Al Pacinos Sonny in Dog Day Afternoon wants enough money to give a better life to his wives. soap.. With the premiere of The Town 10 years ago, the No R genre peaked. Culture Editor Tony Sokol is a writer, playwright and musician. If youre gonna make a film of it, you have to add something to it, or try to. According to the Associated Press, Shea, along with Patrick McGonagle, Michael OHalloran, Stephen Burke, and Matthew McDonald, were all from the same Ben wasnt in Boston. The Telegraph values your comments but kindly requests all posts are on topic, constructive and respectful. All three were 25 or under. She prepped for that for God knows how long. Chuck Hogans novel Prince of Thieves opens with a toast: To Charlestown, our one square mile of brick and cobblestone. Everybody wanted to cut it. Who was in which car?, Burke: I remember we were all standing around and they were like, Oh yeah, were gonna blow this thing. There was a van parked there and they fucking blew it up. Whats the best way to get there?. Date Updated: Jan 18, 2023. After shooting one guard outside the car and one inside the bank, they escaped in a rental truck. Affleck: I had great stunt drivers. Affleck had a personal stake in the film that went beyond proving himself as a sophomore director. Both robbers were shot, one in the back and one in the head, and the getaway driver promptly rear-ended a parked car. Jon Hamm (FBI special agent Adam Frawley): I knew he had some serious Boston cred. So unexpected. Hall: Youd be shooting this tiny little intimate scene, Ben and I, and Id look to my left and there were but thousands of people watching the set. While they dont have a street name, FBI Special Agent Adam Frawley (Jon Hamm) calls them The-Not-Fucking-Around-Crew. They plan their jobs meticulously, bleaching crime scenes to eradicate DNA traces, and nuking the security tapes in the banks own microwave. We did all that kind of stuff. But No R.. Not noir, French for black. And to that end, its 100 percent on Ben. Afflecks Doug almost got out of his predetermined life. Hes been forever. I didnt know, physically, how I wanted the character, but I knew that I wanted a guy who was really unpredictable and scary and you felt nervous when they were on screen. Extremely plausible. Chief Judge Frank Caprio#CaughtInProvidence#thetown#bankrobber See less Comments Most relevant Connie Ann My husband and I watched the movie right after I saw the Providence clip. And Ben Affleck was incredibly famous already. Stockard: There is this over-the-top sense to these movies. Well, not take notes, because you couldnt bring in a pencil. Or a child abduction? Stockard: I think the rule that Ben and I always kind of operated with, was like, Look, there are people like me and you who are very much from Boston who dont talk like that. Its not some weird thing that someone from Boston doesnt have a Boston accent. It has ended with the government getting most of the money. Burke: There were the most narrow streets you could find in the North End. The Town (2010 Jon Hamm and Affleck centers on the Boston neighborhood of Charlestown. The FBI reports agents today arrested Anthony M. Hamilton, 24, of Charlestown, on charges he held up a Malden Citizens Bank branch in December, then shot his way out of a locked vestibule. Her performance was savaged by some critics it features the Bride Wars of Boston accents, Wesley Morris wrote in the New York Times but history has been kinder to her. He also ran afoul of the law himself, recruiting real ex-cons as extras and giving them guns. But he could not have been happier to be there. In 2010, Affleck directed The Town, a drama about a gang of Charlestown armored car robbers. Police figures from 2010 showed that Charlestown accounted for barely 2 per cent of all Boston robberies(not just bank robberies). Carter: They were looking at Chris Pine in the very beginning, because of course Star Trek had just come out. He also made sure to populate the movie with people who didnt have to fake their Boston accents. Slaine: When he cast me in Gone Baby Gone I had no acting experienceand I wasnt the only one. A U.S. District Court jury delivered guilty verdicts on 54 of 55 counts, including ones charging the five in the Aug. 25, 1994, robbery in Hudson in which two I wasnt really in the movie world. He was doing a long sentence. 2023 date, start time and how to watch, From the stripper to the slap: the worst moments in Oscars history, Pedro Pascal is the best actor on TV even behind a mask. In Black Mass, Johnny Depp plays South Boston mobster James Whitey Bulger, an Irish gangster who informed on the Italian mob to the FBI. Some were ex-convicts for whom a judges permission had to be sought for them to carry weapons, even fake or unloaded ones. Ill do that., My place in Connecticut is only three hours from Boston, so I just, on a whim, jumped in the car, drove up to Boston, went to the production office and walked in, and David Crockett, one of the producers, and Chay were like, Hey, what are you doing? And I said to Chay, Oh, Im Detective such and such. And she was like, You fucker. I said, Is he here? And she said, Yeah, hes down doing auditions downstairs., I kind of slipped in and waited in line and then said to the production assistant, Dont say my name. Witt: You dont want to go, like, Quantum of Solace at the beginning where you really dont even know where you are, where you shot it. Jem is also Riff to Dougs Tony in West Side Story. And that looks like a detail youd come up with writing a script. I knew it was one scene and it was gonna be an important scene: [Dougs] relationship with his father. 'The Town': Is Charlestown really America's 'bank robbery capital'? Theyre both from Boston and theyre doing the whole Boston thing, and Ben being Ben, in a very playful way, tries to like, wrestle him. He looks at them. Published in 2004 and set in the 90s, it follows a team of stick-up men led by Doug MacRay, a washed-up NHL draft pick and recovering addict whose traumatic childhood has led him to follow his incarcerated father into the family business. I keep waiting for someone of color, anyone whos not like me, this sort of Irish American crime writer, to figure it out and write another great Boston crime movie that doesnt look like all the ones weve seen. When its done great its Joe Pesci in Goodfellas. Job. Its more general American but with a kind of East Coast, sort of slightly privileged vibe. We had this huge screen over the third base dugout. Hamm: I met with Ben and he was like, You know, I think were gonna have plenty of Boston accents in this. I was like, You know what, youre absolutely right. Once I started meeting all the Federal agents in the [FBI] office, very few of them are actually from Boston. Do everything youre supposed to do, they wont be harmed.. And we had a lot of days for a movie that was relatively inexpensive. Needless to say, it really shook me up. I wanted to be a part of that. There was a script written. Oceans Eleven set the cinematic standard for a heist team. Norbums. [The Town] is not just entertainment and popcorn. And Ill tell you why: Nobody was rooting for Jon Hamm and the cops. That whole character she did was really kind of based on her own preparation. The feds, they get shuffled around all over the country. After a seven-day trial, they were convicted on 54 of 55 counts of robbery, including one which resulted in the death of two armored car guards. And I say, Whats that? And they say, Thats a still of someone robbing a bank. And I said, Did they rob the bank in that skeleton mask with the dreadlocks? They said, Yeah. So I became obsessed with that mask. As robbers in Halloween masksbrandish machine guns and snarl at the terrified staff in heavy Boston drawls Everybody on the f----n flaar! you wonder: is this just an average day in Charlestown? I thought I had something to add to it. They look at him. Affleck: There tend to be trends and people feel like at first its fresh, and then its kind of something they like, and then it becomes something that people get tired of. Aaron Stockard (cowriter): Ben called me up and said, I know what I want to direct next. WebCharlestownis the oldest neighborhoodin Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States. The way we did that was to make the days inexpensive. So all of a sudden, while theyre getting married, they hear gunshots at Fenway. But the sketchy details and the cast of characters sound like a story line from The Friends of Eddie Coyle, a classic movie about low-level wiseguys in the Boston underworld, or the sequel to The Town, the Ben Affleck movie based on a group of Charlestown bank robbers. The movie opened on September 17, 2010, to overwhelmingly positive reviews and eventually grossed $154 million at the worldwide box office. The Boston Police Ive never felt all that interested in literally translating from book to page. This isnt because those criminals made the sloppiest getaways. At one point we even had Brad Pitt ready to do it so it was really close. It went on to make $154 million (119 million) worldwide. The guests ran for cover. [1] Originally called Mishawumby the Massachusetttribe, it is located on a peninsulanorth of the Charles River, across from downtown Boston, and also adjoins the Mystic Riverand Boston Harborwaterways. And I was talking to people right next to him. Then they realized that were shooting a movie. Colin Burch (vice president of marketing and broadcasting, Boston Red Sox): We had filmed a number of movies before at Fenway, starting with Fever Pitch, and we did Ted, and RIPD, and Moneyball. The imitators that his opus spawned, however, couldnt recreate what he managed to. I was fine with that. Affleck: Those little streets created something visually interesting that you dont see in many car chases. This shooting game is the newest brilliant sneaking FPS game. Afflecks crew of bank robbers needed genuine local flavor. To observe this life. Welliver: The upside of that is everybody is rooting for him. The Town took $23.8 million (18.4 million) at the box office on its opening weekend, from a budget of just $37 million (28 million). So theres a whole range of accents. Hes crazy. Hes from Modesto, and hes kind of got that bulldog, kind of dirtbag sensibility. I wrote the book, then I went away for a while, then I worked on the script for a year, then I went away for a while, then other people wrote the script. WebDouglas "Doug" MacRay is a former career criminal and professional bank robber from Charlestown, Boston, which was the bank robbery capital of the world. Cooper: I wanted to spend some time in Walpole [at MCICedar Junction] and just observe. Stockard: Obviously youre making a movie so you mythologize it a little bit. Its not just an accent, its more of an attitude. Hogan: Dick Wolf from Law & Order somehow read [the book] early. For instance, the shot in which a cop supervising a traffic stop takes one long look at a carload of nun-masked robbers and turns the other way? Affleck: When this movie came out, the Boston Phoenix review said it had horrible Boston accents. Im gonna do a movie about Iran.. He was definitely a bad guy and was going to take as many people with him as he could, but you still kind of went, You know what, this is a kid that came along, and in a different environment he wouldve been a different person but he is a product of all of this dysfunction and horror that hes grown up in. Its brilliant. After a seven-day trial, they were Jem is his right hand muscle, and unquestioning backup. Hall: I remember going to the premiere and a group of Charlestowners were there and they all said to me, You ever come back to Boston, well get you a car. There was one of my endings and Ben wrote a couple endings, and thats Bens ending that they used. They blew it up and both sides of the street, all the brick buildings were totally covered in soot. I feel like were still in the black. The romance in the middle of the film is only there to delineate the boundaries between heist film and crime procedural. And everyone was like, Ah, you cant, really. But as I was signing books afterwards, I see this guy coming up. He was a local hockey star who got drafted by the NHL, but started beating on his own teammates and got sent back home. The Town captures the locale expertly, and the atmosphere masterfully. MacRay, who is a recovering addict with mommy issues, is more of a sociopath than Jem, who is only living the way the streets taught him. Affleck: Id been in action sequences plenty, so I kind of knew how they worked. Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! And Blake spent some time with her. Id been in good ones and bad ones, but I knew that it took time, that they were the result of the assembly of a lot of little pieces. [Through a representative, Renner declined to be interviewed for this article.]. Thats how you drive a f----n caaar, declares the getaway driver, Gloansy (played by rapper Slaine). Stockard: Do we want to punish this person or do we not? It is also quirkily structured, vaguely biographical and personal. Location scouting was uppermost in his mind. Burke: Ive heard people say, Oh, we dont sound like that! And Im like, I dont think you guys really listen to yourselves. I call them No R movies, Hogan says. After managing to evade a manhunt and escape to Florida, his character says goodbye to Claire via a letter. Affleck: The Yawkey Red Sox, Im sure, wouldve been impossible. The actor who played James Jem Coughlin, Dougs ex-con buddy, however, wasnt from Boston. For example, with my brother [Casey] in Gone Baby Gone, I thought it really benefited from the fact that he wasnt so well-known. WebAccording to lore, when the Boston Police Department hears of a bank robbery happening in the city, the first thing they do is close the Charlestown bridge. the movie the TOWN WAS Mde after SQUARE OFF T.V 249 subscribers Subscribe 6 Share 1.2K views 1 year But he also liked this book by Chuck Hogan. But he pointed out the quote. Solemn now: To The Town. We had bank robbers, we had career criminals, people that couldnt show up certain days because theyd be violating their parole. I said, Im so sorry to bother you Mr. Postlethwaite, but Im on the movie, sorry we dont have any scenes together, but Im so excited to be in a movie with you. I gushed for a while, and he just smiled as broad as he could, and hes like, Come on, come on, sit down, have a drink. I was like, Well, its 11 in the morning.. Affleck: The day that were shooting the shoot-out with Jeremy, where he gets killed out in front of the McDonalds behind Fenwaywhen you do these stunts with cars, you have to really clean the streets immaculately because these drivers are precision drivers. Craig: We went into a bit of a quandary about the ending. Thats the one moment that gives you a glimpse into how damaged and how profoundly broken Jem is. They like walking out with a little bit of hope. 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