Was The Gong Show's Chuck Barris a CIA assassin? Says Confessions of a Dangerous Mind: Maybe.

³I wouldn't want to live his life, because I think he hasn't been happy all his life," says Dick Clark. "Some of the pieces of the puzzle are missing." Clark's grainy video image cuts to a grainier TV image, Ronald Reagan's swearing-in. But Clark isn't talking about the president; he's talking about Chuck Barris, the man who invented The Gong Show. Barris (Sam Rockwell) first appears in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind standing in front of a TV showing the 1981 inauguration. He stands at attention, naked and alone in a dreary hotel room. His voice-over begins, lamenting the mess he's made of his life -- in particular, his career choices: game show producer and CIA assassin. His redemption, Barris realizes, lies in recollection, specifically, in confessing his many sins -- that is, writing his "unauthorized autobiography." He starts typing.

This tome, published in 1984, comes to the big screen via an adaptation by Charlie Kaufman and directed by George Clooney. The result is a brilliant mix of television history, artistic license and self-inflation. Rather like Reagan, Barris here represents a notoriously "Cold War" attitude -- relentless paranoia, profound self-absorption and intolerance -- that persists today.

Thus established to be layered with fears and lies, as well as filtered through multiple perspectives, Confessions traces Barris' experiences, beginning with his early years in Philadelphia, when he can't convince girls to make out with him in movie theaters. Apparently, such disappointment moves him to seek grander displays of affection in show business. He writes a pop song that makes it to American Bandstand (thus the Clark connection), and makes his way to New York.

When ABC rejects his initial pitch for The Dating Game (choosing instead "Hooten-fuckin-nanny"), poor Chuck despairs. Miraculously, just as he's feeling most forlorn, he's tapped by Jim Byrd (George Clooney), shadowy, grim and fedora-ed, like any CIA handler should be. Informed that he "fits the profile" of the international spy, Chuck signs up, anticipating exciting missions, exotic locales and beautiful women.

Whatever doubts he has about the morality of this line of work, Chuck's training -- in particular, by gruff Instructor Jenks (Robert John Burke) -- convinces Chuck that he has what it takes. On his return home after a first assignment (marked "Mexico City 1964" and shot with stereotypically yellow filters), Chuck evinces a newfound sense of confidence and performance. He's immediately rewarded with a deal from ABC: They're picking up The Dating Game. The show is phenomenally successful, as is The Newlywed Game that follows. Suddenly, Chuck is a "hit man," many times over.

That a bellicose FCC censor (on set to instruct DG contestants) is also played by Burke makes the connection between Barris' fantasies/careers hard to miss. This is the film's primary metaphor: The "decline of Western Civilization" attributed to his miserable game shows has nothing on the decline brought on by nationalist self-regard and international policy. In order to maintain his "cover," his assignments -- some undertaken with the help of fellow spy, Keeler (brilliant Rutger Hauer) -- coincide with excursions he must chaperone for winners of The Dating Game, conveniently set in snowy Helsinki or Berlin.

These games, spy and TV, feed on greed and humiliation, highlighting Chuck's lifelong desire for approval (extending to his generalization that "any American would sell out their spouse for a washer/dryer or a lawn mower you can ride on"). The film elaborates on this conceit through his womanizing self-image. On the one hand, he sleeps with any girl he can; on the other, he falls in love with the perfectly perky Penny (Drew Barrymore), who transforms from cool-cat New Yorker to San Francisco free-lover -- "I'm a hippie now!" she exults, "Come back there and be my old man with me!" -- to devastated girlfriend to blushing bride, willing to accept anything from her man but the truth. Less a character than a marker of Chuck's changes (she can't believe his spy tales), Penny reflects his other self, perhaps happy.

What's more, he shares CIA assignments with dastardly Patricia (Julia Roberts). Though she appreciates Chuck's sinister side, his false identities and violent tendencies, she also never believes him. Their mutual deceits lead to a psychosexual meltdown that parallels Barris' collapsing TV career in a stunning set piece as he hosts The Gong Show, feeling scrutinized by every crew member on the set.

This meta-narrative is exacerbated by talking-head commentaries throughout the film, by Dating Game host Jim Lange and Gong Show participants Jaye P. Morgan, Gene Gene the Dancing Machine, and the Unknown Comic, complete with paper bag. These underline the ways that nostalgia, performance and narcissism inevitably intersect in any life's creation (and re-creations). The film leaves it for you to parse. As Morgan puts it, "I know some things about him that are very distressing. And you wouldn't want to know them about him."