At the time Welles met up with Elmyr in the early 70s, he was living in Ibiza and had already been the subject of Fake! The Story of Elmyr de Hory the Greatest Art Forger of Our Time written by the notoriously fraudulent “biographer” Clifford Irving, who himself figures prominently in the film. During the course of filming F for Fake, Irving (who was later portrayed by Richard Gere in The Hoax), was serendipitously revealed to have forged his own “autobiography” of Howard Hughes (not to mention Hughes’ signature) and sentenced to jail time. The resulting film, an essay on the authorship of “truth” in art, is a dazzling, intellectually challenging masterpiece that can never quite decide if it’s a fake documentary about a fake painter of fake masterpieces who himself was the subject of a fake biographer… or what it is. (It’s no wonder that Robert Anton Wilson was such a fan of F for Fake, which figures prominently in his book, Cosmic Trigger II).
