In January 1971, an unknown novelist, Clifford Irving, broke into the McGraw-Hill Publishing Company and took out three sheets of paper, claiming it was a handwritten letter from Howard Hughes, authorizing him to ghostwrite Hughes' autobiography. . After McGraw-Hill identified the handwriting, it agreed to pay Clifford Irving $500,000 as an advance payment for the publication of the book. . As McGraw-Hill was hyping the book's launch, Howard Hughes showed up, held a press conference by phone and declared that he didn't know Clifford Irving at all and that the new book was a fake. Two weeks later, Clifford Irving admitted that he had fabricated everything. On June 16, 1972, he was sentenced to two years in prison. This is the "fake Hughes biography" thing that made a big splash in the 1970s. In F FOR FAKE, WELLS questioned how could it be proven that hugh was on the phone? Or is there a better impostor who played HUGH and approached IRVING for him to write HUGH's biography? This also reflects WELLS' evaluation of fakes in the entire film: there is no absolute truth or falsehood.
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