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(More customer reviews)"Con Man" is the strange but true story of James Hogue; a prolific con artist. After an uneventful childhood and adulthood in Kansas, he enrolled in a Palo Alto high school as "Jay Mitchell Huntsman," a 16 year old orphan from Nevada. The director of this documentary knew Hogue from those high school days. He set track records there, but was very mysterious, and he was exposed as a fraud when a local reporter digs up his birth certificate which states that he was dead. He was suspended and then expelled from Palo Alto high School. Hogue was then arrested and convicted of the theft of bicycle frames in Utah, and deferred his admission to Princeton while he served his sentence. He next enrolled at Princeton in 1988 under the name Alexi Indris-Santana, a self-taught orphan from Utah. He was accepted by the staff of Princeton as brilliant, and had friends, although he was known to be quiet and a loner. His identity was exposed at a track meet when a student from Palo Alto high school recognized him. The film concentrates on what occured at Princeton and at Palo Alto high school. It is fascinating to watch. The interview with James Hogue (in which he NEVER makes eye contact with the camera) really makes the documentary. He rationalizes his actions, and does not take responsibility for being a fraud. He mentions that if he were a drug addict, there would be hundreds of psychiatrists interested in his story, but because he is not he never got the medical attention he needed to stop. It is continuously repeated in his story, and by him, that Hogue was just "...trying to make a fresh start."
It is never mentioned as to why Hogue chose Princeton to swindle, rather than some other Ivy league school, or why he did not choose to enroll under his real name at a less prestigious school and get a legitimate degree. Upon seeing this documentary I got the distinct feeling that even Hogue does not know why he chose Princeton, or why he does what he does, that his behavior is compulsive.
In the documentary his friends at Princeton and his professors that are interviewed do not appear that they have been conned by Hogue. His friends actually appear regretful that he was not allowed to finish at Princeton. It is pointed out by one friend that despite the fact he was using an assumed identity, Hogue took the SATs himself and scored a 1410, and made excellent grades at Princeton in some of the hardest subjects while the students that got in on their own merit did not fare as well. An interview with his attorney during that time period also sympathized with Hogue, and stated that the scandal should have just been dealt with within Princeton and Hogue expelled, rather than he receive jail time and massive publicity. The police are not as sympathetic. The director of the film is sympathetic to Hogue as well, and possibly due to that he leaves some details out of Hogue's life after he left Princeton. He next made headlines in 1993 with his association with Harvard. He worked as a security guard in one of their museums under an assumed name and stole gemstones on exhibit, and replaced them with fakes. He was charged with grand larceny. He then violated the conditions of his parole by returning to Princeton in 1996 under the assumed name of Jim MacAuthor. He was again found out, arrested, , and eventually tried for "defiant trespass."
And there is more. Police searched Hogue's home in Colorado in January 2005 and found 7,000 stolen items, worth over $100,000, from homes in which Hogue had worked as a repairman and remodeller. For this, he received a 10 year prison sentence.
"Con Man" is intriguing. You will not be able to stop watching this documentary.
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Mesmerizing and provocative, CON MAN explores the remarkable life of James Arthur Hogue, a brilliant imposter who embraced the American art of self-invention, fabricated a spectacular series of fictional identities for himself, and successfully conned his way into Princeton University. CON MAN begins with Hogue’s shocking arrest on the Princeton campus--where he’d earned a scholarship and a place on the track team--and then traces his life backwards to Palo Alto, where he pulled a similar scam at a suburban high school, and finally, to the humble streets of Kansas City, where he grew up. Filmmaker Jesse Moss--a high school classmate--interviews the impostor’s close friends, college roommate, prison cellmate, and ultimately Hogue himself, who speaks on camera for the first time ever about his crimes. Moss also gained access to previously sealed police records, including Hogue’s fradulent Princeton application and an audio recording of Hogue’s police interrogation. CON MAN is an intimate and disturbing profile of an elusive impostor who dared to outrun his past in pursuit of his own dark version of the American dream. DVD Features: Deleted Scenes; Original James Hogue Police Interview; Trailer; Photo Gallery; Interactive Menus; Scene Selection
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