"For my next experiment, ladies and gentlemen,..." "I would appreciate the Ioan of any small personal object... from your pocket." "A Key, a box of matches, a coin..." "Ah, a Key it is, good sir." "On we go, watch out for the... slightest hint of hanKy-panKy and behold... before our very eyes a transformation:" "We've changed your Key into a coin." "What happened to the Key?" "It's been returned to you." "look closely, sir." "You'II find the Key... back in your pocket." "May I see it please?" "Up to your own tricks, I see." "Why not?" "I'm a charlatan." "Did I use to be a magician?" "Sir, I'm still working on it." "As for the Key, it was not symbolic of anything." "This isn't that Kind of movie." "You'II find the coin now in your pocket, sir." "Keep your eyes on that coin, sir,... while it's returned to you as your Key." "should we return you to your mother?" "Is this your mother?" "No, of course not." "Open your mouth, wide." "We'II return you your money." "By the way, have you ever heard of Robert Roudin?" "speaking of magicians, are we?" "Ah, of course not." "But of course you do Know... my partner:" "Fran?" "is Reichenbach" "hello!" "Roudin was the greatest... magician who ever lived!" "Do you Know what he said?" "A magician, he said, is just an actor." "well, good luck to you." "Just an actor!" "playing the part of a magician." "Very nice!" "And she's fabulous!" "And rich!" "Some good story about it." "Do you want to tell it?" "We'II come to that one later." "Now it's time for an introduction." "Ladies and gentleman, by a way of introduction,... this is a film about trickery." "And fraud." "About lies." "told in the art market and now in a movie." "almost any stories are, most certainly, some Kind of Iie." "But not this time." "Now this is a promise." "During the next hour everything you'II hear is really true." "And based on solid facts." "We won't talk about napoleon or julius Cesar." "We are talking about EImyr." "EImyr." "EImyr?" "Who is EImyr?" "That question has he had to be answered with... any real precision?" "Can I Kiss you too?" "certainly." "Anybody wants to eat?" "In the world of jet-setters among us, beautiful people,... everybody Knows EImyr." "But EImyr what?" "He has about sixty times the same name... de Hory?" "Hory, Hury, Bory Sury, Cory, Bary, Dory..." "With U R Y. Sixty names." "His real name was EImyr Ferrin Hoffman." "Then sixty personalities as much lies and as much real." "well, sounds very jesuitic." "Yes, this world is a world of maKe-beIieve." "I'm not an actor." "Not an actor?" "EImyr?" "I'm not an actor." "I'm not a professional actor." "He's the Ieading actor in this movie,... his profession is true,... he's painting fakes." "Among all faKers, EImyr is number two." "Once I saw a man from Ibiza writing a book on fake... who came to see me to Paris, he said "I heard you are... the first man who bought an EImyr"" "And that man's name was?" "clifford Irving." "The important distinction to make when you're talking about... the genuine quality of a painting..." "Is not so much whether it's a real painting or a fake." "It's whether It's a good fake or a bad fake." "Her name...is Oja." "Oja Kodar." "And this, by the way, is from quite another film." "A sequence on "The fine outdoor sport of girl watching"." "Our sneaky crew of cameramen hidden away in camouflage trucks... and packing boxes arranged for her to act for them." "To act as bait." "You see how it worked." "The entire cast, all the performers, except one,... acting away like crazy for us without getting paid for it." "Without even Knowing they were movie actors." "simple puppets." "well, maybe not simple." "No, nothing was simple." "Now in this little gag Laurence Harvey, our leading man... from yet another movie, couldn't arrange space for..." "Miss Kodar on a plane." "well, there's no room in this movie to tell you why in the other one... we squeezed Miss Kodar into a more convenient size for travelling... by a magical illusion." "But you really must believe that what comes afterwards... is solid fact." "Yes, after this hocus-pocus the next thing we heard about... her was not as an actress." "But as the Ieading figure in a notorious scandal." "I took another plane, grew another beard,... made another movie well before Miss Kodar..." "We'II leave" "Miss Kodar aside for the moment." "But in case that mambo-jambo might make it seem that there's... going to be some trickery in this film about trickery... we'II repeat our promise." "In writing." ""girl Watching" was evidence of how much of all this was filmed... in blissful ignorance of the facts about some of the various... characters who found their way in front of our cameras." "clifford Irving is the author." "He told the story in the book." "Maybe." "By now you understand I'd fallen in with Fran?" "is... and on the island of Ibiza we've fallen into the biggest... series of scandals in the whole history of hoaxing." "It was a pretty good experience to start making yet another movie... and end up making yet another with a storyline rocking with... coincidence." "For instance that the author of..." ""fake" a book about a faker was himself a faker and the author... of a fake to end with all fakes He must have been planning that... when we were filming him." "Quiet please!" "Edith Irving, take 3." "look, you've Known EImyr longer than anyone else on this island." "Do you really believe he did all those fakes?" "No I really don't believe." "I've been jumping around like this because that's the way it was." "clifford Irving, take 2." "Let's pull ourselves together,... if we can, begin at the beginning." "Now on this table cloth... decorated with a map is where everything worked." "I'II start with some wine that I understand wine brings... good luck around the ear...now there's a little luck anywhere." "And here, I'II have to mark it in, on this tiny island... is where the two great hoaxes were hatched:" "Ibiza." "One island." "Two Ibizas." "The serious, indeed a very sober part, is part of Spain." "And the other...an island in the sun." "like magazine calls it,... where restless souls may find each other." "The restless souls being, I guess, cliff Irving , over there... and EImyr." "Coincidence number one:" "That these two world leaders in faKery... operated, quite separately, on the same tiny island." "That's Mrs. Irving." "EImyr and Mrs. Irving." ""CIifford Irving has declared today that Mrs. Irving... is the same HeIga R Hughes wanted by the police in..." "switzerland and the United States..."" ""If CIifford drag Edith into this", said EImyr,..." ""I spit on his face"." "This was greater, of course, when everything was finely... hanging out or as much of this, I guess, any of us will ever... get to see." "Now we have to stop these... movieoIas, use them as time machines and then roll back... and come in again to the days when CIifford Irving, as far as... any of us Knew, was just a researcher... into someone else's fakery." "And now for the truth, clifford." "We'd like to ask you a few questions." "My personal feelings about EImyr are...very mixed." "He has developed a fiction about his life and to destroy that... would tear down the whole castle that he's built... of his illusions." "The illusion, for example,... that he has not broken any law." "As long as people are enjoying, if it's a pleasure... why should they have it?" "The illusion that the world has always taken advantage of him." "Why they should have it, why?" "If you were to put it to EImyr that he had taken advantage... of the world, that he had cheated people he'd be horrified." "These two have made each other famous." "They have much in common." "One of them is talented." "Hm, now start again." "We'II get this film together and we'II try to get together..." "EImyr's version of the story." "I came to Ibiza in 1959 after I'd found a certain aspect of... my Iife in America becoming too difficult I've wandered around..." "Europe for a time and eventually came here." "I liked life here,..." "I like the island, I like the atmosphere, I like the people." "And so I decided: that is the place where I want to settle." "The island is "simpatico", there's always a group of...) interesting people here, I find the people amusing." "Ibiza is not a place for snobbish society." "That's not London, it's not Paris, it's not Omaha." "That's Ibiza." "That's the charm of Ibiza, that's what makes Ibiza... why we like to live here." "Ibiza's Ibiza and here people... with themselves, you Know, doing all strange things... all the time, you Know, so they shouldn't really be shocked." "Everybody meets, everybody has business very intensely." "several months ago I read an article about EImyr de Horay... and I was so impressed that I decided to come from..." "Minnesota to Ibiza in the hope of meeting EImyr and now..." "I've become his body-guard." "That's mark speaking." "EImyr's friend." "He takes his duty seriously." "EImyr swears that he goes in... daily dread of being murdered." "This takes us into murky waters... where the lawyers tell us we'd be rash to go fishing." "In fake there's just a hint or two about this violence and danger." "As a result of which Irving, on top of all his other troubles,... is being sued for 55 million dollars worth of slander." "Interesting question:" "Is CIifford Irving being sued... for telling the truth..." "A slight legal difference." "well, if you can buy the notion that cliff Irving turned to... forgery before he turn to EImyr then I guess you can Keep right on... through the looking glass and believe that his book about EImyr... is in fact a pack of lies." "I'm sorry, Iie about what?" "That fake is a fake and EImyr himself is a fake...faKer." "fake fakes!" "fake or not fake." "EImyr is a true faKer." "Here for instance is a Van Dungen by EImyr, then Dungen studied... it carefully and then swore that he painted it himself." "He's now Known as the greatest art forger in the world." "But I don't admit anything." "I just talk about." "Because he's scared, I mean, you Know, there could be... a jail sentence hanging over his head." "EImyr, says a French newspaper, has sold his soul to the devil." "They said that of the wizard of the fiddle." "EImyr is another wizard of another sort of fiddle." "A true Paganini of the pallet." "get away with it for 22 years." "If you hang them in the museum in a collection of real paintings... and if they hang for long enough there, they'II become real." "Because there's always a market for it." "How much is that drawing worth in the market today?" "probably 8 to 10 thousand dollars." "To my knowledge he has never made a mistake... when identifying a painting." "What period is that Matisse?" "Erm, 36." "I feel that we should burn it." "When he looks at a painting, a Matisse, a ChagaII, and says..." ""That's mine, I did it" he is always right." "EImyr..." "There's just no way of... talking about EImyr and leaving out cliff Irving." "Not any longer." "Right up at the finish" "EImyr plays a very important role in his biographer own story." "Just here, of course, he is stage center." "WiIIKommen, wiIIKommen!" "And Irving who, I have to admit, is a much better magician... than I am has yet to transform himself before our very eyes... into a superstar." "Fran?" "is, you Know we talked about your shirt." "It was indecently horrid!" "I must tell you something." "I went to the airport and I picked up... a copy of the London daily Express and there was an article:" ""Exposed a man who holds the art world to ransom." "Sitting in a sunny studio..."" "And that goes on..." "daily Express" "The museum..." ""...the ModigIiani to the..." "metropolitan Museum of Art"" ""...is a profound embarrassment to them all."" "EImyr is a profound embarrassment to them all." "II est un embarasment profund a tout Ie mond de I'art." "The art world has been a huge confidence thing." ""Exposed - a man who holds the art world to ransom"" ""Sitting in a sunny studio..."" "Fantastic!" ""...in a 60 thousand pound villa on the Mediterranean island... of Ibiza it took EImyr de Horay, the world's greatest art forger,... just one hour to draw an original ModigIiani"" "Today on a sale it wouId be around 50 thousand dollars." "There was really no time when he ever could have done it." "It was all much more a joke." "The world has yet to hear a word about the her story... with a Swiss bank." "There hasn't been a breath... about funny passports or phoney signatures and here's..." "Edith telling CIifford Irving that she can't believe EImyr had... anything to do with fakery." "That's why I never could think or really believe that he... really did those paintings." "It's a good drawing." "If he did it, my compliment." "should we burn it ?" "And I only hope there are more people who do them." "Irving's book about EImyr is the story of a man of talent... taking the mickey out of those who were rejected, and transforming... disappointments into a gigantic joke." "Do you thinK I should Keep it for my old age?" "AII right, I will." "I'II put it back here." "You're a painter, why do you want people to do fakes?" "Because the fakes are as good as the real ones and there's... a market and there's a demand." "If you didn't have an art market then faKers could not exist." "So, more, the better, no?" "If you say so." "Here's another little coincidence." "A peculiar moment during the lunch party." "And in switzerland checks are not accepted." "You pay cash, on the table." "That's switzerland." "You are Swiss, you Know it." "If you did those paintings, my compliments." "I only think it's a pity that there are not more people like you." "And we only pray that he doesn't exist again." "Mr Irving now claims Mr Hughes himself asked Mr Irving... to deposit the money in a Swiss bank and then draw it out." "The manuscript, itself, however, maybe isn't genuine." "I've Known EImyr for about eight years." "We met when I was broke." "When I was writing fiction." "Wasn't selling very well." "His fiction didn't sell." "EImyr's biographer... is a highly gifted writer." "Does it say something to this... age of ours that you can only make it big by fakery?" "Je croire." "There are hoaxes about the most famous writer in the world?" ")" "La grand surprise." "cliff Irving's caper may well be the hoax of the century... but really this is not, you Know, in any way the... century of the hoax." "We hanKy-panKy men... have always been with you." "That's a fact." "What's new is that the..." "Experts." "The experts." "The so-caIIed experts." "Experts are the new oracles." "Who are greatly pretentious." "They speak to us with absolute authority." "Pretend to Know something but they only Know very superficially." "And we bow down before them." "Their God's own gift to the faker." "AII the world loves to see the experts... and the establishment made a fool of." "Let's say we could find a ModigIiani made by KissIer,... a ModigIiani made by EImyr and one ModigIiani made by modigliani." "It could be anyone from..." "KnoedIer to Perrs any of the great ones who considers... themselves great and experts and if any of them can... recognise which one is which..." "And if the lawyers would just let us we could name you one...) highly respected museum which boasts an important... collection of post impressionists every single one of which... was painted by EImyr." "EImyr, as the great faKer of the twentieth century,... becomes a modern folk hero for the rest of us." "We have a bit of genius within ourselves but we simply... don't have the courage and the opportunity to express it." "When you wrote his biography, you don't think you were... a little hard on him?" "Some people even say "After I read a book of clifford Irving... about you I liked you even more than before."" "That you explode the myth of the infallibility of the art dealers... and museum directors and that you expose their crookedness,... their evilness and viciousness." "I would run to the art galleries." "This is a catalogue." "A catalogue which includes a great many... paintings that have been sold over the past few years." "In this catalogue was this ModigIiani which is... a ModigIiani by EImyr." "He worked very little, he died very early so if that added to... a few paintings and a few drawings... it's not going to destroy his ouvre." "I would say "This is a fake", and the art gallery owner would say..." ""well, of course, you can see it's a fake because ModigIiani... would never have drawn the line of the arm parallel... to the line of the dress that way, and the background is very... badly done and signature isn't right"." "In the next gallery I would show them this ModigIiani and say..." ""That's a genuine ModigIiani" and they would say..." ""well, yes, you can see it's one of his finest ModigIianis." "It's a portrait of mademoiselle Ebout?" ".." "and it's reproduced everywhere."" "After that lost my faith in the concept of expertise." "I don't feel bad for ModigIiani." "I feel good for me." "You name and he paints them." "Duffy, Van Dungen,..." "Durham, Braque, Bonard..." "would you like a nice Matisse?" "Many of these drawings are very weak." "Matisse's lines were never as sure as mine... he was hesitant when he made the drawing, you Know?" "He added to it a little more and a little more." "It wasn't as flowing, it wasn't as sure as mine." "I had to hesitate to make it more Matisse-IiKe." "Voi Ia!" "I would like to see any expert or any museum director or any... art dealer who would Know which one is by Matisse... and which one is by EImyr." "And I'm ready to accept the challenge." "One nod from an expert and that piece of canvas would be worth... maybe a couple of hundred thousand dollars." "And now, with your permission, a bit of verse by kipling." ""When first the flush of a new-born sun fell on the green and gold,..." "Our father Adam sat under the Tree and scratched... with a stick in the mould;..." "And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy... to his mighty heart,..." "till the devil whispered behind the leaves, 'It's pretty." "But is it art?"'" "It's pretty but is it art?" "How was it valued?" "The value depends on opinion, opinion depends on the experts." "A faKer like EImyr makes fools of the experts... so who's the expert?" "Who's the faker?" "I never offered a painting or a drawing to a museum... that was refused." "They never refused one." "Never." "Now this, this isn't a forgery." "No, not this time." "This is a... portrait by EImyr of another famous art forger." "MigeI Ange." "michael angelo, no less." "I must say I'm honoured,... my signature forged by EImyr on a real EImyr, it's really something!" "You Know, art forgery used to be admired as an art." "michael angelo... even used smoke on some of his fakes to antique them." "like some... of the rest of us, he finally went straight." "EImyr: reformed and exposed, was just recently the island's... number one celebrity but now the crown has passed from the... old emperor, the hoax, to the pretender." "Tomorrow there's a big party." "Don't miss it." "Tomorrow at eight." "The ex-grand master of fakery not only unmasked but eclipsed... by his own biographer." "He's putting a brave face on... and giving another party." "David..." "And here..." "I've come to invite you for a big party." "Yet another painter from Ibiza." "Life hired him to illustrate the... tale as Irving told it." "Nice to see you..." "David WaIsh." "And this is his impression based on Irving's... report of that secret meeting on the Mexican pyramid with..." "Howard Hughes." "Here's how he was supposed to have looked... based on Irving's report of those secret meetings, which in fact,... never happened but who cared about facts?" "Was Mr Hughes a vegetable?" "A spook?" "A lunatic?" "Was his hair... down to his Knees?" "Were his fingernails 9 inches long?" "Did Howard Hughes exist?" "Irving insisted that he did." "Hughes denied the existence of Irving." "I don't Know him, I never saw him..." ""Don't believe a word of it" said Irving." "And, believe it or not,...) almost nobody did. "We were partner..." "Irving" "They were doing a book together now that the Hughes mystery... would be solved." "Now of course Irving..." "Knew very well that whatever made Hughes a mystery was whatever... made Hughes, himself, a born mystery maker." "Here in the smoggy wonderland of hollywood is where I last saw... and talked to him." "It was 5 o'cIocK in the morning... 25 years ago and I found him, as usual, very bright and... pleasant and polite." "Most of the Hughes legends... is just something you hear, nothing you can prove." "But, for what it's worth, it seems that hotel bungalow was,... supposedly, the HQ of the rather spooky brigade of midnight minions... we used to call "Howard's secret police"." "That's where that tree comes in." "Just precisely there at... one thirty every morning some operative placed at precisely... the same angle some very carefully wrapped package." "Howard Hughes in his nocturnal wanderings never once paused there." "But it was always ready for him." "In case he should." "What was it that the mystery package contained?" "A ham sandwich." "How can we believe that is true?" "Fran?" "is's referring, of course, to EImyr." "But about Hughes...)" "Who could blame cliff Irving for believing that Hughes wanted... us to believe almost anything." "look where we are now." "When the old hollywood swinger turns hermit this is the... hermitage he picked." "His hideaway." "His desert retreat." "The desert had retreated first to give room to sIot-machines... and card-tabIes." "And then Hughes." "He chased out and bought off... most of the mafia and bought up most of the hotels and settled... down up there in a few rooms on the top floor of that one and... all through the Iong years not a shadow was seen moving... in that window." "The good people... saw nothing and believed everything they told each other." "More than one bemused observer claims to have seen the whimsical... tycoon at 4 o'cIocK in the morning promenading this highway... with no socks on and wearing, instead of shoes, a pair of empty..." "KIeenex boxes." "Do I believe that?" "But people pretend to be shocked and they like to be shocked." "It's in their nature, it's the human nature." "What was he doing up there?" "What were they doing to him?" "When he broke the silence would it be a cry for help?" "well, if Hughes couldn't speak, or wouldn't, then somebody,... and why not CIifford Irving, could do the speaking for him?" "Nobody got near the man." "Just a tiny group of mystery..." "Mormons were admitted to his presence even high executives... in the Hughes Empire never laid eyes on him." "One man alone laid... claim to have made it into that fortress and you can guess... who that was." "How Irving got to Hughes... in the first place?" "He just mailed him a copy of... his book with a friendly sincere dedication and the partnership... was formed now if you can believe the ham sandwich and the..." "KIeenex boxes I guess you can swallow that." ""I mean that episode is just so fantastic but it defies your... imagination to believe a thing like this could happen!"" "Is that the voice of the real Howard Hughes?" ""I only wish I was on a movie but..."" "No, no, he's on television and a committee of journalists are... interviewing his voice." ""I don't remember by any stretching of the imagination... how it turned out to be"" "I remember how this went:" "(Irving announced the Hughes... had decided that Irving was just a writer he could trust." "Not only with his book but with the money for it and it involved... an advance of some three quarters of a million dollars... and he had the notes, memos and manuscripts and what,... he claimed, was Hughes own handwriting to prove it... now they brought in the handwriting experts." "Now, just here, Irving never gets nervous." "look at this:" "well, maybe he was just as cool as he acted, remembering what... he'd learned from the old mice." "EImyr was a good teacher... followed by example and his most valuable lesson... was this: "Don't be spooked by the experts."" "My opinion about experts is they are far too overestimated." "It's a race that shouldn't even exist." "And all right he was!" "That should not exist that one single person makes a... decision about what's good and what's bad." "Sure enough, after much study and analysis the experts on... handwriting handed in their verdict." "The forgeries were genuine." "The proof was irresistible,... unanswerabIe and overwhelming." "Thus Irving's papers like..." "EImyr's paintings were authenticated." "I wanted to find out what it was really like to try and... get an expertise on a fake and I asked EImyr to do three... drawings for me:" "Two Matisse and a ModigIiani." "Which he did before lunch." "And put a little coffee stain on... the edge of the ModigIiani to make it look really as if..." "ModigIiani had done it in some Paris caf?" "I, then, took the three drawings to the Museum of Modern Art." "The museum examined them for two hours and came back with... the verdict that they were absolutely genuine and, in fact,... were horrified that I wanted to sell them." "But that's a true story!" "This story is absolutely true." "well, Mr Irving pretends that he destroyed them." "I don't think that Mr Irving is exactly a character... who would destroy something that he got an offer of 15 thousand." "It's nice security in a bank." "It could be unwrapped in 15 years." "AII the tales he tells now are things he's built up in his... imagination over the years and come to believe is true." "The tale is as old as the Eden Tree and new as the new-cut tooth." "For each man Knows ere his Iip-thatch grows he is master... of Art and Truth." "This created in him the ability to live, I risk to say,... a "criminal life" because I don't think of him as a criminal." "As he doesn't think of himself as a criminal." "To fool, once in a while, somebody very pompous or... very pretentious, that I like." "Now that it's out in the open." "That the world Knows who EImyr is... and what he's done and now that EImyr accepts it and says... to the world "Yes, It's me." "I am the great art forger of... the twentieth century"." "Now I thinK he can recapture... that personal honesty." "Good bye Matisse." "I thinK EImyr's problem for years and the reason why he... couldn't succeed as a painter in his own right was that... the type of Iife he led prohibited him from... having a personal vision." ""And each man hears as the twilight nears,... to the beat of his dying heart,... the devil drum on the darkened pane:...'It's pretty." "But was it art?"'" "Art." "take 2." "And when an artist has no personal vision, what can he... communicate on to the canvas?" "It's like the devil!" "It's pretty." "But is it rare?" "Lots of oysters only a few pearls." "Ah, rarity!" "The chief cause and the encouragement of fakery... and phoniness." "In everything." "Even when we're given to eat... an awful lot of forgeries committed these days in the Kitchen." "Oja!" "Seafood isn't phoney in here, thank God." "You can take the word... of an expert." "Three friends from the... old days who used to eat here were real painters." "Jean Cocteau the poet and filmmaker and, you can call him,... a Monday painter." "Drew the picture of the menu... and signed his name as it is Known through a whole epoch." "Here on the walls are samples to the famous... charm of Christian Berrat." "And, speaking of charm,... there's Vert?" "all round us." "Vert?" "had to be charming." "He was Hungarian and he started his career and he told me... right here at this table:" ""As a charlatan I painted... fake masterpieces." "I began", he said "as Lautrec"." "A woman, a titled english woman, walked, one day, into my room... and she saw, pinned on the wall, a drawing." "She said "Hey, where you got that Picasso?"" "I said "Do you thinK it's a Picasso?"" "And there was this art dealer, I won't give you his name,... turning down everything I showed him." "This is Vert?" "speaking: " But something caught his eye." "'Where did you get that?" he said "That nice little Lautrec" I told him... it was a very nice little Vert?" "." ""I'II take the Lautrec" he said." ""And if you happen to find anymore bring them in."" "And then said "would you sell it?" And I said "well, deIightedIy."" "And then I suddenly realised I couId sell something absolutely... unexpectedly for quite great deal of money in a time when I was... unable, but absolutely unable, to sell any of my paintings." ""How could you blame me?" "I had no money in my pocket,... no socks in my shoes, no real painting style of my own."" "Even the amount of 5 dollars meant "Am I going to eat."" "I don't mean a grand style meal but eat." "Hu?" "re avec organique cuiI et..." "I woud like to see that poor Hugarian refugee who would... have resisted that temptation!" "well, Vert?" "didn't either." "like all Hungarians he told... the best Hungarian jokes." "The omelette, you Know that?" "Sure, it's a classic!" "It's in all Hungarian cookbooks." ""To make an omelette", it says" first steal an egg."" "naturally, to be Hungarian is not a nationality, is a profession." "But the truth about Hungarians that they try to cover up... is that they're not any more crooked than the rest of us." "Of all the Hungarian friends I've ever had I can't remember... one who didn't want me to think of him as a King of con man." "As for this Hungarian's own tales of his lurid past they don't,... according to his biographer, jive exactly with versions of... the same answers told by certain art dealers." "I do think art dealers are crooked." "Ladies and gentlemen, the jury, I put it to you that, between... such witnesses, your choice, to phrase it nicely, is not easy." "Even if CIifford Irving mentions in his book that..." "Hmm..." "I must insist that I never sell to privates." "So I'm afraid I might say you should buy a fantastic drawing... by a refugee from Budapest..." "" Budapesht"." "Not " Budapest", " Budapesht."" "Who wants to sell tem ModigIiani and ten Matisse." "I talked to him and I said to Fran?" "is he was not... a movie director, he was an art dealer." "I tried to sell at the Art gallery saying it was an "ocasion"..." "for 200 dollars..." ""Ocasion" is a "bargain"." "Yes." "A whole story really starts with two famous... collections of paintings." "One belongs to the Reichenbachs... and is regal." "The other, EImyr was supposed to have... smuggled out of Hungary." "From his family." "Oh, no, that's a complete fabrication!" "I can tell you exactly... who he was." "After the book was published I got a letter from... a man who'd Known him at a concentration camp in Hungary." "And he said that he was not from the aristocracy but that he... was from a normal lower middle class home." "And since then he's refused to discuss it,... just evades the subject whenever it's brought up." "Understand the inconvenience." "It's like everything else." "Fran?" "is bought some of EImyr's paintings and... sold them again at his Art gallery for a couple of fast bucks." "double of price." "You sold them for double of..." "What you got bought them for..." "Before he did pay me, for the drawings he did buy, he sold them." "The third year I went back and he came to see me... with other ModigIiani." "So I was a little suspicious." "And he said he had more?" "More." "You thought maybe it was too many ModigIiani!" "Too many." "Because the Iast time he said..." ""It's my last one, take it." Then when he had others I said..." ""Where did they come from?" But I didn't try to investigate." "Why didn't you?" "like everyone." "I didn't want to..." "You didn't want to Know!" "The year after he called me and said "I have three more."" "Three more ModigIianis." "I said I've already 10 in my rooms." "I'm not a collector of ModigIiani." "Of course, if you had a... portrait of Soutine." "I Iove so much Soutine." "Why did you want a portrait of Soutine?" "Because I like Soutine." "And asked EImyr If he had one." "And he said "I don't have any Soutine by modigliani."" "Soutine was a friend of ModigIiani." "You asked him if he had one." "He said "I don't have it"." "I said "So Keep your three others."" "Even if they were cheap." "double price but still very cheap." "Then during the nigh he called me, he said..." ""Fran?" "is you are genius!" "You guessed I had one..." "I found one in my drawer." "A beautiful "Portrait du Soutine"... par ModigIiani"" "And now there's something else that I'm doing." "That's a Picasso." "And now the scene changes from New YorK to PampIona." "This deep in the Hemingway country you might not expect... to find EImyr." "And he said "I'm going to reimburse you."" "Reimburse you for what?" ""For the fake I sold you."" "But you made a Iot of money on it!" "But he didn't Know!" "You Know what he did?" "He gave a check... and the check had no money in the bank." "He gave you a false check." "Yes." "For a false painting." "Yes." "It's a certaine justice." "Good bye Picasso." "It's fact to record that art dealers either in ignorance,... innocence or simple greed have made themselves fortunes... on the paintings of EImyr." "I have not the vaguest idea the money they've got." "Those paintings must have been pretty good... or the dealers mus have been pretty bad." "I cannot estimate if it is 10 million or 20 million,... dollars, pounds, zIotys..." "A whole of them, anyway, make profits of a 100% more... on these affairs and EImyr, has really made very little." "And all I got was a television this size for 215,000 dollars." "Even that handsome house of his, it isn't his." "A dealer has a deal with him." "Somebody must have made some Kind of strange deal." "I was fooled." "I was used and I was squeezed up like a last drop." "Because even the roof of that house doesn't belong to me." "I don't have a dime to my name." "So after all these long years on the run, even now,... after his final reformation as a forger EImyr can't feel much... real security in his last refuge in what people like to call..." "The golden Years." "A little bit of luck." "And a dash of lies in it." "You've been friIIing up your own past I'd better... do something impressive, myself." "Fran?" "is was an art dealer and I was an artist." "I thought I was anyway." "like EImyr I too was once... a hungry painter." "But not here in France." "I was hungry in ireland." "I bought paint, board, donkey... and cart, filled the cart with paints and canvases... and went travelling." "At night I slept under the cart." "It was a very nice summer." "But tem when I got to dublin... the donkey had to go up for auction." "And so did I." "My paintings were gone, all given away to the Irish farmers... who'd given me food, I'd run out of paint and money." "I was 16 years old, my career, as you might say, was... at the cross-roads." "Winter was coming in." "well, I guess I couId have found myself an honest job as a... dish-washer or something but, no, I took the easy way." "I went on the stage." "I'd never been on the stage... but I told them in dublin I was a famous star in New YorK... and some way I got them to believe me." "And that's how I started: began at the top, and have been... working my way down ever since." "In fact it is an art." "cooking up that bogus Broadway career was a... fine case of art forgery." "Then later on the radio..." "well, we've seen how EImyr started." "In my past there... aren't any Picassos." "My next flight into faKery... was my flying saucer." ""We interrupt this program to bring you a news bulletin." "Government sources have ceased to deny the presence,...) in many parts of the country of non-terrestriaI objects." "We return you now to the starlight terrace of the hotel glory...) with the swinging strings of LazIo Gabor and his MaIIones.")" "On the radio I got my first job from paul Stuart." "And we were lucky enough to have him join us later... in the Mercury." "paul was a real head... of Mafia in the Martian case." "The War of the worlds was before world War II, remember,... before television in the great days of radio." "Maybe that's what made it all possible." ""Another bulletin, ladies and gentlemen, the latest word of the... monsters from outer space." "Correction: from Mars." "Sorry, folks, that's what experts... are saying." "They are Martians."" "TV would have shown us up." "half the population got the... screaming panic just because they couldn't see how silly... it all would've looked." "well, we said that the Martians ere releasing a noxious gas... across the Jersey meadows that as drifting towards New YorK... so people took to the hills." "I met a welfare worker, years later, who told me he spent...) weeks trying to woo some of the refugees back to civilisation.)" ""The entire state of New Jersey has now been taken." "State highways are..." "Yes?" "Ladies and gentlemen, a special news flash from..." "Washington: any moment now president roosevelt... will be receiving a special delegation from..." "Mars." "From Mars." "These talks are expected..."" "A woman...you just have to believe this...rushed into a police... station in San Francisco with her clothes in tatties to report...) she'd been repeatedly attacked by Martians." "She tried to take poison for the shame of it and they stopped... her just in time." "Were they little green man or what?" ""I can't describe it" she said "It's hell!"." "Somebody, down... in South America, did an imitation of hat broadcast and he... ended up in prison." "So I shouldn't complain." "I didn't go to jail." "I went to hollywood." "Yet another coincidence." "Here's a leading film director." "AII those years ago he went west with the rest of us to make... our first movie:" "Richard wilson." "Our first movie?" "well, among the first of... our projects was to be a story based on the fictionalised life... of a certain famous tycoon." "John CodIin was to play the part." "That certain famous tycoon, yes." "But when the character was... changed to the famous news paper tycoon it became obvious that..." "Orson should play the part which he did." "Oh, and, I'm not complaining." "No." "I had a fine part in "Citizen Kane"." "But, I was just wondering, that original concept may... have been fun." "Yes I'm just wondering." "If I would have been the first or the Iast to impersonate..." ""Howard Hughes." "This week saw the cheering to all the nation's pioneers." "The great heart of a welcoming nation receives the hero..." "Howard Hughes." "broken for speed are all records for around the... world solo flights." "broken too is the garbage men's record... for cleaning." "people cheered from their windows the high fly..." "Mr Money Bags, himself."" "Why did we change our minds?" "Change tycoons?" "Of course... we'd have to change his name." "And, as a character in fiction,... who could believe that a man like Howard Hughes could exist?" "I put the sweat of my Iife into this thing." "I have my reputation rolled up in it." ""Hughes fighting here for the future of the controversial... airplane, the "Cruise Hughes"." "Other inventions had success,... for example this piece of clothing." "Hughes design for a Hughes directed hip movie was, for the men of America,... the cause of a great uplift." "Less uplifting was the..." ""Cruise Hughes" the biggest thing with wings that ever happened." "In fact in flew for a few minutes only a few feet in the air."" "And I have stated several times that if it's a failure I'II... probably leave this country and never come back and I mean it!" "And that's what he did, finally." "The super secretive celebrity... went all out for world fame, won it and then got to be more... famous trying for privacy." "Maybe he's a loser after all." "A lady from his past once said "That's part of his charm!"" "But this Iady-KiIIing, willing, dealing, death-defying,..." "Iife-defying mystery man has a strange habit of winning,... somehow." "Sometimes, anyway." "Is he winning now?" "At the end of this story?" ""I only wish I was on a movie but..."" "I'II send my mythological night bird of a billion airs flow in... his vaguest coup." "But only to go on muteIy... on the top of various other holiday hotels." "In germ free, air conditioned solitude." "On this planet, crowded, computerised, maybe Keeping... yourself isn't easy." "make what you want of..." "Howard Hughes but on a movie." "cliff Irving had more courage...) then we did." "And sure we had fiction." "He's nudging the Martians that championship title." ""It defies your imagination to believe that... a thing like this could happen!"" ""I do not Know CIifford Irving" said the voice." ""It is a matter of days ago when this thing... first came to my attention."" "AII over the world people were saying that really the fishiest... thing in this whole business was not Irving's part in it... but the identity of whoever it was who claimed to..." "Irving he was Hughes." "And who do you thinK is still... mixed up in all this?" "According to one theory,... who else but EImyr?" "A man who is so skilled... in art forgery, could have forged that manuscript." "Irving's lawyer's speculating about a host of theories." "Here, for instance, that the telephone voice was Hughes... and was telling the truth." "We should remember that..." "Hughes had been Known to make use of doubles." "Here comes another theory: now a double might be making...) use of Hughes." ""According to informed sources, high officials in the Hughes...)" "Empire are not even now fully satisfied with the... mystery's solution." "They are searching for... a Mr Big behind it all."" "Was Mr Big, Mrs Big?" "Edith maybe?" "cliff Irving... topped all this and stopped it dead." "With a confession." ""Charges can result in as much as a hundred years imprisonment... but his can be softened if CIifford Irving agrees to come clean... on the whole story"" "He did." "He told it all." "Not only to the courts but... in a book." "And now as EImyr leaves that story and the chapter... has come to a close things maybe looking up just a bit... for his biographer." "This a headline in London's..." "Sunday Times "Hoaxer Irving makes a Handsome Profit."" "And for EImyr, at Ieast and at last, that story has... a happy ending." "well, here's another little coincidence for you." "Somebody else from Ibiza." "This is our co-producer." "Richard Drewit." "Richard Drewit." "The only pure, non-charIatan in this movie." "Irving is hold up in Connecticut." "We're calling him from Paris... and so excruciating is Richard's honesty that he's insisted... on warning Time Magazine's nomination for con man of the year... that our call to him is being taped." "hello?" "The book." "Can you say anything about the deal that you managed... to do with the book?" "Has it turned out as well as..." "you'd expect it?" "The deal?" "Are you going to tell the whole truth?" "Yes, absolutely." "In fact, I'II write a book about the book." "In two years cliff will be writing a book... about the book, about the book." "gentlemen, was that the real voice of clifford Irving?" "Irving's real voice is a write and his new book's title is..." ""What really Happened"" "I want to be my own paintings." "I want to write uniquely and... exclusively of my work." "And EImyr?" "will there ever be another book about him?" "He's told so many stories about himself." "always telling the story to that one, another story to that one..." "He's lived always on the run." "I stayed, ultimately, 12 years in Paris." "Which he spent there illegally since he only had... a three month visa." "I lived very simply." "I lived on my own paintings." "I sold them for ten dollars, fifteen dollars." "My own canvases..." "And then, sometimes, when I had absolutely no money, I was... completely broke, I made a ModigIiani drawing I had to... come to one of the big dealers around beverly hills." "Never happened that I didn't sell them." "I always sold them." "One reason he could get away with what he was doing,... for 22 years, selling fakes all over the world,... all over the United States, was the existence of something... new in the art world and that was the art market." "It enabled him to live from day to day, from painting... to painting, from fake to fake, from con man to con man,... from crook to crook and from town to town." "Who Knows?" "What is it?" "What makes you travel?" "You want to change the landscape, you want to meet new people,... you want to meet new faces, you thinK you'II meet somebody... more attractive in the next town as you get there..." "We'II never Know." "Why?" "Why people travel do you Know?" "Because the FBI and the police at four different states... were on his tail." "But..." "And he had to be one jump ahead of them." "He had to leap to..." "Mexico and then up to Canada and then back to New YorK." "And then when he heard that the police were knocking on his door... in Miami beach he had to scuttle out of town on a bus to Texas." "Then finally on a distant island he did find a home." "It is a splendid villa with a fine view of the village... and the village jail." "The village jail, yeah, you probably haven't seen." "Here is better than somewhere else but a jail is a jail,..." "let's face it." "Moment of truth." "He is talking about that time... they put you down out of that villa he doesn't own and... put him into prison." "Let me show you that again." "The village jail, yeah, you probably haven't seen." "Here is better than somewhere else but a jail is a jail,..." "let's face it." "Hemingway wrote a great short story about an old buIIfighter... called "The Undefeated"." "Where are all the heroes... out of the bull ring?" "Here's our hero." "Our ex-jaiI bird flying high above his troubles." "Watch the quick recovery." "That was quite a disgusting person." "He looks disgusting too,... doesn't he?" "He was a German whose main preoccupation... was his moustache." "He Kept doing nothing but... touching his moustache." "He Kept on curling and curling... and curling his moustache." "These are the drawings I made... during the time I was in prison." "In the very end the judge,... thanKed me and declared I am a very generous and Kind person." "Now that he is out of prison what will he do?" "Give a party." "Another party." "EImyr, how do you mean you were not a prisoner?" "Because I was not a prisoner in the years of war..." "I was not imprisoned." "I was interned." "She's a great friend of mine." "She's really sweet and Kind." "When I was in prison she came to see me everyday." "Most of the days of the week." "Jean Pierre Lumont." "I had a..." "Spanish prince." "I had everyday coming in Nina." "Nina, that MarceI plucked from our name dropper list of... prison visitors, is the Baroness Van PIaten." "She was a witness against Irving." "It seems he couldn't have... a secret meeting with Howard Hughes in Mexico because... he spent every minute there with the Baroness." "She used to be a famous folk singer and now she is famous again." "Many other ladies fIirted across the front pages and... our cameras never got close to them." "Oh, we have Kodar on something else!" "Miss Kodar on the line." "They've been calling you the Hungarian connection." "Because of my connection with Irving?" "This is from a tape of a recent interview." "Yes it's quite a hassle." "Indeed." "You wonder how I've got to mention his typewriter." "No Miss Kodar!" "You wouldn't say that forgery is a crime?" "The experts?" "As long as there are fakers I guess there have to be experts.)" "But if there weren't any experts would there be any faKers?" "A friend once showed a Picasso to Picasso... who said it was a fake." "The same friend brought him,... from yet another source, another wouId-be Picasso... and Picasso said that, too, was as fake." "Then yet another... from another source, also fake, said Picasso. " But pablo,"" "said his friend "I watched you paint that with my own eyes!" "."" ""Haha," said Picasso "I can paint false Picassos... as well as anybody."" "I'm not excusing myself." "I'm not trying to make an excuse." "I'm trying to explain a psychological situation... and a human weakness." "It's down in general to basically two reasons." "A court case would bring such publicity on the art world that... any art dealer who took the stand would automatically... become suspect." "The other reason is because... the French police had explained to me that in order to jail him... in France they would have to have two witnesses who saw him... doing the paintings, who saw him signing the paintings as..." "Picassos or any other." "The signatures I put on much later then... the paintings were painted." "I never signed any painting anyway." "That's a very important matter." "No, I never signed." "Never, never did, no." "Of course they were signed." "well, whoever did sign them, his paintings are in so many great... collections that it must be said of EImyr that he has achieved... a certain immortality under various other signatures." "If you hang them in the museum in a collection of great paintings... and if they hang for long enough there, they'II become real." "Now this has been standing here for centuries." "The premier work of men, perhaps, in the whole western world." "And it's without a signature." "A celebration to God's glory and to dignity of men." "AII that's left, most art don't seem to fill these days, is... men...make it...poor for trade." "There aren't any celebrations." "Ours is the scientists that Keep telling this is a universe... which is disposable." "You Know what might be just this one anonymous glory?" "Of all things, this rich stone forest, this epic chant,... this gaiety, this grand chairing shout of affirmation... which we choose, when all our cities are dust,... to stand intact, to mark where we've been,... to testify to what we had in us, to accomplish." "Our works in stone, in paint, in print are spared solid for a... few decades or a millennium or two but everything must finally... fall and ore will wear away into the ultimate and universal ash." "The triumphs and the frauds, the treasures and the fakes." "A fact of Iife, we're going to die." "Be a good heart." "Private dead artists... out of the living past." "Our songs, will all be silenced." "But what are we?" "Go on singing." "Maybe a man's name doesn't matter that much." "Now, at last, we come to Oja." "For this true, story with their Kind collaboration,... we offer now, and we might call it a re-enactment of recent history." "As we told you at the start she comes into this only at the end." "And that's why we've left her for the end." "That's a coincidence." "Just for instance I'II give you..." "Oja's grandfather." "No, Iet's take him back for a while and save him for later." "The mixture is rich enough as it is." "Oja, as far as I Know,... never breathed a word about this." "She comes into this when she,... herself, came to the attention of, who else but , the first genius... among all the artists of our age." "The most celebrated, certainly... the wealthiest painter in 6 thousand years." "well, Picasso is the biggest phenomenon of our time." "It never existed that a painter was able, with one movement... of his hand, what necessarily didn't involve more than ten seconds,... that movement of the hand transform in gold." "Not even John RocKfeIIer was able to do that." "His estate has been valued at 750 million dollars." "Oja turned him into a girl watcher." "That's happened not so very long ago." "When Picasso,... for reasons of his own, went to paint, for a while,... in the little village of Toussand." "Oja was there too, on her holidays." "And she had a friend with her, a boy named ola, from somewhere... in the viking country." "In his homeland, up there in the frozen..." "North, ola had been infected, rather imperfectly, with a taste... for the classic Jazz of New orleans and his researches... took place under Picasso's window, where, morning and night,... he practised the trombone." "ola's trombone commenced early,... finished late and nearly drove Picasso out of his skull." "And then there was another distraction." "Far more disturbing:" "Oja." "Oja in the morning, on the way to the beach." "Oja at ten coming back for the Sun tan lotion." "To the beach again." "And back once more... at noon for lunch." "At that climate after lunch one takes a siesta." "Not Oja." "And not Picasso either." "cocktail time." "Dinner time." "Any time!" "Oja on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday..." "And all through the week." "week after week." "Oja checking out the trombone." "Oja escaping from it." "But no escaping from Picasso." "Was he tempted?" "Perhaps he was inspired." "I can't tell you what happened in there." "But Picasso was a fast worker, by which I mean to say,... you understand, that the results of this encounter were,... to say the least of it, extremely fruitful." "Figs sweetened on the trees." "Grapes burst into ripeness on the vines." "And 22 large portraits of Miss Oja Kodar were born... under that brush." "Money." "We've heard EImyr on that subject." "well, Picasso didn't make all that bread by casting any crumbs... into the water or feeding it to the birds or giving any pictures... to his models." "But Oja laid down conditions." "She put a price." "On the sunshine." "To give it up he had to give something to her." "And this is true, you Know, what she exacted from Picasso... was no less than this." "Those pictures, all 22 of them,... ought to be hers, outright, her property to pick up... and carry away." "Which is just exactly what... she did with them." "She got away with it all." "well, "no wonder she's rich" you'II say, but, wait,... there's more of this." "Just now Paris is her stand,... this is important to our story, there is another sort of paralysis." "Paris was suffering from August." "This happens every year." "It shuts down, closes up and this is the time when an invader could... take the country by telephone." "If he could get somebody... to answer it." "And this is the time when,... down there in Toussand, Picasso, opening his morning news paper... read that in a little Known Art gallery in Paris there would... be, open to the public, an exposition of the works of..." "pablo Picasso!" "And this a species of atomic blast stormed out of the Riviera." "In the American hemisphere we give our bigger tornadoes... names like Mary Lou and DoIores." "The one in the South of France... that day should have been called "pablo"." "booking a seat on the first available plane the storm now... moved toward Paris." "And there wasn't an improvement... in the atmosphere and conditions of the airport when another... news paper came to the artist's furious attention." ""Picasso", said the headline "Have Been Born Again."" "Critics were hailing, the press, the tabloids but who cared." "Not Picasso." "No, there'd been a very clear understanding." "Oja'd get rich but not a penny's profit for pablo?" "There are witnesses who'II swear that an aureole of blue flame... sizzIed about that noble head as the great painter burst... what will never be forgotten is the terrible incandescence... of Picasso's rage." "And then there came a sudden and quite remarkable change." "Those famous staring eyes now stared as eyes that... ever stared before." "From picture to picture they travelled all 22 of them,... recognising none." "Not one single canvas in that whole collection... had been painted by Picasso." "And there she was, standing beside him." "You told him about your grandfather, that he was dying?" "He didn't even Know he existed." "Nobody did the greatest of all the art forgers remained always... a legend mentioned only in whispers." "tell us what you did with Picasso." "I just took him by the hand and let him out and... put him in my little car." "And drove him to your grandfather's secret studio?" "This is true, you Know." "What's amazing is that he went with her!" "Here's some pictures." "Theses are the Iast I took of him." "And the first we meet publicly." "He was never photographed except in the family." "He was very careful about that." "That's why he was never caught." "You I never thought of asking..." "EImyr about that?" "They are both Hungarians." "There are many great painters in the Renaissance... but only one Da Vinci." "Do you mean among the great art forgers your father's the Da Vinci?" "One of his Da Vincis is so famous I don't dare to name it." "Giving him credit is as tough as nailing him for the crime." "Crime?" "!" "He painted every last one of those phoney Picassos of you." "Every last one for which Picasso was very highly praised." "But not, to put it mildly, highly pleased." "You must have Known you couldn't get away with it." "I got to meet Picasso." "The world's best and least Known geniuses." "My grandfather was very glad to see him." ""Haha, Picasso", said your grandfather..." ""I've been painting you for years." "AII of the great..." "Picasso periods" I'm not trying too hard for that..." "Hungarian accent, right." "It is hard work." "Oh, yes." ""This girl", said Picasso "claims that you're dying"." ""A dying art forger", he said "is still an art forger."" "You tell us what Picasso said." "He called us both a couple of crooks." ""Oh, yes', said your grandfather " is quite as honest as anyone... that young, that beautiful and that Hungarian."" ""She's stolen my pictures!", said Picasso." "She made you a gift signior." "She gave you a whole summer." "Is that more than the price of 22 Picassos?" "And where for God's sake are they now?" "pablo!" "May I call you "pablo"?" "No." "well, signior, it seems that in my son-in-Iaw's new little..." "Art gallery there are 22 paintings every one of which has been... accIaimed as a masterpiece at Ieast that's the... best critical opinion..." "The best critical opinion is a load of horseman you..." "perfectly we agree on that, signior." "But you have so little... reason to be bitter." "Is there a man in all the world who... doesn't Know your name?" "And who in all the world Knows mine?" "You are one of those that use so many names that... you forget your own!" ""I, signior, am not one or anything." "I, like you, am unique." "You've seen my big C?" "anne at the metropolitan?" "Is that just a forgery, my friend?" "Is it not also a painting?"" "Now you tell us what Picasso had to say of that." "Something dirty in Spanish, I thinK." "He, then, accused you father of arrogance." "Arrogance?" "A man who never in his life signed... his own name to a picture?" "What could be more modest than that?" "It's true that when you thinK of those great Rembrandts..." "Chicago has five of them!" "And..." "Important ones!" "London." "Just those two small Tintorettos in brazil and tokyo..." "The big ones..." "Cincinnati had all the Goyas and most of the Grecos..." "And the Monet and the Manet in Detroit" ""So, am not in myself", said your grandfather "one of the... great painters?" "No?" "No." "Yet, here you are Picasso,... standing at the death bed of a ghost." "For all my Iife I've been a ghost and for all the times the..." "galleries and Museums will be haunted with my works." "Do you thinK I should confess?" "For what?" "Committing masterpieces?" "They'd all be torn down... from the walls." "And what then would be..." "left of me?" "But before I die I find I need something to believe." "I must believe that art, itself, is real." "If it is not, signior,..."" "Here my grandfather was interrupted by Picasso... who asked him to stop making speeches." ""We have to settle a fate of 22 large canvases painted by me." "Picasso, you move so easily from one Picasso period to another,... you change like an actor, like an art forger yourself." "Won't you give to me, who admire you so much, a happy death?" "Can you not let me go Knowing that at last I've managed to... give something new to the world:" "one whole Picasso period." "would you give me this?"" ""Give my pictures!", said Picasso." ""Give back my 22 paintings!"" ""Ah", said the grandfather "That is impossible." "I have burnt them"." "well, good bye Picasso!" "Time for a confession?" "Time to go." "Good night, Oja." "That's her real name, you Know?" "Oja, Oja Kodar." "I don't think... that young gentleman is a player but Oja's grandfather... was Hugarian." "Did he paint any pictures?" "Never in his life." "Ladies and gentlemen, we did use Oja's grandfather to lend... verisimiIitude to the re-enactment of the story but... with a story this hard to believe..." "re-enactment, isn't easy!" "..." "Right Fran?" "is?" "At the very beginning I did make you a promise." "Remember?" "I did promise that for one hour I'd tell you only the truth." "That hour, ladies and gentlemen, is over." "For the past 17 minutes I've been lying my head off." "The truth, and please forgive us for it, is that we've been... forging an art story." "As a charlatan, of course, my job was to try to make it real." "Not hat reality has anything to do with it." "reality is the tooth-brush waiting at home for you... in it's glass, a bus ticket, a paycheque and a grave." "EImyr perhaps has as few regrets as I have... to have been a charlatan." "But we're not so proud, either of us,... as to lay any superior claim to being... very much worse than the rest of you." "You Know what, we, professional liars hope to service the truth,..." "I'm afraid the pompous word for that is "art."" "Picasso himself said it." ""Art", he said "is a lie." "A lie that makes us realise the truth"." "Oja's grandfather floating here in the air has no comment,... which isn't surprising, because he never existed." "To the memory of that great man who will never cease to exist..." "I offer my apologies and wish you all,... true and false, a very pleasant,... good evening."