FICTION: In the film, McGraw Hill employees and Clifford Irving are seen waiting for a helicopter purportedly holding Howard Hughes to land

FACT: There were never preparations made for a helicopter landing at McGraw-Hill

HOAX: Clifford Irving definitively reported to producer Josh Maurer that it was a fact, that was not included in the book, but later suggested it was fanciful.

FICTION: In the film, McGraw-Hill passes on Clifford Irving’s latest manuscript

FACT: Irving actually had a 4-book deal at McGraw-Hill at the time of the ruse

HOAX: Lasse Hallström notes that McGraw-Hill had previously published Irving’s book Fake!, about forger Elmyr de Hory, which perhaps should have tipped them off to his fascination with the false

FICTION: In the film, Irving is seen attending Truman Capote’s celebrity-studded Black & White Ball

FACT: The real Black & White Ball took place in 1966 and Clifford Irving wasn’t there

HOAX: Costume designer David Robinson put Richard Gere in a black cat-mask, just like Frank Sinatra wore at the real ball

FICTION: In the film, Irving lives in Upstate New York and travels across the United States preparing his fake book on Howard Hughes

FACT: Irving’s primary residence was Ibiza, Spain during 1971

HOAX: Screenwriter William Wheeler condensed many events and dramatized interactions that actually took place via letters and phone calls-if Ibiza was used in the film, notes Wheeler, “the entire movie would’ve been a 90-min shot of a man on a telephone in Spain.”

FICTION: In the film, a hotel in the Bahamas is evacuated of all visitors at Howard Hughes’ insistence

FACT: Hughes was living at Paradise Island in the Bahamas but no such incident was ever reported

Richard Gere as Clifford Irving

HOAX: The filmmakers wanted to emphasize a reality – the Hughes was obsessed with heavy security and avoiding the public eye. There are stories that he once insisted the lobby of Las Vegas’ Desert Inn be empty when he entered it.

FICTION: In the film, Irving steals portions of Noah Dietrich’s Howard Hughes book right out from under him in his own house

FACT: Clifford Irving actually got access to Dietrich’s manuscript (published as Howard: The Amazing Mr. Hughes) through an intermediary, but when told he had to read the one and only copy privately and return it, he had it Xeroxed without permission so that he and Dick Suskind could use the reproduction as further information for their book

HOAX: The scene in the film plays on the way Irving copied the manuscript illicitly

FICTION: In the film, Dick Suskind is seen having an affair with a hooker

FACT: The loyal Suskind never had such an affair

HOAX: The filmmakers took Suskind even deeper into Clifford Irving’s world than he really went to push the dimensions of their friendship

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HOAXED! A BRIEF GUIDE TO FAMOUS MEDIA HOAXES
THE CARDIFF GIANT HOAX: One of the earliest and greatest media hoaxes of all time, the Cardiff Giant Hoax began in 1869, when workers digging on a farm in Cardiff, New York unearthed a mysterious stone fossil in the shape of a ten-foot tall man