Jurassic Park or
Saving Private Ryan,
Catch Me if You Can has always quietly been one of Steven Spielberg s greatest films. In fact, Catch Me if You Can is actually ranked as Spielberg s fourth-best directorial effort on Rotten Tomatoes, above any of his other movies I ve mentioned here.
Leonardo DiCaprio stars as real life con man Frank Abagnale Jr., who throughout the 60s and 70s cashed more than $2 million in fake checks and successfully posed as a doctor, a lawyer, a college professor, and a pilot for Pan American airlines. According to Abagnale s own story, he began conning at the age of 15 and was hunted throughout his teenage years by the FBI (Tom Hanks plays the fictional agent Carl Hanratty, loosely based on Joseph Shea who was a friend of Abagnale). The film also shows Abagnale escape twice from the FBI once from a plane as it was on the runway at JFK and again from a detention center in Atlanta.
A new book says the story of a teenager who posed as a pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer that inspired the beloved Steven Spielberg film might have all been one brilliant lie.
A new book says the story of a teenager who posed as a pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer that inspired the beloved Steven Spielberg film Catch Me If You Can might have all been one brilliant lie.
By
Frank W. Abagnale Jr. (second from the right) is famous for his audacious cons, documented in the blockbuster movie “Catch Me If You Can.” But science writer Alan Logan says the real grift is Abagnale’s entire life story. (Rene Macura/AP Photo)
This story is from The Pulse, a weekly health and science podcast.
Frank W. Abagnale Jr. may have pulled off one of the greatest hoaxes on earth.
Abagnale’s famous tale of forging checks and assuming different professional identities has captured national audiences through pop-culture adaptations, most famously the 2002 Steven Spielberg film, “Catch Me if You Can,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks. It was developed from Abagnale’s memoir of the same name.
“Can Businesses Require Proof of Vaccination?” SHARE
In general, no federal law prohibits businesses from asking for proof of vaccination as a condition of consumer services or employment. Kathryn Watson of CBS News interviewed me about this and I hit a few main points, beginning with the relatively few exceptions:
Religious objections and employment. Title VII, the federal employment discrimination law, forces an employer to accommodate employees’ religious beliefs when it can do so without cost. For that reason, employees with religious objections to vaccination can ask employers to exempt them, and employers must at least consider the request. “Consider,” however, does not mean “accede to”: under a 1977 Supreme Court case called Trans World Airlines v. Hardison, which I’ve written about here, Title VII “does not require an employer to make any accommodation for an employee’s practice of religion if doing so would impose more than a