This is a fascinating and funny video -- most especially if you’ve seen the movie Catch Me If You Can. It’s from the Tonight Show in 1978 -- an interview between Johnny Carson and the real-life Frank Abagnale. Yes, that Frank Abagnale, the imposter con man who Leonardo DiCapprio played in the 2002 movie, chased by Tom Hanks (and directed by Stephen Spielberg). What it also is…is 18 minutes long, so they get into a great deal, and it’s a very nice job of interviewing by a clearly-engrossed Johnny Carson (just look at his expression in the freeze-frame below...), knowing that it's best to rarely interrupt Abignale in order to let him tell his stories. Those stories include a few that later made their way into the movie, and so we get the fully accurate versions. For instance, he tells about posing as an airline pilot, which is one of last cons in the movie, but here he says it was his first. And there’s his story about being with the famous model who worked as a prostitute (played in the movie by Jennifer Garner) -- though what he explains here has a great deal more information than in the film and some hilarious twists. One thing that I especially liked is that at the beginning of the interview Johnny Carson mentions that Abagnale’s life story is similar to that of Ferdinand Waldo Demara about who the movie, The Great Imposter was made with Tony Curtis – that I wrote about here in 2017. It looks like the two other guests are actors Jill Ireland and George Peppard who become so intrigued by it all that they even jump in with questions. By the way, at one point Carson gets bleeped. I suspect that – without giving away what his joke is -- the word that got bleeped was “screwed.”
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AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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