The Bale character transforms himself into a financial consultant who steals the money of his clients and helps a former stripper (Amy Adams) impersonate a British noblewoman with access to English banks.
(“If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.”)Ĭhristian Bale’s obsessive crook in American Hustle has a sales pitch not all that far from Parker’s - a story too good to be true but nevertheless credible to the greedy and the desperate. He was convicted of fraud and died in prison, having earned a place in the language that endures to this moment.
He also sold the Statue of Liberty and Grant’s Tomb (claiming to be the grandson of its occupant). For years, according to the legend, he sold the Brooklyn Bridge about twice a week, offering it for a few hundred dollars but sometimes asking “only half price.” He fired the imaginations of his victims by describing the fortune that could be made by building a toll gate and collecting a modest sum from everyone who crossed the bridge.