2. The True Story Of Catch Me If You Can Was Less Fun
Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can is a fun caper film about old fuddy-duddy FBI agent Tom Hanks chasing after young rebellious con man Leonardo DiCaprio. DiCaprio's Frank Abagnale was a real guy who pretended to be everything from a surgeon to an airplane pilot with uncanny accuracy, for which he was relentlessly pursued by the authorities. Hanks's FBI fraud agent Carl Hanratty, meanwhile, didn't actually exist. He's a complete fiction. The film depicts the two engaged in a cat-and-mouse pursuit, with the pair forming a grudging respect for each other than eventually blossoms into genuine friendship. Which never happened because, again, Hanratty doesn't exist. He's loosely based on real agent Joe Shea, who didn't have much of a connection with Abagnale and worked as part of a larger operation. Hanratty was added to the script to act as a surrogate father in place of the con man's absent dad, played by Christopher Walken, who actually was around and was a jerk so Abagnale made him his first victim.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
