All three men were arrested and sent to prison. Chucks such a good writer that you get the tone from his details. Ive been on the force for 20 years and Im not looking for money or anything, but Im originally from Charlestown and I think I could be helpful. Shes like, Well, its really great to talk to you, we do have technical advisers and everything kind of lined up, but if you wanted to drop off a card or something like that. I said, Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. The robbers were waiting. 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. Suspects at large after $100K stolen from North Side bank: authorities. It later served as inspiration for the Massachusetts natives third book. Craig: We went into a bit of a quandary about the ending. When I saw it, I thought, Its fine. I wound up learning a lot from how Ben did that. ], Affleck: Having been through an experience myself where I felt that people had a sense of me that wasnt really fair, Im very sympathetic to and interested in people who are, I think, sort of pigeonholed. When fans of The Town think of Charlestown, they think of banks and bars and punchlines. He said, Shes slightly different. Marblehead is a little chi-chi. Stockard: Ben and I went and spent a day with this FBI task force. He was able to hold his own with a lot of those dudes who are the real deal. 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. Affleck was born in Berkeley, California but grew up in Cambridge, also across the Charles River from Boston but far removed from the inner-city neighborhood of the film. He gave me so much ammunition all the time to play off and to feel. Its been in development here for a while. 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. Theyre incarcerated. One of those characters you love to hate and find sort of intoxicating and moving; all of those things at the same time. FBI responds to bank robbery on NW Side. ). Burke: There were the most narrow streets you could find in the North End. Its worth bearing in mind that these are state-wide statistics, which do not differentiate betweenneighborhoods. Thats the thing, that theres a kind of ownership and its beautiful. The violent film starring Jeremy Renner, John Hamm and Ben Affleck centers on the Boston neighborhood of Charlestown. Hogan: Adrian really thought in more operatic terms, and he really wanted to do the book. 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. Shortly after 9am on August 25 1994, an armoured car pulled up outside a NFS Savings Bank in Hudson, New York. His first reaction is to take her out of the equation.. That was the most important part, because he could so easily lapse into clich. And that looks like a detail youd come up with writing a script. CONCORD, N.H. (AP) _ Three men who were convicted in a deadly string of bank and armored car robberies after prosecutors finally broke the ``code of silence in To get to Charlestown was to live free. After all, there are only so many Massachusetts-set crime stories about Irish American antiheroes that you can tell. Matheson: I will never forget sitting there with some felt and scissors at 3 or 4 in the morning. Shea, 35, Stephen Burke, 42, and Michael OHalloran, 40, were convicted of racketeering, conspiracy, robbery and other offenses Dec. 22 for a series of holdups in New England and Florida. Thats the one moment that gives you a glimpse into how damaged and how profoundly broken Jem is. Affleck: The Red Sox were really smart and understood how vital and central their organization was and is to the city, and they loved the idea of it. Affleck: When this movie came out, the Boston Phoenix review said it had horrible Boston accents. He contributed to Altvariety, Chiseler, Smashpipe, and other magazines. Dont run away from it. We love that movie, dont be afraid of doing things that they did that worked. The gang torches their escape cars and their transfer vehicles. If possible, its really great to hire people with whom an audience isnt overly familiar, because audiences have developed expectations and kind of anticipate what an actor might do if theyve seen them a bunch. Everyone was making New York movies. Martin Scorseses The Departed cast Jack Nicholson as Frank Costello, who was loosely based on Bulger. And this was toward the end of the shoot. Thats how you drive a f----n caaar, declares the getaway driver, Gloansy (played by rapper Slaine). No above-the-line people got paid any money. I had never even been in a drama class or nothing like that. And well, why not nuns and tactical gear? Al Pacinos Sonny in Dog Day Afternoon wants enough money to give a better life to his wives. [The Town] is not just entertainment and popcorn. So I leave the movie theater and Im really kind of numb, trying to figure it out. Adrian had wanted to do one of my books, which was kind of unadaptable because it took place over like, 30 years. Particularly commercial success. It is because the small community adheres to omerta, silence unto death. And everyone was like, Ah, you cant, really. Cooper: I wanted to spend some time in Walpole [at MCICedar Junction] and just observe. Affleck: He played that so deftly, and made that scene work so well, when hes sort of smiling and laughing, but theres so much menace underneath it. I love Adrian. He has that capacity, and I think that makes him a classic American filmmaker. 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. Doug MacRay ( Ben Affleck) is not cut from the same cloth as his fellow thieves. If youre gonna make a film of it, you have to add something to it, or try to. Funny enough, I have shot in Boston twice since then. I had somebody from Marblehead quote all her dialogue. Job Type:Part-Time. Or why Affleck hired him to play a Charlestown bank robber in his new movie The Town.. Welliver: If anything, people were kind of burned out on the New York gangster genre. Burch: We did it during off days. Hogan: I think weve played out the Irish Boston gangster thing. Id go sit in Fenway and be the only guy there. The only time I attempt it is when Im basically making fun of Ben, his character, about the Stah Mahket. Yes Charestown, MA is known for Bank robbers. WebDouglas "Doug" MacRay is a former career criminal and professional bank robber from Charlestown, Boston, which was the bank robbery capital of the world. That whole character she did was really kind of based on her own preparation. (His co-star John Hamm once said thatwalking around Boston with Affleck was like walking around with the mayor.) Date Updated: Jan 18, 2023. Affleck: The Yawkey Red Sox, Im sure, wouldve been impossible. Unlike them, Doug had a chance at success, a chance to escape following in his father's criminal footsteps. But the Red Sox were definitely in the spirit of, This is gonna be fun. In Quentin Tarantinos Reservoir Dogs (1991), the crew had color-coded names; in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid they wore 10-gallon hats. It would go from completely quiet at 5 oclock in the morning to suddenly its like doing theater on a massive scale. Determined to get a better grip on the place, he brought in another local, his old school friend Stockard, and began an intensive period of research. The crew at the center of The Town resembles a gang of five masked robbers who pulled holdups from 1990 to 1995. 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. I said, Is there any way in hell that you can imagine that someone would ever rob a bank if theyre from Charlestown dressed as a nun? And the FBI agent I was meeting with turned to me and said, You know what, thats not a bad idea at all. And thats where that idea started. A woman who saw it speeding past reported it to the police, who matched the report to a truck rented the day before in nearby Medford by a man already suspected of a string of robberies. David Fincher does an even more exaggerated version of that. 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. Affleck: Id been in action sequences plenty, so I kind of knew how they worked. 1 hospitalized after fire in West Town, CFD says . But mostly a Boston accent depends on your socioeconomic status, by and large. Because youre in a confined space, not a soundstage. It took him to the next level because it made him a filmmaker who also had box office appeal. Hed be happy to settle down with his former hostage, Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall). 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. The Telegraph values your comments but kindly requests all posts are on topic, constructive and respectful. Affleck: That was fascinating. Im gonna do a movie about Iran.. The top of his head was really messed up. Craig: Adrian wanted 90 shooting days and $90 [million] to do it. When it came time to cast The Town, Affleck had fun putting together a star-powered ensemble on a relatively limited budget. They were about to buy it but they wanted to cut it, too. Hamm: Another smart move by Ben was to populate this movie with people that have an actual, real-life connection to these things. He goes, Yeah, you know, Ill tell you, Ty. It eventually just blew up. And I was like, Who the hell is this guy? This really happened it was described to Affleck by a man serving time. And so, constantly, Ben and I are trying to make it as real as possible. the movie the TOWN WAS Mde after SQUARE OFF T.V 249 subscribers Subscribe 6 Share 1.2K views 1 year As I got older I lived in [Jamaica Plain], West Roxbury, where my son was born. Culture Editor Tony Sokol is a writer, playwright and musician. Hall: I just remember him being so mercurial. Affleck: I made sure that we had enough money to do the Fenway heist sequence in total, which was a lot. The Town unfolds in the Boston neighborhood of Charlestown, which the prologue claims has produced more bank robbers and armored car thieves than Welliver: He said, Hey, weve got great stories in this city that nobodys telling.. It definitely felt like, Im getting to see something that not a lot of people get to see. What is the penalty for bank robbery in mass? Welliver: On the page it was one thing, and he beat the page because rather than it being a scene that was about anger and aggression, Renner turned that scene into a scene about heartbreak and devastation. Gone Girl we shot a hundred days for a two-hour thriller. [Chairman] Tom Werners a friend of mine. Police figures from 2010 showed that Charlestown accounted for barely 2 per cent of all Boston robberies (not just bank robberies). Burke: It was not on my radar at all. Its not a super cheap movie but its not expensive like a studio movie. Starring: Ben Affleck Rebecca Hall Jon Hamm Jeremy Renner Blake Lively. We went back to his hotel room right after. The blue-collar neighborhood produced more bank robbers and armored car thieves than anywhere else in the world, according to the movies prologue. The Town is loosely based on Chuck Hogans novel Prince of Thieves. Like you didnt know what they were gonna do. How are you gonna figure this out because you want to drive an armored car out of one of our gates? They dont rat. But instead, Affleck went with something more bittersweet. MacRay is a narcissist who uses Jems sister Krista (Blake Lively) for bathroom quickies, and Claire as a loophole. The team, while sporting nun costumes and masks, quickly attempts to make an escape from downtown Boston to the bridge and beat the police department to the closing. 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 Town was originally set to be a three-and-a-half-hour-long epic directed by Fatal Attractions Adrian Lyne. Neighborhood of Boston, yet lopped off every map of the city like a bastard cropped out of a happy family portrait. Theyre locked, loaded, and trained in automatic weapons, and launder their take immediately. WebBank Robbery | Detective Mehul ( ) | Hindi Paheliyan | Hindi PaheliDetective Mehul or Mehul Jasoos is the best detective in town. 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. Heist movies are filled with criminals who want to pull one last big job and settle down. Ben Affleck grew up in Cambridge, only a few miles away from Charlestown, but to him the distance between the two places felt vast. Cooper: It was kind of this crisp evening. 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. Owen Burke (Desmond Elden): I was going to a community college in Charlestown, I was working under the table, I had just gotten past some legal trouble in my teenage years. Los Angles police on high alert for grand theft and planned robbery in town. 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. Chuck Hogans novel Prince of Thieves opens with a toast: To Charlestown, our one square mile of brick and cobblestone. A good writer that you get the tone from his details task force I said, I have in... Filled with criminals who want to drive an armored car out of one of our gates to the movies.... Ben was to populate this movie with people that have an actual, real-life connection to these things Yawkey... 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