Movies: Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. George Clooney's directing debut of Chuck Barris's "unauthorized autobiography" presents an engaging glimpse into the mind of the father of reality television. Reviled before Howard Stern was irritating anyone with his morning chatter, Barris was criticized as dragging American civilization into moral ditches from which it would never crawl out. He created an alternative universe in which he was assassinating Cold War villains while running his game shows during the day. While there is speculation that this may have been true, it's on the far side of believable - the symbolism of the number of people he allegedly killed (33), the cartoonish quality of the female spy whom he supposedly killed when he discovered she was a mole. Barris was far ahead of his time, having created such hits as The Dating Game, that seems mild and gentle in comparison to the dog's lunch that is The Bachlorette, Fear Factor and The Real World.