Money can be an intense motivator, and in the film Catch Me if You Can (directed by Steven Spielberg) Frank Abagnale Jr. learns some very illegal ways to make an amazing living. The story is set in the early sixties and begins with the usual happy family scenario. Frank Abagnale Sr. has a good job and at a banquet he makes a speech about two small mice falling into a bucket of cream. He describes how one of the mice drown, but the other one struggled so hard that he eventually churned the cream in the bucket to butter and walked out. Frank Sr. was a hardworking man who got to where he was as a direct result of his efforts. Unfortunately, he also wasn’t the most honest man either and the bank takes their home due to tax fraud.

The real Frank at age 16, posing with a stewardess.

Frank Jr. then begins to see his family fall apart. His mother us unhappy with the new situation and takes one of his father’s friends as a lover. Eventually his parents get divorced, and they sit him down at a table with a lawyer and ask him to choose which parent he wants to live with. Unable to make the decision, he runs away from home. After he runs out of money he begins writing bad checks that always bounce. He stumbles into a situation where he is given a good idea; that he could easily make a lot of money by impersonating an airline pilot. He had impersonated a substitute French teacher in school and taught the class (making lesson plans, and even scheduling a field trip) for a full week before anyone caught on, so why not be a pilot?

Frank goes through with his plan and becomes a guy in a airline pilot uniform, though he never actually flies a plane. Throughout the movie he manages to also impersonate a doctor and legitimately pass the bar exam to become a lawyer, all while being chased by the FBI. The most interesting bit of information about this movie is that heavily based on the real life accomplishments of a man by the same name; and he did it all before his eighteenth birthday.

May we reconvene under the blood red moon,
-Black Widow