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If you were born in the '60s, you grew up with Chuck Barris. He was the creator of such intelligent tv fare as The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game, and The Gong Show. Not exactly the kind of baby-sitter most parents would want, but he certainly laid the groundwork for the type of tv we have today. Indeed, it's impossible to imagine reality tv without the influence of Barris. But that's not a legacy many would care to own.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind which opened last weekend, is based on Barris's memoirs in which he discusses his rise to tv prominence. Sam Rockwell stars as Barris, from when he was a sex-starved teenager to his days of naked seclusion in a seedy hotel. In fact, there's a lot of naked Chuck Barris in this movie. He meets his future wife Penny (Drew Barrymore) while standing naked in her apartment (he's been sleeping with her roommate). This focus on nudity might function as a metaphor--Chuck Barris bares all in tawdry autobiography--except that Confessions is not exactly the bare truth. You see, Barris claims that, while he as a tv impresario, he was also a CIA agent who killed over 30 men around the globe.

The movie, written by Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation) and directed by George Clooney in his directorial debut, takes all of this at face value. We see Barris rise to power by coming up with the Dating Game concept, and we also see his introduction to the CIA world via secret agent Jim Byrd (Clooney). The third vertex of this triangle is his growing relationship with Penny, as Barris refuses to tie the knot. The movie deftly moves between all three points, treating the spy game as if it's as real as his girlfriend. Barris apparently conducted his CIA assassinations while chaperoning his Dating Game contestants on their "date." While off in a dark corner of Europe, he meets Patricia (Julia Roberts), a double agent right out of a pulp fiction novel. The intrigues of espionage mirror the back-room dealings Barris goes through to get his tv concepts on the air.

One of my problems with Confessions is that it's never clear whether we're supposed to think Barris is crazy or just putting us on. Now I'm all
for ambiguity and making an audience figure things out, but the ambiguity here makes it impossible to offer any judgments at all. We just watch this train wreck of a life, laugh at a few of the situations, and scratch our head when everything's done.

On the positive side, it is a great ride. Clooney, in conjunction with cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel (Three Kings), creates a beautifully, washed-out world with an emphasis on lurid colors and dark shadows. The wide-frame compositions are beautifully crafted and belie Clooney's rookie status.

Sam Rockwell turns in an award-worthy performance as Barris, full of self-loathing and self-doubt. Early in the movie, his awkward teenager is pitch-perfect, and his later scenes with Clooney and Roberts are hilarious. You should know that, despite the commercials, Roberts and Clooney's roles are relatively small. They're both wonderful and add a marvelous style to the spy story, but neither are major characters. Which is as it should be. This is Barris's story, and Rockwell can certainly carry a movie by himself. His relationship with Penny is sweetly sad, and Barrymore brings a welcome earnestness to the movie.

This brings us back to the movie's point. Not all movies need a point, of course, and Confessions might serve as a convoluted "memoir" of a troubled, not dangerous, mind. But it feels like there's more going on here. A voiceover from Barris runs throughout the film (taken, I assume, from the book) in which he argues with his detractors and yet somewhat agrees with their assessments. His tv shows were stupid. They were brilliant in their decision to use ordinary people, and yet they went out of their way to make ordinary people look stupid. But watching Rockwell do an amazing impersonation of Barris's hand-clapping host of the Gong Show, I'm reminded that Barris made himself look stupid, too. Here's an obviously intelligent man who's reduced to spending his day arguing with the Unknown Comic and ridiculing people anxious for their fifteen minutes of fame. Who in that position wouldn't want to imagine himself at the center of some CIA plot? We're all hoping for significance. How hopeless it is when our mark in life turns out to be pointless and stupid, and we can't turn to Jesus. When the truth is too hard to bear (and it always is), self-deception and/or insanity might be the only realistic options.   

J. Robert Parks 1/29/2003