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He said that he had been mugged, that his money and thesis - on the criminal justice system - had been taken, and that he needed a place to stay until his father arrived in town at the Pierre Hotel the next day. Hampton telephoned both couples -on successive nights - and told them that his name was David Poitier and that he was a college friend of their children. Among the families he duped, besides the Elliotts, were their friends John Jay Iselin, who was then the president of Channel 13, and his wife, Lea, a lawyer. Hampton that others acknowledge his chosen identity. Though theft was apparently a motive, it seemed to have been equally important to Mr. 18, 1983, 19-year-old David Hampton was arrested in Manhattan for posing as Sidney Poitier's son in order to gain access to the homes of certain New Yorkers. I bought Sidney Poitier's autobiography at the Strand and just did it.'' I had lost touch with the incident, but suddenly, I somehow felt I had to write about it. ''Two good friends of mine, Osborn Elliott - who was then the dean of the Columbia School of Journalism - and his wife, Inger, visited me and said, 'Have we got a story for you!' It turned out that they were among those taken in by David Poitier's scam. ''I had been in England when it happened,'' he said. Guare wrote the play last summer, after discovering some forgotten newspaper clippings about Mr. Audiences leave wondering where the facts stop and Mr. Hampton's life never made it to the stage (where he is portrayed by James McDaniel). Some of his story is the basis for ''Six Degrees of Separation,'' the new play by John Guare that opened to critical acclaim last week at the Mitzi E. Calling himself David Poitier, he turned his fantasy into a shocking hoax that touched the lives of many prominent New Yorkers and landed him in prison. Someone who would finally understand him.ĭavid Hampton, growing up in Buffalo, chose Sidney Poitier.īut unlike other boys, Mr.
#Six degrees of separation john guare movie
That he was meant instead to be the child of someone infinitely more suitable - a king, a president, a movie star.
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Six Degrees of Separation is one of those rare works that capture both the supercharged pulse of our present era and the deepest and most mysterious movements of the human heart.It's every boy's dream - that his mean, old, ordinary parents really aren't his at all.
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"In this soaring and deeply provacative tragicomedy of race, class, and manners, John Guare has created the msot important American play in years. Guare uses the props of the late twentieth century, such as social issues and art, to create a comprehensive picture of a fragmented society, one in which those simple six degrees that bind people together are overlooked, blatantly ignored, and, very occasionally, celebrated Guare based the premise of his play on an actual incident-a young African-American man gained access to the homes of upper-class New Yorkers by pretending to be the son of actor Sidney Poitier-but the creation of the play is an imaginative tour de force. Xiii, 120 pages, 4 unnumbered pages of plates : 21 cmĬalled a tragicomedy by some critics, Six Degrees of Separation is a witty, biting, yet ultimately sincere commentary on what drives people: the desire for money, fame, social standing, comfort, and, for the lucky, a desire for meaningful human connection.