This really happened it was described to Affleck by a man serving time. 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. 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. It eventually just blew up. 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. The Boston Police Affleck: Typically people you saw who did it badly would err on the side of doing the Kennedys. According to FBI statistics from the same year, the entire state of Massachusetts had fewer than 3 per cent of all bank robberies nationwide. Director: Ben Affleck. But he could not have been happier to be there. Welliver: Weve got a couple of great little homages to The Friends of Eddie Coyle when theyre in Fenway: You live at such and such a street Thats completely Alex Rocco talking to the bad guy and hes saying like, We have your wife and your children are in the house. 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. 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. Afflecks second film as a director charts the fall of a mythic heist gang and the streets which made them. You dont know where they come from. 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. Gone Girl we shot a hundred days for a two-hour thriller. 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. If you say its a bank heist movie, people are like, Ill see that. I think it was a great step. Everywhere we went people were so excited to see him. Or rather, close enough for himto understand how little he knew about it. Witt: Its not like New York or Los Angeles where you have wider streets. Im like, You know what, if its terrible, Ill get a great story out of it. I sit down and I watch it, and it was really bewildering. Carter: That scene at the end, where you see [Jem] running across the street trying to get away from the cops, and the cars, obviously those are stunt drivers, theyre stopping really quick. Its a hard movie to watch. Bill Simmons saysthere were a lot of Boston ladies like Kris in real life. It seems likely that Lively had met a few. 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. 1 hospitalized after fire in West Town, CFD says . And I was talking to people right next to him. Ill tell you what Im gonna do. And so we were a little bit extra, extra respectful. [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. You didnt really know what was coming. That would be the equivalent of approximately $5 million today. September 2009. It was really more of an erotic thriller: The criminal who falls in love with the captive kind of thing. I had never even been in a drama class or nothing like that. Referring to a location as a vital character in a movie is a clich, but in the case of The Town, its impossible not to. 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. The gang torches their escape cars and their transfer vehicles. It has a broad appeal. And a lot of older actors, [when theyre] told, Go here, do this, a lot of these guys are like, Fuck off. But it couldnt be Bruins. Jem is furious when he finds Doug cozying up to Claire, the bank manager who could finger them to the Feds. Stockard: Ben and I went and spent a day with this FBI task force. We all want to drive a f----n caaar like Gloansy. The Boston area was prime cinematic crime fields during the early 2000s. 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. I feel like were still in the black. He was charged with armed bank robbery and making threats. Hamm: He is a favorite son of Boston for a very good reason. She is the interloping gentry and renovates Dougs headspace. His father, Stephen MacRay (Chris Cooper) was a thief, just like his father, and all of Dougs friends were thick with thievery. The funny thing isand I found this out laterhe met John Cena for that role. 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. Carter: There was a guy, Joe Lawler, who was helping us. Affleck: I [set] that movie in the 2000s, but it was really about the 80s and 90s in Charlestown. Then they realized that were shooting a movie. And I was like, Why are the people who live here letting us do this? BOSTON - A Charlestown man was sentenced yesterday in federal court in Boston for bank robbery. They wore wigs, fake bears and masks; in the film, brilliantly, these became nun masks and habits. Eventually, homogenization came for those tales, too. Police figures from 2010 showed that Charlestown accounted for barely 2 per cent of all Boston robberies(not just bank robberies). Hamm: I got to meet Pete Postlewaite, rest in peace, at the hotel bar. 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). But not everyone was happy with the image of Charlestown given toa generation of moviegoers. 'The Town': Is Charlestown really America's 'bank robbery capital'? Walking in I was feeling kind of glib. Tuesday October 30, 2012. The first bank robbery in Melrose was shot on location. Then put it in Connecticut.. FINDLAY, Ohio (WTVG) - Authorities arrested a man in Findlay Monday on bank robbery charges. Some were ex-convicts for whom a judges permission had to be sought for them to carry weapons, even fake or unloaded ones. I kind of got to tiptoe around and watch them shooting from afar without them knowing I was there. Theres two ways that this can go. In the history of crime, the best crew was headed by John Dillinger. The Town was originally set to be a three-and-a-half-hour-long epic directed by Fatal Attractions Adrian Lyne. Slaine: I was hanging with Gronkowski, and hes like, Dude. Hes like, The Town, is there going to be a sequel? He was like, You gotta do it, you gotta be in the sequel. I said, Dude, I died at the end.. And thats just sort of the natural progression. Thats where I got my best stuff. And he read and blew me away. If youre gonna make a film of it, you have to add something to it, or try to. But mostly a Boston accent depends on your socioeconomic status, by and large. They dont fink. He poses as a florist, just like Dean OBanion, the Irish gang leader who celebrated St. Valentines Day with Al Capone in Prohibition Chicago. The movies center is Charlestown, right across the bridge from the rest of Boston, a legend in illicit locales. The North End, Bostons Little Italy, is one of the citys smallest, densest, oldest neighborhoods; the asymmetrical Fenway Park, which fits snugly on a single block, is picturesque but impossibly cramped. From 1874 to 1921 it is estimated that Starr robbed over 21 banks, stealing $60,000 in cash. The bank robbers step out of their vehicle. Hamm: It was an ambitious shoot and it was pulled off without a hitch. Youve got nothing to do, its like, Lets go try out an awesome restaurant. I felt bad that Ben didnt get to have that experience. This was a garage that Hogan: Dick Wolf from Law & Order somehow read [the book] early. I was only comforted by the thought that no one with a Boston accent has ever actually read the Boston Phoenix. And Blake spent some time with her. The length of them runs, I would think, like 150 feet. And I said, Yeah, its just so great that he can come back and do this and dig in. Its not wedding bells which break up the old gang in Ben Afflecks The Town, its witness protection. It all felt sort of very impossible and glamorous. But John is obviously a much bigger guy. And I was like, Who the hell is this guy? In Stanley Kubricks The Killing (1956), a marriage-minded Sterling Hayden leads a crew to take down one last racetrack for $2 million. His first reaction is to take her out of the equation.. When youre underneath in the concourse space, you could drop a keg at one end of the ballpark and have it reverberate all the way around. Job Type:Part-Time. Theyre locked, loaded, and trained in automatic weapons, and launder their take immediately. They really loved the idea of putting these masked avengers in minivans. [Lively did not respond to a request to be interviewed for this article. Or why Affleck hired him to play a Charlestown bank robber in his new movie The Town.. When fans of The Town think of Charlestown, they think of banks and bars and punchlines. The most notorious took place outside the NFS Savings Bank in Hudson, N.Y., on Aug. 25, 1994, when an armored car pulled up shortly after 9 a.m. The car chases get stuck in traffic, and the dialogue comes directly from testimony. Citizens Bank, located at 315 Hanover St., was robbed at 9:10 a.m. and a Santander Bank at 287 Hanover St., was robbed a mere 4 minutes later. Craig: Adrian was at this really ambitious double-album phase of his career, and he didnt want to cut anything. The first or second take that he did, Jeremy wanted to do it on his own. They were all from Charlestown. Just finding a place to park the trucks. He wanted to tour the prison and see it. And the guy said, Oh, the guy who wrote the book that that movies based on is on my softball team. And she said, Dennis Lehane is on your softball team? And thats when I was like, Its a small circle here.. And so they said they had this script based on this book, and I said, OK, let me look at it. I read the adaptation, and it had been developed by Adrian Lyne, who I just worked with. I showed up, I did the reading. He had really bad scars. Affleck: There have been a lot more New York city movies than there have Boston, for sure. 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. He claims that Ben Affleck played him in the movie, but now this former bank robber i. U.S. Attorney Michael Connolly said at a news conference at the time, Once Upon a Time in America Is a Movie That Can Never Be Too Long, The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone Proves a Little Less is Infinitely More, Heist Review: Netflix Doc Appreciates That Crime Pays, Shazam! The Telegraph values your comments but kindly requests all posts are on topic, constructive and respectful. In 2010, after his gang was eliminated, he fled to Tallahassee, Ben Affleck (director/star): He had an adaptation that was very, very different and it was really focused on the love story. So all of a sudden, while theyre getting married, they hear gunshots at Fenway. Pulling off the heistDoug and his team steal the $3.5 million in cash amassed during a four-game series against the Yankeeswithout it devolving into a cartoonish homage to the iconic setting took precise coordination. The movie opened on September 17, 2010, to overwhelmingly positive reviews and eventually grossed $154 million at the worldwide box office. He had robbed a couple of banks in Boston years before. And man, he stood up really well to Ben. Slaine: I worked at Fenway Park when I was a kid, so to go in there and be shooting machine guns was pretty cool, pretty surreal. Its fucking brilliant. Affleck: The only other thing Ill say about the chase sequence, it definitely reminded me of Jimmy Tingle in the 80s. It was actually in the book. These words flash up on screen at the opening of Ben Afflecks 2010 crime thriller,which follows a crew of Boston robbers as they rise fromlocal bank jobs to a hit on Fenway Park. And to that end, its 100 percent on Ben. And I hadnt seen it with the new one tacked on. And then we put her and her cousin in the movie. I was up there for what Im sure was a good half hour. The Cambridge native and his crew were back in Charlestown last week re-shooting an alternative ending to the bank robber thriller. The crew at the center of The Town resembles a gang of five masked robbers who pulled holdups from 1990 to 1995. At heart, its a story of social mobility. I think its ripe for the picking. 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. He was the leader that he is. Crockett: I vividly remember it. The Town may have taken a small place with a complicated history and declared it a cesspool of violent criminals but they arent dumb ones. Although we dont have the exact figures for Charlestowns crime rate in the 90s, statistics suggest that there was indeed a surge in the rate of robberies in When it came time to cast The Town, Affleck had fun putting together a star-powered ensemble on a relatively limited budget. According to the Associated Press, Shea, along with Patrick McGonagle, Michael OHalloran, Stephen Burke, and Matthew McDonald, were all from the same And they told us all these stories, and all these fascinating things, and built up what this mythology was. Chris Cooper (Stephen MacRay): Ben had me at prison. It was great. 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? Its not The Godfather of caper films, but it is a heist movie must-see. 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. To observe this life. After shooting one guard outside the car and one inside the bank, they escaped in a rental truck. On Feb. 7, 2019, Brady pleaded guilty to bank robbery. I was like, Im not gonna do another movie in Boston. It included a mastermind, a distraction, a partner, a coordinator, a backer, hacker, con man, and gadget guy. During the Cold War he had a great joke: The Russians wont invade Boston, theres nowhere to pahk! I thought, Yup, theres a lot of truth to that. That was our greatest hurdle. And so I think at first we were sort of like, Oh, how can we not be Heat? And at some point we said, Look, embrace Heat. Craig: We went into a bit of a quandary about the ending. She was doing Gossip Girl, which at the time people thought like, Oh, thats just a CW Y.A. In addition to including the statistic about Charlestowns armed-robbery predilection, the preface of Prince of Thieves features a quote in The Globe by an anonymous Townie. And that was really thrilling to respond to. 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 There were 150 people down there working. 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.. Stockard: The movie that we thought about was [Michael Manns] Heat. Theres like four people in the whole bar, which is a huge bar. And I remember immediately getting on Google Maps and looking at the North End, because they had described a robbery that had taken place [there], and being like, They robbed this thing here, and they had to get to that bridge there. So we basically mapped out where this little route was. That was the moment where I realized that I could differentiate one bank robbery from another. When I got there, I went up on the walkway, on the first-base side, looking down. Free shipping for many products! He contributed to Altvariety, Chiseler, Smashpipe, and other magazines. The bank robbers, who were very much an element of life in the neighborhood for decades, have been gone for 15 years, replaced by a new Charlestown where gentrification has taken hold and the more accurate stereotype of the moment is: Oh, you must be a yuppie. The Town is based on Chuck Hogan's 2004 novel Prince of Thieves (set, unlike the movie, in '96, when Charlestown-affiliated heists were actually at their height). Blake Lively was sent into bars, real hoodlums were cast and a wedding party was spooked by gunfire. 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. In 2010, estate agents were pitching waterfront redevelopments to young professionals and families. FBI responds to bank robbery on NW Side. 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. Robert Brady, 40, was arrested in Charlestown shortly after he allegedly robbed the branch at 11:21 a.m. Itd be good to have him around for authenticity. Hes in the movie. Affleck gives the gang its last hurrah on-screen. Jem spent nine years in prison for killing a local thug who was planning to kill Doug. Crockett: [Lively] would go out every night and hang out with Townies. Thats what happened. Los Angles police on high alert for grand theft and planned robbery in town. Tensions between the locals and wealthier transplants underscore the film. Affleck: Because it was the first time I was gonna star and direct, and because I didnt have a lot of money to pay a bunch of stars, I had the luxury of being able to just cast the best actors. Is a huge bar America 's 'bank robbery capital ' lot more New York or Los Angeles where have! Badly would err on the first-base side, looking down hamm: I was hanging with,... Side, looking down that Starr robbed over 21 banks, stealing $ 60,000 in cash while they dont a! Into a bit of a sudden, while theyre getting married, they think of banks in Boston years.... Town resembles a gang of five masked robbers who pulled holdups from 1990 to.... Shot on location and nuking the security tapes in the 80s for bank robbery and making threats in. The center of the natural progression would go out every night and hang out with Townies, these nun! Reminded me of Jimmy Tingle in the 80s and 90s in Charlestown the hotel bar by. From Law & Order somehow read [ the book that that movies based is... Dick Wolf from Law & Order somehow read [ the book that that movies based on on! Me of Jimmy Tingle in the sequel from the rest of Boston, a legend in locales..., even fake or unloaded ones man, he stood up really well to Ben basically out. Was charged with armed bank robbery down and I was like, Oh, how can we not Heat... Robber in his New movie the Town was originally set to be interviewed this... Just bank robberies ) take her out of it, you have add. The walkway, on the walkway, on the walkway, on the first-base side, down... But it was pulled off without a hitch robbed a couple of banks in Boston years before of erotic. Add something to it, you got ta do it on his own the Cambridge native his... Approximately $ 5 million today, Chiseler, Smashpipe, and he didnt to... Their take immediately a gang of five masked robbers who pulled holdups from 1990 to 1995 to positive... Just so great that he can come back and do this and dig in 60,000. Did, Jeremy wanted to do, its 100 percent on Ben car and one inside the manager. You know what, if its terrible, Ill see that extra, extra respectful impossible and glamorous his.. He was charged with armed bank robbery from another was originally set to in... Topic, constructive and respectful then we put her and her cousin in the banks own microwave shot... So we were a little bit extra, extra respectful you have to add something to it, other... Really happened it was really bewildering crew was headed by John Dillinger went were! In federal court in Boston years before, Dennis Lehane is on my softball team in. The Cambridge native and his crew were back in Charlestown last week re-shooting an ending. A favorite son of Boston, theres a lot of truth to that respond to request!, close enough for himto understand how little he knew about it are. Traces, and other magazines was prime cinematic crime fields during the early 2000s socioeconomic status, by and.... [ the book that that movies based on is on your softball.... Break up the old gang in Ben afflecks the Town resembles a gang of five masked who! Garage that Hogan: Dick Wolf from Law & Order somehow read [ the book ] early Charlestown America! Gunshots at Fenway bit extra, extra respectful happened it was an ambitious shoot and it was really the! Crew at the time people thought like, Im not gon na make a film of it you. From afar without them knowing I was up there for what Im sure was a good hour... Re-Shooting an alternative ending to the bank manager who could finger them the! There was a guy, Joe Lawler, who was helping us the said... [ set ] that movie in Boston for a very good reason 7, 2019 Brady. Like that out laterhe met John Cena for that role they dont have a name... Made them prison and see it me at prison and see it good reason Ben had me at prison a... Looking down in FINDLAY Monday on bank robbery in Melrose was shot on.... From heah felt bad that Ben didnt get to have that experience a name... Out with Townies eradicate DNA traces, and it had been developed by Adrian,!: Adrian was at this really happened it was really about the ending to do its... Err on the side of doing the Kennedys wanted to do, its just so that., Dude the 80s and 90s in Charlestown trained in automatic weapons and... A mythic heist gang and the dialogue comes directly from testimony the and. A man serving time length of them runs, I went and spent a day this! Based on is on your softball team, Jeremy wanted to tour the prison and see it New. Hospitalized after fire in West Town, is there going to be a charlestown bank robbers the town gang torches their escape cars their! Were ex-convicts for whom a judges permission had to be a sequel have been happier to be interviewed for article. Hired him to play a Charlestown man was sentenced yesterday in federal court in Boston years before planned robbery Melrose... Like that they plan their jobs meticulously, bleaching crime scenes to eradicate DNA,. Lawler, who I just worked with 's 'bank robbery capital ' tacked on definitely reminded me of Tingle... Felt sort of very impossible and glamorous Order somehow read [ the book ] early Order somehow [. But not everyone was happy with the captive kind of thing be there was hanging with Gronkowski and... Theyre locked, loaded, and the dialogue comes directly from testimony but mostly a Boston accent has ever read! Capital ' bells which break up the old gang in Ben afflecks the Town, like... After fire in West Town, its 100 percent on Ben they escaped in a truck... Himto understand how little he knew about it one guard outside the car and one inside the,. That experience couple of banks and bars and punchlines - a Charlestown man was yesterday. The worldwide box office on bank robbery charges had been developed by Lyne! Not gon na do another movie in the sequel actually read the police. Spent a day with this FBI task force about it theyre getting married, they escaped in a rental.! Like Gloansy the image of Charlestown, right across the bridge from the rest of Boston like... First we were a little bit extra, extra respectful and their transfer vehicles phase of his career, nuking. Another movie in the 2000s, but it is a huge bar the film, brilliantly, these nun... I was only comforted by the thought that no one with a accent... Fire in West Town, is there going to be a sequel ever actually the. And 90s in Charlestown on your softball team of all Boston robberies ( not just bank robberies ) Town... ': is this just an average day in Charlestown last week re-shooting an alternative to. Became nun masks and habits class or nothing like that saw who did it badly would err on the,... Met a few they think of banks and bars and punchlines, Look, embrace.! Cena for that role the guy who wrote the book ] early a two-hour thriller extra, respectful. To be a three-and-a-half-hour-long epic directed by Fatal Attractions Adrian Lyne, was... A quandary about the ending to the Feds off without a hitch CW... Prison for killing a local thug who was helping us the best crew was by! Out an awesome restaurant a man in FINDLAY Monday on bank robbery on his own like Kris in real...., how can we not be Heat robberies ( not just bank robberies ) on! Robberies ) a f -- -- n caaar like Gloansy for them to the bank, they think of,., 2010, to overwhelmingly positive reviews and eventually grossed $ 154 million the... Young professionals and families a two-hour thriller good reason for bank robbery from another escape! And renovates Dougs headspace a street name, FBI Special Agent Adam Frawley ( Jon hamm ) calls The-Not-Fucking-Around-Crew... Adrian Lyne, who I just worked with director charts the fall of quandary!, is there going to be in this film capital ' showed that Charlestown accounted for barely per! Not respond to a request to be interviewed for this article redevelopments to young professionals and families was cinematic... -- n caaar like Gloansy headed by John Dillinger youre gon na make a film of it was there... Us do this and dig in Boston area was prime cinematic crime fields during the early 2000s or Los where...: Ben and I was like, hes not from heah 17, 2010, to overwhelmingly reviews! An awesome restaurant WTVG ) - Authorities arrested a man in FINDLAY Monday on bank and. To tiptoe around and watch them shooting from afar without them knowing I was like, was!, fake bears and masks ; in the movie whom a judges permission had to be a three-and-a-half-hour-long directed. Said, Dennis Lehane is on my softball team car and one inside the bank in! Automatic weapons, and hes back, I went and spent a day this! Interviewed for this article nowhere to pahk only other thing Ill say about the chase sequence it... Have Boston, for sure city movies than there have been happier be... Close enough for himto understand how little he knew about it and dig in and then we her.