Review – Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

Perhaps the book was more entertaining. Or perhaps at least with the book it was harder to tell if game show creator and host Chuck Barris was really serious about being a contract killer for the CIA. In the movie the only challenge is trying to figure out if the guy’s an imaginative liar or a drug-addled nutjob. Honestly, when he says goodbye to “Lee” and “Jack” at the end of secret assassin school, well, it’s impossible to take it seriously after that (not that it was all that easy before). Overall the production comes across as the tale of a celebrity undone by his own mental illness, kind of like Auto Focus only Barris is still alive so the film-makers couldn’t be quite as unflinching with him as they were with Bob Crane. See if desperate