ABSCAM-The Movie

I enjoy movies.  Always have.  From time to time the world of Hollywood intersects with my professional life.  Such was the case with "American Hustle."

In case you don't know, the movie with an all star cast, is about an FBI investigation into white collar crime during the late 1970s.  Dubbed ABSCAM (the FBI had an agent impersonate an Arab sheik -- named Abul and it was a scam, hence ABSCAM), the case moved from looking into forged art, to securities, to political corruption.  You can read more about the real life investigation here from the FBI's perspective, as well as here from a recent journalistic attempt to link ABSCAM to the NSA scandal.

As a movie goer, the film was a lot of fun.  Very well acted.  Nice soundtrack.  Well directed.  It captured the "vibe" of the late 1970s quite well.  You can take a look at the cast and the movie's official website here.  Any awards the film generates are well deserved.

As an historian, the movie left me a bit wanting.  It mixed fact with fantasy a bit to much for me.  Now, this isn't just because they didn't film it in Philadelphia (where some of the story actually took place) or some other "dramatic license" issue with the past.  Rather, it is because for three years I got to know some the people who were actually involved in ABSCAM (on the federal side of things), and while the movie got the feel right, the actually story, in some ways, is even more outlandish than what appears on film.  From 2007 until 2010, I was the lead researcher for the Historical Society of the United States District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania, as they put together a history of their court.  It was an honor and pleasure to get to work with and for them and the legal community of Philadelphia.  The end result of my research was turned into a book, authored by the Honorable Harvey Bartle III, Mortals with Tremendous Responsibilities.  Those of you who have read The Mainline know that much of the discussion about church/state and the law are drawn from my work in Philadelphia with the court.



The point of all this isn't that "American Hustle" isn't worth your time and money  (I think it is).  But rather, that once you've walked, breathed, rubbed shoulders with, indeed, experienced history or an historic event, no cinematic undertaking is ever going to be able to capture what it was really like, no matter how good.  In one part of the movie, Christian Bale (playing the part of Irving Rosenfeld--the small time con man who teaches the FBI how to hustle) shows Bradley Cooper (playing the part of Richie Dimaso the FBI agent who busts and flips Bale's character in an earlier scam) a painting at a museum.  Rosenfeld tells Dimaso that this beautiful piece of art is a forgery, but that it was done so well no one knows the difference.  The message being that a well put together ("from the feet up" as they say in the movie) scam is real because people believe it to be so...that perception is reality.  Perhaps that is true on some sort of philosophical level.  But I'd argue that once you know the truth, all imitations pale in comparison.