
900
00:52:46,190 --> 00:52:48,681
the cause of a great uplift.
901
00:52:48,792 --> 00:52:51,158
Less uplifting was
the Spruce Goose...
902
00:52:52,096 --> 00:52:54,826
The biggest thing with
wings that ever happened-
903
00:52:55,699 --> 00:52:59,692
In fact, it flew for a few minutes
only, a few feet in the air.
904
00:52:59,803 --> 00:53:02,397
And I have stated several times
that if it's a failure...
905
00:53:02,506 --> 00:53:05,737
I'll probably leave this country and
never come back, and I mean it.
906
00:53:05,843 --> 00:53:08,835
And that's what he did, finally.
907
00:53:08,946 --> 00:53:11,676
The super secretive celebrity...
908
00:53:11,782 --> 00:53:14,751
went all out for world fame...
909
00:53:14,852 --> 00:53:19,482
won it, and then got to be more
famous trying for privacy.
910
00:53:22,193 --> 00:53:25,026
Maybe he's a loser after all.
911
00:53:25,129 --> 00:53:28,360
A lady from his past once told
me that's part of his charm.
912
00:53:29,800 --> 00:53:32,769
But this lady-killing,
wheeling, dealing...
913
00:53:32,870 --> 00:53:36,738
death-defying, life-defying
mystery man supreme...
914
00:53:36,840 --> 00:53:40,276
has a strange habit
of winning somehow-
915
00:53:40,377 --> 00:53:43,608
sometimes anyway-
just at the end.
916
00:53:43,714 --> 00:53:47,548
Is he winning now, at
the end of this story?
917
00:53:47,651 --> 00:53:49,983
I only wish I was still
in the movie business.
918
00:53:50,087 --> 00:53:54,114
Our semi mythological night
bird of a billionaire...
919
00:53:54,225 --> 00:53:56,887
has flown his Vegas coop.
920
00:53:56,994 --> 00:53:59,588
But only to go on
mutely roosting...
921
00:53:59,697 --> 00:54:04,100
on the top of various
other holiday hotels...
922
00:54:04,201 --> 00:54:06,192
in germfree...
923
00:54:06,303 --> 00:54:09,238
air-conditioned solitude.
924
00:54:10,541 --> 00:54:13,203
Ah, it's his decision.
925
00:54:13,310 --> 00:54:15,107
On this planet...
926
00:54:15,212 --> 00:54:18,306
crowded and computerized...
927
00:54:18,415 --> 00:54:21,248
being yourself-
whatever that may be -
928
00:54:21,352 --> 00:54:24,446
and keeping yourself to
yourself isn't easy.
929
00:54:24,555 --> 00:54:28,218
Make what you want of Howard
Hughes, but not a movie.
930
00:54:28,325 --> 00:54:30,793
Cliff Irving had more
courage than we did...
931
00:54:30,894 --> 00:54:35,092
and as sure a hand,
certainly, at fiction.
932
00:54:35,199 --> 00:54:39,898
Also, I'll admit that he's
nudging the Martians a bit...
933
00:54:40,004 --> 00:54:42,165
for the championship title.
934
00:54:42,273 --> 00:54:46,607
It taxes your imagination to believe
that a thing like this could happen.
935
00:54:46,710 --> 00:54:50,441
"I do not know Clifford
Irving, said the voice."
936
00:54:50,547 --> 00:54:55,382
Until a matter of days ago, when this
thing first came to my attention.
937
00:54:56,620 --> 00:54:58,445
All over the world,
people were saying that
938
00:54:58,469 --> 00:55:00,317
the fishiest thing in
this whole business...
939
00:55:00,424 --> 00:55:02,392
was not Irving's part in it...
940
00:55:02,493 --> 00:55:07,226
but the identity of whoever it was
who claimed to Irving he was Hughes.
941
00:55:07,331 --> 00:55:09,822
And who do you think is
still mixed up in all this?
942
00:55:09,933 --> 00:55:15,030
According to one theory, who else but
Elmyr, a man so skilled in art forgery...
943
00:55:15,139 --> 00:55:16,629
could have forged
that manuscript?
944
00:55:16,740 --> 00:55:19,265
Irving's lawyer is speculating
about a host of theories.
945
00:55:19,376 --> 00:55:21,901
Theories, if, for instance,
that telephone voice...
946
00:55:22,012 --> 00:55:24,845
was Hughes and was telling the
truth, we should remember...
947
00:55:24,948 --> 00:55:29,885
that Hughes had been known
to make use of doubles.
948
00:55:29,987 --> 00:55:31,887
And here comes another theory:
949
00:55:31,989 --> 00:55:35,720
Now a double might be
making use of Hughes.
950
00:55:35,826 --> 00:55:39,728
According to informed sources, high
officials in the Hughes empire...
951
00:55:39,830 --> 00:55:44,164
are not even now fully satisfied that
the mystery is completely unraveled.
952
00:55:44,268 --> 00:55:48,364
They are searching for a "Mr.
Big" behind it all.
953
00:55:48,472 --> 00:55:51,839
Was "Mr. Big" Mrs. . Big?
954
00:55:51,942 --> 00:55:54,570
Edith, maybe?
955
00:55:54,678 --> 00:55:57,704
Cliff Irving topped all
this and stopped it dead...
956
00:55:57,815 --> 00:55:59,715
with a confession.
957
00:55:59,817 --> 00:56:03,116
Charges could result in as much
as 100 years imprisonment.
958
00:56:03,220 --> 00:56:05,279
But this may be softened
if Clifford Irving...
959
00:56:05,389 --> 00:56:08,790
agrees to come clean
on the whole story.
960
00:56:08,892 --> 00:56:11,087
He did. He told it all...
961
00:56:11,195 --> 00:56:13,026
not only to the courts,
but in a book.
962
00:56:13,130 --> 00:56:16,258
And now, as Elmyr
leaves that story...
963
00:56:16,367 --> 00:56:18,961
and a chapter in ours
comes to a close...
964
00:56:19,069 --> 00:56:20,969
things may well be
looking up just a bit...
965
00:56:21,071 --> 00:56:24,165
for his biographer, jail or not.
966
00:56:24,274 --> 00:56:27,038
This is a headline in
London's Sunday Times:
967
00:56:27,144 --> 00:56:30,307
"Hoaxer Irving Makes
a Handsome Profit."
968
00:56:30,414 --> 00:56:34,680
- No, no, no.
- And for Elmyr, at least and at last...
969
00:56:34,785 --> 00:56:38,084
that story has a happy
ending: He's in the clear.
970
00:56:39,790 --> 00:56:41,781
Here's another
coincidence for you.
971
00:56:41,892 --> 00:56:44,053
To Connecticut, yeah.
972
00:56:44,161 --> 00:56:47,324
Somebody else from Ibiza.
This is our co producer.
973
00:56:47,431 --> 00:56:50,127
- Who's calling?
- Richard Drewett.
974
00:56:50,234 --> 00:56:54,432
Richard Drewett, the only simon-pure
noncharlatan in this movie.
975
00:56:54,538 --> 00:56:57,974
Irving just now is holed up in Connecticut,
and we're calling him from Paris.
976
00:56:58,075 --> 00:57:02,273
And so excruciating is Richard's honesty,
that he's insisted on warning...
977
00:57:02,379 --> 00:57:04,870
Time magazine's nomination
for con man of the year...
978
00:57:04,982 --> 00:57:07,007
that our call to him
is being taped.
979
00:57:07,117 --> 00:57:09,017
- Hello?
- The book.
980
00:57:09,119 --> 00:57:11,144
Can you say anything
about the, um -
981
00:57:11,255 --> 00:57:13,175
the deal that you've managed
to do with the book?
982
00:57:13,257 --> 00:57:17,159
I mean, is it-h-has it turned
out as well as you'd expected?
983
00:57:19,096 --> 00:57:21,394
- Th-The deal?
- Are you going to tell the whole truth?
984
00:57:21,498 --> 00:57:23,523
Yes. Absolutely.
985
00:57:23,634 --> 00:57:25,374
Yeah.
986
00:57:25,398 --> 00:57:27,161
In fact the title is The
Book About the Book.
987
00:57:27,271 --> 00:57:30,671
In two years, Cliff, you are going to write
"The Book About the book About the Book."
988
00:57:30,741 --> 00:57:34,404
Gentlemen, was that the real
voice of Clifford Irving?
989
00:57:34,912 --> 00:57:37,676
Well, Irving's real
voice as a writer...
990
00:57:37,781 --> 00:57:40,011
he may well have found
now in his new book.
991
00:57:40,117 --> 00:57:42,017
The new title is What
Really Happened.
992
00:57:42,085 --> 00:57:44,144
I want to paint
my own paintings.
993
00:57:44,288 --> 00:57:46,654
I want the right uniquely...
994
00:57:46,757 --> 00:57:50,557
and exclusively of my work.
995
00:57:50,661 --> 00:57:54,563
And Elmyr? Will there ever
be another book about him?
996
00:57:54,665 --> 00:57:56,963
He's told so many stories
about himself...
997
00:57:57,067 --> 00:57:59,747
always telling this story to that
one and another story to that one.
998
00:57:59,771 --> 00:58:02,004
Uh, I don't -
999
00:58:02,105 --> 00:58:04,471
He's lived always on the run.
1000
00:58:04,575 --> 00:58:10,036
I, uh, stayed ultimately 12
years in the United States.
1001
00:58:10,147 --> 00:58:13,412
Which he spent there illegally, since
he only had a three-month visa.
1002
00:58:13,517 --> 00:58:17,578
I lived very simply. I lived,
uh, on my own paintings.
1003
00:58:17,688 --> 00:58:20,486
I sold them for $ 10, $ 15.
1004
00:58:20,591 --> 00:58:24,584
My own canvases. And then sometimes
when I had absolutely no money...
1005
00:58:24,695 --> 00:58:28,096
I was completely broke, I
made a Modigliani drawing.
1006
00:58:28,198 --> 00:58:32,100
I took 'em to one of the big
dealers around Beverly Hills.
1007
00:58:32,202 --> 00:58:34,568
It never happened that
I didn't sell them.
1008
00:58:34,671 --> 00:58:36,571
I always sold them.
1009
00:58:36,673 --> 00:58:39,198
One reason he was able to get
away with what he was doing...
1010
00:58:39,309 --> 00:58:43,040
for-for 22 years, selling
fakes all over the world...
1011
00:58:43,146 --> 00:58:45,046
all over the United States...
1012
00:58:45,148 --> 00:58:47,616
was the existence of something
new in the art world.
1013
00:58:47,718 --> 00:58:50,380
And that was the art market.
1014
00:58:50,487 --> 00:58:53,047
It enabled him to live
from day to day...
1015
00:58:53,156 --> 00:58:55,681
from painting to painting,
from fake to fake...
1016
00:58:55,792 --> 00:59:00,092
from-from con man to con
man, from crook to crook...
1017
00:59:00,197 --> 00:59:02,097
and from town to town.
1018
00:59:02,199 --> 00:59:04,531
Who knows? What is it? What
- What makes you travel?
1019
00:59:04,635 --> 00:59:07,069
You want a change of landscape.
You want to meet new people.
1020
00:59:07,170 --> 00:59:08,797
You want to meet new faces.
1021
00:59:08,906 --> 00:59:11,334
You think you'll
meet somebody more
1022
00:59:11,358 --> 00:59:13,809
attractive in the next
town as you met there.
1023
00:59:13,911 --> 00:59:16,209
You never know. Why? Why people travel.
Do you know?
1024
00:59:16,313 --> 00:59:20,079
Because the F.B.I. And the police in
four different states were on his tail.
1025
00:59:20,183 --> 00:59:23,277
- But, uh - - And he had to
be one jump ahead of them.
1026
00:59:23,387 --> 00:59:27,414
He had to whip off to Mexico and then up
to Canada, and then back to New York.
1027
00:59:27,524 --> 00:59:30,764
And then when he heard that the police were
knocking on his door in Miami Beach...
1028
00:59:30,827 --> 00:59:33,819
he had to scuttle out of town
on a Greyhound bus to Texas.
1029
00:59:33,931 --> 00:59:37,423
Hit hard by Torborg, but right to
third baseman, Aurelio Rodriguez.
1030
00:59:37,534 --> 00:59:39,764
After one hop, the ball
really flattened out for him.
1031
00:59:39,870 --> 00:59:43,101
Then, finally, on a
distant island...
1032
00:59:43,206 --> 00:59:45,106
he did find a home.
1033
00:59:46,910 --> 00:59:50,346
He doesn't own it, remember,
but it's a splendid villa...
1034
00:59:50,447 --> 00:59:52,972
with a fine view
of the village...
1035
00:59:53,083 --> 00:59:54,983
and the village jail.
1036
00:59:55,085 --> 00:59:57,576
To be in jail here is
probably, I would say-
1037
00:59:57,688 --> 00:59:59,588
here is better than
somewhere else.
1038
00:59:59,690 --> 01:00:03,990
- But a jail is a jail. Let's face it.
- Moment of truth.
1039
01:00:04,094 --> 01:00:07,325
He's talking about the
time they took him down...
1040
01:00:07,431 --> 01:00:11,128
out of that villa, which he doesn't
own, and put him into prison.
1041
01:00:12,703 --> 01:00:14,694
Let me show you that again.
1042
01:00:14,805 --> 01:00:18,172
To be in jail here is
probably, I would say-
1043
01:00:18,275 --> 01:00:20,175
here is better than
somewhere else.
1044
01:00:20,277 --> 01:00:23,474
But a jail is a jail.
Let's face it.
1045
01:00:23,580 --> 01:00:27,380
Hemingway wrote a
great short story...
1046
01:00:27,484 --> 01:00:33,047
about an old bullfighter
called "The Undefeated."
1047
01:00:34,558 --> 01:00:37,618
Well, all the heroes
aren't in the bullring.
1048
01:00:37,728 --> 01:00:40,720
Here's our hero,
our ex-jailbird...
1049
01:00:40,831 --> 01:00:42,992
flying high above his troubles.
1050
01:00:43,100 --> 01:00:45,000
Watch the quick recovery.
1051
01:00:45,102 --> 01:00:47,832
That was quite a
disgusting person.
1052
01:00:49,439 --> 01:00:51,873
He looks disgusting
too, doesn't he?
1053
01:00:54,011 --> 01:00:55,911
He was, again, a German...
1054
01:00:56,013 --> 01:00:58,982
whose main preoccupation
was his mustache.
1055
01:00:59,082 --> 01:01:02,074
He kept doing nothing but
touching his mustache.
1056
01:01:02,185 --> 01:01:06,212
He just kept on curling and
curling and curling his mustache.
1057
01:01:07,424 --> 01:01:11,258
These other drawings are made
during the time I was in prison.
1058
01:01:11,361 --> 01:01:15,855
In the very end, the judge
himself thanked me...
1059
01:01:15,966 --> 01:01:20,266
and he declared that I'm a very
generous and a very kind person.
1060
01:01:20,370 --> 01:01:23,635
Now that he's out of
prison, what will he do?
1061
01:01:25,275 --> 01:01:28,836
He'll give a party.
Another party.
1062
01:01:42,125 --> 01:01:44,218
Elmyr, how do you mean
you were not in prison?
1063
01:01:44,327 --> 01:01:47,728
Because I wasn't a prisoner
in the full sense of word.
1064
01:01:47,831 --> 01:01:52,359
I was not imprisoned.
I was interned.
1065
01:01:52,469 --> 01:01:56,428
She's a great friend of mine.
1066
01:01:56,540 --> 01:01:59,270
She's a great friend of mine She
was very sweet and kind to me.
1067
01:01:59,376 --> 01:02:02,209
When I was in prison, she
came to see me every day.
1068
01:02:02,312 --> 01:02:04,780
Most of the days of the week.
1069
01:02:04,881 --> 01:02:09,909
Jean-Pierre Ramon. I had a
Spanish-Polish prince...
1070
01:02:10,020 --> 01:02:13,319
Charles-Touriski Bourbon,
who's a cousin germain...
1071
01:02:13,423 --> 01:02:17,655
of the next king of Spain, Juan
Carlos, who came every day.
1072
01:02:17,761 --> 01:02:19,661
I had every day coming in Nina.
1073
01:02:19,763 --> 01:02:22,254
Nina, that morsel plucked...
1074
01:02:22,365 --> 01:02:25,163
from our name-dropper's
list of prison visitors...
1075
01:02:25,268 --> 01:02:27,862
is the Baroness Van Pallandt.
1076
01:02:27,971 --> 01:02:29,905
She was a witness
against Irving.
1077
01:02:30,006 --> 01:02:33,669
It seems he couldn't have had a secret
rendezvous with Howard Hughes in Mexico...
1078
01:02:33,777 --> 01:02:35,897
because he spent every minute
there with the baroness.
1079
01:02:35,921 --> 01:02:39,475
She used to be a famous folk singer,
and now she's famous again.
1080
01:02:39,649 --> 01:02:44,177
Many other ladies flitted
across the front pages.
1081
01:02:44,287 --> 01:02:46,187
No, our cameras never
got close to them.
1082
01:02:46,289 --> 01:02:48,689
But Oja Kodar was
something else.
1083
01:02:48,792 --> 01:02:52,853
- Uh, Miss Kodar... The newspapers have
been calling you the Hungarian connection.
1084
01:02:52,963 --> 01:02:54,863
Because of my
connection with Irving?
1085
01:02:54,965 --> 01:02:57,297
This is from the tape
of a recent interview.
1086
01:02:57,400 --> 01:02:59,925
- There's quite a list.
- Indeed.
1087
01:03:00,036 --> 01:03:03,276
If only half of all that is true, I wonder
how he ever got away to his typewriter.
1088
01:03:03,300 --> 01:03:05,269
Well, Miss Kodar.
1089
01:03:05,375 --> 01:03:08,105
- You wouldn't say that forgery's a crime?
- And the experts?
1090
01:03:08,211 --> 01:03:12,307
As long as there are fakers, I
guess there'll have to be experts.
1091
01:03:12,415 --> 01:03:15,077
But if there weren't
any experts...
1092
01:03:15,185 --> 01:03:17,676
would there be any fakers?
1093
01:03:17,788 --> 01:03:20,348
A friend-another friend-
1094
01:03:20,457 --> 01:03:23,051
once showed a Picasso
to Picasso...
1095
01:03:23,160 --> 01:03:24,855
who said, no, it was a fake.
1096
01:03:24,961 --> 01:03:28,397
The same friend brought him,
from yet another source...
1097
01:03:28,498 --> 01:03:32,025
another would-be Picasso, and
Picasso said that, too, was a fake.
1098
01:03:32,135 --> 01:03:34,865
Then yet another from another source.
"Also fake, said Picasso."
1099
01:03:34,971 --> 01:03:37,667
"But, Pablo, said his friend..."
1100
01:03:37,774 --> 01:03:39,833
"I watched you paint
that with my own eyes."
1101
01:03:39,943 --> 01:03:44,903
Said Picasso, "I can paint false
Picassos as well as anybody."
1102
01:03:46,283 --> 01:03:50,310
I'm not excusing myself. I'm
not trying to make an excuse.
1103
01:03:50,420 --> 01:03:54,015
I'm trying to explain a
psychological situation...
1104
01:03:54,124 --> 01:03:56,251
and a human weakness.
1105
01:03:56,359 --> 01:03:58,919
He's not in jail today for
basically two reasons.
1106
01:03:59,029 --> 01:04:03,489
A court case would bring such
publicity upon the art world...
1107
01:04:03,600 --> 01:04:08,435
that any art dealer who took the stand
would automatically become suspect.
1108
01:04:08,538 --> 01:04:10,870
The other reason he's not
in jail is because...
1109
01:04:10,974 --> 01:04:14,910
the French police have explained to me
that in order to jail him in France...
1110
01:04:15,011 --> 01:04:17,377
they would have to
have two witnesses...
1111
01:04:17,480 --> 01:04:19,380
who saw him doing
the paintings...
1112
01:04:19,482 --> 01:04:21,507
who saw him signing
the paintings...
1113
01:04:21,618 --> 01:04:24,052
as Vlamincks or
Derains or Picassos.
1114
01:04:24,154 --> 01:04:26,088
The signatures were put on...
1115
01:04:26,189 --> 01:04:29,124
much later than the
paintings were painted.
1116
01:04:29,226 --> 01:04:32,855
I never signed any
painting anyway.
1117
01:04:34,030 --> 01:04:36,464
That's a very important matter.
1118
01:04:46,309 --> 01:04:49,039
No, I never signed any of them.
1119
01:04:52,082 --> 01:04:54,380
No. Never did. No.
1120
01:04:54,484 --> 01:04:56,782
Never did.
1121
01:05:12,535 --> 01:05:14,435
Of course they were signed.
1122
01:05:16,106 --> 01:05:20,270
Well, whoever did sign them...
1123
01:05:20,377 --> 01:05:23,107
his paintings are in so
many great collections...
1124
01:05:23,213 --> 01:05:25,113
that surely it must
be said of Elmyr...
1125
01:05:25,215 --> 01:05:28,184
that he has achieved a
certain immortality...
1126
01:05:29,819 --> 01:05:33,778
under various other signatures.
1127
01:05:36,459 --> 01:05:39,860
If you-you hang them in a museum or
your collection of great paintings...
1128
01:05:39,963 --> 01:05:42,989
and if they hang long enough
there, they become real.
1129
01:05:44,434 --> 01:05:48,302
Now, this has been standing
here for centuries.
1130
01:05:48,405 --> 01:05:51,772
The premiere work of man, perhaps,
in the whole Western world.
1131
01:05:51,875 --> 01:05:55,333
And it's without a signature.
1132
01:05:56,379 --> 01:05:58,279
Chartres.
1133
01:06:03,053 --> 01:06:08,047
A celebration to God's glory
and to the dignity of man.
1134
01:06:11,227 --> 01:06:14,094
Well, all that's left, most artists
seem to feel these days...
1135
01:06:14,197 --> 01:06:16,597
is man.
1136
01:06:18,368 --> 01:06:20,802
Naked.
1137
01:06:20,904 --> 01:06:24,533
Poor, forked radish.
1138
01:06:26,476 --> 01:06:29,036
There aren't any celebrations.
1139
01:06:30,513 --> 01:06:33,004
Ours, the scientists
keep telling us...
1140
01:06:33,116 --> 01:06:36,415
is a universe which
is disposable.
1141
01:06:39,422 --> 01:06:44,121
You know, it might be just
this one anonymous glory...
1142
01:06:44,227 --> 01:06:46,320
of all things-
1143
01:06:46,429 --> 01:06:48,829
this rich stone forest...
1144
01:06:48,932 --> 01:06:51,833
this epic chant, this gaiety...
1145
01:06:51,935 --> 01:06:56,565
this grand choiring
shout of affirmation...
1146
01:06:56,673 --> 01:06:58,834
which we choose...
1147
01:06:58,942 --> 01:07:01,433
when all our cities are dust...
1148
01:07:01,544 --> 01:07:03,569
to stand intact...
1149
01:07:03,680 --> 01:07:05,910
to mark where we have been...
1150
01:07:07,684 --> 01:07:10,710
to testify to what
we had it in us...
1151
01:07:10,820 --> 01:07:13,015
to accomplish.
1152
01:07:14,758 --> 01:07:19,923
Our works in stone, in
paint, in print are spared-
1153
01:07:20,030 --> 01:07:23,727
some of them for a few decades,
or a millennium or two-
1154
01:07:23,833 --> 01:07:27,462
but everything must
finally fall in war...
1155
01:07:27,570 --> 01:07:32,337
or wear away into the
ultimate and universal ash.
1156
01:07:32,442 --> 01:07:35,206
The triumphs and the frauds...
1157
01:07:35,311 --> 01:07:37,472
the treasures and the fakes.
1158
01:07:37,580 --> 01:07:40,413
A fact of life.
1159
01:07:40,517 --> 01:07:42,644
We're going to die.
1160
01:07:42,752 --> 01:07:44,777
"Be of good heart"...
1161
01:07:44,888 --> 01:07:50,224
cry the dead artists out
of the living past.
1162
01:07:50,326 --> 01:07:52,658
"Our songs..."
1163
01:07:52,762 --> 01:07:55,788
"will all be silenced."
1164
01:07:55,899 --> 01:07:57,799
"But what of it?"
1165
01:08:00,503 --> 01:08:02,835
"Go on singing."
1166
01:08:05,041 --> 01:08:07,874
Maybe a man's name...
1167
01:08:08,912 --> 01:08:10,812
doesn't matter...
1168
01:08:12,082 --> 01:08:14,175
all that much.
1169
01:08:20,390 --> 01:08:22,381
And now, at last,
we come to Oja.
1170
01:08:26,229 --> 01:08:30,165
For this true story, and with
her kind collaboration...
1171
01:08:30,266 --> 01:08:34,134
we offer now-well, you might call
it a reenactment of recent history.
1172
01:08:34,804 --> 01:08:38,103
As we told you at the start, she
comes into this only at the end.
1173
01:08:38,208 --> 01:08:40,506
And that's where we've
left her, for the end.
1174
01:08:44,647 --> 01:08:46,774
And as for coincidence-
1175
01:08:46,883 --> 01:08:50,444
Just for instance, I give
you Oja's grandfather.
1176
01:08:50,553 --> 01:08:53,147
Oh, no.
1177
01:08:53,256 --> 01:08:56,248
No, let's take him back for a
while and save him for later.
1178
01:08:56,359 --> 01:08:59,328
The mixture's rich
enough as it is.
1179
01:08:59,429 --> 01:09:01,454
Oja, as far as I know...
1180
01:09:01,564 --> 01:09:04,624
never breathed a word
about him to any of us.
1181
01:09:04,734 --> 01:09:07,965
She comes into this when she
herself came to the attention of-
1182
01:09:08,071 --> 01:09:13,839
well, who else, but the first genius
among all the artists of our age.
1183
01:09:13,943 --> 01:09:16,571
The most celebrated, certainly
the wealthiest painter...
1184
01:09:16,679 --> 01:09:18,977
in 6,000 years.
1185
01:09:20,517 --> 01:09:25,352
Well, Picasso is the biggest
phenomenon of our time.
1186
01:09:25,455 --> 01:09:30,825
It never existed that
a painter was able...
1187
01:09:30,927 --> 01:09:34,624
with one movement of his hand -
1188
01:09:34,731 --> 01:09:39,566
what necessarily didn't involve
more than 10 seconds -
1189
01:09:39,669 --> 01:09:41,967
that movement of the hand...
1190
01:09:42,071 --> 01:09:45,165
transformed in gold.
1191
01:09:45,275 --> 01:09:49,211
Not even John D. Rockefeller
was able to do that.
1192
01:09:52,882 --> 01:09:55,214
His estate has been valued at...
1193
01:09:55,318 --> 01:09:59,220
$ 750 million.
1194
01:10:00,523 --> 01:10:04,015
Oja turned him into
a girl watcher.
1195
01:10:05,261 --> 01:10:07,821
This happened not
so very long ago...
1196
01:10:07,931 --> 01:10:09,796
when Picasso, for
reasons of his own...
1197
01:10:09,899 --> 01:10:13,630
went to paint for a while in the
little village of Toussaint.
1198
01:10:15,004 --> 01:10:18,462
Oja was there too,
on her holidays.
1199
01:10:19,542 --> 01:10:23,103
And she had a friend with
her, a boy named Olaf...
1200
01:10:23,213 --> 01:10:25,443
from somewhere in
the Viking country.
1201
01:10:28,218 --> 01:10:30,482
In his homeland, up there
in the frozen north...
1202
01:10:30,587 --> 01:10:32,748
Olaf had been infected
rather imperfectly...
1203
01:10:32,855 --> 01:10:35,619
with a taste for the classic
jazz of New Orleans...
1204
01:10:35,725 --> 01:10:39,855
and his researches in this area took
place under Picasso's window...
1205
01:10:39,963 --> 01:10:44,263
where morning and night he
practiced the trombone.
1206
01:10:48,972 --> 01:10:51,270
Olaf's trombone
commenced early...
1207
01:10:53,209 --> 01:10:55,336
finished late...
1208
01:10:55,445 --> 01:10:57,777
and nearly drove Picasso
out of his skull.
1209
01:10:59,882 --> 01:11:03,682
And then - then there was
another distraction.
1210
01:11:04,988 --> 01:11:06,888
Far more disturbing.
1211
01:11:09,592 --> 01:11:11,492
Oja.
1212
01:11:14,097 --> 01:11:17,066
Oja in the morning, on
her way to the beach.
1213
01:11:18,735 --> 01:11:21,602
Oja at 10:00, coming back
for the suntan lotion.
1214
01:11:24,274 --> 01:11:27,266
To the beach again...
1215
01:11:27,377 --> 01:11:31,336
and back once more
at noon for lunch.
1216
01:11:35,251 --> 01:11:38,982
In that climate, after
lunch one takes a siesta.
1217
01:11:39,088 --> 01:11:41,852
Not Oja. And not Picasso either.
1218
01:11:43,726 --> 01:11:46,524
Cocktail time.
1219
01:11:46,629 --> 01:11:48,324
Dinnertime.
1220
01:11:48,431 --> 01:11:50,524
Anytime.
1221
01:11:51,834 --> 01:11:55,531
Oja on Sunday,
Monday, Tuesday...
1222
01:11:55,638 --> 01:11:57,868
and all through the week.
1223
01:11:59,475 --> 01:12:01,841
Week after week.
1224
01:12:02,612 --> 01:12:05,308
Oja checking on the trombone.
1225
01:12:05,415 --> 01:12:07,713
Oja escaping from it.
1226
01:12:07,817 --> 01:12:10,445
But no escaping for Picasso.
1227
01:12:44,220 --> 01:12:46,586
Was he tempted?
1228
01:12:56,332 --> 01:12:59,631
Perhaps he was... inspired.
1229
01:14:31,127 --> 01:14:35,029
I can't tell you what
happened in there.
1230
01:14:35,131 --> 01:14:38,999
But Picasso was a fast
worker, by which -
1231
01:14:39,101 --> 01:14:41,160
I mean to say, you
understand, that...
1232
01:14:41,270 --> 01:14:44,239
the results of this encounter
were, to say the least of it...
1233
01:14:44,340 --> 01:14:47,138
extremely fruitful.
1234
01:15:10,433 --> 01:15:13,561
Figs sweetened on the trees.
1235
01:15:13,669 --> 01:15:18,106
Grapes burst into
ripeness on the vines.
1236
01:15:19,141 --> 01:15:21,837
And 22-22-
1237
01:15:21,944 --> 01:15:25,072
large portraits of
Miss Oja Kodar...
1238
01:15:25,181 --> 01:15:28,275
were born under
that virile brush.
1239
01:15:30,486 --> 01:15:34,946
Money. We've heard
Elmyr on that subject.
1240
01:15:35,057 --> 01:15:37,525
Well, Picasso didn't
make all that bread...
1241
01:15:37,627 --> 01:15:41,154
by casting any crumbs of it on the
waters, or feeding it to the birds...
1242
01:15:41,264 --> 01:15:44,256
or giving away any
pictures to his models.
1243
01:15:44,367 --> 01:15:48,030
But Oja laid down conditions.
She put a price...
1244
01:15:48,137 --> 01:15:49,695
on the sunshine.
1245
01:15:49,805 --> 01:15:53,536
To give it up, he had to give something
to her. And this is true, you know.
1246
01:15:53,643 --> 01:15:56,737
What she exacted from Picasso
was no less than this:
1247
01:15:56,846 --> 01:15:59,974
All those pictures
- all 22 of them -
1248
01:16:00,082 --> 01:16:02,550
were to be hers, outright.
1249
01:16:02,652 --> 01:16:06,850
Her property. Oja's very own
to pick up and carry away...
1250
01:16:06,956 --> 01:16:08,890
which is just exactly
what she did with them.
1251
01:16:10,626 --> 01:16:14,323
The lot. Let's call it the loot.
1252
01:16:14,430 --> 01:16:17,263
She got away with it all.
1253
01:16:18,200 --> 01:16:20,828
Well, no wonder she's
rich, you'll say.
1254
01:16:21,270 --> 01:16:23,238
But wait, there's more to this.
1255
01:16:23,339 --> 01:16:27,105
Just now, Paris is fogbound.
1256
01:16:27,209 --> 01:16:30,337
Just then - and this is
important to our story-
1257
01:16:30,446 --> 01:16:32,914
there was another
sort of paralysis.
1258
01:16:33,015 --> 01:16:35,745
Uh, Paris was suffering
from August.
1259
01:16:35,851 --> 01:16:37,751
This happens every year.
1260
01:16:37,853 --> 01:16:40,344
It shuts down, closes up...
1261
01:16:40,456 --> 01:16:44,392
and this is the time when an invader
could take the country by telephone...
1262
01:16:44,493 --> 01:16:46,961
if he could get
somebody to answer it.
1263
01:16:47,063 --> 01:16:50,590
And this is the time,
of all time...
1264
01:16:50,700 --> 01:16:53,897
when, down there in Toussaint...
1265
01:16:54,003 --> 01:16:57,769
Picasso, opening his
morning newspaper...
1266
01:16:57,873 --> 01:17:00,239
read that in a little-known
art gallery in Paris...
1267
01:17:00,343 --> 01:17:02,811
there had been opened to the
public an exposition...
1268
01:17:02,912 --> 01:17:05,278
of the works of Pablo Picasso.!
1269
01:17:05,381 --> 01:17:09,681
At this, a species
of atomic blast...
1270
01:17:09,785 --> 01:17:12,310
stormed out of the Riviera.!
1271
01:17:13,456 --> 01:17:15,981
In the American hemisphere...
1272
01:17:16,092 --> 01:17:18,788
we give our bigger tornadoes...
1273
01:17:18,894 --> 01:17:23,228
names like Ethel,
Mary Lou and Dolores.
1274
01:17:23,332 --> 01:17:26,460
Well, what shook the South
of France that day...
1275
01:17:26,569 --> 01:17:29,163
should've been called "Pablo."
1276
01:17:29,271 --> 01:17:31,831
Booking a seat on the
first available plane...
1277
01:17:31,941 --> 01:17:34,535
the storm now moved
toward Paris.
1278
01:17:34,644 --> 01:17:37,204
And there wasn't any improvement
in the atmospheric conditions...
1279
01:17:37,246 --> 01:17:41,842
at the airport when another newspaper
came to the artist's furious attention.
1280
01:17:41,951 --> 01:17:43,919
"Picasso, said the headline..."
1281
01:17:44,020 --> 01:17:45,954
"has been born again."
1282
01:17:46,055 --> 01:17:51,118
Critics were hailing the freshness,
the force, the fecundity.
1283
01:17:51,227 --> 01:17:53,593
But who cared? Not Picasso.
1284
01:17:53,696 --> 01:17:57,097
No. There'd been a very
clear understanding.
1285
01:17:57,199 --> 01:18:01,158
None of those portraits
were ever to be sold.
1286
01:18:01,270 --> 01:18:05,400
Oja'd get rich, but not a
penny's profit for Pablo.
1287
01:18:05,508 --> 01:18:11,071
There are witnesses who swear
that an aureole of blue flame...
1288
01:18:11,180 --> 01:18:13,648
sizzled about that noble head...
1289
01:18:13,749 --> 01:18:17,014
as the great painter burst
into the picture gallery.
1290
01:18:18,054 --> 01:18:21,751
What is remembered - what
will never be forgotten -
1291
01:18:21,857 --> 01:18:25,918
is the terrible incandescence...
1292
01:18:26,028 --> 01:18:28,428
of Picasso's rage.
1293
01:18:28,531 --> 01:18:31,989
And then there came a sudden...
1294
01:18:32,101 --> 01:18:34,797
and quite remarkable change.
1295
01:18:34,904 --> 01:18:38,738
Those famous staring eyes...
1296
01:18:38,841 --> 01:18:42,971
now stared as eyes have
never stared before.
1297
01:18:49,351 --> 01:18:54,448
From picture to picture
they traveled.
1298
01:18:56,125 --> 01:18:59,583
All 22 of them...
1299
01:18:59,695 --> 01:19:01,788
recognizing...
1300
01:19:01,897 --> 01:19:03,922
none.
1301
01:19:07,503 --> 01:19:11,200
Not one single canvas...
1302
01:19:11,307 --> 01:19:13,832
in that whole collection...
1303
01:19:16,479 --> 01:19:19,471
had been painted by Picasso.
1304
01:19:22,685 --> 01:19:24,744
And there she was...
1305
01:19:24,854 --> 01:19:27,584
standing beside him.
1306
01:19:27,690 --> 01:19:30,284
You told him about your...
1307
01:19:31,627 --> 01:19:34,152
grandfather...
1308
01:19:34,263 --> 01:19:36,163
that he was dying.
1309
01:19:37,433 --> 01:19:40,095
- He didn't even know he existed.
- Nobody did.
1310
01:19:40,202 --> 01:19:42,102
The greatest of all
the art forgers...
1311
01:19:42,204 --> 01:19:45,799
remained always a legend,
mentioned only in whispers.
1312
01:19:45,908 --> 01:19:48,536
Oja, tell us what you
did with Picasso.
1313
01:19:48,644 --> 01:19:50,942
I just took him by the
hand and led him out...
1314
01:19:51,046 --> 01:19:52,946
and put him in my little car.
1315
01:19:53,048 --> 01:19:56,609
And drove him to your
grandfather's secret studio?
1316
01:19:57,920 --> 01:20:01,788
This is true, you know. What's
amazing is that he went with her.
1317
01:20:01,891 --> 01:20:04,131
Here are some pictures. These
are the last I took of him.
1318
01:20:04,241 --> 01:20:05,833
And the first to be
made public, hmm?
1319
01:20:05,943 --> 01:20:08,891
He was never photographed,
except in the family.
1320
01:20:08,998 --> 01:20:11,865
- He was very careful about that.
- That's why he was never caught.
1321
01:20:11,967 --> 01:20:13,724
You know, I never thought
to ask Elmyr about
1322
01:20:13,748 --> 01:20:15,528
him. After all, they're
both Hungarians.
1323
01:20:15,638 --> 01:20:19,233
There are many great painters in the
Renaissance, but only one da Vinci.
1324
01:20:19,341 --> 01:20:21,241
The point being, that among
great art forgers...
1325
01:20:21,343 --> 01:20:23,311
your grandfather
is the da Vinci?
1326
01:20:23,412 --> 01:20:26,074
One of his da Vinci's is so
famous I don't dare to name it.
1327
01:20:26,182 --> 01:20:29,640
Giving him credit is as tough
as nailing him for the crime.
1328
01:20:29,752 --> 01:20:31,811
- Crime?
- Well...
1329
01:20:31,921 --> 01:20:34,161
he painted every last one of
those phony Picassos of you.
1330
01:20:34,185 --> 01:20:38,050
For every last one of which
Picasso was very highly praised.
1331
01:20:38,160 --> 01:20:40,019
But not, to put it mildly,
highly pleased. You
1332
01:20:40,043 --> 01:20:41,926
must have known you
couldn't get away with it.
1333
01:20:42,031 --> 01:20:44,022
I got to meet Picasso.
1334
01:20:44,133 --> 01:20:48,502
So, here they are, the world's
best and least known geniuses.
1335
01:20:48,604 --> 01:20:51,767
My grandfather was
very glad to see him.
1336
01:20:51,874 --> 01:20:53,739
"Picasso"...
1337
01:20:53,843 --> 01:20:55,834
said her grandfather...
1338
01:20:55,945 --> 01:20:58,709
"I've been painting
you for years.
1339
01:20:59,515 --> 01:21:03,281
All the great Picasso periods."
1340
01:21:03,385 --> 01:21:06,183
I'm not trying too hard for
the Hungarian accent...
1341
01:21:06,288 --> 01:21:08,620
- but I think that's how it went.
- Oh, yes.
1342
01:21:08,724 --> 01:21:13,286
"This girl," said Picasso,
"claims that you're dying."
1343
01:21:13,395 --> 01:21:16,262
"A dying art forger," he said,
"is still an art forger."
1344
01:21:16,365 --> 01:21:18,765
Well, you tell us
what Picasso said.
1345
01:21:18,868 --> 01:21:20,802
He called us both a
couple of crooks.
1346
01:21:20,903 --> 01:21:23,428
"Oja," said your grandfather,
"is quite as honest...
1347
01:21:23,539 --> 01:21:26,872
"as anyone that young,
that beautiful...
1348
01:21:26,976 --> 01:21:29,274
and that Hungarian
has any need to be."
1349
01:21:29,378 --> 01:21:32,370
"She's stolen my
pictures," said Picasso.
1350
01:21:32,481 --> 01:21:34,949
"She made you a gift, señor.
She gave you a whole summer."
1351
01:21:35,050 --> 01:21:37,125
"It's not more than the
price of 22 Picassos.
1352
01:21:37,149 --> 01:21:39,248
And where, for God's
sake, are they now?"
1353
01:21:39,355 --> 01:21:40,982
"Pablo -"
1354
01:21:41,090 --> 01:21:43,058
"May I call you Pablo?"
1355
01:21:45,160 --> 01:21:47,060
"No."
1356
01:21:48,764 --> 01:21:51,130
"Well, señor...
1357
01:21:51,233 --> 01:21:54,134
"it seems that in my son-in-law's
new little art gallery...
1358
01:21:54,236 --> 01:21:57,569
"there are 22 paintings, every one
of which has been acclaimed...
1359
01:21:57,673 --> 01:21:59,937
"as a masterpiece.
1360
01:22:00,042 --> 01:22:03,478
At least, that's the
best critical opinion."
1361
01:22:03,579 --> 01:22:06,844
"The best critical opinion
is a load of horse manure."
1362
01:22:06,949 --> 01:22:09,679
Or words to that effect.
1363
01:22:09,785 --> 01:22:13,346
"How perfectly we
agree on that, señor.
1364
01:22:13,455 --> 01:22:15,946
"But you have so little
reason to be bitter.
1365
01:22:16,058 --> 01:22:19,516
"Is there a man in all the world
who doesn't know your name?
1366
01:22:19,628 --> 01:22:21,619
And who in all the
world knows mine?"
1367
01:22:21,730 --> 01:22:24,491
"You're one of those that use so many
names that you forget your own!"
1368
01:22:24,515 --> 01:22:27,995
"I, señor, am not one...
1369
01:22:28,103 --> 01:22:30,367
"of anything.
1370
01:22:30,472 --> 01:22:34,670
"Like you, I am unique.
1371
01:22:34,777 --> 01:22:38,213
"You've seen my big Cézanne
at the Metropolitan?
1372
01:22:38,314 --> 01:22:42,410
"Is that just a
forgery, my friend?
1373
01:22:43,752 --> 01:22:46,721
Is it not also a painting?"
1374
01:22:49,391 --> 01:22:52,121
Now, you tell us what
Picasso had to say to that.
1375
01:22:52,227 --> 01:22:54,388
Something dirty in
Spanish, I think.
1376
01:22:54,496 --> 01:22:57,192
He did accuse your
grandfather of arrogance.
1377
01:22:57,299 --> 01:23:01,963
Arrogance? A man who never in his life
signed his own name to a picture.
1378
01:23:02,071 --> 01:23:03,971
What could be more
modest than that?
1379
01:23:04,073 --> 01:23:06,769
"It's true that when you think
of those great Rembrandts" -
1380
01:23:06,875 --> 01:23:10,208
- Chicago has five of them. Important ones.
- "And London."
1381
01:23:10,312 --> 01:23:15,716
"Why, just those two small
Tintorettos in Brazil.
1382
01:23:15,818 --> 01:23:18,582
- "And Tokyo."
- The big one.
1383
01:23:18,687 --> 01:23:23,021
In Cincinnati. Did all the
Goyas and most of the Grecos."
1384
01:23:23,125 --> 01:23:26,060
And the Monet. And the
Manet in Detroit.
1385
01:23:26,161 --> 01:23:29,221
"So, am I not then myself"...
1386
01:23:29,331 --> 01:23:32,892
said your grandfather, "one
of the great painters?"
1387
01:23:33,002 --> 01:23:35,903
"No? No."
1388
01:23:37,139 --> 01:23:41,508
"Yet here you are, Picasso, standing
at the deathbed of a ghost."
1389
01:23:41,610 --> 01:23:43,737
"For all my life
I've been a ghost."
1390
01:23:43,846 --> 01:23:48,783
"And for all time, the galleries and
museums will be haunted with my works."
1391
01:23:48,884 --> 01:23:53,048
"Do you think I should confess?
To what?"
1392
01:23:53,155 --> 01:23:56,420
"Committing masterpieces?"
1393
01:23:56,525 --> 01:24:01,394
"They'd all be torn down from the walls.
And what then would be left of me?"
1394
01:24:01,497 --> 01:24:05,593
"But before I die, I
find I need something."
1395
01:24:07,036 --> 01:24:09,197
"To believe -"
1396
01:24:11,774 --> 01:24:14,675
"I must believe..."
1397
01:24:14,777 --> 01:24:17,769
"that art itself..."
1398
01:24:19,148 --> 01:24:21,048
"is real."
1399
01:24:23,886 --> 01:24:26,116
If it is not, señor" -
1400
01:24:27,856 --> 01:24:30,689
Here, my grandfather was
interrupted by Picasso...
1401
01:24:30,793 --> 01:24:33,284
who asked him to stop
making speeches.
1402
01:24:33,395 --> 01:24:35,625
"We've only to
settle the fate..."
1403
01:24:35,731 --> 01:24:38,291
"of 22 large canvases..."
1404
01:24:38,400 --> 01:24:40,300
"painted by me."
1405
01:24:40,402 --> 01:24:43,394
"Picasso, you move so easily..."
1406
01:24:43,505 --> 01:24:46,372
"from one Picasso
period to another..."
1407
01:24:46,475 --> 01:24:49,342
"change like a-an actor..."
1408
01:24:49,445 --> 01:24:52,608
"like an art forger yourself."
1409
01:24:52,714 --> 01:24:55,581
"Won't you give to me, who
admire you so much..."
1410
01:24:56,652 --> 01:24:59,052
"a happy death?"
1411
01:24:59,154 --> 01:25:01,315
"Can you not let me go
knowing that at last..."
1412
01:25:01,423 --> 01:25:05,189
"I've managed to give
something new..."
1413
01:25:05,294 --> 01:25:07,194
"to the world?"
1414
01:25:08,230 --> 01:25:11,290
"One whole Picasso period."
1415
01:25:13,969 --> 01:25:15,869
"Would you give me this?"
1416
01:25:15,971 --> 01:25:19,202
"Give me my pictures,"
said Picasso.
1417
01:25:19,308 --> 01:25:21,868
"Give me back my 22 paintings."
1418
01:25:21,977 --> 01:25:25,413
"Ah," said your grandfather.
"That is impossible.
1419
01:25:28,217 --> 01:25:30,117
"I have burnt them."
1420
01:25:31,753 --> 01:25:35,189
Well, good-bye, Picasso.
1421
01:25:35,324 --> 01:25:37,189
Time for a confession?
1422
01:25:38,827 --> 01:25:40,795
- Time to go.
- Good night, Oja.
1423
01:25:42,798 --> 01:25:44,698
That's her real name, you know.
1424
01:25:45,501 --> 01:25:48,095
Oja. Oja Kodar.
1425
01:25:48,203 --> 01:25:52,037
I don't think that young
gentleman's a trombone player...
1426
01:25:52,141 --> 01:25:55,042
but Oja's grandfather
was Hungarian.
1427
01:25:55,144 --> 01:25:58,705
- Did he paint any pictures?
- Never in his life.
1428
01:25:58,814 --> 01:26:03,012
Ladies and gentlemen, we did
use Oja's grandfather...
1429
01:26:03,118 --> 01:26:06,485
to lend verisimilitude to the
reenactment of this story.
1430
01:26:06,588 --> 01:26:09,648
But is "reenactment"
really the word?
1431
01:26:09,758 --> 01:26:12,591
What I mean is, with a story
this hard to believe...
1432
01:26:12,694 --> 01:26:15,959
reenactment isn't easy.
1433
01:26:16,064 --> 01:26:18,328
- Right, François?
- Right.
1434
01:26:18,433 --> 01:26:21,834
At the very beginning, I - of all this
- I did make you a promise.
1435
01:26:21,937 --> 01:26:24,804
Remember? I did promise...
1436
01:26:24,907 --> 01:26:28,536
that for one hour I'd
tell you only the truth.
1437
01:26:33,115 --> 01:26:35,743
That hour, ladies and
gentlemen, is over.
1438
01:26:35,851 --> 01:26:39,719
For the past 17 minutes,
I've been lying my head off.
1439
01:26:41,056 --> 01:26:44,514
The truth- and please
forgive us for it-
1440
01:26:44,626 --> 01:26:47,959
is that we've been
forging an art story.
1441
01:26:48,063 --> 01:26:52,693
As a charlatan, of course, my job
was to try to make it real...
1442
01:26:52,801 --> 01:26:56,532
not that reality has
anything to do with it.
1443
01:26:56,638 --> 01:26:59,971
Reality? It's the toothbrush...
1444
01:27:00,075 --> 01:27:03,101
waiting at home for
you in its glass.
1445
01:27:03,212 --> 01:27:07,114
A bus ticket, a paycheck...
1446
01:27:07,216 --> 01:27:09,275
and the grave.
1447
01:27:09,384 --> 01:27:12,945
In the right mood, perhaps, Elmyr
has just as few regrets...
1448
01:27:13,055 --> 01:27:14,955
as I have to have
been a charlatan.
1449
01:27:15,057 --> 01:27:17,582
But we're not so
proud, either of us...
1450
01:27:17,693 --> 01:27:19,820
as to lay any superior claim...
1451
01:27:19,928 --> 01:27:22,761
to being very much worse
than the rest of you.
1452
01:27:27,436 --> 01:27:31,964
No, what we professional liars
hope to serve is truth.
1453
01:27:32,074 --> 01:27:34,440
I'm afraid the pompous
word for that is "art."
1454
01:27:34,543 --> 01:27:37,239
Picasso himself said it.
1455
01:27:37,346 --> 01:27:39,906
"Art, "he said, "is a lie-
1456
01:27:41,016 --> 01:27:43,484
"a lie that makes us...
1457
01:27:43,585 --> 01:27:45,485
realize the truth."
1458
01:27:46,722 --> 01:27:50,749
Oja's grandfather, floating
here in the air...
1459
01:27:50,859 --> 01:27:52,656
has no comment, which
isn't surprising...
1460
01:27:52,761 --> 01:27:55,662
because he never existed.
1461
01:27:55,764 --> 01:27:58,597
To the memory of that great man
who will never cease to exist...
1462
01:27:58,700 --> 01:28:02,693
I offer my apologies...
1463
01:28:02,804 --> 01:28:04,704
and wish you all...
1464
01:28:04,806 --> 01:28:08,298
true and false...
1465
01:28:08,410 --> 01:28:11,402
a very pleasant good evening.
121892
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