Affleck: I had great stunt drivers. 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! Free shipping for many products! Its been in development here for a while. Good God, some of them may still be there today. Bens standing there and hes doing his public relations things, and people are swarming him. Its not The Godfather of caper films, but it is a heist movie must-see. 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. They like walking out with a little bit of hope. Burch: We did it during off days. They had seen Gone Baby Gone, which opened in like sixth place to $5 million or something and wasnt seen widely. MacRay is a narcissist who uses Jems sister Krista (Blake Lively) for bathroom quickies, and Claire as a loophole. 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. Jason Bourne kills the bad guys. Slaine: Im convinced my hearing is still not the same after that film. The Town was initially supposed to end with Doug paying for his sins with his life. He was the leader that he is. Location scouting was uppermost in his mind. Agents with the FBI believe Gage Haws robbed five small town banks throughout northwest Ohio. That was the most important part, because he could so easily lapse into clich. Unlike them, Doug had a chance at success, a chance to escape following in his father's criminal footsteps. Affleck: Rebecca worked just as hard on the accent. Affleck was determined to make sure that his main cast could at least pass as true Massholes. Job Type:Part-Time. WebThe crew consisted of Doug MacRay, Jem Coughlin, Desmond Elden, and Albert MacGloan, four veteran Charlestown bank and armored car robbers. MacRay is pulled between the devil and angel who sit on his shoulders: Jem, who spent nine years in prison for killing someone who was supposedly planning to kill Doug; and Claire, the bank manager Doug falls for after a job. Cooper: I dont know Jeremys height, but Ben is a pretty big boy. We did all that kind of stuff. This is based on FBI statistics at the time. Its not just an accent, its more of an attitude. These interviews have been condensed and edited for clarity. Craig: Adrian wanted 90 shooting days and $90 [million] to do it. 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. Rob Dobi Chuck Hogans novel Prince of Thieves opens with a toast: Raise a Glass. They blew it up and both sides of the street, all the brick buildings were totally covered in soot. And that was really thrilling to respond to. Hed be happy to settle down with his former hostage, Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall). [Adrian Lyne did not respond to a request to be interviewed for this article.]. 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. Witt: Its not like New York or Los Angeles where you have wider streets. (His co-star John Hamm once said thatwalking around Boston with Affleck was like walking around with the mayor.) This is the script I want. And I said, Adrian, this is gonna be a three-and-a-half-hour movie. Hes like, Well, if Scorsese can make a three-and-a-half-hour movie, I want to.. Then they look up to find a Boston cop reading a newspaper in his police car. You werent sure exactly what he was gonna do, or how he was gonna behave, because it wasnt Matt Damon, whos always the hero and always wins out in the end. Hes maybe four people away. But they said, We have this project that we think youd be right for. But one of the greatest films about Boston goes back to 1973. Numerous career bank robbers threw in the towel and testified in this trial, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Connolly said at a news conference at the time. And we had a lot of days for a movie that was relatively inexpensive. Its gentrified and diverse now, a local TV show host told The Christian Science Monitor. Thats my quote that you used in the book. I was like, Oh man, whats up? He was excited. 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. And we got in the car and kept going. I totally put that directly in the movie. It all went to the actual production of the movie. Stockard: As much as it felt like, We know this story, we know these people, there was also this entire world for us to discover. Everybody wanted to cut it. They were about to buy it but they wanted to cut it, too. The romance in the middle of the film is only there to delineate the boundaries between heist film and crime procedural. Then they realized that were shooting a movie. 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. [Chairman] Tom Werners a friend of mine. It was really more of an erotic thriller: The criminal who falls in love with the captive kind of thing. And everyone was like, Ah, you cant, really. Although it certainly felt like he was. Adrian had wanted to do one of my books, which was kind of unadaptable because it took place over like, 30 years. Some were ex-convicts for whom a judges permission had to be sought for them to carry weapons, even fake or unloaded ones. IS Charlestown MA known for Bank robbers? [The Town] is not just entertainment and popcorn. Hes not someone that blends in easily. Affleck: I was very self-conscious about being limited to being the Boston guy. 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. The Den of Geek quarterly magazine is packed with exclusive features, interviews, previews and deep dives into geek culture. Welliver: The character Dino was a cop who grew up in Charlestown. He was in his early 20s. 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. They went to jail because there were cracks on the pavement, leaks on the street. A Boston bank robber looks for a way out of his criminal lifestyle after beginning a passionate romance with the woman that his gang briefly took hostage. Stockard: Obviously youre making a movie so you mythologize it a little bit. The Ringers Bill Simmons, who lived in Charlestown for eight years, said on The Rewatchablesthat, of all films, this one makes me the most nostalgic for Boston. The bars in the film are real Charlestown bars:Old Sullys (for townies), where Douggie and Jem meet early on, and New Sullys (for yuppies), where Hamms FBI officer approaches Niki. Afflecks crew of bank robbers needed genuine local flavor. Id go sit in Fenway and be the only guy there. We all want to chortle,like Jem,there goes college soccaaar, while shooting a guy we dont like in the knee. They were all from Charlestown. Its an action movie where you get to root for the bad guys. My father insisted that I go over. The guy that I spoke with, who was kind of our head technical adviser from the FBI, was from Nebraska. It went on to make $154 million (119 million) worldwide. And so yes, they rob Fenway, but its not like hes running across the outfield getting tackled by Tom Brunansky with a bag of money in hand. It was as simple as that. [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. 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. Nothing kills a Boston-set movie like bad Boston accents. Dillinger assembled a crack team and he himself would hop over the bank booths like a jack-rabbit, hence his nickname. Claire represents the real problem at the center of the proceedings. It was concealing a character-based drama centered around themes that I was interested in, particularly the theme of children paying for the sins of their parents, Affleck says. Aaron Stockard (cowriter): Ben called me up and said, I know what I want to direct next. Suspects at large after $100K stolen from North Side bank: authorities. The funny thing isand I found this out laterhe met John Cena for that role. Affleck: That was fascinating. Peter Craig (cowriter): Theres a really great detail that I always loved where Doug just sticks his gun in one of those portholes in the armored car, and so the bullets like ricochet and rattle around in there. 1 hospitalized after fire in West Town, CFD says . They had all these Blaupunkts. Theres so many shots and so quickly, that at the end, OK, what happened? Violence, unsolved murders . Adrian was off the project. Tuesday October 30, 2012. Job. 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. I look over and its Pete, and hes having his breakfast, and hes reading the paper, and I hadnt met him before because I didnt have any scenes with him. Its kind of insular. It would go from completely quiet at 5 oclock in the morning to suddenly its like doing theater on a massive scale. Afflecks Doug MacRay, the leader of the gang, is the one whos gotten tired of the life. Craig: I hadnt really processed the new ending. He had really bad scars. There were 150 people down there working. They stole their tunes., The interviews also gave The Town an on-tap supply of authentic extras. The Friends of Eddie Coyle starred Robert Mitchum in the title role and Peter Boyle as a hitman who ran a bar. So we had access to all of the underneath [of it], because thats where we shot a lot of it. Martin Scorseses The Departed cast Jack Nicholson as Frank Costello, who was loosely based on Bulger. It at least had that upswing. And I still am. It was wild. If the Herald said that, I mightve taken it more personally. Jem spent nine years in prison for killing a local thug who was planning to kill Doug. Everybody in attendance loved it; no car windows smashed or anything like that. [It was] probably the most intense production that weve had at the ballparkfrom both an overall action perspective, but also the grandeur of it. 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. If the criminal culture that The Town associated with Charlestowns Irish-Catholic working-class community ever existed, it had dwindled away with the neighbourhoods traditional residents. Theres like four people in the whole bar, which is a huge bar. They happened to be casting this action movie across the street from where I live. They look at him. 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. In the 70s, New York was that. 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. The full version. Craig: We went into a bit of a quandary about the ending. This database contains birth information from several towns included in the Massachusetts (U.S.A.) Town Vital 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 showed up, I did the reading. I dont know exactly what happened, but I know that the option was running out. What it allowed me to do is privately observe the prison population. He often has a very small crew. Everyone was making New York movies. And to that end, its 100 percent on Ben. It very much had a sense of place. And for better or worse, it was also a hit thatin addition to tax incentiveshelped temporarily cement Massachusetts as Hollywood East. He saw it and he was like, This is perfect. R Thriller Drama Crime Movie 2010. hd. He robbed banks but let the civilians in the banks keep their money. This shooting game is the newest brilliant sneaking FPS game. Theres two ways that this can go. Affleck unequivocally contributed to that proliferation. And he said, Well, there was a time I remember when we all had just robbed a truck and we pulled up to the switch car, and we all had our masks, and we were carrying a bag of money, and we pull up to the car, and we look over, and theres a cop doing lazy construction. And he just looked at us, and we looked at him, and he looked the other way. Cooper: He got me about five [recorded] voices and one in particularthis one of somebody who had done timewas just so full of character and I just loved it, and so thats what I glommed onto. 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. FBI responds to bank robbery on NW Side. This shooting game is the newest brilliant sneaking FPS game. And they led me into this little alleyway. The Boston area was prime cinematic crime fields during the early 2000s. He had participated in a bunch of these armored car robberies, and we had been talking for two hours, and time was almost up. 2 hours ago. I dont think you know how you sound. Actors tell me that thats one of the toughest ones they have to do. Its a hard movie to watch. He made my job easy. We all want to be from Douggies Charlestown and we all know its a fantasy. An earlier version of this piece misspelled Roslindale. 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. Its fucking brilliant. David Crockett (producer): They read, and not saying who she was or what she was in, she did the [Boston] accent. Affleck: With Jeremy Renner, somebody said to me, Theres this guy, hes got this movie coming out that you should see, its supposed to be really good. But he pointed out the quote. Thats what happened. They wore wigs, fake bears and masks; in the film, brilliantly, these became nun masks and habits. 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. I watched a screening with a different ending and it hadnt been testing well. But as I was signing books afterwards, I see this guy coming up. Affleck never had so much fun, One blue-collar Boston neighbourhood has produced more bank robbers and armoured-carthieves than anywhere in the world: Charlestown.. I liked the way it was released, man. Ben Affleck grew up in Cambridge, only a few miles away from Charlestown, but to him the distance between the two places felt vast. Hes just great. He loves her enough not to kill her, but not enough to testify. He goes into the family business. It was actually in the book. 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. Cooper: It was kind of this crisp evening. Affleck: Im glad to have worked on movies that are part of that tradition. Norbums. But he could not have been happier to be there. Two armored car guards were shot to death in New Hampshire in 1994 during one of the robberies. The violent film starring Jeremy Renner, John Hamm and Ben Affleck centers on the Boston neighborhood of Charlestown. Just finding a place to park the trucks. Welliver: I had an experience several years before for a David Kelley show called The Practice which took place in Boston. By the way? And I hadnt seen it with the new one tacked on. Then it might as well just stay a book. Walking in I was feeling kind of glib. Like you didnt know what they were gonna do. Pretty much everyone on the set was an ex-con of some sort,Jeremy Renner told the LA Times. They were shooting a scene. As they fled with a bag of cash containing roughly $281,000 (180,000 then), another guard opened fire. Chucks such a good writer that you get the tone from his details. When I got there, I went up on the walkway, on the first-base side, looking down. Hall: It was like being alongside Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in London. After a seven-day trial, they were Thats the thing, that theres a kind of ownership and its beautiful. Burke: There were the most narrow streets you could find in the North End. Culture Editor Tony Sokol is a writer, playwright and musician. And I was like, Why are the people who live here letting us do this? 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. Afflecks second film as a director charts the fall of a mythic heist gang and the streets which made them. September 2009. From 1874 to 1921 it is estimated that Starr robbed over 21 banks, stealing $60,000 in cash. 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. Crockett: He knew from the beginning that [Magloan] was gonna be Slaine. He has that capacity, and I think that makes him a classic American filmmaker. The gentrification of Charlestown is the huge pile of rotting wood fueling The Towns bonfire of crime. 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