It at least had that upswing. He also made sure to populate the movie with people who didnt have to fake their Boston accents. The actor who played James Jem Coughlin, Dougs ex-con buddy, however, wasnt from Boston. . 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. We went back to his hotel room right after. They wore wigs, fake bears and masks; in the film, brilliantly, these became nun masks and habits. 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. They blew it up and both sides of the street, all the brick buildings were totally covered in soot. Agents with the FBI believe Gage Haws robbed five small town banks throughout northwest Ohio. To Charlestown, our one square mile of brick and So we had access to all of the underneath [of it], because thats where we shot a lot of it. He has a certain thing in that town. Dont run away from it. We love that movie, dont be afraid of doing things that they did that worked. Affleck didnt just direct, he played the lead alongside a cast of present and future superstars and locals. Hamm: It was impressive. When I saw it, I thought, Its fine. I wound up learning a lot from how Ben did that. You dont know where they come from. UPDATE: Ordered held in lieu of $50,000 bail, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports. In 2018, there were just over 4,000 robberies in Massachusetts compare that to 1980, when there more than 13,500. 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. Ive never felt all that interested in literally translating from book to page. 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. 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. 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. I think its ripe for the picking. Theres something so tomb-like and archaic about Fenway. He contributed to Altvariety, Chiseler, Smashpipe, and other magazines. Chuck Hogans novel Prince of Thieves opens with a toast: To Charlestown, our one square mile of brick and cobblestone. As I got older I lived in [Jamaica Plain], West Roxbury, where my son was born. Something the character of James (Jeremy Renner), aka Jem, could appreciate. Welliver: It [was] like doing photo shoots in front of Graceland with Elvis when Elvis was still alive. Stockard: Ben and I went and spent a day with this FBI task force. Hall: I remember going to the premiere and a group of Charlestowners were there and they all said to me, You ever come back to Boston, well get you a car. Jem spent nine years in prison for killing a local thug who was planning to kill Doug. Aaron Stockard (cowriter): Ben called me up and said, I know what I want to direct next. I showed up, I did the reading. Blake Lively was sent into bars, real hoodlums were cast and a wedding party was spooked by gunfire. Stockard: Do we want to punish this person or do we not? Crockett: As he puts it, you have so many fame chips you can use. Director: Ben Affleck. Adrian was off the project. 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. But they liked it and they wanted to meet with me, and I was like, of course. I was willing to meet with anyone who was interested in hiring me as a director. Affleck: There did kind of get to be a glut of Boston movies, and everybody did a Boston accent. Hes like, What the fuck are you doing? 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. 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. The Town was originally set to be a three-and-a-half-hour-long epic directed by Fatal Attractions Adrian Lyne. Police figures from 2010 showed that Charlestown accounted for barely 2 per cent of all Boston robberies (not just bank robberies). They like walking out with a little bit of hope. Jem is his right hand muscle, and unquestioning backup. Gone Girl we shot a hundred days for a two-hour thriller. The romance in the middle of the film is only there to delineate the boundaries between heist film and crime procedural. Thats how you drive a f----n caaar, declares the getaway driver, Gloansy (played by rapper Slaine). The 6-foot-tall Dorchester-born rapper is an intimidating physical presence with a raspy grumble of a voice flavored with a thick Boston accent. 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. He heard stories about Charlestowns reputation for bank robberies and its strict code of silence. And more than anything, just from a noise standpoint, it was kind of unique. Id go sit in Fenway and be the only guy there. And they said, We like what you did, we think youre a good director and we believe in you. And I was kind of struck by the enthusiasm they had considering for the most part, Hollywood operates based on success. Everywhere we went people were so excited to see him. He loves her enough not to kill her, but not enough to testify. September 2009. 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. 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. It went on to make $154 million (119 million) worldwide. Affleck: Its parochial and kind of a small town in some ways. At heart, its a story of social mobility. He gave me so much ammunition all the time to play off and to feel. Walking in I was feeling kind of glib. Robert H. Brady, 42, was sentenced by Senior U.S. District Court Judge Douglas P. Woodlock to five years in prison and three years of supervised release. In real life, they were not so lucky. I had a darker ending in it, like a real 70s ending, where Doug dies. In my imagination, hes always been Ben Affleck. He claims that Ben Affleck played him in the movie, but now this former bank robber i. To get to Charlestown was to live free. Ten years ago this week, Ben Affleck and his crew put on nun masks, robbed Fenway Park, and made the ultimate Boston movie. In Quentin Tarantinos Reservoir Dogs (1991), the crew had color-coded names; in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid they wore 10-gallon hats. According to FBI statistics This was a garage that Then put it in Connecticut.. Affleck gives the gang its last hurrah on-screen. He loved it, optioned it. 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. They really loved the idea of putting these masked avengers in minivans. Its something Ive seen other directors do. 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. IS Charlestown MA known for Bank robbers? If youre gonna make a film of it, you have to add something to it, or try to. The crew at the center of The Town resembles a gang of five masked robbers who pulled holdups from 1990 to 1995. Many of them testified that they had grown tired of a life of stealing, of drugs, of broken relationships.. Just because the echo in the ballpark. His father, Stephen MacRay (Chris Cooper) was a thief, just like his father, and all of Dougs friends were thick with thievery. Affleck: Jeff Robinov and [worldwide marketing president] Sue Kroll were working at Warner Bros. at the time, and they asked to have a meeting with me. Craig: We went into a bit of a quandary about the ending. Thats my quote that you used in the book. I was like, Oh man, whats up? He was excited. 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. So I was thrilled. I had somebody from Marblehead quote all her dialogue. Welliver: I still think that The Town and Gone Baby Gone, thats the bar. FINDLAY, Ohio (WTVG) - Authorities arrested a man in Findlay Monday on bank robbery charges. 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. It can be a terrible experience, meaning you can interrupt somebody when theyre trying to have a nice moment, or they can be pleasant. "Ben Affleck Played Me". Some of the scenes were shot on the real crime locations depicted. WebThe crew consisted of Doug MacRay, Jem Coughlin, Desmond Elden, and Albert MacGloan, four veteran Charlestown bank and armored car robbers. I came back and met with Ben, and I was so excited. And I thought, Not only is she the best actress for the part, shes gonna be able to really surprise people.. 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. Jem is furious when he finds Doug cozying up to Claire, the bank manager who could finger them to the Feds. It has a failed romance, a foiled heist, an unsolved crime, enough car chases for three movies, and yet is a coming-of-age film and a portrait of an eras end. Stockard: Obviously youre making a movie so you mythologize it a little bit. 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. Job. Job Type:Part-Time. Itd be good to have him around for authenticity. Hes in the movie. And Im like, Whoa, so he must be the director.. And thats just sort of the natural progression. Then they realized that were shooting a movie. But not everyone was happy with the image of Charlestown given toa generation of moviegoers. And in an exciting way. NO NAME GANG: CHARLESTOWN bank robbers. He grew up in Cambridge,which was close enough to Charlestown for him to know a little about it. She prepped for that for God knows how long. I lived in South Boston, Roslindale. Because youre in a confined space, not a soundstage. He was the leader that he is. 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. Its not a super cheap movie but its not expensive like a studio movie. Ben Affleck grew up in Cambridge, only a few miles away from Charlestown, but to him the distance between the two places felt vast. He saw it and he was like, This is perfect. You didnt really know what was coming. Or why Affleck hired him to play a Charlestown bank robber in his new movie The Town.. Or rather, close enough for himto understand how little he knew about it. The blue-collar neighborhood produced more bank robbers and armored car thieves than anywhere else in the world, according to the movies prologue. It was wild. Hes maybe four people away. David Fincher does an even more exaggerated version of that. Im gonna do a movie about Iran.. Free shipping for many products! Welliver: The upside of that is everybody is rooting for him. 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. It was as simple as that. Claire foretells the doom of Charlestowns criminal culture. Im mighty proud of where I come from, he says. 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. Crockett: [Lively] would go out every night and hang out with Townies. We did all that kind of stuff. Hogan: Warner Bros. didnt want to make the movie for that amount. And man, he stood up really well to Ben. 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. FBI figures reveal significantly higher crime rates pre-gentrification. 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. Everyone was making New York movies. Her performance was savaged by some critics it features the Bride Wars of Boston accents, Wesley Morris wrote in the New York Times but history has been kinder to her. When fans of The Town think of Charlestown, they think of banks and bars and punchlines. And so if you cant do it, just dont do it. 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. Burke: To go sit in the stands with Jeremy Renner in an empty stadium, it was surreal. Carter: There was a guy, Joe Lawler, who was helping us. Slaine: When he cast me in Gone Baby Gone I had no acting experienceand I wasnt the only one. 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. But the sketchy details and the cast of characters sound like a story line from The Friends of Eddie Coyle, a classic movie about low-level wiseguys in the Boston underworld, or the sequel to The Town, the Ben Affleck movie based on a group of Charlestown bank robbers. And I was like, Who the hell is this guy? Yeah, dont do the accent. I said, Well, wait, this show takes place in Boston and this guy is from Boston. He went, Yeah, yeah, but you know, we dont do the accent. I was kind of, Well, whats the fucking point of basing this in Boston? They have an allegiance which goes from womb to tomb, and sperm to worm. Jems family took Doug in after his mom deserted him, and his father fell apart for a little while. And then we put her and her cousin in the movie. And I hadnt seen it with the new one tacked on. To observe this life. Theyre locked, loaded, and trained in automatic weapons, and launder their take immediately. Chay Carter (coproducer): We found a couple of real bank robbers that we did real research with, which is what these four [thieves] were based on. Its more general American but with a kind of East Coast, sort of slightly privileged vibe. David Crockett (producer): They read, and not saying who she was or what she was in, she did the [Boston] accent. Crockett: I remember being on the streets of Charlestown talking to some people. Witt: You dont want to go, like, Quantum of Solace at the beginning where you really dont even know where you are, where you shot it. Theres like four people in the whole bar, which is a huge bar. Bens standing there and hes doing his public relations things, and people are swarming him. The funny thing isand I found this out laterhe met John Cena for that role. Affleck: I made sure that we had enough money to do the Fenway heist sequence in total, which was a lot. He was charged with armed bank robbery and making threats. 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.. FINDLAY, Ohio (WTVG) - Authorities arrested a man in Findlay Monday on bank robbery charges. You can come over to my house for dinner. It was just short of, If you need protection, were here for you. It was incredible. Slaine: I think he was just really going for authenticity. Both robbers were shot, one in the back and one in the head, and the getaway driver promptly rear-ended a parked car. So I leave the movie theater and Im really kind of numb, trying to figure it out. And so Adrian developed it for quite some time. [It was] probably the most intense production that weve had at the ballparkfrom both an overall action perspective, but also the grandeur of it. Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! One of those characters you love to hate and find sort of intoxicating and moving; all of those things at the same time. And they led me into this little alleyway. The two banks Crockett: The Fenway heist was really just a logistical kind of clusterfuck. 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. Free shipping for many products! He often has a very small crew. But one of the greatest films about Boston goes back to 1973. WebDoug MacRay (Ben Affleck) is an unrepentant criminal, the de facto leader of a group of ruthless bank robbers who pride themselves in stealing what they want and getting out clean. According to the Associated Press, Shea, along with Patrick McGonagle, Michael OHalloran, Stephen Burke, and Matthew McDonald, were all from the same The FBI says the vestibule was actually a "man-trap," designed to capture people like Hamilton. But he could not have been happier to be there. It is also quirkily structured, vaguely biographical and personal. 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