Affleck: Those little streets created something visually interesting that you dont see in many car chases. David Fincher does an even more exaggerated version of that. It really wasnt gonna work. He was quite clear. 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. Hamm: We could all go, hang out at the bar; me and Rebecca, and Renner, and Titus, that whole crowd. Burke: To go sit in the stands with Jeremy Renner in an empty stadium, it was surreal. Rob Dobi Chuck Hogans novel Prince of Thieves opens with a toast: Raise a Glass. Police figures from 2010 showed that Charlestown accounted for barely 2 per cent of all Boston robberies (not just bank robberies). 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. 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 something so tomb-like and archaic about Fenway. The guy that I spoke with, who was kind of our head technical adviser from the FBI, was from Nebraska. Ben Affleck grew up in Cambridge, only a few miles away from Charlestown, but to him the distance between the two places felt vast. 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 was cutting out pieces of felt while Gina [Rhodes] was stitching themmaking, by hand, the fake Bruins logo. 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 Hes part of John Hamms FBI crew. After managing to evade a manhunt and escape to Florida, his character says goodbye to Claire via a letter. IS Charlestown MA known for Bank robbers? They think theres no more serious white people in Charlestown, says local girl Kris (Blake Lively) early in the film. Its this movie and its already got a script. 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. I think its ripe for the picking. Most of the heists in The Town were inspired by real crimes from that era. 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. 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: Blake Lively took the train from New York. The gang torches their escape cars and their transfer vehicles. Afflecks reluctant bank robber Doug desparately wants to redefine himself as a serious Hollywood player after misfires like Gigli and Jersey Girl. He was able to hold his own with a lot of those dudes who are the real deal. [The Town] is not just entertainment and popcorn. Blake came in and read the scene and was amazing. 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. Like you didnt know what they were gonna do. Welliver: [Renner] switches it on and I love watching him work. All they see are yuppies. 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. Hes crazy. Hes from Modesto, and hes kind of got that bulldog, kind of dirtbag sensibility. Now, William shares his story after his Caught in Providence case went viral. Tuesday October 30, 2012. He knows how to get a story from one place to another and connect all the dots in between so that you are in it and immersed in it and believe it and its thrilling and its really entertaining, as well as being serious. And everyone was like, Ah, you cant, really. It eventually just blew up. Affleck: In a world of increasing homogenization, having this fresh place that I think stood out, it was appealing. Stockard: Do we want to punish this person or do we not? Claire represents the real problem at the center of the proceedings. Which I like, and its good, but I want to sort of put our perspective on it.. We all want to chortle,like Jem,there goes college soccaaar, while shooting a guy we dont like in the knee. 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). They dont squeal. So theres a whole range of accents. As they fled with a bag of cash containing roughly $281,000 (180,000 then), another guard opened fire. 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. And well, why not nuns and tactical gear? In the history of crime, the best crew was headed by John Dillinger. Slaine: Ive seen other cuts of the ending, like the one they put out, the extended version. 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. But not everyone was happy with the image of Charlestown given toa generation of moviegoers. And so if you cant do it, just dont do it. And for better or worse, it was also a hit thatin addition to tax incentiveshelped temporarily cement Massachusetts as Hollywood East. They are holding their automatic weapons and wearing their disguises. Chris Cooper (Stephen MacRay): Ben had me at prison. It was great. Everybody wanted to cut it. 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. Ive never felt all that interested in literally translating from book to page. Affleck: The only other thing Ill say about the chase sequence, it definitely reminded me of Jimmy Tingle in the 80s. Crockett: [Lively] would go out every night and hang out with Townies. 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. They set up a date and Jeremy Renner and I both arrived at Walpole to go through the screening. But wrapping that in the sort of candy shell of a heist movie. Beyond the flashy heists, The Townrenamed because Prince of Thieves had already been used as the subtitle of Kevin Costners version of Robin Hoodis a movie about fate, loyalty, and morality, and how those things commingle. Do everything youre supposed to do, they wont be harmed.. Cooper: I think he was just having a ball with this character. 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.. By contrast, Afflecks Doug MacRay heads a four-man gang. The first bank robbery in Melrose was shot on location. 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. He loved it, optioned it. 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. According to FBI statistics 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. Whats the best way to get there?. You couldve just called me.. I remember the librarians called me the day before, just to confirm. 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. 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. He also made sure to populate the movie with people who didnt have to fake their Boston accents. 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. We had this huge screen over the third base dugout. I said, Look, you know, I understand that youre making this movie about robbers out of Charlestown. He was a local hockey star who got drafted by the NHL, but started beating on his own teammates and got sent back home. Craig: [Jeff] Robinov, [the president] at Warners, really wanted to make the movie. And Ben Affleck was incredibly famous already. 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. And then a few months later I got a call and they were like, Oh, we want you to come back in and audition for the director. I show up at this office in Cambridge to go in and read and all of a sudden I see Ben Affleck walk in. And that was really thrilling to respond to. Gone Girl we shot a hundred days for a two-hour thriller. 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. 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. 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? Burke: I was at a point where I was still looking for what I was gonna do with my life. You definitely get more of that in BPD and the local cops. Director: Ben Affleck. My father insisted that I go over. It was taking a period of time that had passed and pretending it was still a reality. Starring: Ben Affleck Rebecca Hall Jon Hamm Jeremy Renner Blake Lively. When its not, its predictable and obvious and trite. Affleck: Id been in action sequences plenty, so I kind of knew how they worked. In 2010, Affleck directed The Town, a drama about a gang of Charlestown armored car robbers. The romance in the middle of the film is only there to delineate the boundaries between heist film and crime procedural. He made my job easy. Slaine: I think he was just really going for authenticity. Chuck gets credit for that. Jem spent nine years in prison for killing a local thug who was planning to kill Doug. The imitators that his opus spawned, however, couldnt recreate what he managed to. But one of the greatest films about Boston goes back to 1973. Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! Id go sit in Fenway and be the only guy there. Ill tell you what Im gonna do. And so we were a little bit extra, extra respectful. Affleck: I was able to get access to the FBI and the division that chased and caught most of these armored car robbers, particularly in Charlestown. The story appealed to Affleck. The money was all on the screen. Then it might as well just stay a book. Afflecks Doug MacRay, the leader of the gang, is the one whos gotten tired of the life. 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