In 2020, journalist Alan C. Logan wrote The Greatest Hoax on Earth: Catching Truth, While We Can. In it, he undermined the decades-long fascination with conman Frank Abagnale, Jr., who pocketed millions speaking on his alleged experiences at conferences nationwide. He claimed to have impersonated a Pan Am pilot, a licensed physician in the state of Georgia, an attorney at law in Louisiana, and to have cashed more than $2 million worth of bad checks in over 26 countries. 

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It was all a lie.

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In reality, he impersonated a pilot for only a few weeks, during which he met and befriended flight attendant Paula Parks. Infatuated, Abagnale, Jr. got her work schedule and stalked her, eventually confronting her in New Orleans. Parks informed him of her plans to visit her parents in Baton Rouge; Frank came with her and made such a great impression that when he showed up a few weeks later, Mr. and Mrs. Parks allowed him to stay in Paula’s vacant bedroom.

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Frank spent the next several weeks showering the family with expensive gifts and fancy dinners with money he had stolen… from them. He had come across a stack of checks during his stay and used them to run up $1200 worth of debt, .06% of the total he claimed to amass over his fictitious reign of terror.

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Logan’s book inspired further research into the subject of Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can, based on an “autobiographical” novel co-written by Abagnale. The claims were audacious, his perspective on them even more so. He imagined himself as a modern-day Robin Hood, a “kid ripping off the establishment.” He claimed he never swindled an individual save a prostitute he gave a fraudulent cashier’s check. During the film’s release, Abagnale posted a disclaimer on his website asserting minimal interaction with his co-writer: the novel’s, and thus the movie's, contents were subject to artistic license. Unfortunately, that was a gross understatement, and that further research unveils things that make Catch Me If You Can a taxing watch in retrospect.

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In 1970, Abagnale visited the University of Arizona while posing as a Pan Am pilot. He told Paul Holsen, a licensed commercial pilot, that he was on a recruitment mission that necessitated physical examinations. Decades later, Abagnale copped to the ruse, stating that he would give “thorough examinations” to the “young girls” he interacted with during the charade. Abagnale ultimately abused, and bragged about abusing, 12 women. In the wake of #MeToo, Holsen finally realized the true nature of what happened and has struggled with the reality that he spent decades publicly condoning sexual abuse.

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As we reflect on Catch Me If You Can 20 years on, we understand our getting drawn to the cinematic version of Abagnale. He is portrayed by a gorgeous young actor at the peak of his talent, with a more mature look than the teenager he depicts while retaining a sympathetic boyish quality. We empathize with the troubled home life that shapes him in damaging, complex ways. We delight in his escapades because Spielberg makes it so: Frank’s choices destroy lives, but we never truly see the destruction.

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Debra, the nurse he cons into an engagement, is left shocked after Frank drops the bomb about his identity and leaves. We see her once more at an airport and then never again. His parents' knowledge of his actions gets little attention; Frank Sr. is accepting, as we’d expect of a man who raised his son through cons. Frank’s mother gets a shocked expression and a swift departure from the film. Even those in his periphery are unaffected. A young boy, lying in a hospital bed with his tibia exposed, receives improper care from Frank and gets abandoned while the fake doctor vomits in a janitor’s closet. We do not see him again, and the situation gets played for laughs.

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If we were ever going to view Abagnale in a negative light, Spielberg doesn’t make it easy, nor do his trusted compatriots. Williams’ score is light and bouncy even in the film’s darkest moments. A callback to his father’s con involving a gold chain and a naive woman gets as much aeration as the tension of Abagnale fleeing from the Feds at his engagement party. The stakes are always high, but Williams never lets it feel that way entirely; Abagnale is just a kid: a score too dark would never let us remember that.

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Frank was a kid, but not in the way we can let ourselves imagine. A teenage boy is rife with hormonal energy, eager to seek release, and prone to emotional outbursts, but this does not render him immoral. It is easy to separate the action from its implications; how many crusaders have sought “justice” for juveniles given harsh sentences without contextualizing the nature of their offense? It is easy to champion someone when you can reduce their actions to a simple word. Let us take Joshua Phillips, who, at 14, got sentenced to life without parole for the murder of Maddie Clifton, his 8-year-old neighbor. It’s simple to hear “juvenile,” “life sentence,” and “murder,” and walk away feeling something must be done, that he deserves a second chance, and the punishment was too harsh. 

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The sentiment cracks under the weight of that murder: it meant little Maddie Clifton getting bludgeoned with a baseball bat to stop her from screaming, her throat cut open when Phillips discovered she was still breathing, stabbed seven times with a knife, and left under Phillips' bed while he slept above her rotting corpse for a week. It means blood, screams, agony, terror, pain, and loss. At a certain point, actions cannot get explained away by youth. Abagnale may not have reached that level of gruesome psychopathy, but the principle holds firm.


He was young, and the term “sexual assault” is so commonplace that it no longer challenges us to think about what it means, devaluing it based on the severity of affliction. Although we did not know it in 2002, there is no excuse now: the truth of Abagnale’s life exposes severe iniquity, something age cannot rationalize or justify. He touched these women without their consent, being "thorough" to extract every ounce of sexual gratification under the guise of professionalism. Several states have enacted "rape by deception" laws; Arizona has defined consent partially by manipulating victim awareness. Abagnale would likely not have gotten prosecuted under that state law had it been active at the time, but if it were to occur today, the case would make noise, especially in a #MeToo context.

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It makes the film much more challenging now, akin to seeing how your food gets made. Hamburgers are America’s most popular meal; no one wants to know how the country’s 14,000 McDonald's make their Big Mac (though, if you're curious): we want to eat. No one ever wants to admit bias: we cling to principles whose integrity we compromise in the face of logical criticism. If something we enjoy undermines our values, we rationalize it under the guise of periods or intent. The humor of days past cannot get condemned by modern sensibilities; no one meant to offend, and thus any offense felt is the fault of the offended party; we cannot hold ourselves accountable for not knowing what we did not know. 

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Three years after the film’s release, David Randall of Utah’s The Daily Herald published an article detailing the “physical examinations” that Abagnale conducted on female students. It is not a fact that Spielberg could have known, and thus the door opens for one of those rationalizations to creep through: how can a director get penalized for working only with what we had… what we all had? The difference is that simply because something rationalizes does not mean it is irrational.

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Catch Me If You Can remains a fantastic film. It is well-paced and acted, sharp, quick, funny, moving, and photographed to feel warm and inviting even in its coldest moments. A Christmastime phone call from a lonely teenager to a relentless FBI agent feels like the soothing embrace of the holidays, even though there's nothing warm about their conversation. It injects humor into an inherently humorless story; even if, on some level, Frank’s exploits were amusing, it is only by their separation from our lives. As The Even Stevens Movie once asked, “Isn’t life funny when it’s not happening to you?”

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It is a natural defense of what we hold dearest; Jane Campion’s snide dismissal aside, Kevin Costner’s syrupy speech at this year’s Oscars rings true: movies shape lives, especially those of an artist. A single moment can change a lifetime. The things we see on screen did not happen to us, and in many cases of films based on a true story, did not happen at all. The distance justifies our refusal to broach the subjects that prove most pressing when progress pressures art. Perhaps we cling to the nostalgia of youth, recall the traumas a film helped heal, or feel deference to an artist who inspired us to become who we became. Regardless, we must challenge ourselves to recognize reality and not conflate acknowledgment with blame. 

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It is not an easy task. After Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered 12 classmates and a teacher at Columbine High School 23 years ago, blame became the defining characteristic of American culture. We blamed Marilyn Manson, guns, bullying, mental health, and psychiatry. Somewhere along the way, we lost sight of personal accountability and objective responsibility. Eric and Dylan made a choice. Every day, we make a thousand choices on much smaller scales. Since they are small, we do not recognize their merit and struggle to build good habits. The last five years have forced us to confront this failure.


Women deserve to be honored because they are human beings, and Abagnale’s deviance victimized 12 of them. The movie could not have addressed it, and so it doesn't; it still happened, and knowing that is enough to feel queasy at acclaiming a film that wants us to sympathize with him, regardless of how much it knew. It is about second chances he did not earn, the redemption he never sought, and validation he does not deserve; even if hindsight is 20/20, that does not mean we can ignore what it lets us see.

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It can also be true that we cannot expect retrospective knowledge to affect decades of admiration. After all, that is the basis of revering Catch Me If You Can 20 years down the line: the man at its center is so removed from the actual person it feels like fiction within fiction, a con within a con within a con. Is the ludicrousness of his deceptions so palpable that we can toss it aside and marvel at the movie? For some, no: for others, yes. For Frank Abagnale, Jr.? Absolutely, for better or worse. 

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It has been nearly half a century since all his false cons allegedly occurred, and still, his lies prove an unfortunate truth: our past does not always come back to haunt us. The closeted skeletons do not always get dragged into the light. The truth, even if it catches, can not always condemn. We are human beings with memories, feelings, attachments, and passions. Catch Me If You Can is not Spielberg's best-remembered film, but it resonates with many. Why should he feel guilt for sympathizing with such a vile figure when he did not understand the full breadth of his wickedness? Why should we feel shame for enjoying the spectacle when we have for so long, and the art is so expertly-crafted that pretending otherwise is pointless? 

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The same principle governs the decision to eat animal products: many choose not to, whatever their motives. We know just as many who grapple with the ethics as those who exploit them to feel superior. It is an individual decision we all must understand, even if we do not empathize. A life-long meat-eater cannot get expected to stop because another did, just like a person who swears off a film cannot hold others to their standard. We become used to what we love; abandoning it is never easy, regardless of any moral imperative: not all standards are objective.

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It is the foundation of societal divisions and the primary cause of our inability to close them: no one accepts that their truth is not the truth. In recognition of Abagnale’s seeming sociopathy and sexual abuse, Catch Me If You Can must inspire deeper thought than ever before. It is not a meditation on simple concepts because reality is nuanced. Spielberg didn’t know, nor did we. Now that we do, we must each make our own decision and take the wisdom with us as we consume media from bygone eras, where hindsight exposes far more than many wish to stomach. If we can avoid the mistakes of Columbine or the mainstream interpretation of the #MeToo movement, we can find the moderation society desperately needs.


We can no longer write things off as “the past is the past” as though learning doesn’t require dissecting its worth; we cannot be so defensive of our lawns and try to hose those who step on them with valuable insight. We cannot blame internal choices on external factors. We also cannot burn every film that offends as though, again, learning from it doesn’t demand that we face our history squarely in the face. 

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Catch Me If You Can serves as an example because its offenses are not all blatant. We watch Abagnale trick the sex worker almost as a fact of his narrative; Spielberg doesn’t seem to feel one way or the other about it. We know he goes a step too far, but in the context of his endless parade of schemes, it’s easy to overlook the precise nature of his sexual gambit. It becomes even easier when factoring in our tried and true excuses, like age and home life.

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Frank’s mother is shallow and uncaring, forsaking her marriage when the money dries up and showing more concern for getting exposed than the effect of her infidelity. His father is fun, bringing Frank along on his scheming adventures and sharing the same devilish sense of humor. Frank Jr. doesn’t see his negative impact, though we do: he has natural “talent” but sometimes requires his father’s watchful eye. He knows to fold a crease in a fake doctor’s note but not the specifics of the bank con on which his father takes him. Everything with Frank Sr. is a story, from the two mice trapped in a bucket of cream to how he bagged the most beautiful girl in a small French village. Life has rules about what we can and cannot do and how we should and should not think. Senior has constructed a fantasy; is it entirely Junior’s fault he never realizes the consequences of his actions?

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It is the type of rationalization we give at our discretion. It is always a tale of mental health or deep trauma, anything to feed our delusion that no one is inherently bad. Many examine the Harrises, Klebolds, and Abagnales of society sympathetically, looking for some uncontrollable cause, unable to accept inherent evil. We want to believe in the good and thus dismiss misdeeds as a result of something terrible. 

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No evidence exists to assert Abagnale suffered any soul-crushing traumas aside from his parents’ divorce. Well, his “biopic” got directed by a man who endured that agony: he made Schindler’s List, Jaws, Jurassic Park, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Saving Private Ryan, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, all without notching a single complaint in the #MeToo onslaught. Trauma is not a blanket we can use to protect those we refuse to admit are inherently flawed. If we cringe at the sight of Kevin Spacey’s Lester Burnham for who the actor turned out to be, why can someone not do the same over Frank Abagnale, and his movie, for the same reason?

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The simple answer is selfishness, but the reality of Abagnale is not something we should use to virtue signal. The goal should be capitalization. The dissection of Catch Me If You Can under a modern microscope inspires fruitful questions, forcing us to confront when principles should get applied and the worth of our words. We can still love, watch, and revisit it when we want a dose of whatever it provides. We can also accept that acknowledging a counterpoint does not constitute conceding the argument altogether. Will those who make blanket choices learn not to condemn art because of its subject? Can those employ principle to avoid the music of R. Kelly or Michael Jackson forsake Catch Me If You Can for enriching a liar, stalker, and sexual abuser? Regardless, few films question us this deeply. We’ve spoken of Gone with the Wind and its prejudice, which is low-hanging fruit from a Charlie Brown tree: discussing it or films of its like is now unproductive. Catch Me If You Can is the next step in the dialogue, something that forces us to think deeper and and in new, challenging ways. The nature of the facts, when they came to light, and the implications of our knowledge make it a difficult conversation; if one were to discuss the film, it is, for many reasons, the one most worth having.