Afflecks second film as a director charts the fall of a mythic heist gang and the streets which made them. 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. When we started, I said, I need a driver whos Charlestown born and bred. Interestingly enough, my driver was a guy named John Fidler who was a major suspect in many bank robberies, and also bread truck robberies. Its just great that hes from here and hes back. And this woman looked at me and shes like, Hes not from heah! OK, hes from, like, three miles away. There are three tiers of cells. [But] Warners gave it back to Adrian and said, You know what, shop it around. He took it to Imagine; he took it to Universal. Police Arrest Charlestown Man Following Bank Robbery - Charlestown, MA - Officers responded to the Santander Bank at 437 Rutherford Avenue early Sunday morning. I love Adrian. But it couldnt be Bruins. Slaine: Owen and I didnt have to listen to anybody. Hogan: Warner Bros. didnt want to make the movie for that amount. It was sort of trying to be patrician and they had, and still do, a very distinct way of talking thats not actually common to most people in Massachusetts, in my experience. Welliver: So, when [Jem] gets killed at Fenway, when the cops dump him and [theres] that brilliant thing of him reaching down and taking a sip of the soda behind the mailbox, it was a little bit of, Top of the world, ma! Its heartbreaking. Because of oversaturation in the last decade, Boston movies have been rightfully skewered. He said, Shes slightly different. Marblehead is a little chi-chi. In adapting the script, itself adapted from Chuck Hogans novel Prince of Thieves, Affleck and Aaron Stockard (with whomhe also worked on Good Will Hunting and Gone Baby Gone) changed the cinema setting of the second heist to an armoured-car robbery and car chase based on a real incident that took place in Harvard Square. 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: Rebecca worked just as hard on the accent. Adrian had wanted to do one of my books, which was kind of unadaptable because it took place over like, 30 years. The imitators that his opus spawned, however, couldnt recreate what he managed to. With a relatively modest budget of $37 million, he made a classic heist flick thats well, porn for New Englanders: the heavy Boston accents; the scene in a Dunkin Donuts; and, oh yeah, the fact that a crew of robbers takes down Fenway Park. Chuck Hogan (author, Prince of Thieves): When the book came out, I was scheduled to do a reading at the Charlestown Public Library. They dont fink. And I got a call saying that [Fatal Attraction and Indecent Proposal director] Adrian Lyne had read it and really wanted to do something with it. The sentence subtly shapes the viewers response to the daytime bank heist thatstarts the film. Or a child abduction? UPDATE: Ordered held in lieu of $50,000 bail, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports. According to FBI statistics from the same year, the entire state of Massachusetts had fewer than 3 per cent of all bank robberies nationwide. He often has a very small crew. And Ill tell you why: Nobody was rooting for Jon Hamm and the cops. And I was talking to people right next to him. It kind of had a post-apocalyptic feeling to it. The movies center is Charlestown, right across the bridge from the rest of Boston, a legend in illicit locales. Extremely plausible. It included a mastermind, a distraction, a partner, a coordinator, a backer, hacker, con man, and gadget guy. Jem is also Riff to Dougs Tony in West Side Story. Its not The Godfather of caper films, but it is a heist movie must-see. The city also set the scene for Clint Eastwoods Mystic River, and Afflecks directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone, both based on books by local crime novelist Dennis Lehane. [Adrian Lyne did not respond to a request to be interviewed for this article.]. So he uses them in that way. Also, Starr starred in a silent movie based on his criminal activity titled A Debtor to the Law. The Town captures the locale expertly, and the atmosphere masterfully. We went back to his hotel room right after. When Doug wakes Jem up in the middle of the night to do some damage and ask no questions, the only thing his friend wants to know is which car they should take. When I was a kid, I was scared to go there. The Boston Police That was the moment where I realized that I could differentiate one bank robbery from another. There have been dozens of films and television shows filmed in the Bay State over the last decade, but by the time the 2010s came to a close, the popularity of the No R genre had faded. Claire represents the real problem at the center of the proceedings. Chuck Hogans novel Prince of Thieves opens with a toast: To Charlestown, our one square mile of brick and cobblestone. But he also liked this book by Chuck Hogan. Gone Girl we shot a hundred days for a two-hour thriller. And so if you cant do it, just dont do it. The romance in the middle of the film is only there to delineate the boundaries between heist film and crime procedural. I was playing a character that was from Boston and I worked really hard on the accent and went in and did my first rounds and the director said, That was great. FBI figures reveal significantly higher crime rates pre-gentrification. Now, William shares his story after his Caught in Providence case went viral. When I saw it, I thought, Its fine. I wound up learning a lot from how Ben did that. WebFind many great new & used options and get the best deals for Lego Jail Prisoner Robber Crook Minifigure Lot of 12 w/ Accessories Town City at the best online prices at eBay! That would be the equivalent of approximately $5 million today. Im mighty proud of where I come from, he says. Aaron Stockard (cowriter): Ben called me up and said, I know what I want to direct next. They think theres no more serious white people in Charlestown, says local girl Kris (Blake Lively) early in the film. He came over and he was a little bit shy but she was speaking for him. Affleck was determined to make sure that his main cast could at least pass as true Massholes. The violent film starring Jeremy Renner, John Hamm and Ben Affleck centers on the Boston neighborhood of Charlestown. In all of his years of being a criminal, he robbed two banks and seven armored cars, plus robbing Fenway Park during a baseball game. The car chases get stuck in traffic, and the dialogue comes directly from testimony. Pretty much everyone on the set was an ex-con of some sort,Jeremy Renner told the LA Times. We all want to chortle,like Jem,there goes college soccaaar, while shooting a guy we dont like in the knee. Affleck: Its parochial and kind of a small town in some ways. He set the bar with those filmsyou [must] reach a modicum of the depth and the artistry of those films if youre going to do a Boston film. In real life, they were not so lucky. You woke me up.. Starring: Ben Affleck Rebecca Hall Jon Hamm Jeremy Renner Blake Lively. 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. They had all these Blaupunkts. Affleck: That was fascinating. Stockard: Ben and I went and spent a day with this FBI task force. 10 Patty Hearst Rebecca Halls character asking Douggie why the kids with whom she volunteerscall her a tunie? I wasnt really in the movie world. After a seven-day trial, they were And then she recorded her voice, read some of the pages, so that we shared that with Blake Lively, so she could try to get the accent down. Its more general American but with a kind of East Coast, sort of slightly privileged vibe. Or rather, close enough for himto understand how little he knew about it. Affleck: There have been a lot more New York city movies than there have Boston, for sure. But the Associated Press, which broke the Coyman story, reported Burke is also from Charlestown and was sent to prison in 1988 for six bank robberies in Florida. In the history of crime, the best crew was headed by John Dillinger. The movie opened on September 17, 2010, to overwhelmingly positive reviews and eventually grossed $154 million at the worldwide box office. Affleck: When this movie came out, the Boston Phoenix review said it had horrible Boston accents. All three men were arrested and sent to prison. Craig: We went into a bit of a quandary about the ending. Affleck: The hothead friend. Oct 31, 2012. I knew that many of these bank robbers had gone to Catholic schools as children and been taught by nuns. I watched a screening with a different ending and it hadnt been testing well. And on Afflecks instructions, Blake Lively, a California girl, spent three months hanging around with locals in bars and apartments to prepare for her role. But the machines they use to clean the streets are very loud and we were cleaning the streets at like 7 in the morning and out of this apartment building comes Jonathan Papelbon. Craig: [Jeff] Robinov, [the president] at Warners, really wanted to make the movie. WebBen Affleck played this real life bank robber in 'The Town'. Ben wasnt in Boston. As they fled with a bag of cash containing roughly $281,000 (180,000 then), another guard opened fire. His father, Stephen MacRay (Chris Cooper) was a thief, just like his father, and all of Dougs friends were thick with thievery. It was kind of a moment for them. 1 hospitalized after fire in West Town, CFD says . Then it might as well just stay a book. Its been in development here for a while. Burke: To go sit in the stands with Jeremy Renner in an empty stadium, it was surreal. CONCORD, N.H. -- A friend of two accused bank robbers testified yesterday as a prosection witness about a car found burning in Revere, the night of a 1994 robbery. It had to feel like Bruins. Three friends and acquaintances who had lied on the stand before testified against the five, along with four convicted bank robbers from Charlestown. The Cambridge native and his crew were back in Charlestown last week re-shooting an alternative ending to the bank robber thriller. But it was very real. Her words had already come true. And its absolutely authentic. Four men in ski masks ambushed and hijacked the Northeast Armored Transport truck Aug. 25, 1994, in a parking lot of a branch of the NFS Savings Bank in Hudson. And Im like, Whoa, so he must be the director.. Dillinger assembled a crack team and he himself would hop over the bank booths like a jack-rabbit, hence his nickname. The 1995 article in The Boston Globe, which inspired the films prologue, actually noted more armored car robbers are traced to Charlestown than any other neighborhood in the country. And he read and blew me away. Nothing kills a Boston-set movie like bad Boston accents. She was doing Gossip Girl, which at the time people thought like, Oh, thats just a CW Y.A. Afflecks reluctant bank robber Doug desparately wants to redefine himself as a serious Hollywood player after misfires like Gigli and Jersey Girl. And someone had forgotten to tell them that we were downstairs shooting. So we wrote parts for characters with Boston accents because we thought that was something that we could do well and that you saw done badly. Location scouting was uppermost in his mind. How are you gonna figure this out because you want to drive an armored car out of one of our gates? Fury of the Gods Brings Back the "Shazamily": Inside DC's New Superhero Adventure, Scream 6's Brutal NYC Trip: "You Can't Trust Anyone" This Time, Cocaine Bear Is Not Just About a Killer "Coked-Up" Bear, It's Also an "Underdog Story", How Marvel's Wastelanders Podcast Created an Exciting Story with No Visual Safety Net, The Town: Ben Afflecks Heist Movie Love Letter to Boston. Affleck unequivocally contributed to that proliferation. Some residents felt it portrayed the locals as in the words of onequoted in The Christian Science Monitor, a bunch of dumb bums. But it really wasnt. Titus Welliver (Officer Dino Ciampa): I called the production office and I got [Carter] on the phone and I pretended I was a Boston detective. 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. Neighborhood of Boston, yet lopped off every map of the city like a bastard cropped out of a happy family portrait. Hogan: I was just checking out the internet one day in my office and I saw a Variety headline: Affleck moves to The Town. I called my wife over and said, I think theyre making a movie of the book. And that was it. And they said, We like what you did, we think youre a good director and we believe in you. And I was kind of struck by the enthusiasm they had considering for the most part, Hollywood operates based on success. Whats the best way to get there?. Some were ex-convicts for whom a judges permission had to be sought for them to carry weapons, even fake or unloaded ones. Bens standing there and hes doing his public relations things, and people are swarming him. Suspects at large after $100K stolen from North Side bank: authorities. 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. All three were from Charlestown. 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. They like walking out with a little bit of hope. [Lively did not respond to a request to be interviewed for this article. The story was much clearer and cleaner. Then they look up to find a Boston cop reading a newspaper in his police car. But not everyone was happy with the image of Charlestown given toa generation of moviegoers. See more. Because youre in a confined space, not a soundstage. Cooper: Hes had a wonderful career, but [The Town] was a big shot in the arm for him. When its done great its Joe Pesci in Goodfellas. Crockett: [Lively] would go out every night and hang out with Townies. Chuck gets credit for that. This shooting game is the newest brilliant sneaking FPS game. I was up there for what Im sure was a good half hour. He loves her enough not to kill her, but not enough to testify. Its called The Hurt Locker. The only thing that I had seen of him was the Jeffrey Dahmer movie, which couldnt have been more different from what I wanted. Besides being the lovable and erudite wrinkle in the scheme, she is not a townie, someone who was raised in the neighborhood. The budget that we had previously was too high for us to make it. And then I realized, Maybe they think I can make movies more on the cheap.. The productions biggest scoop, location-wise, was being granted permission to shoot the Fenway Park heist scene in the real Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox. But if Charlestowns present reality as a yuppie stronghold is easy to establish, its past status as a mythical crime mecca is difficult to entirely dismiss. There were 150 people down there working. Provo, UT, United States () -Provo Towne Center 1200 Towne Centre Blvd Ste B. FINDLAY, Ohio (WTVG) - Authorities arrested a man in Findlay Monday on bank robbery charges. And we got in the car and kept going. I totally put that directly in the movie. Hogan: I was playing on a softball team, and this friend, he works for one of the prisons here and he was walking by someones desk and they had a picture of Ben Affleck on her screen saver. But he pointed out the quote. I could tell it was hard on Ben because literally going out to dinner was not really an option. Claire foretells the doom of Charlestowns criminal culture. Theres so many shots and so quickly, that at the end, OK, what happened? By contrast, Afflecks Doug MacRay heads a four-man gang. Theres a lot of different stories to tell. We had bank robbers, we had career criminals, people that couldnt show up certain days because theyd be violating their parole. Its kind of like a safety thing. The crew at the center of The Town resembles a gang of five masked robbers who pulled holdups from 1990 to 1995. He gets punished. I just still really thought that way. And so, constantly, Ben and I are trying to make it as real as possible. So I was thrilled. If they get popped, they do the time. Carter: Someone was getting married. I was cutting out pieces of felt while Gina [Rhodes] was stitching themmaking, by hand, the fake Bruins logo. But they liked it and they wanted to meet with me, and I was like, of course. I was willing to meet with anyone who was interested in hiring me as a director. Burch: We did one of the premieres at Fenway. Staging a chase scene in the North End was difficult, but shooting a robbery inside and around Fenway Park was unprecedented. He is the TV Editor at Entertainment. I said, Really, Ive got to drive all the way to fucking Boston to get a meeting with you? He looked at me and went, Youre crazy. I said, No, Im not. He said, So, you really want to be in this film? I went, Yeah. And then he went, Dino? I went, Yeah. He went, OK. And everyone was like, Ah, you cant, really. I sort of pretended that Charlestown was still the way it used to be. He was kind of hemming and hawing a little bit and I said, Look, unless they make you wear the fucking purple outfit and the mask, you gotta do this. He went, I know..