The plot of the entertaining period piece “The Hoax” surrounds wannabe star author Clifford Irving’s attempt to publish a fake autobiography of reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes.

But the film goes beyond the basic story to show how our society glamorizes the big play and the willingness for some to capture a piece of the glory.

Richard Gere plays another type of American gigolo. He’s a smooth talker, who has a mistress and a willing co-conspirator, about to launch into a humongous lie about the book he’s yet to write.

“The lying gives me a headache,” Irving tells his lover on the side, played by the luminous French actress Julie Delpy.

But the pain only appears when it comes to matters of the heart, not one related to huge advance checks, which the duped publisher is eager to hand out to secure what is promised as a moneymaker. No one is innocent when it comes to compromising ethics for the shot at the one big play.

Irving, stinging from comments that he is a second-rate Phillip Roth, is going for that one-in-a-million shot for stardom. His wife, played by Marcia Gay Harden in a wig and accent, goes along with the plan, as does Irving’s researcher Dick Suskin (an excellent Alfred Molina).

But none of them reach Irving’s heights of playing along and believing in the plan, which is based on a seemingly thin prospect of Hughes’ publicly rebuking the book. (He’s crazy. Who knows what he could be lying about? Right?)

Director Lasse Hallstrom, a specialist in wispy tales like “Chocolat” or “Casanova,” gives the actual events surrounding the fake book a needed injection of freewheeling adventure. Searching for clues into Hughes mannerisms, the hunt for contact with the crazy one, Irving and Suskin are enjoying their tasty treasure hunt.

Like David Fincher’s riveting “Zodiac,” “The Hoax” captures the early 1970s with intoxicating attention to detail.

Hughes, like the Zodiac killer, is a cloudy figure who sends out only half-formed communications (that maybe aren’t even his). Maybe he approves of the fake book, or is he using the publicity surrounding it for his own agenda?

Gere embodies that certain man who is willing to drop in to that massive wave that promises instant immortalization if he can hold on tight enough to ride it out. “The Hoax” shows us — with vigorous excitement — the weight of that task.

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