Jeff Nathanson

Inspiration comes early for some writers, and Jeff Nathanson is no exception. After spotting a course on screenwriting in his college catalog, he was hooked: "I started writing scripts at 18 and haven't stopped." Luck has been on his side. What he thought would turn out to be just a great writing sample has been topping the box office for weeks now-Steven Spielberg's Catch Me if You Can, starring Leonardo Di Caprio and Tom Hanks, and based on the life of real-life con artist turned FBI expert Frank Abagnale, Jr. A departure from his earlier work on such action-oriented fare as Twister, Speed 2: Cruise Control and Rush Hour 2, the UCLA and AFI alumnus is now hard at work on his upcoming directorial debut for Disney, for which he also wrote the script.

Jennifer Wood (MM): How did you get involved with Catch Me If You Can?

Jeff Nathanson (JN): I heard a tape of Frank Abagnale talking about his life, which he does quite a bit. He goes to all sort of conventions, banker's conventions and all kinds of things, and does a 30-minute presentation on his story. Someone had put that on tape and I heard it and I took the tape to Dreamworks. I had worked with [producer] Walter Parkes there quite a bit. I told him I wanted to make the movie and he bought it. Then we bought the life rights and the book rights from Frank and started developing the script.

MM: How long did you work on the script?

JN: I think the whole process was a little over three or four years in development. I think Leonardo DiCaprio was the first person to sign on and then, about a year after DiCaprio, Spielberg came on.

MM: What was your writing process for the film? How much research did you have to do?

JN: I did a lot of interviews with Frank himself. I met with him several times, had long, in-depth interviews and really tried to get him to talk about his childhood in a way that he hadn't done before. I actually think the movie is more accurate about his childhood than the book, which was written in like two weeks.

Frank started talking about his father one day, and that sort of got us into this whole long discussion about why he actually did what he did. The other research was really just period research.

MM: Being that Frank is really an expert on the topic, I wouldn't think you'd need to go much further than him.

JN: Exactly. Steven is really into detail and accuracy, so quite a bit of work was done just to try to capture the period. Not only in the script, but the costumes and the production design really captured the period beautifully.

MM: Did you feel at all constricted in the creative liberties you wanted-or could-take because, one, the script was based on an actual person, but also because it was based on this individual who you had developed a personal relationship with?

JN: Not really, only because Frank isn't exactly a historical figure. It's not like we were doing the John Adams story-it's the life of a con man. From the very beginning I think, in my head at least, I wasn't trying to do every moment exactly as it happened. And the only person who knows exactly what happened is Frank, and I'm not sure if he'll ever tell anyone every detail of what happened when he was on the run for those years.

MM: Is what's up on the screen how you envisioned the final product while you were writing it?

JN: No, no-not at all. When I was writing the script I didn't think anyone would ever make the movie. I was really just doing it as a sample to do some new sort of writing. At that time, I think Hollywood was perceiving me in a different way and I was sort of desperate to try something else. I just figured I'd write this little movie and it would never get made, but at least it would be a good sample. Certainly, you can never in your wildest dreams, say 'Oh, it's going to be a Tom Hanks-Steven Spielberg-Leonardo DiCaprio movie.' That just goes beyond the realm.

MM: You mentioned being perceived by Hollywood as a different kind of writer. As much as Catch Me if You Can is a father and son story, it's also  very action-oriented, which is a lot of what you had done before. Do you think that some writers are better suited to particular genres?

JN: Not really. I'm not much of an action writer, to be honest. I mean, Jackie Chan choreographs all of his own action stuff, so maybe I get credit for stuff that I never did! [laughs] The truth is Hollywood only makes a certain kind of movie; all the movies that are churned out are pretty similar. If you want to work within that system-and you actually want to make a living at it-you pretty much either work on Hollywood studio films or you only write for yourself and hope to get small, independent films made.

I don't think you can blame the writers of the world and say "They only write a certain kind of film" or "They should only write a certain kind of film." I think we're all kind of scrambling to find things that are a little bit outside the box and desperate to do anything that is a little bit different. It's nice that Catch Me if You Can, while it is clearly a piece of large entertainment, is also not really classifiable as a certain genre.

MM: So what are you working on now?

JN: I'm about four weeks away from directing my first movie. It's a dark comedy for Disney, also based on a true story, about the FBI's decision in 1987 to try to go after John Gotti by making a movie. They actually decided that they would make a film in Providence, RI as a way of implicating the teamsters. The mobsters were peddling bribes between the teamsters and the movie people.

MM: And you wrote this, as well?

JN: I did. I wrote it, and Matthew Broderick and Alec Baldwin are going to star in it with Toni Collette and Calista Flockhart. We start literally in a month!

MM: So you're a little stressed-publicity for Catch Me if You Can while you're trying to prepare your own movie?

JN: [laughing] Well, writers don't get that much publicity, so it's not that daunting-I've got to be honest!