CONVIVIAL PURSUIT 'CATCH ME IF YOU CAN' REFRESHED FILM'S PRINCIPALS.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

After years of slogging through dystopian sci-fi futures, World War II battlefields, rain-drenched Depressions and endless cycles of 19th-century violence, Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio needed to have some fun.

So the director and two superstars got together to make ``Catch Me If You Can,'' a blithe, period caper comedy. It's based on the true-life adventures of Frank Abagnale Jr., who as a teenager in the early 1960s passed himself off as an airline pilot and got jobs as a hospital surgeon and district attorney, while cashing millions upon millions of dollars in phony checks.

OK, so criminality on a grand scale, with a subtext of broken family trauma familiar from many a Spielberg film (and, not coincidentally, from the real-life experiences of Hanks, DiCaprio and the filmmaker), may not be everybody's idea of a busman's holiday. But when your resumes have recently been weighted down with the heavy-duty likes of ``Minority Report,'' ``Road to Perdition,'' ``Gangs of New York,'' ``A.I.'' and ``Saving Private Ryan,'' a romp through the American Dreamland at its hedonistic height has got to be a relief, whatever the movie's underlying implications.

``We had a lot of fun on the set,'' notes Spielberg, the most successful moviemaker in history - and, over the last decade, among the most serious. ``It wasn't a kind of movie like 'Minority Report' or 'A.I.' where everybody was respectful of the darkness. On this set, there were so many laughs, it brought me back to the days when I made 'Jurassic Park' and 'E.T.,' when I actually got to laugh while making a picture.''

Filmed in a relatively quick 56 days at locations across the continent, ``Catch Me'' was even a relatively cheap trip: Spielberg says the detailed period piece's budget was $65 million - half of which went toward star salaries.

For DiCaprio, who was coming off a multiyear commitment to shooting Martin Scorsese's ``Gangs of New York'' the speed and lightness of Spielberg's production had a tonic effect.

Freeways and leeway

``This was a much different style of filmmaking,'' the young ``Titanic'' icon, who plays Abagnale in the film, understates. `` 'Gangs of New York' started, essentially, three years ago; actually, physically being in Rome took almost 10 months. It was one of the most rewarding experiences I've ever had as an actor, but you lose that sort of independent spirit of filmmaking. But I had it with this experience, which happened this year.

``This movie was like a road picture,'' DiCaprio fondly adds. ``We were constantly moving from location to location, and the pacing of it was really intense. Steven did that very consciously, because he wanted the movie to reflect Frank Abagnale's real life, how he was constantly thrown into situations and had to use his instincts as an actor to get out of them.''

Spielberg confirms that he thought in terms of function following form.

``I tried to shoot this picture in the way that Frank Abagnale perpetrated his rather creative schemes,'' says the director. ``I wanted the movie to have an air of innocence and adolescence, but at the same time I was very concerned that the movie continued to be serious in tone when it comes to this young boy who doesn't have a mother and father in his life like he used to and is alone in the world. It was balancing those two tones, the comedy and the drama, that made it a challenge for me.''

``Catch's'' screenplay, which Jeff Nathanson adapted from Abagnale's memoirs a number of years ago, was tilted more toward the effect his parents' split had on the teenage scam artist once Spielberg agreed to direct.

While DiCaprio was linked to the project well before these developments, Hanks was attracted to the role of Carl Hanratty - the FBI agent who tracked Abagnale for years and, after the felon's capture, became a kind of mentoring father figure to the larcenous but reforming lad - partially because he could intimately relate to the broken-family story line.

``My parents pioneered the marriage dissolution laws for the state of California,'' Hanks reminds us. ``They got divorced way before it was hip, man; we were celebrities on our block because we had three sets of different stepparents. But it's a watermark in anybody's life, when your parents break up. It's usually painful in some way.

``I think that's part and parcel to the grander theme of this movie,'' the back-to-back Oscar winner says. ``Great movies are always about loneliness. In this case, you have a very lonely guy, Carl Hanratty, who actually belongs to a big family in the FBI. And you have lonely Frank, who is searching, I think, for something to belong to. That's very evocative and very recognizable.''

``It's probably the most direct approach I've ever taken to divorce,'' Spielberg admits. ``Frank seems to benefit from it because of this high lifestyle he manufactures for himself and all the fun he has and all the fun we have watching him go through these different scams. But by the same token, if I must be on the couch about this, it probably is the first time I've directly blamed a broken home for what makes Frank run ... and, perhaps, for what made me run when I was leaving home after my parents were divorced.''

Master of deception

That story famously goes something like this: While visiting L.A., the runaway Spielberg ran away from the Universal Studios Tour tram, installed himself in an empty office on the actual studio lot and, for the next three summers, came to ``work'' as if he actually, well, worked there, fooling guards and executives and producers into letting him observe their sets.

Obviously, this was another formative experience that the filmmaker and Abagnale had in common. Now one of the world's top security experts (after his capture, he went to work for the FBI's check fraud division), Abagnale was relieved to learn that another consummate fibber-turned-good would be telling his story.

``I was very concerned about it, but once I read that Steven Spielberg was going to direct it, I knew that he would not make a movie that was just going to glorify what I did,'' Abagnale confesses. ``I knew that if he was going to make it, he obviously had a statement to make and he saw something in the film. And I knew of his background - running away at 16, parading onto the lot - so I knew there was a parallel there. So I figured he had statements he wanted to make about his own life.''

Which proves that even the cagey Frank Abagnale can be fooled.

`If I had taken a moral approach, I would have taken it from the point of view of the FBI agent and created more of a shadow of the perpetrator,'' Spielberg says. ``But I really think this is Frank Abagnale's story. I think he was kind of a genius. He had a great imagination, a tremendous presentational style and could sell himself to anyone.''

In other words, the kid could really act. But although he agreed to a brief cameo appearance in the movie, Abagnale has a little difficulty accepting the notion that he's in a league with Hanks and DiCaprio.

``As Leo pointed out, this guy must have been one of the great actors,'' Abagnale says of, well, himself. ``At the time, you don't think of yourself as acting, you're just out doing this stuff. But in reality, when I look back on it, I was pretending to be somebody I wasn't 24 hours a day, except when I was alone in a room by myself. But I'm certainly not going to go out and be an actor, believe me.''

Can we? According to Hanks, whatever the perks of being a top Hollywood movie star may be - and they are more than anything Frank Abagnale could have imagined back in 1964 - the fundamental thrill remains exactly the same thing that the kid used to love.

``I didn't go into it for any other reason than it's fun,'' Hanks says of acting. ``There's nothing more fun than pretending to be somebody else. Look, Frank Abagnale was having a great time. That whole thing about the power of the Pan Am uniform? I understand that exactly.''

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) `catch' of the day

DiCaprio, Spielberg, Hanks went fishing for a fun movie and returned with a caper

(2) Tom Hanks, left, and Leonardo DiCaprio in ``Catch Me If You Can.''

(3) Steven Spielberg