“Confessions of a Dangerous Mind” is the story of Chuck Barris, the guy who hosted “The Gong Show,” came up with “The Dating Game” and “The Newlywed Game,” wrote the 60s pop hit “Palisades Park,” was completely aware of his own, escalating on-camera absurdity … and may or may not have killed 33 people as a CIA operative. The surprise reveal of a self-aware show businessman takes place over half a century and half a world, from Italian New Jersey in the 30s to the gunslinging streets of Mexico, from the soundstages of Hollywood to behind (or rather, under) the Berlin Wall, with jaunts to a secret G-man training camp and an ice-skating date in Helsinki — with guns, spies, poison, secret passwords and double-agentry, the most spectacular display of which is alleged to have been undertaken by Barris himself.

Barris (played by Sam Rockwell) has a story fascinating enough even before George Clooney (who both directs and plays a CIA talent-hunter who picks Barris because he fits the “profile” of the perfect, albeit unlikely, hitman) arrives on the scene. Much of this is in the telling, the movie’s stage-like cleverness in cinematography. Instead of piles of money and digital effects, there are long one-take shots where, for instance, Rockwell will start out entering the NBC building as a tourist, then be seen getting a job as a tour guide there and finally be found sitting in an employee lounge. There’s a scene where he’s on the phone, arranging the deal that will get “The Dating Game” on the air, and a wall in his apartment opens to reveal the executive, in a no-splitscreen kind of splitscreen between foreground and background. The camera zooms in on Barris, as he tells Penny his idea for “The Newlywed Game,” and when we pull out, he is in a boardroom, with a tiny mockup of the gameshow set in his hands.

Best, none of this slight of hand attempts to make up for weaknesses elsewhere — there are none.

By every measure, Rockwell should have his face carved into a mountainside. (I think George Clooney would even agree.) And “Confessions” marks the rare time Drew Barrymore (playing Barris’ girlfriend Penny) isn’t discounted, insulted, disregarded and chopped into pale fluff, perhaps the first time someone respected her enough to give her a role fit for a Barrymore. (See also: 2009’s “Grey Gardens.”) She’s the reason we stick around, the reason Rockwell’s Barris is a protagonist instead of just an oozing bag of cynicism reading from cue cards.

We never hear exactly what kind of mad “profile” Barris fits (except for a wild, soap operatic explanation Clooney’s character spins involving a serial killer and a dead twin sister) but I think it goes something like this. How strange would it be if one of the seeming empty suits of television had us fooled? Imagine Bobby Mandel on a weekend junket to Pakistan, crushing the windpipe of a Taliban leader he’s only ever seen in an 8x10 black and white photo, passed under a restroom stall door? Would your mind be blown if Tyra Banks was a black widow seductress of sinister oligarchs? If Simon Cowell had been parachuting into jungles, negotiating the release of hostages, in between seasons of “American Idol”? (It certainly gives the CIA plausible deniability.)

If Charlie Kaufman hadn’t adapted the screenplay from Chuck Barris’ autobiography, of the same name, Kaufman might well have dreamed up this bizarro curlicue of a tale himself. This is true even if Barris concocted his autobiography, the dual existence. Who would come up with that kind of thing? Just maybe, the kind of troll who would come up with the premise of “The Newlywed Game” — “that anyone would sell out their spouse for a washer, dryer, or a lawnmower you could ride on.” This is a great movie for the opposite reason Barris is a good hit man: It doesn’t fit any known profile.

Ashley O’Dell writes about movies that aren’t in theaters anymore.