Last year, when the BBC started showing Hustle, I read a piece by one of the writers explaining where the inspiration came from. Obviously there’ve been plenty of films covering this area, more of which later. But one book he mentioned was The Big Con by David Maurer.
It was first published in 1940, and followed some exhaustive research work into the lives of America’s con artists. In the book, he details precisely how some of the more commonly found “Big Cons” worked, as well as other variants and devices used. It’s an amazing insight into a world full of “ropers” and “marks” (a roper is the person who goes out to find the sucker, or rather, mark). He then “tells the story” and brings the mark back to the “store”.
The lengths these teams went to, and the awards that were available to them were remarkable. Certainly policemen and other officials had to be paid off, but the insights are fascinating.
The key with many of these cons is that the mark has to be essentially dishonest. The “games” only work if the mark is willing to do something a little suspect, like bet on a fixed race, or take part in a dubious syndicate of stock brokers. If you’re completlely honest, you won’t be taken.
The book is obviously detailing life pre-war, but you can see how variants of some of these things could carry on working today. My question is how many big teams really continue to work like this?
Over the weekend I had a bit of a “con-man” film festival.
First up was Matchstick Men, which is one of the few Ridley Scott films I hadn’t previously seen. Nicolas Cage plays a small time con-artist who works with Sam Rockwell. But then Cage is reintroduced to his daughter. Like many of the films in this genre, there’s a sting in the tale, and I was caught out. I quite enjoyed it – and there were some neat short cons played out.
Then I watched a classic – House of Games. This was David Mamet’s debut film, and starred his wife of the time, Lindsey Crouch (featuring his actress wife is something of a Mamet hallmark, with more recent films featuring his current wife, Rebecca Pigeon). Crouch played a psychologist who is “roped” by Joe Mantegna into the world of conmen. We see tricks played, but of course something else is going on too. There are some great plays, and it’s an excellent film. Mamet later revisited much of this territory with The Spanish Prisoner – a “game” you’ll find referenced in The Big Con.
My final film was the Stephen Frears movie, The Grifters, starring Anjelica Huston, John Cusack and Annette Bening as a trio who live by dubious means. Less a straightforward con movie than the other two, it does feature some basic small scale stings. But then organised crime has more of part in this film. It’s based on the novel by Jim Thompson written in 1963. Although the film is set in the present day (well 1990 when it was made anyway), it still feels as though it might be set in a world 30 years earlier than that. Some great performances though.
Now we just have the second series of Hustle to look forward to.