– I was channel-surfing the other night and ran across Auto Focus, Paul Schrader’s biopic about the unsolved murder of Bob Crane, the star of Hogan’s Heroes. I didn’t see it when it came out in 2002, so I watched the first part out of curiosity. At first I was struck by the concept–a straight-arrow radio host stumbles into sitcom stardom, learns that he can have pretty much anything he wants for the asking, and turns into a full-fledged sex addict–but within a half-hour or so I found myself growing bored. The problem, as is so often the case with fictionalized biography, is that life and art aren’t the same thing. No matter how many liberties you take with the life of Bob Crane, you’re still stuck in the end with a man who was either dull or ultimately unknowable, neither of which makes for an engrossing narrative.
One of the best examples I know of a work of narrative art based on a real-life model is Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men, a novel about a southern politician who at first glance closely resembles Huey Long. What sets All the King’s Men apart from lesser works in the same genre is that Willie Stark isn’t Huey Long, but a made-up character based on Huey Long. For the most part, his life, both interior and exterior, has been imagined, not adapted, which is one of the reasons why All the King’s Men is a great novel, not a clever roman