Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

Plot synopsis:
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. Chuck 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.
On a CIA mission in Helsinki, Finland, he meets female operative Patricia Watson. 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 East 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 1976, Barris creates The Gong Show and becomes famous as its host. Keeler is murdered and Byrd warns Barris of a mole in the agency. His TV shows are canceled due to poor ratings, and Penny threatens to leave after catching him cheating on her. One night, Barris finds Byrd sitting atop the diving board of his backyard pool. Byrd reveals to Barris 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 after Byrd is killed moments later, Barris is seen pointing his gun at him.
Faced with the unpleasant truth about himself, Barris begins to spiral out of control. After almost having a nervous breakdown on one of his shows, Barris shuts himself away in a New York City hotel. Penny manages to find him and tries in vain to convince him to return to California to get married.
Barris finally leaves his room and meets Patricia in Boston. After a cup of coffee with her, Barris collapses, seemingly poisoned. Patricia reveals that she is the mole. Barris has tricked Patricia into drinking from the poisoned cup, and she falls dead. 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, he sees some of the people he killed in the crowd. Distraught, he confesses to her his double life as a CIA assassin, but she merely laughs, assuming he is joking, and he decides not to correct her.

Tags: psychedelic, psychological

Review:
We all remember Chuck Barris as the creator of some of television's most successful - albeit notoriously mind-numbing - game shows: `The Dating Game,' `The Newlywed Game,' and `The Gong Show.'  But did you know that he was also a hit man for the CIA?
Well, that's what he claims, straight from his own `unauthorized autobiography' entitled `Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,' which has now been made into a movie by director George Clooney and writer Charlie Kaufman.
What most of us didn't know about Barris at the time was that, while all this was going on, he was ostensibly leading a double life as a secret agent, tracking down and killing any number of `bad guys,' all in the name of `national security.'Given the inherently incredible, jaw-dropping nature of the material, George Clooney, in his directorial debut, brings an appropriately surrealistic tone to the work.
Rounding out the cast are Clooney himself, as the mysterious CIA agent who draws Barris into this strange netherworld of intrigue and danger, Rutger Hauer, as a fellow hit man who pours out his feelings about his chosen occupation to Barris, Julia Roberts, as the icy cool CIA operative who pops up at various moments and in various places to keep an eye on the young recruit, and even Brad Pitt and Matt Damon, who show up for a truly hilarious cameo appearance together, one that had the audience at the screening I attended howling with delight.The $64,000 question becomes, of course, is this story even remotely true, or is it merely another case of this master showman's playing the public for all its worth?
Whether the film is really a true story or merely a grand lark perpetrated on an increasingly credulous audience, the fact is that `Confessions of a Dangerous Mind' turns out to be a thoroughly entertaining, utterly loony piece of original filmmaking.`Confessions of a Dangerous Mind' marks an auspicious debut for Clooney as a director, who, in his work behind the camera, demonstrates a thorough command of vision and style.
'Confessions' though is willing to give Chuck Barris the benefit of the doubt in regards to his dubious claims to have been a secret assassin for the CIA in the midst of his days as a game show host, giving life to such controversial classic as 'the Gong Show' and 'the Dating Game' while taking it from a range of human targets around the globe.
Regardless of whether the real-life Barris truly did have some incredible adventures within his time, or simply an overly-active imagination, this movie translates it into one heck of an enjoyable romp  slick, stylish and entrancing on the surface, and with a bracingly poignant and sobering tale lurking underneath.Kaufman continues to rule supreme with his flair for developing the most heavily flawed and eccentric of characters, investing them with witty dialogue and sharp situations and, as with his previous screenplays, the humour is a pleasantly mixed bag  lightly amusing at some points, laugh-out-loud hilarious at others, even outright alarming whenever it needs to be.
Sure, things can move a tad slowly every now and then, but with this number of niceties up there to be marvelled at you know you're never for a second going to be bored.It also draws a fine contrast between the two separate pursuits that Chuck Barris is called to follow  the game show scenes are colourful, light-hearted fun, the assassin scenes murky and deliciously paranoid, and Sam Rockwell, at the helm as our savvy and hapless main man, has the timing, the energy and the appeal to emerge from the two as both a comic figure and a tragic one.
Kicking off as a likable, familiar kind of anti-hero, whose goofy grin and offhand ways have us smiling through the bar fights and the womanising, he gradually evolves into something more enigmatic and sorrowful; a lost, confused individual whose more innocuous contributions to society, in the form of lowbrow 'trash TV', are widely scorned (not that I've ever seen any of the genuine Chuck Barris's shows myself, but it would amaze me if they were really any worse than the kind of mind-numbing reality TV that's enjoyed popularity over the past few years), while the hidden talent he discovers in contract killing begins to understandably repulse him soon enough.
One of the most effective things about 'Confessions' is just how deftly it uses its gags and its pathos, along with interview snippets from those who were acquainted with the real-life Barris, which punctuate the story at various points, to reflect upon this man, his life, and just how much he really achieved either way, arriving in the end at quite a biting conclusion.
I don't think that any other rendition of 'If I had a Hammer' could feel nearly as sad and haunting as it does here.Drew Barrymore and Clooney himself offer nice support all the while, each epitomising different ends of the Chuck Barris spectrum  Barrymore, as Chuck's bubbly girlfriend Penny, is a fun-loving innocent; Clooney, as his CIA director, is aptly subtle and mysterious.
But neither of them, or anyone else involved for a matter of fact, comes even close to upstaging Rockwell, whose input is simply fantastic  there's no doubt in my mind that the Best Actor Award which, as the blurb on the DVD so proudly states, he picked up at the Berlin International Film Festival for his efforts, was well-and-truly earned.It's not an innovative, far-out, one-of-a-kind experience (a la 'Being John Malkovich').
Clooney Plays a Weird Story Straight Up. What if the creator and host of two of the 1970s biggest and lamest television game shows was also a part-time CIA hitman?
It is competently acted by Sam Rockwell as Barris, Julia Roberts as a fellow spy, Drew Barrymore as his love interest, and director George Clooney as his CIA recruiter and handler.
While Barris and Byrd are good characters, some aren't as well used and you get the impression that the script wishes they weren't involved at all, certainly Penny and Patricia were a little confused and what was hinted at was never revealed in terms of who they were.Rockwell runs the film really well and copes with the comic stuff and the darker stuff.
Definitely worth a watch if you enjoy strong acting performances mixed with offbeat plots.Clooney takes what is basically a poor mans "THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE" and makes a very entertaining and watchable film with great acting and stylish but reigned in technique.
George Clooney's directorial debut is a compelling dramatic biopic about `Gong Show' host Chuck Barris, who claims to be a hit man for the CIA.
So before seeing "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind", his debut as a director, I had my doubts...This time we don't get to see Clooney very often in the movie itself.
Of course without the interesting story and the good acting by all of his main actors Clooney wouldn't have been able to make this movie.
Also watch for Brad Pitt and Matt Damon in fleeting, non-speaking cameo roles.The film (and book) explore the double life of Chuck Barris who was once described as lowering the bar on television for ever.
"Confessions of a Dangerous MInd' was excellent and I'm surprised it doesn't receive more credit.The story is an 'autobiographical' tale of TV producer Chuck Barris (Sam Rockwell) who doubles as a CIA-assassin.
The cinematography is superb, and Director of Photography, Newton Thomas Sigel, creates a film with such innovative lighting and tones, and to top it off, the screen play is written by one of Hollywood's best, Charlie Kaufmann (wrote 'Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine).The movie was shadowy but not dark, humorous but not too light, mysterious but not deceptive and was honestly one of the most original films I've seen in a long time.
Chuck Barris, who became a television icon in the mid-1970s while acting as producer-creator-host of TV's "The Gong Show", has his humble and strange beginnings reenacted by first-time director George Clooney, who curiously displays a loving affection for innocent American nostalgia and yet a puny breadth of imagination behind the camera.
This was a life story no one really wanted to see adapted to the screen, and even Clooney (as both director and supporting actor, playing the CIA operative who recruits Barris) is more cheeky than serious.
From the man who created such revolutionary concepts as "Date Game", "The Gong Show" and "The Newlywed Game", the predecessors to modern-day exploitational reality TV shows, comes "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind", the autobiography of Chuck Barris (Sam Rockwell).
While this involves a lot of spying, espionage and double crosses, the big difference between Oceans and Confessions, is that Oceans 11 had a lot of charm and tongue-in-cheek with itself.Sam Rockwell plays Chuck Barris here, as you probably know, if you've read his so-so book, was not only a hammy game show host, but also a CIA agent.
I actually almost felt, while watching Julia Roberts scenes, that she was thinking "Boy, Clooney owes me a big fat favor here".So-so story, so-so main character, excellent supporting actors..
Sam Rockwell, Drew Barrymore, George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Rutger Hauer, Maggie Gyllenhaal...the big names just kept right on coming.
Watching this film, I couldn't help recalling another one, "A Beautiful Mind", the story of another troubled soul that parallels, in a way, the life of the main character of this one: Chuck Barris.It's a big stretch of the imagination to imagine the real Barris as a CIA operative, let alone, someone worth of a biopic with a screen play by Charlie Kaufman and an interesting directorial debut by George Clooney.
Barris insists that during his days as a creator and/or host for such shows as "The Dating Game" and "The Gong Show," the CIA employed him to murder "33 human beings."Whether or not you believe his story is really beside the point--as a story for a film it seems pretty reasonable.
I haven't read his autobiography, I heard it is very well-detailed and all, but knowing the type of scum Barris is in real life makes me think he's either a crazy loon or he just wanted to make it back into the spotlight, and so he came up with this crazy story (I prefer the latter theory).The film doesn't always make a whole lotta sense.
At best, the Clooney CIA character is Barris's version of the A Beautiful Mind hallucination.Sam Rockwell looked more like Kramer from Seinfeld than he did Chuck Barris.
But the ramifications are as much ambiguous as what George Clooney (an exemplar of the mainstream Hollywood mindset) wants us to believe, it does manage to shape a believe-it- or-despise-it logjam and according to the film's depiction, Chuck Barry is nothing but a pipsqueak (there is no reference of any flair in his ascending in the show business), a lunatic has a very troubled mental state (a dreadful imagination of someone is going to finish him off), a repellent womanizer/sex-addict has big commitment issues if we simply remove the " hit-man" halo, so from which one could imply is that the "other identity" suits well to rationalize his personal mire, it is his last straw, but from the eyes of an audience, it flunks by blatantly over-beautifying the double-identity situation, I never feel the frisson albeit the film is being cunningly shot in a retro-redolent grain, with a friendly comic tone and lively interactions between the cinematography and the editing, plus an ace soundtrack with the trademark of its time.
All sidekicks are come-and- go (with Drew Barrymore and Julia Roberts the female auxiliaries have longer stints, both equally awful I must say, Barrymore doesn't age at all along a two-decades span which is so dragging viewers out of the picture), the sole comic relief is the performance from Sam Rockwell, who was largely unknown at that time and overlooked by the awards season (a SILVER BERLIN BEAR for BEST ACTOR is his only trophy), his panache proffers the vitality of the film against its slightly mind-bogging narrative tempo, also his personal charisma transcends his character, and sublimates his character Chuck, a connection has been substantially built across the screen, a triumphant achievement in deed.
Sam Rockwell's portrayal of Barris is an obnoxious caricature, as is Drew Barrymore's long-suffering girlfriend, as is George Clooney's CIA man, as is Julia Roberts' double-agent seductress (will someone please make her go away already?).
Last year his autobiography was published, in which he claims to have been an undercover CIA operative while all this was going on, and when he chaperoned couples on their holiday dates, to charming places like Helsinki, west berlin and south east asia, he was actually on missions of murder and espionage.George Clooney uses this autobiography as the basis for his directorial debut, starring himself as a CIA man, The excellent Sam Rockwell as Barris, Rockwell is probably best known for his chilling portrayal of wild bill Wharton, that awful hillbilly murderer in the green mile, it also stars Drew Barrymore, who is just divine in the role as his long suffering girlfriend and Julia Roberts, oddly enough playing a CIA femme fatale.
And George Clooney can act a bit as well, what a voice and doesn't every guy just want to look like him.It's also a very different film in the way that the main character elicits little sympathy from the audience, he is not really that likeable, it almost could be confessions of a despicable and self-indulgent mind, but he is a fascinating character, this barris, and if it's all really true, what a story and what a life..
Clooney shows good performance just as Julia Roberts, Rutger Hauer (didn't see him for a while), Drew Barrymore and Sam Rockwell do.So after all "Confessions of a dangerous mind" is a good movie and worth watching !.
Clooney plays a CIA man with such robotic lack of conviction that his character comes off more like a very bad stereotype than a person who really existed.The story is absurd, the "humour" unfunny, and the film is quite dull in the second half.
And, since this film promises to be, like it says on the DVD, "In the cool, witty style of 'Ocean's Eleven'," Barris is recruited by handsome director George Clooney (as Jim Byrd) to kill dozens of people for the CIA.
This film takes Barris' distraction (the CIA story) too seriously, thus misses a mark; but, Mr. Rockwell is excellent and Mr. Clooney found a directorial "voice" in his next film.******* Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (5/02) George Clooney ~ Sam Rockwell, Drew Barrymore, George Clooney, Julia Roberts.
"Confessions of a Dangerous Mind", George Clooney's tongue in cheek directorial debut, is an adaptation of Gong Show creator Chuck Barris' memoir in which he claims to have murdered dozens as a secret agent.
Sam Rockwell captures Chuck Barris movements and idiosyncracies and George Clooney continues his obsession with the full backside nudity of the male body this time as a director in this movie and as an actor in Solaris.
Thus the fine directing of George Clooney and good appearances of Drew Barrymore, Julia Roberts and Sam Rockwell (who steals the show) as well as Mr. Clooney itself, I kinda was left confused whether this story of a double life between producer/host and secret agent is believable.
It had his feel to it, George Clooney did a great job, though he's not known for directing, and Sam Rockwell accurately portrayed the young, ambitious Chuck Barris.
TV producer Chuck Barris has "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" in this 2002 movie directed by George Clooney and starring Sam Rockwell, Drew Barrymore, Julia Roberts and George Clooney with appearances by Dick Clark, Jaye P.
In Barris' writings, he claims that all the time he was developing and producing shows like "The Newlywed Game," "The Dating Game," and "The Gong Show," he was moonlighting as a CIA hit man.
He claims to have killed more than 100 people, though in the film he's credited with only 33.Done partially as a documentary, Barris' TV success is chronicled as is his love life with Penny (Barrymore); things get a little confusing when he gets drafted by the Clooney character and starts killing.
This movie is also the proof that George Clooney is more than a pretty face and a fine actor, he's a talented director as well.Sam Rockwell gives a funny, tragic and intense performance as Chuck Barris.
The trick that makes this film work is that it is entertaining enough that you will probably not care whether or not Chuck Barris really was a hit-man for the CIA.
There's an ensemble cast surrounding Sam Rockwell (playing Barris) that includes Julia Roberts, George Clooney, and Drew Barrymore, that in no way takes away from the amazing performance he gives.
Stylistically self-conscious directorial debut from George Clooney adapted by Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) from the "is it true" autobiography by real-life game-show host Chuck Barris (Matchstick Men's Sam Rockwell, who's great), in which he claims to have been a CIA agent.One thing about directorial debuts is they're usually fairly self-conscious, as i said (ie, you feel while you're watching it that the director has thought about style too much), but the good thing is they're always passionate.
well I'm confused.Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is the film adaptation of Chuck Barris' "Unauthorised" Autobiography in which we follow the life of the man who masterminded the cheesy American game shows of the 60s and 70s.Well that sounds like a barrel of laughs and possibly the most interesting autobiography ever written.
I simply didn't care.Add the naked man in-front of the TV(which added exactly what?), the funky camera tricks(unnecessary), Julia Roberts as a killer(yeah right), and I'm afraid that the movie just doesn't really cut it.Some things I like:  extras on DVD, Sam Rockwell (excellent job as Barris), good actors(maybe not good casting!), and beautiful scenes.The story just didn't sell me.