Opinion: Hustling History--When Truth is Better Than Fiction

Because I’m a sucker for any plotline that involves New Jersey, I plan to see the new movie “American Hustle,” inspired by the Abscam scandal of the 1970s. But I’m already disappointed by the caveat that appears on the screen before it starts: “Some of this actually happened.”

If there’s any story that doesn’t need embroidering, it’s Abscam, with its cast of colorful conmen, FBI agents operating on the edge of the law, and politicians so greedy that they accepted bribes from a palpably bogus sheik -- all exhaustively documented in untold hours of courtroom transcripts and secretly recorded videotapes.

I only hope that “American Hustle” is as funny as The Selling of Vince D'Angelo, Danny DeVito’s take on Abscam that was released in 1983. I’ll never understand why moviemakers insist on fictionalizing historical events that are dramatic enough in their own right. Sticking to the facts doesn’t have to result in a tendentious documentary or a lifeless History Channel production.

In writing the screenplay for “Lincoln,” Tony Kushner went to great lengths to ensure its historical accuracy, and that effort helped earn him his Oscar nomination.

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