Then put it in Connecticut.. 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. 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. The money was all on the screen. Affleck: The day that were shooting the shoot-out with Jeremy, where he gets killed out in front of the McDonalds behind Fenwaywhen you do these stunts with cars, you have to really clean the streets immaculately because these drivers are precision drivers. 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. Affleck: Jeremy came in and was just awesome. Suspects at large after $100K stolen from North Side bank: authorities. Claire represents the real problem at the center of the proceedings. Bens standing there and hes doing his public relations things, and people are swarming him. No above-the-line people got paid any money. Just because the echo in the ballpark. Unfair or not, Charlestown had a reputation. Jem spent nine years in prison for killing a local thug who was planning to kill Doug. Hamm: Theres nothing weirder than an empty stadium. Jem is furious when he finds Doug cozying up to Claire, the bank manager who could finger them to the Feds. This was a garage that 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. Walking in I was feeling kind of glib. 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. The actor who played James Jem Coughlin, Dougs ex-con buddy, however, wasnt from Boston. The full version. See more. Shooting there had been a condition of Afflecktaking on the film. An alternate title for the film could be Ben Afflecks Boston, and no one would have had it any other way. And she really focused specifically, not only on like, an American accent, but what it sounded like in Marblehead, which doesnt sound like Charlestown. Solemn now: To The Town. Stockard: The movie that we thought about was [Michael Manns] Heat. He gets punished. I just still really thought that way. In my imagination, hes always been Ben Affleck. Particularly commercial success. Burke: To go sit in the stands with Jeremy Renner in an empty stadium, it was surreal. Slaine: When he cast me in Gone Baby Gone I had no acting experienceand I wasnt the only one. This really happened it was described to Affleck by a man serving time. Starring: Ben Affleck Rebecca Hall Jon Hamm Jeremy Renner Blake Lively. The Town was initially supposed to end with Doug paying for his sins with his life. And so they said they had this script based on this book, and I said, OK, let me look at it. I read the adaptation, and it had been developed by Adrian Lyne, who I just worked with. The guests ran for cover. According to FBI statistics from the same year, the entire state of Massachusetts had fewer than 3 per cent of all bank robberies nationwide. Hogan: I was playing on a softball team, and this friend, he works for one of the prisons here and he was walking by someones desk and they had a picture of Ben Affleck on her screen saver. Most of the heists in The Town were inspired by real crimes from that era. Welliver: It [was] like doing photo shoots in front of Graceland with Elvis when Elvis was still alive. Police Arrest Charlestown Man Following Bank Robbery - Charlestown, MA - Officers responded to the Santander Bank at 437 Rutherford Avenue early Sunday morning. 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. I knew it was one scene and it was gonna be an important scene: [Dougs] relationship with his father. 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. For the film, Affleck talked to locals, visited the maximum-security prison MCICedar Junction, and consulted with the FBI Violent Crimes Task Force in Boston. And there were probably a couple of guys there who were still robbing banks.. Its an action movie where you get to root for the bad guys. Burke: Ive heard people say, Oh, we dont sound like that! And Im like, I dont think you guys really listen to yourselves. [But] Warners gave it back to Adrian and said, You know what, shop it around. He took it to Imagine; he took it to Universal. So if you give somebody a space, all they want to do is figure out how to do a heist in there. 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. I watched a screening with a different ending and it hadnt been testing well. 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 Town stages heists in both places. But he also liked this book by Chuck Hogan. WebBank Robbery | Detective Mehul ( ) | Hindi Paheliyan | Hindi PaheliDetective Mehul or Mehul Jasoos is the best detective in town. Job Type:Part-Time. It was taking a period of time that had passed and pretending it was still a reality. When fans of The Town think of Charlestown, they think of banks and bars and punchlines. Thousands. And obviously it was in Bostonthat I was comfortable with. Affleck: I was very self-conscious about being limited to being the Boston guy. Hall: It felt like cinema in the classic sense. I was at that point in my career where every place I walked into I was trying to figure out how to write a robbery in that space. There was one of my endings and Ben wrote a couple endings, and thats Bens ending that they used. Afflecks crew of bank robbers needed genuine local flavor. What it allowed me to do is privately observe the prison population. The sentence subtly shapes the viewers response to the daytime bank heist thatstarts the film. You didnt really know what was coming. Its been in development here for a while. And that looks like a detail youd come up with writing a script. Some of the scenes were shot on the real crime locations depicted. Its more general American but with a kind of East Coast, sort of slightly privileged vibe. This is based on FBI statistics at the time. Robert Brady, 40, was arrested in Charlestown shortly after he allegedly robbed the branch at 11:21 a.m. . We did not have legal clearance to use the logo. It went on to make $154 million (119 million) worldwide. Police figures from 2010 showed that Charlestown accounted for barely 2 per cent of all Boston robberies(not just bank robberies). It really wasnt gonna work. They were shooting a scene. That whole character she did was really kind of based on her own preparation. He was doing a long sentence. Hamm: Another smart move by Ben was to populate this movie with people that have an actual, real-life connection to these things. Doug MacRay ( Ben Affleck) is not cut from the same cloth as his fellow thieves. The annual average hovered above 10,000 for the next 15years. 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. WebBen Affleck played this real life bank robber in 'The Town'. Burch: We did it during off days. 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. And I hadnt seen it with the new one tacked on. Jem is also Riff to Dougs Tony in West Side Story. 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. 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. Affleck unequivocally contributed to that proliferation. Dont run away from it. We love that movie, dont be afraid of doing things that they did that worked. But what about in the 1980s and early 1990s? The first or second take that he did, Jeremy wanted to do it on his own. The gentrification of Charlestown is the huge pile of rotting wood fueling The Towns bonfire of crime. 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. Theyre locked, loaded, and trained in automatic weapons, and launder their take immediately. But it still has to be divvied up among the team. And I was like, Why are the people who live here letting us do this? From 1874 to 1921 it is estimated that Starr robbed over 21 banks, stealing $60,000 in cash. MacRay is a narcissist who uses Jems sister Krista (Blake Lively) for bathroom quickies, and Claire as a loophole. Its ironic that by the time the film came out, the process was largely complete. Burke: I was at a point where I was still looking for what I was gonna do with my life. So I leave the movie theater and Im really kind of numb, trying to figure it out. Or a child abduction? Ill use them because Im from Boston to get into Fenway. 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. Affleck gives the gang its last hurrah on-screen. After all, there are only so many Massachusetts-set crime stories about Irish American antiheroes that you can tell. Some residents felt it portrayed the locals as in the words of onequoted in The Christian Science Monitor, a bunch of dumb bums. Adrian had wanted to do one of my books, which was kind of unadaptable because it took place over like, 30 years. 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: Because it was the first time I was gonna star and direct, and because I didnt have a lot of money to pay a bunch of stars, I had the luxury of being able to just cast the best actors. Provo, UT, United States () -Provo Towne Center 1200 Towne Centre Blvd Ste B. And Ben Affleck was incredibly famous already. Hall: I wouldnt really say I did a Boston accent. 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. Stockard: Ben had a good relationship with the Red Sox. The story was much clearer and cleaner. In the history of crime, the best crew was headed by John Dillinger. 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. Affleck: Typically people you saw who did it badly would err on the side of doing the Kennedys. Well, not take notes, because you couldnt bring in a pencil. Carter: That scene at the end, where you see [Jem] running across the street trying to get away from the cops, and the cars, obviously those are stunt drivers, theyre stopping really quick. He made my job easy. Martin Scorseses The Departed cast Jack Nicholson as Frank Costello, who was loosely based on Bulger. The movies center is Charlestown, right across the bridge from the rest of Boston, a legend in illicit locales. Carter: There was a guy, Joe Lawler, who was helping us. I wanted to be a part of that. 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. I wasnt really in the movie world. Affleck: The Yawkey Red Sox, Im sure, wouldve been impossible. Affleck also embarked on a series of interviews with locals, including convicted robbers and members of the FBI violent crimes force. These words flash up on screen at the opening of Ben Afflecks 2010 crime thriller,which follows a crew of Boston robbers as they rise fromlocal bank jobs to a hit on Fenway Park. And he read and blew me away. 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. After a seven-day trial, they were convicted on 54 of 55 counts of robbery, including one which resulted in the death of two armored car guards. He didnt want to option it himself, so they set him up with [producer] Graham King, who got the option. As for Affleck, the success of The Town helped advance his career as a director. In Stanley Kubricks The Killing (1956), a marriage-minded Sterling Hayden leads a crew to take down one last racetrack for $2 million. Besides being the lovable and erudite wrinkle in the scheme, she is not a townie, someone who was raised in the neighborhood. We all want to chortle,like Jem,there goes college soccaaar, while shooting a guy we dont like in the knee. Crockett: Gone Baby Gone, which I did with him, was a relatively small movie. Theres something so tomb-like and archaic about Fenway. The city also set the scene for Clint Eastwoods Mystic River, and Afflecks directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone, both based on books by local crime novelist Dennis Lehane. So unexpected. On Feb. 7, 2019, Brady pleaded guilty to bank robbery. WebThe Town. I dont even think they had sidewalks. It included a mastermind, a distraction, a partner, a coordinator, a backer, hacker, con man, and gadget guy. Affleck: Hockeys such a big thing in Charlestown. soap.. BOSTON - A Charlestown man was sentenced yesterday in federal court in Boston for bank robbery. Stockard: There is this over-the-top sense to these movies. [Lively did not respond to a request to be interviewed for this article. Ex-felons are not allowed to hold even fake weapons. It very much had a sense of place. And Im like, Whoa, so he must be the director.. WebIn a stroll of Charlestown on a sunny day, its hard to believe this tiny Boston neighborhood could be the bank robbery capital of America the Warner Bros. hype about Ben Director: Ben Affleck. Yes Charestown, MA is known for Bank robbers. 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. Even the prison is real: the scene in which Douggie visits his father was shot on location at the maximum security MCI-Cedar Junction, the first time anything had been filmed there. WebCharlestownis the oldest neighborhoodin Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States. The car contained stolen money an And someone had forgotten to tell them that we were downstairs shooting. Agents with the FBI believe Gage Haws robbed five small town banks throughout northwest Ohio. He came over and he was a little bit shy but she was speaking for him. 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. And so if you cant do it, just dont do it. Crockett: I remember being on the streets of Charlestown talking to some people. His first reaction is to take her out of the equation.. Jason Bourne kills the bad guys. 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. Adrian was off the project. Craig: I was a crime writer already. Because of oversaturation in the last decade, Boston movies have been rightfully skewered. The Den of Geek quarterly magazine is packed with exclusive features, interviews, previews and deep dives into geek culture. But John is obviously a much bigger guy. If the world was empty, what would you do? 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