Unlike "Myra Breckinridge," where Raquel Welch provided a mostly silent and content-free commentary, for "Confessions" George Clooney provides a witty, informative and wholly entertaining commentary on his first film as director.
I did not realize, when I bought it, that Charlie Kaufmann wrote the script (adapting Chuck Barris's book). Although, according to Clooney, he had to throw out large swaths of Charlie's script because they were unfilmable within his budget. Too bad. I suspect Charlie's script would've been a better movie.
Chuck Barris, the game show creator, wrote a fictional autobiography in which he was a CIA hitman by night. I don't think anyone took it seriously, but it added to the Barris aura. By the time the movie finally got made -- after many, many years of development and rejection -- Barris was old and retired and no longer in the public eye. So the story about him needed to be told with a lot of exposition of who he was and what he'd done.
In other words, less Charlie. Too bad.
Because of who Clooney is, he was able to get Drew Barrymore, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, Sam Rockwell, Jaye P. Morgan, Dick Clark, Matt Damon, Rutger Hauer, Gene Gene The Dancing Machine Patton, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jim Lange (the announcer), and lots more to work for less than their usual scale and make a relatively low budget movie. All the effects shots were shot "in-camera" with rotating sets and running actors (except one, where they had to digitally correct a spelling error on the title page for Barris's book, that nobody noticed until final editing).
Clooney drops scads of homages to favorite movies in the shots and dialog, almost all of which I missed until he pointed them out.
There are several long deleted scenes which would've goosed up the film if it could've been longer.
Clooney swerves between classic film noir (muted colors, moody music) when Barris is on a mission, and garish yellows and reds when covering for instance "The Gong Show." It makes the film unpredictable and fun. But alas, it *is* pretty straight-forward and linear, and despite all the subtle homages (which I missed) it seems like it all happens on the surface layer. I suspect Charlie's script messed with the reality/fantasy boundary a little bit more, which would've made Barris's outrageous claims more contemplatable.
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