Wow! It seems almost nobody has ever heard of the book or the movie made from it. I worked at Beth Israel and people around in that time frame have varying levels of belief about how much of it was based on real people and events. It was the kind of thing that had to be discussed quietly as some of those real people were still there.
I was certain this thread was going to be about something I learned yesterday from reddit’s Today I Learned (TIL).
TIL that gooning is a form of legal kidnapping in the US where a parent can hire someone to kidnap a kid they think is troubled at night to bring them to boarding school or behavior modification facility.
There is further gold in the comments such as the NSFW meaning of gooning.