Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (film)

Tired of being rejected by the beautiful women he lusts after, Chuck Barris moves to Manhattan to become an NBC page with dreams of becoming famous in television but is eventually fired. He moves back to Philadelphia and becomes Dick Clark's personal assistant on American Bandstand in 1961. He writes the successful song "Palisades Park" and becomes romantically involved with a woman named Penny Pacino. Barris is given permission to pitch the concept for The Dating Game at ABC. He is given $7,500 to create a television pilot, but ABC abandons the idea in favor of Hootenanny. One night after Barris is kicked out of a bar for fighting, he is approached by CIA agent Jim Byrd, who recruits him as an assassin. Returning from a mission in Mexico, Barris finds that Penny has become a hippie. Meanwhile, ABC green-lights The Dating Game, and by 1967 the show is a phenomenon. Byrd suggests to Barris that the prize for winners of The Dating Game should be a first date in a foreign country and that Barris should accompany them as a chaperone as cover for further assassination missions. On a CIA mission/chaperoning trip in Helsinki, Finland, he is frequently bothered by the male winner from the couple he's chaperoning, but things improve when he meets female operative Patricia Watson. Following the completion of his mission, Barris and Patricia spend his final night in Helsinki together. He finds more success back home when The Newlywed Game goes on air. He and Penny decide to move to Los Angeles, but Barris is cautious of marriage, much to Penny's dismay. In 1970, Byrd convinces Barris to go on a mission to West Berlin to assassinate Hans Colbert. Barris is introduced to German-American agent Keeler, whom he helps to kill Colbert. However, he is captured by the KGB and, after some weeks, freed during a west–east spy exchange in which Barris discovers the male winner from the Helsinki trip was actually a Russian spy. In 1976, Barris creates The Gong Show, becoming famous as its host. One day, Barris and Keeler go out for a meal together, during which Keeler explains how he became an assassin. Not long later, Keeler is murdered and Byrd warns Barris of a mole in the agency. His TV shows are cancelled due to poor ratings, and Penny threatens to leave after catching him cheating. One night, Barris finds Byrd sitting atop the diving board of his backyard pool. Byrd reveals why he was chosen by the CIA to become an assassin: he is the son of a serial killer and had been raised as a girl by his mother, so he "fit the profile". Barris threatens Byrd and, moments later, Byrd is revealed to have died while still sitting on the diving board. Faced with the unpleasant truth about himself, Barris begins to spiral out of control. After almost having a nervous breakdown on The Gong Show, Barris shuts himself away in a New York City hotel. Penny finds him and tries in vain to convince him to return to California to get married. Barris finally leaves his room to meet Patricia in Boston. After a cup of coffee, Barris collapses, seemingly poisoned. Patricia reveals that she is the mole. However, Barris has tricked Patricia into drinking from the poisoned cup, and she falls dead as he stands up unharmed. After her death, he returns home and begins writing his autobiography, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. He finally decides to marry Penny. At the end of the ceremony, Barris sees some of the people he killed in the crowd. Distraught, he confesses to Penny his double life as a CIA assassin, but she merely laughs, assuming he is joking, and he decides not to correct her. The film ends with a description of one final game idea from Barris: The Old Game in which three old men are given handguns and made to reminisce about their lives. Whoever doesn't turn the gun on themselves wins a refrigerator. ==Cast==

Barris, Dick Clark, Jim Lange, Murray Langston, Jaye P. Morgan, and Gene Patton are featured in interviews central to the storyline. ==Production==

Development Chuck Barris first sold the film rights of his "unauthorized autobiography" to Columbia Pictures in the late 1980s. Columbia president Dawn Steel greenlighted Confessions of a Dangerous Mind with Jim McBride directing. and finished his first draft later that year. Barris gave positive feedback to Kaufman's script and Curtis Hanson instantly agreed to direct Hanson eventually dropped out, but with the financial success of ''My Best Friend's Wedding'' (1997), P. J. Hogan entered discussions with Warner Bros. to direct in January 1998. Mike Myers signed on to replace Sean Penn, who vacated the lead role. However, negotiations with Hogan fell through; Sam Mendes, David Fincher and Darren Aronofsky all became interested in taking over the director's position. Fincher and Myers were fast tracking production for Confessions of a Dangerous Mind in April 2000, but Fincher dropped out and, by that October, Brian De Palma was attached to direct with Renaissance Pictures co-financing. Later that month, Warner Bros. put the project in turnaround, and Myers lost interest. In December 2000, Ben Stiller was in discussions to star as Chuck Barris, with Bryan Singer directing and Clooney still aboard. However, Stiller was forced to vacate Confessions of a Dangerous Mind due to scheduling conflicts with Zoolander (2001) and The Royal Tenenbaums (2001). Although Singer was interested in Sam Rockwell in the lead role, Renaissance Pictures was holding international distribution rights, but the filmmakers still needed more financing as well as a studio to cover distribution duties in the United States. Grosvenor Park was interested in co-financing with Renaissance, but the next month (February 2001), Confessions of a Dangerous Mind was once again stalled in development. Miramax Films had been negotiating for domestic rights, but difficulties arose when Miramax also wanted to cover international rights. Renaissance was also unable to close the financing in time to accommodate both the "production insurance" deadline and the 65-day shooting schedule, Artisan Entertainment then became interested in covering North American distribution rights but dropped out after the bid went over $8 million. Johnny Depp eventually went to work on other films. Director With Singer busy preparing X2, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind was rejuvenated with Clooney taking over as director. Miramax Films agreed to cover distribution duties and co-finance the film. In the end, funding for Confessions of a Dangerous Mind came from Miramax, Clooney's own Section Eight Productions, Village Roadshow Pictures, producer Andrew Lazar's Mad Chance, Allied Filmmakers, and The Kushner-Locke Company. Writer Charlie Kaufman said he was dissatisfied with the way Clooney treated the screenplay. "I spent a lot of time working on the script," he explained, "but I don't think he was interested in the things I was interested in. I've moved on and I don't have any animosity towards Clooney, but it's a movie I don't really relate to." Clooney acknowledged that Kaufman's original script contained "really funky scenes that would never reach the green light of being a studio film." Clooney was adamant that Barris become heavily involved during production in an attempt to portray the film from his point of view. Barris filmed cameo appearances of himself during the shoot in Canada and taped a voice-over in Clooney's house. When asked about Barris's claim of being a CIA assassin, Clooney commented, "I don't know how much I believed it. I didn't want to officially ask him, because I didn't want him to say, 'I made it up.' I wanted to tell the story and I thought how interesting, if it was all made up, why someone as wealthy and as successful as Chuck Barris would have to do that. I thought that was an interesting person to explore, and that's what we wanted to do with the film." However, Barris had already admitted he had made the story up in a 1984 interview promoting the book; he wrote the story in large part because he had been exiled from television over the controversy surrounding one of his shows, ''3's a Crowd. In the same interview, Barris noted that he had applied for work with the CIA in the early 1960s but never actually entered the agency; Confessions of a Dangerous Mind'' was the product of Barris imagining how he could have done both at the same time. Clooney acknowledged that his upbringing with father Nick Clooney had a great bearing on his choice of depicting the 1960/70s game shows. "My father had a game show when I was growing up called The Money Maze. I know what those sets look like. I showed the guy how to do cue cards. I grew up on them," the director reflected, "and knew what it looked like and smelled like. And I know something about some of the trappings of fame, so I thought I had a unique take on it." Casting Casting the lead role of Barris was a long, difficult process. "After two months of screen tests and everything I still wasn't able to get Sam Rockwell," Clooney reflected. "We went to coffee shops and dinner and movies, took walks, went to the zoo; I even filmed him," Rockwell explained. "I had him tape my lines in a tape recorder, and I listened to that to get his voice down." Clooney cast Julia Roberts as the mysterious CIA agent Patricia Watson due to their positive working relationship in ''Ocean's Eleven (2001). Her role was originally set for Nicole Kidman, who dropped out over scheduling conflicts with The Hours''. After Rockwell's casting, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind was once again briefly postponed; Miramax did not greenlight the film until Roberts signed on. Renée Zellweger and Gwyneth Paltrow were considered for the Penny Pacino role, which eventually went to Drew Barrymore. Miramax was unsure of Clooney's decision to cast Rockwell Clooney also agreed to cameo in Miramax's Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over (2003) so Rockwell could be cast. To accommodate the $30 million budget, Clooney convinced Roberts and Barrymore to lower their asking prices. From January to March 2002, production for Confessions of a Dangerous Mind took place primarily in California and Montreal. The Playboy Mansion scene was shot in early April at Los Angeles, California; the remaining two weeks of production took place around the Mexico – United States border. Filming for Confessions of a Dangerous Mind ended in late April 2002. Clooney commented that post-production for Confessions of a Dangerous Mind was stressful because he was simultaneously acting in Solaris (2002). ==Reception==

Release To tie in with the release of the film, Miramax Books republished Barris's 1984 book. The film premiered out-of-competition at the May 2002 Cannes Film Festival before Miramax Films gave it a limited release in the United States on December 31, 2002; the wide release came on January 24, 2003. The film only barely recouped its production costs, grossing only $33.01 million, of which $16 million was domestic revenue and $17.01 million came from foreign markets. Critical response The film received positive responses from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 79% based on 165 reviews, with an average rating of 7.2/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Rockwell is spot-on as Barris, and Clooney directs with entertaining style and flair." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 67/100, based on 33 reviews, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F scale. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind was shown at the Berlin International Film Festival on February 10, 2003. Sam Rockwell won the Silver Bear for Best Actor and George Clooney was nominated the Golden Bear but lost to Michael Winterbottom of In This World. Roger Ebert gave Confessions of a Dangerous Mind a positive review, awarding it 3 out of 4 stars. "George Clooney's directorial debut is not only intriguing as a story but great to look at," Ebert said, "a marriage of bright pop images from the 1960s and 1970s and dark, cold spyscapes that seem to have wandered in from John le Carré." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine wrote that the film carried a perfect balance of dark humor and psychological drama. "Clooney tackles a far-reaching absurdist fantasy with Barris as a paradigm of paranoia," Travers reviewed. "He wisely hooks up with talent he worked with as an actor: cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel, from Three Kings (1999), and editor Stephen Mirrione from ''Ocean's Eleven'' (2001)." Mick LaSalle from the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that "there may be more entertaining and less problematic movies, but Confessions of a Dangerous Mind has something about it that hangs in there, working on the mind like a dog gnawing on a table leg. The movie makes a case for itself through sheer oddness and perversity. I'm not sure Confessions is a good movie, but I am sure I like it." Owen Gleiberman, writing in Entertainment Weekly, observed that "Sam Rockwell is handsome in a rumpled, slightly goofy rabbit-toothed way, but he doesn't really have the look, or aura, of a movie star," Gleiberman stated. "He's more like a weirdly sincere space cadet, babbling to himself with puppyish befuddlement, breaking into funky soft dance moves that look as if he's been doing them in his bedroom since he was 8. All of which makes him an inspired choice to play Chuck Barris." Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times gave a negative review. He disliked the characterization of Chuck Barris and commented that "with its multiplicity of over-stylized looks and slick gimmicks, Dangerous Mind was doubtless more stimulating to direct than it will be for audiences to experience." Internet reviewer James Berardinelli wrote a mixed critique. "George Clooney is eager to show how much he has learned at the hands of the A-list filmmakers he has toiled under. So we get a style that is about 50% Steven Soderbergh and 50% Coen brothers. Sometimes it works, but mostly it comes across as too artsy, with all sorts of bizarre angles and unusual shots." ==Series adaptation==

In April 2021, a drama series adaptation was reported to be in development at Apple TV+, who won the auction for the script. David Hollander and Jon Worley are signed on as showrunners and executive producers, while Justin Timberlake is attached to play Chuck Barris. Miramax and CBS Studios (now Paramount Television Studios) will produce the series. ==References==