Auto Focus - Criticism By Scotty Crane

Criticism By Scotty Crane

Bob Crane's son, Scotty, bitterly attacked the film as being inaccurate. In an October 2002 piece he wrote on the movie, Scotty said that his father was not a regular church-goer and had only been to church three times in the last dozen years of his life, which included his own funeral. There is no evidence that Crane engaged in S&M and director Paul Schrader told Scotty that the S&M scene was based on his own personal experience. Scotty claims that his father and John Carpenter did not become close friends who socialized together until 1975, and that Crane was a sex addict long before he became a star, recording his sexual encounters at least as early as 1956.

Scotty and his mother had shopped a rival script for a Bob Crane movie biography. The script, alternately titled "F-Stop" and "Take Off Your Clothes and Smile". The spec script was written up in Variety by venerable columnist Army Archerd, but after Auto-Focus was announced, interest in Scotty's script ceased.