He was charged with armed bank robbery and making threats. I was like, Im not gonna do another movie in Boston. Welliver: He said, Hey, weve got great stories in this city that nobodys telling.. Colm bribed a man on the inside to show the crew into the basement of the stadium, where they would enter the cash room and steal $3,500,000 in gate money (money spent on beer, food, admissions, etc. Although it certainly felt like he was. Salon Professionals. 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. So I leave the movie theater and Im really kind of numb, trying to figure it out. I showed up, I did the reading. I feel like were still in the black. Cooper: Hes had a wonderful career, but [The Town] was a big shot in the arm for him. The Boston Police Honestly, people just wouldnt have liked the movie [with my ending]. Ill tell you what Im gonna do. And so we were a little bit extra, extra respectful. He claims that Ben Affleck played him in the movie, but now this former bank robber i. By contrast, Afflecks Doug MacRay heads a four-man gang. Hes been forever. 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). So many broke the code, shattered the code. All they see are yuppies. An earlier version of this piece misspelled Roslindale. Affleck was determined to make sure that his main cast could at least pass as true Massholes. It had to feel like Bruins. We all want to drive a f----n caaar like Gloansy. 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. Theyre incarcerated. 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. He came over and he was a little bit shy but she was speaking for him. They were excited. But the Red Sox were definitely in the spirit of, This is gonna be fun. Agents with the FBI believe Gage Haws robbed five small town banks throughout northwest Ohio. Im fairly good at being invisible and disappear quite easily, but Boston? 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. Its fucking brilliant. Im mighty proud of where I come from, he says. So I was thrilled. He had the beginnings of the accent, clearly he had the ability to do ita bad Boston accent would ruin that part. Burch: We did one of the premieres at Fenway. From 1874 to 1921 it is estimated that Starr robbed over 21 banks, stealing $60,000 in cash. A man who was in the square at the time recalls thinking: Whoscrazy enough to pull off a bank robbery at noon in Harvard Square? Charlestown guys. Jem is also Riff to Dougs Tony in West Side Story. I had an interesting moment with him at one point, we were in the car and I said, Whats the deal? And he called me Ty, as all the guys did because they didnt want to say Titus. When I saw it, I thought, Its fine. I wound up learning a lot from how Ben did that. Thats what happened. But does it? The case of the Charlestown robbers in the show grows to encompass and eventually upend Bostons citywide criminal justice system. Kim Mahoney of the That would be the equivalent of approximately $5 million today. I could tell it was hard on Ben because literally going out to dinner was not really an option. Nothing kills a Boston-set movie like bad Boston accents. BOSTON - An infamous criminal, who claims he's robbed more than 100 banks, was arrested in an attempted heist in the Back Bay. Cooper: I think he was just having a ball with this character. Thats how you drive a f----n caaar, declares the getaway driver, Gloansy (played by rapper Slaine). He was doing a long sentence. Doug MacRay ( Ben Affleck) is not cut from the same cloth as his fellow thieves. Carter: Ben actually went and sat down with the guy that his character was based on, and was able to see him and take notes in person. She was doing Gossip Girl, which at the time people thought like, Oh, thats just a CW Y.A. He heard stories about Charlestowns reputation for bank robberies and its strict code of silence. I wasnt really in the movie world. He was with his mother. 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. We all want to be from Douggies Charlestown and we all know its a fantasy. Chuck Hogan (author, Prince of Thieves): When the book came out, I was scheduled to do a reading at the Charlestown Public Library. 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. It has ended with the government getting most of the money. A long moment passes with intensity. Affleck unequivocally contributed to that proliferation. 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. Crockett: The Fenway heist was really just a logistical kind of clusterfuck. Police figures from 2010 showed that Charlestown accounted for barely 2 per cent of all Boston robberies (not just bank robberies). I lived in South Boston, Roslindale. 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. In 1995, The Boston Globe reported that the neighborhood was a community to which more armored car robbers are traced than any other in the country, according to FBI statistics. Hogan recalls reading that and filing it away. Slaine: Owen and I didnt have to listen to anybody. 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. We went back to his hotel room right after. Staging a chase scene in the North End was difficult, but shooting a robbery inside and around Fenway Park was unprecedented. I went in to audition. They really loved the idea of putting these masked avengers in minivans. Crockett: He knew from the beginning that [Magloan] was gonna be Slaine. In one of his final roles, Academy Awardnominated English actor Pete Postlethwaite plays Fergus Fergie Colm, a menacing mob boss/florist who gives Doug orders while chomping gum and stripping roses. First of all, it was about 20 pages shorter. Claire represents the real problem at the center of the proceedings. Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! We had bank robbers, we had career criminals, people that couldnt show up certain days because theyd be violating their parole. He made my job easy. I showed Ben the skeleton and Ben said to me, How can we make it look tougher? And I said, Why dont we put them in tactical gear? And so that started this riff, this juxtaposition of skeletons and tactical gear. Hall: I wouldnt really say I did a Boston accent. Everywhere we went people were so excited to see him. 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 second thing was, I realized what a fool I was to think like, Oh, if its bad Ill have a story. I realized that I wouldve been crushed if that movie was bad. They were all from Charlestown. Affleck: Typically people you saw who did it badly would err on the side of doing the Kennedys. 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. His father, Stephen MacRay (Chris Cooper) was a thief, just like his father, and all of Dougs friends were thick with thievery. Hes like, What the fuck are you doing? Its not a super cheap movie but its not expensive like a studio movie. Cooper: I dont know Jeremys height, but Ben is a pretty big boy. 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. When he took over the project Fatal Attractions Adrian Lyne was originally down to direct local boy Affleck decided he wanted to make this as much of a Boston filmas he possibly could. The actor who played James Jem Coughlin, Dougs ex-con buddy, however, wasnt from Boston. Its like 50 percent of why people buy tickets. 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. Welliver: The character Dino was a cop who grew up in Charlestown. This shooting game is the newest brilliant sneaking FPS game. David Fincher does an even more exaggerated version of that. Some residents felt it portrayed the locals as in the words of onequoted in The Christian Science Monitor, a bunch of dumb bums. WebCharlestownis the oldest neighborhoodin Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States. I sort of pretended that Charlestown was still the way it used to be. Affleck: Those little streets created something visually interesting that you dont see in many car chases. Did they know that this was in the plans?. Affleck gives the gang its last hurrah on-screen. Download Bank Robbery missions 2017 and enjoy it on your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. It was kind of a moment for them. Burch: We did it during off days. When fans of The Town think of Charlestown, they think of banks and bars and punchlines. But he could not have been happier to be there. 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. 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 didnt just direct, he played the lead alongside a cast of present and future superstars and locals. NEW YORK -- The mystery began when a Boston ex-con dropped dead on a New York train platform with a backpack stuffed with $180,000. Afflecks reluctant bank robber Doug desparately wants to redefine himself as a serious Hollywood player after misfires like Gigli and Jersey Girl. Its not wedding bells which break up the old gang in Ben Afflecks The Town, its witness protection. Please review our, You need to be a subscriber to join the conversation. It eventually just blew up. In March 1995, two men held the guard of an armoured car at gunpoint as he tried to delivercash to a branch of the Bank of Boston on Massachusetts Avenue. Afflecks second film as a director charts the fall of a mythic heist gang and the streets which made them. Location scouting was uppermost in his mind. He was the leader that he is. ). The guy that I spoke with, who was kind of our head technical adviser from the FBI, was from Nebraska. Jem is his right hand muscle, and unquestioning backup. And for better or worse, it was also a hit thatin addition to tax incentiveshelped temporarily cement Massachusetts as Hollywood East. Affleck: That was fascinating. Welliver: I still think that The Town and Gone Baby Gone, thats the bar. 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. The Town was initially supposed to end with Doug paying for his sins with his life. And they were like, Just so you know, weve had some calls and threats of violence. People didnt know what the book was, I think they were expecting something that would really knock Charlestown. They went to jail because there were cracks on the pavement, leaks on the street. If youre gonna make a film of it, you have to add something to it, or try to. Aaron Stockard (cowriter): Ben called me up and said, I know what I want to direct next. Craig: I hadnt really processed the new ending. Craig: I was a struggling crime writer. I think its ripe for the picking. The story was much clearer and cleaner. That was the moment where I realized that I could differentiate one bank robbery from another. I remember one day going to set because he and Ben were doing that great scene where it ends up with them having a fight. Many of them testified that they had grown tired of a life of stealing, of drugs, of broken relationships.. Hed done his time. See more. Not noir, French for black. Its been in development here for a while. The guests ran for cover. And I said, Is there anything just weird or strange or unexpected or bizarre in the course of this? And I mean, the guy had lived a pretty bizarre life. Which was nice. On Feb. 7, 2019, Brady pleaded guilty to bank robbery. Jason Bourne kills the bad guys. I walked the city for something like two, three hours, and by the end of it, I realized two things: The first thing was, I really like the movie and I cant wait for it to come out. Affleck: I had great stunt drivers. 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. Hall: It was like being alongside Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in London. 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. Chucks such a good writer that you get the tone from his details. And a lot of older actors, [when theyre] told, Go here, do this, a lot of these guys are like, Fuck off. The Telegraph values your comments but kindly requests all posts are on topic, constructive and respectful. 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. Affleck: I made sure that we had enough money to do the Fenway heist sequence in total, which was a lot. At heart, its a story of social mobility. He said, Shes slightly different. Marblehead is a little chi-chi. Affleck: What I liked about [the book] was that it was similar to [Dennis Lehanes] Gone, Baby, Gone in that I both could use the bones and the structure of the story and there was good dialogue and interesting characters in there, but also they kind of inspired me to create more and add on to it. Welliver: If anything, people were kind of burned out on the New York gangster genre. Stockard: Its a little weird being a piece of that, as somebody who wrote two of those movies. WebThe crew consisted of Doug MacRay, Jem Coughlin, Desmond Elden, and Albert MacGloan, four veteran Charlestown bank and armored car robbers. For his turn as Jem, Renner was nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, though he lost out to Christian Bale, who played the troubled brother of boxer Micky Ward in yet another movie set in Massachusetts: The Fighter. Nobodys gonna hire me to do anything except Boston., Stockard: I said, You can do Boston again, but lets get out of there for a while., Affleck: Which is why I was like, Great. Some of the scenes were shot on the real crime locations depicted. This makes it a mini-epic. Stockard: Do we want to punish this person or do we not? The Town (2010 Jon Hamm and Affleck centers on the Boston neighborhood of Charlestown. They had to look and sound like they just rolled out of Old Sullys at 2 a.m. on a Sunday. A Providence man who claims he's robbed at least 100 banks and that Ben Affleck's character in "The Town" was based on him was held without bail Thursday on charges of robbing two Boston banks and attempting to rob a third, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office said. It was like a different world, the actor and filmmaker says. Hes probably still there. Cooper: I wanted to spend some time in Walpole [at MCICedar Junction] and just observe. 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. And we saw the film for the first time and I must say: I was across the aisle and up two or three rows from Jeremy, and I dont know if Im letting the cat out of the bag, but I think he was thrilled watching that film. 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. Some were ex-convicts for whom a judges permission had to be sought for them to carry weapons, even fake or unloaded ones. What is the penalty for bank robbery in mass? These interviews have been condensed and edited for clarity. I dont even think they had sidewalks. "Ben Affleck Played Me". Slaine (Albert Gloansy Magloan): I was born in Dorchester, grew up there as a kid. And it is a bit like visiting royalty there, for me, in a way that I dont get in any other town or city in the world. The way John tells the story is, Of course I do two [moves] on him and Ive got him and he cant move, and [Afflecks] like, alright, alright, alright!. I was still in the 70s mindset of, Oh thats how you end one of these movies. And man, he stood up really well to Ben. Around 3 p.m., two armed men robbed the Hingham Institution for Savings on Charles Street, according to police spokeswoman Rachel McGuire. But he also liked this book by Chuck Hogan. Yes Charestown, MA is known for Bank robbers. And well, why not nuns and tactical gear? Chuck gets credit for that. I was fine with that. 1 hospitalized after fire in West Town, CFD says . Hamm: He is a favorite son of Boston for a very good reason. Hamm: Another smart move by Ben was to populate this movie with people that have an actual, real-life connection to these things. Director: Ben Affleck. Thats my quote that you used in the book. I was like, Oh man, whats up? He was excited. Suspects at large after $100K stolen from North Side bank: authorities. WebBen Affleck played this real life bank robber in 'The Town'. Pretty much everyone on the set was an ex-con of some sort,Jeremy Renner told the LA Times. (His co-star John Hamm once said thatwalking around Boston with Affleck was like walking around with the mayor.) Unfair or not, Charlestown had a reputation. WebThe Town (2010) is a heist film that follows a group of bank robbers in Charlestown, Boston, and the law enforcement personnel attempting to stop them. What it allowed me to do is privately observe the prison population. And in an exciting way. The Town stages heists in both places. Burke: To go sit in the stands with Jeremy Renner in an empty stadium, it was surreal. WebThe Town. Affleck: My favorite moment in the movie, cinematically, came directly from a conversation I had with a guy who was in MCI-Norfolk at the time. 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. Some were ex-convicts for whom a judges permission had to be a subscriber to join the conversation, thats still... Accounted for barely 2 per cent of all Boston robberies ( not just bank robberies and its strict of... Be sought for them to carry weapons, even fake or unloaded ones to that... 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