The lost language of Crane: Greg Kinnear and director Paul Schrader talk about the homoerotic tension behind the Bob Crane biopic Auto Focus. (film).

Paul Schrader's Auto Focus begins with Bob Crane (Greg Kinnear) landing the lead role in an unlikely sitcom about Allied soldiers in a World War II German POW camp. When Hogan's Heroes becomes a runaway hit Crane becomes a household name--and an addict of porn and sex, thanks in part to new best friend John Carpenter (Willem Dafoe), a voracious swinger. With access to then-cutting-edge home video equipment, the pair document their many sexual conquests. Yet this frisky folie a deux hits the rocks when Carpenter's bisexuality emerges and Crane, whose out-of-control sexual proclivities become publicly known, attempts to reboot his flagging career.

"What I saw underneath was a kind of American, middle-aged, heterosexual TV-star version of Prick Up Your Ears," recalls Schrader, likening the script to the biography and biopic about the life of gay playwright Joe Orton, who was murdered by his lover. "I liked that needy, enabling dynamic of those two characters, so I thought it would be very interesting to do it in this context." In Auto Focus, the undercurrent of homoeroticism emerges as a plot point: When Carpenter gropes Crane during an orgy, it causes a split between the swingers.

For former Talk Soup host Kinnear, playing a tragic character like Crane was a radical departure from a largely comic oeuvre, much like his Oscar-nominated role in As Good as It Gets as the tortured gay Simon. "Simon, unlike Bob, didn't have the burden of authenticity," says Kinnear. "When you're playing a nonfictional character, there are details and clear signposts to their behavior. In Bob's case, a lot of those were ambiguous, but there were also some clear elements [I tried to] use to help inform the audience what the guy was all about."

To help mold his Crane authentically, Kinnear was lent a wealth of materials by Crane's son Bob Jr., including the leather jacket Crane wore in Hogan's Heroes. Kinnear also gained access to Crane's X-rated videos and photographs, some of which are available on a Web site run by his son from his second marriage, Scotty. (Schrader refers to the porn-pushing Scotty Crane as "not well held together.") Kinnear is quick to note that minimal time was devoted to the videos. "You don't need to watch that much to get the idea of what's going on there," Kinnear drawls. "A little goes an exceedingly long way."

While Crane was aggressively hetero, Carpenter was more sexually ambiguous, says Schrader, whose past filmic forays into realms of hidden sexuality include Hardcore and American Gigolo. Crane would often refer to Carpenter as bisexual, and one salacious rumor tied Carpenter sexually to Hogan's Heroes costar Richard Dawson--possibility "I certainly wasn't going to touch!" Schrader says with a laugh. The one certainty, he notes, is that "no one says [Carpenter] was 100% gay because he was a real pussy hound."

Another certainty was Crane's up-tight attitude toward male-male sex, which Kinnear considers somewhat incongruous. "That two guys could run this closely together, particularly in a world where the door is open for everything, for there to be certain doors closed seemed odd to me," Kinnear ponders. "I think there were real parameters to his execution, as outrageous as the lifestyle was."

Actually, Kinnear and crew learned that a swinger's lifestyle isn't necessarily that outrageous. "They're just so-o-o boring!" Schrader admits with a laugh, noting that some real-life swingers populated scenes in the film. "Just sitting around listening to them, I thought, Jesus, it's one thing to fuck these people, but then you have to listen to them talk!"

For excerpts The Advocate's 1997 cover story on Greg Kinnear, go to www.advocate.com

Ferber has also written for Entertainment Weekly and Time Out New York.