Lasse Hallstrom recently shot a film that retells a decades-old story some of the players would rather forget. In a phone interview, Hallstrom, the highly regarded Swedish director, was clear about one thing: to make a movie about Clifford Irving isn't necessarily to love him.

Irving is still remembered as the writer who nearly pulled off one of the most audacious scams in publishing: an "autobiography" of Howard Hughes, based on in-person interviews of the reclusive billionaire, which was in fact completely bogus.

"The Hoax," directed by Hallstrom, with a permed and sideburned Richard Gere as the '70s-era Irving, also stars Alfred Molina as Irving's co-writer and sidekick, Richard Suskind, and Marcia Gay Harden as Irving's wife, Edith. Filmed over 49 days, mostly in and around New York City, the picture is set for release by Miramax Films next year.

But Irving is already complaining that the film takes so many creative liberties, that it will be "a hoax about a hoax." On the heels of "Capote" and "Good Night, and Good Luck," yet another chapter in the twisted history of New York news media thus heads for the screen with fair warning, and more than a little tension among some of the principals. "This version, or is it a vision, has nothing to do with me," Irving, 75, said of the screenplay. Speaking by phone from a winter home in Aspen, Colorado, he acknowledged the filmmakers' "right to do what they want."

Irving was, after all, paid an undisclosed sum for his life rights, as well as the rights to his published account of the scandal (written just before the 16 months he spent in prison for peddling the discredited Hughes book).

But he was bothered to find the characters, including his own, extremely unsympathetic, "even unlikable."

Hallstrom hasn't yet met his outspoken subject in person, but said he regarded his film as a "complete portrait, warts and all."

"Remember, this is about someone who is doing questionable things," he explained. "So I cannot be looking at the aspect of likability. I really can't." As historically based films come back into vogue, disputes are perhaps inevitable - and may even help give such pictures their special tang. Certainly, in describing his fascination with Irving, Gere didn't shy away from the man's less endearing qualities.

"I saw the character there," Gere said of a 1972 segment of "60 Minutes" that he watched and rewatched in preparation for the role. "He revealed so much. How he carried himself, how he spoke, how he lied. I thought he was transparent. Transparent in his lying. But there was a certain sense of authority about him, that I think was covering a lot."

Gere added, "I had the sense he was covering hysteria." In much the same way that Howard Hughes, nearly 30 years after his death, remains a prismatic figure, representing different things - industrialist, Las Vegas entrepreneur, aviator, filmmaker, breast man, hero, nut case - to different people, those who know about Irving and his wild publishing ride may applaud him as a charmingly seductive manipulator, or be repelled by his con. (He convinced both McGraw-Hill, which was to publish the book, and Life magazine, which would publish excerpts, that he was collaborating with the world's most mysterious man, even passing a lie detector test to prove it.)

In Orson Welles's 1976 film essay, "F for Fake" - about the art forger Elmyr de Horay, as well as his biographer, Irving - Irving, years before the hoax, reveals both personas when he says breezily, "All the world loves to see the experts and the establishment made a fool of."

It is almost impossible, however, not to be awed by the hoax's ramifications - inadvertently smoking out the elusive Hughes for what remains, to this day, one of the oddest Q-and-A sessions ever. Taking place in Los Angeles on Jan. 7, 1972, and captured by television cameras, the surreal scene had seven reporters sitting around a horseshoe-shaped table, feeding questions to a disembodied voice coming from a speaker box atop a small, adjacent stand.

Hughes, talking from a penthouse suite in the Bahamas, some 3,000 miles, or 4,800 kilometers, away, proclaimed that he had never met Irving, and called the writer's book "totally fantastic fiction." However, Hughes, a former filmmaker and studio chief, conceded that the saga had cinematic possibilities. "I only wish I were still in the movie business," he said, "because I don't remember any script I ever saw in Hollywood as wild or imagination-stretching as this autobiography yarn has turned out to be."

No wonder, considering that the bizarre drama included claims of clandestine meetings, a secret Zurich bank account, professional handwriting and voice analysts, stone-faced federal prosecutors and at least three "mystery women," one of them the blonde folk-singing baroness Nina Van Pallandt.

All of which made for a barrage of tantalizing headlines and a national guessing game that fascinated America.

"It was the first reality show," said Joshua Maurer, one of the film's producers.

Maurer is president of City Entertainment, which develops and produces projects that are largely reality-based, for network and cable television. Intrigued by Irving's story after reading "The Hoax" 11 years ago, he brought the project to the prolific feature film producer Mark Gordon, who was immediately taken by the tale's irreverence and humor and signed on to the project.

"It read like a '70s movie, which we all miss," said Gordon in a telephone interview. "These characters were so unabashedly irreverent." He added, "There have always been hoaxsters, there have always been con men. I think we, as Americans, are fascinated by people who can pull the wool over other people's eyes - and our own."

Last year's "Aviator" introduced Hughes and his legend to many younger moviegoers. "The Hoax" continues the lore by introducing him as an older, off-camera presence. "The resurgence of interest in Hughes is international," said the producer Bob Yari, who oversaw the new film's financing, including strong presales in foreign territories. As Yari noted, "The Hoax," which is budgeted at about $30 million, has three internationally known star names: Hallstrom, Gere and Hughes.

Over a luncheon meeting, the film's screenwriter, William Wheeler, recently pondered the notion of the truth, especially as it pertained to a man Time magazine singled out as "Con Man of the Year." "That appealed to me," admitted Wheeler. "The idea of working off a first-person account, from a guy who was known for being a con man, a liar. And exploring those layers, trying to figure out what actually happened."

Wheeler previously wrote "The Prime Gig" (2000), a low-budget exploration of a shady telephone marketer, played by Vince Vaughn. Himself a former telemarketer, Wheeler drew from his own experiences.

Of his take on Irving's story - and the liberties that so annoy his real-life subject - Wheeler said: "I think that screenwriters do have a responsibility to the truth, but I also think the primary responsibility is to the story. And that you have to follow your muse, in terms of where the story takes you.

"I almost feel like I would not be servicing the material correctly if I didn't have some mischief in my attitude. I wanted to stay true to the spirit of the things that happened, and the motives of those doing it, and within that, construct my own tall tale, based on Clifford's tall tale, which is based on Howard's tall tale. And Lasse did his own spinning on top of mine. And then, Richard."

Wheeler's tall-tale elements include a face-to-face meeting between Irving and Noah Dietrich, Hughes's longtime associate, who is played by Eli Wallach. In fact, the two never actually met. (Instead, it was by way of an associate of Dietrich's that Irving fortuitously acquired a manuscript, actually Dietrich's memoirs, that became the basis for the faked autobiography.)

By far, the most radical element in Wheeler's script are scenes suggesting a connection between the Hughes "autobiography," Richard Nixon and Watergate.

Irving's published tell-all does not mention Watergate. But over the years there have been varying accounts, in books by John Dean, H.R. Haldeman and others, describing White House concern about possible revelations of financial ties between Hughes and Nixon; in his memoirs, Haldeman goes on to suggest that the Watergate burglary was triggered by such concerns.

"Watergate was a way to distinguish our film," Maurer said, from several other projects about the Irving hoax that were making the Hollywood rounds. (One of those, with a working title of "Mr. Hughes," had a particularly strong pedigree, involving the screenwriter David Koepp, the director Brian De Palma and the actor Nicolas Cage.) But Irving is somewhat baffled by the script's Watergate allegations. "I never set out to bring down President Nixon," he said.