BY DANIEL BAIG | The new film Auto Focus is a good film for talking about afterwards over coffee. Its a very serious work, less interested in providing entertainment value than it is in offering thoughtful folk fodder for discussion. Although technically it could be described as being both full of sex and all about sex, it is for the most part a decidedly unsexy movie. It definitely aint a candidate for the The Feel-Good Hit of the Fall!  quite the opposite in fact  but it is well done, with good performances and great production design and costume work, and is off and on again fascinating. Worth your time; just dont go in expecting American Pie: The Me Generation.

The Me Generation part is about right, though. Auto Focus is, above all else, an unhappy love story between a man and himself. (Hence the title, which, if entered into one of those language translation tools and then re-translated back from another tongue into English just might end up as Fixated on Self, which would be a much less misleading title, though granted not as catchy a one.) Like he would a lover hes scared to lose, the man indulges his every desire, only to find that this brings him no real, lasting happiness, in addition to bringing much unhappiness to those around him  except, actually, he doesnt find this. We do, but hes ultimately not self-aware enough.

The man in question is (a to some degree fictionalized version of) Bob Crane, the titular star of 60s/70s sitcom Hogans Heroes, which was both very popular in its day and possibly even more so in its afterlife in syndication. The show made Bob Crane a star  a huge one, for awhile , and enabled him to have unlimited access to what became his drug of choice: meaningless sex.

Crane actually had two enablers, to use the parlance of 12-step, one being the show, and the other being a man named John Carpenter. (Note: This is NOT the director of Halloween, Escape from New York, etc.. This John Carpenter is now dead.) John Carpenter was a video technician (this being back in the days when video was still a very new and, compared to today, relatively primitive, and definitely complicated, technology). The two men met because of a mutual acquaintance, Richard Dawson, the British comedian who was one of Cranes costars on Hogans Heroes, and who later went on to become the kissy-poo host of Family Feud (and who is also now dead).

Fame was the entry ticket for Bob Crane into a world of one-night stands and orgies; John Carpenter was the man who first revealed that world to Bob, and, at the beginning at least, acted as his tour guide into it.

The arc of Auto Focus is pretty much a straight diagonal line from post-Eisenhower Southern California Edenic existence down to Cranes sordid end in a motel room in Scottsdale, Arizona in 1978 (he was bloodily murdered in his sleep, almost without a doubt by buddy Carpenter, who was, though, acquitted at trial because of confusion raised over blood spots and other forensic evidence  remind you of anyone?). The opening titles are a nifty 60s style animated sequence accompanied by a swinging, catchy little ditty, which turns out to have been written by the films director Paul Schrader (working from a script by Michael Gerbosi) and its composer, Mr. Twin Peaks Angelo Badalamenti. The first part of the movie is bright and sunny. Everythings shiny and pristine, including Cranes house and the hairdo on his wife, played by Rita Wilson. The Cranes home, complete with two kids  a boy and a girl, natch  though its the 60s, seems almost 50s in its Ozzie and Harriet-ness. The film at this point is full of gleaming, pastel-colored surfaces  on the giant cars, on the surface of the swimming pools.

By the time its over, though, Auto Focus looks radically different. To match everything else, its visually dark now too. The lighting is often barely adequate; scenes are either underlit, or occasionally seem overexposed (get it?). And most noticeable of all, and most annoying to me, weve switched to a lot of handheld camera work. (That particular cinematic trend  handheld to denote tension, instability, what have you  is, I must say, one I am most heartily sick of.)

Though Bob Crane is pretty much only known, career-wise, for Hogans Heroes  his sleazy life and violent and mysterious death have of course provided him with an additional layer of notoriety , a show with an extremely bizarre premise for a situation comedy  jolly Allied POWs outwit harmless, buffoonish Nazis week after week! , Auto Focus only peripherally deals with the program. It is uncannily recreated for a few scenes, including spot-on reincarnations of the men in the starring roles, including of course Greg Kinnear as Crane, and also for a heavy-handed and truly idiotic dream sequence which is far and away the worst thing in the movie.

But the considerable controversy and criticism which (to my mind, deservedly) greeted the show is just hinted at, in a brief scene where an entertainment journalist informs Crane that, as a Jew, hes appalled by the show. Amusingly, if a little strangely, the actor chosen for this very small part was Ed Begley, Jr., who with his fair features, blond hair, etc. looks more Aryan than anyone else in Auto Focus. Theres actually a very, very funny and clever line in this scene: first Begleys reporter tells Crane he thinks the show is offensive; Crane responds that its just show business!; the writer replies that hes Jewish and gets up and walks away  while Bob pleadingly, cluelessly calls after him, Its the same thing!

Indeed, the very interesting question about what different Jewish people, who certainly were (and are) heavily represented in Hollywood, thought about Hogans Heroes  many of the people involved in the making of the show were Jewish  is not addressed at all.

But then, Hogans Heroes is only important to Auto Focus filmmakers in terms of the celebrity it bestowed on Bob Crane, and what he then did with that celebrity. This can be exemplified by a really good scene set in a seedy cocktail joint, many years after the show was canceled. Bobs sitting at the bar when he spots a lady hed like to sleep with (a very common situation for him to be in). He asks the bartender to switch the TV set overhead to channel 5 because he wants to catch its newscast (or some similar reason). Of course, as Bob well knew, a repeat of Hogans Heroes is running on that channel right now. Bob turns to display his profile so that he exactly matches the image of himself four feet above his head. (One of the things thats sad here is that while of course Hogan will never age, the actor playing him has in the interval noticeably grown older; hes gained a paunch, and graying hair.) Just as hed hoped, the girl happens to look over; she does a double take, and then comes over. Thats you, isnt it?! she breathlessly inquires. Bob looks up, acts shocked to see his visage, and says, Oh, how embarrassing. I didnt even know that was on!

But just as all his many, many, many, many, many, many conquests only see Bob as Hogan, so too oddly enough does he only seem to feel what happens to him is real if it can be seen on a TV screen: he, with the aid of video expert Carpenter, tapes (and photographs) his romps.

One begins to suspect that for Bob and John, sex isnt about the pleasure, but about their egos: the bagging of babes is a reaffirmation of their masculinity (and even, possibly, their worth as human beings), which is why it has to be done constantly. And as if terrified that without an appreciative audience, these notches on the belt will cease to have existed  along the lines of the tree falling in the forest but not making any sound because theres no one there to hear it  everything must be meticulously documented. Its the proof that counts. Bob spent an enormous amount of time and energy in cataloguing all his sexual encounters, in photo albums, in lists, etc. And he delighted in showing these albums to people  to just about everybody, in fact, from costars to complete strangers. He seemed almost to get more pleasure from this than from the acts themselves.

This is both disturbingly and amusingly brought home in one of the most significant scenes in the movie. Bob is sitting in his large basement watching a video of himself (and John, who traveled around with Bob  who by this time was touring the country on the dinner theater circuit  and joined him in the sexual escapades, meaning sex was more often than not a group activity, even when it wasnt an official orgy) being, ahem, pleasured by a woman. John is there too, as usual, tinkering with Bobs substantial collection of video equipment. Bob gets aroused watching himself, comments on this to John, and begins to masturbate right then and there. John sits down next to him and does likewise.

For Bob, sex  which became his life, pretty much  is exclusively about Bob. (And hence, not his partners. All this, of course, is Auto Focus take on Bob Crane. In reality he apparently had many warm relationships with women.) It validates his existence.

He and John have a catch-phrase: A day without sex . . . is a day wasted! The truth would seem to me to be more,

A day without sex is a day I have not proved to myself that I am alive.

The never ending quest for sex, every night, becomes increasingly exhausting and mirthless. There are almost no standards anymore  any port will do, so to speak. The tiresome, perpetual hunt becomes more and more pathetic and imbued with desperation.

And unfortunately for Bob, for John Carpenter as well, sex is about Bob. He gets it only because of Bob, which Bob cruelly reminds him of, though he is all too painfully aware of the fact, and there are indications that having sex right alongside his friend is not just necessary or convenient for him, but titillating as well. Theres an absolutely hysterical, brilliantly acted scene between Kinnear and Willem Dafoe, who plays Carpenter, where Bob discovers  once again, not from the act itself, but from watching it later  that Johns sexuality is a little too all-embracing for his taste.

And so when Bob lets John know of his intention to sever this once symbiotic, and now to his mind solely parasitic, relationship, it is to John as if his best friend has told him he is going to pull the plug on his life support system. That being the case, why then should Bob get to live either?

The acting in Auto Focus works well. Kinnear is appropriately vacuous, boastful, self-deceiving, and miserable, and Dafoe is, not surprisingly, excellent. Rita Wilson is very strong as Bobs horrified and devastated first wife. And providing a sterling lesson in acting every moment hes onscreen is Ron Leibman, as Cranes long-suffering, yet always sympathetic to his client, agent. (Though I dont know whats up with his eyes constantly darting to the left; was it a deliberately affected tic? It was distracting and disconcerting.)

Greg Kinnear just might get a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor. Willem Dafoe would be a likely candidate for a Best Supporting Oscar nod (in keeping with the Academys recent trend for treating anyone other than the top billed star, no matter how large their part, as supporting).

But the one person who, if she doesnt get an Academy Award nomination, will have been absolutely robbed, is Julie Weiss for her incredible costume design. The clothes the movies inhabitants wear over its 17-year or so period are all perfect, from Rita Wilsons buttoned-down look to the terrific macrami dress (!) Maria Bello, as Cranes second wife, gets to wear.

Weiss costumes blend in terrifically with Auto Focuss very impressive physical recreation of its settings and periods; the production designer was James Chinlund and the art director Seth Reed.

Auto Focus ends with Bob Crane speaking to us from beyond the grave, much as Kevin Spaceys character does at the end of American Beauty. The difference is that there the narrator tells us he has gained newfound understanding from being in the place he is now. Auto Focus Bob Crane, however, has apparently not managed to look closer, and seems now to comprehend himself only as well as he ever did  which wasnt very well.

Grade: A-