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. Chuck Hogans novel Prince of Thieves opens with a toast: To Charlestown, our one square mile of brick and cobblestone. 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. Pretty much everyone on the set was an ex-con of some sort,Jeremy Renner told the LA Times. FBI responds to bank robbery on NW Side. ). Id made Gone Baby Gone for $18 million. Its ruined my life, literally, but Im proud.. I think its ripe for the picking. 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. Its fucking brilliant. So unexpected. 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. Id been in good ones and bad ones, but I knew that it took time, that they were the result of the assembly of a lot of little pieces. 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. Were like, Wait, hes about the right size, height, and all that other, he could be Bens stand-in. If youre gonna make a film of it, you have to add something to it, or try to. FINDLAY, Ohio (WTVG) - Authorities arrested a man in Findlay Monday on bank robbery charges. It is because the small community adheres to omerta, silence unto death. Afflecks crew of bank robbers needed genuine local flavor. Affleck: When this movie came out, the Boston Phoenix review said it had horrible Boston accents. This database contains birth information from several towns included in the Massachusetts (U.S.A.) Town Vital Thats the thing, that theres a kind of ownership and its beautiful. Affleck: I made sure that we had enough money to do the Fenway heist sequence in total, which was a lot. There were 150 people down there working. They had to look and sound like they just rolled out of Old Sullys at 2 a.m. on a Sunday. With a relatively modest budget of $37 million, he made a classic heist flick thats well, porn for New Englanders: the heavy Boston accents; the scene in a Dunkin Donuts; and, oh yeah, the fact that a crew of robbers takes down Fenway Park. Affleck: Rebecca worked just as hard on the accent. The Town was originally set to be a three-and-a-half-hour-long epic directed by Fatal Attractions Adrian Lyne. Well, not take notes, because you couldnt bring in a pencil. Her words had already come true. When its done great its Joe Pesci in Goodfellas. Then put it in Connecticut.. She is the interloping gentry and renovates Dougs headspace. He is the TV Editor at Entertainment. In adapting the script, itself adapted from Chuck Hogans novel Prince of Thieves, Affleck and Aaron Stockard (with whomhe also worked on Good Will Hunting and Gone Baby Gone) changed the cinema setting of the second heist to an armoured-car robbery and car chase based on a real incident that took place in Harvard Square. WebWhitey Bulger and his friendss and some of the Charlestown robbers operated from Marshall Street Garage was actually in Winter Hill, Somerville. 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. You didnt really know what was coming. "Ben Affleck Played Me". Aaron Stockard (cowriter): Ben called me up and said, I know what I want to direct next. 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. 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. Not noir, French for black. The imitators that his opus spawned, however, couldnt recreate what he managed to. 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. Adrian was off the project. Even with the shorter length hes afforded, Affleck tells multiple stories. From 1874 to 1921 it is estimated that Starr robbed over 21 banks, stealing $60,000 in cash. soap.. After a seven-day trial, they were Its been in development here for a while. And I remember immediately getting on Google Maps and looking at the North End, because they had described a robbery that had taken place [there], and being like, They robbed this thing here, and they had to get to that bridge there. So we basically mapped out where this little route was. Its a hard movie to watch. 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. Welliver: When we were doing The Town is when he was up for the role of Hawkeye. Affleck: Its parochial and kind of a small town in some ways. 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. 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. They ran mass auditions of up to 1,000 people at a time, Affleck recalls. Chuck gets credit for that. Shortly after 9am on August 25 1994, an armoured car pulled up outside a NFS Savings Bank in Hudson, New York. They are holding their automatic weapons and wearing their disguises. Download Bank Robbery missions 2017 and enjoy it on your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Thats what makes it great. And then we put her and her cousin in the movie. Theres two ways that this can go. The top of his head was really messed up. Witt: Its not like New York or Los Angeles where you have wider streets. Hogan: Adrian really thought in more operatic terms, and he really wanted to do the book. FINDLAY, Ohio (WTVG) - Authorities arrested a man in Findlay Monday on bank robbery charges. 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. And they walked me over to this locked door and once you opened it, there was an old, dusty cobwebby circular staircase. I was up there for what Im sure was a good half hour. And was critically acclaimed. Theyd closed off the street, working on this story that I had cooked up in my bedroom at home. Especially when youre in a park thats not open to the public. 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. Craig: We went into a bit of a quandary about the ending. Affleck was born in Berkeley, California but grew up in Cambridge, also across the Charles River from Boston but far removed from the inner-city neighborhood of the film. Hogan: Dick Wolf from Law & Order somehow read [the book] early. Suspects at large after $100K stolen from North Side bank: authorities. It has a broad appeal. No above-the-line people got paid any money. He often has a very small crew. Los Angles police on high alert for grand theft and planned robbery in town. That was sort of the trick. But it was very real. 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. Robert Brady, 40, was arrested in Charlestown shortly after he allegedly robbed the branch at 11:21 a.m. Hogan: I went in to go see it in a screening room in Manhattan like two months before it came out. The full version. WebThe crew consisted of Doug MacRay, Jem Coughlin, Desmond Elden, and Albert MacGloan, four veteran Charlestown bank and armored car robbers. The Town stages heists in both places. I call them No R movies, Hogan says. Burke: To go sit in the stands with Jeremy Renner in an empty stadium, it was surreal. 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. Chief Judge Frank Caprio#CaughtInProvidence#thetown#bankrobber See less Comments Most relevant Connie Ann My husband and I watched the movie right after I saw the Providence clip. I was doing that. In the 70s, New York was that. Welliver: [Renner] switches it on and I love watching him work. And more than anything, just from a noise standpoint, it was kind of unique. It was as simple as that. Rob Dobi Chuck Hogans novel Prince of Thieves opens with a toast: Raise a Glass. Besides being the lovable and erudite wrinkle in the scheme, she is not a townie, someone who was raised in the neighborhood. Maybe its not balls; maybe cocky is the right word to describe him. 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. For instance, the shot in which a cop supervising a traffic stop takes one long look at a carload of nun-masked robbers and turns the other way? It would go from completely quiet at 5 oclock in the morning to suddenly its like doing theater on a massive scale. Affleck: There did kind of get to be a glut of Boston movies, and everybody did a Boston accent. 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. Now, William shares his story after his Caught in Providence case went viral. When I was a kid, I was scared to go there. The film makes Jem out to be the loose cannon in the arsenal, but he makes criminal sense. I love Adrian. 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. Eventually, homogenization came for those tales, too. WebMassachusetts, U.S., Town Birth Records, 1620-1850. Its something Ive seen other directors do. And that looks like a detail youd come up with writing a script. Needless to say, it really shook me up. Its gentrified and diverse now, a local TV show host told The Christian Science Monitor. That was the moment where I realized that I could differentiate one bank robbery from another. Norbums. So all of a sudden, while theyre getting married, they hear gunshots at Fenway. Carter: Hes 6-foot-3. Or rather, close enough for himto understand how little he knew about it. Salon Professionals. If the Herald said that, I mightve taken it more personally. Nothing kills a Boston-set movie like bad Boston accents. Or why Affleck hired him to play a Charlestown bank robber in his new movie The Town.. 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. 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. Oct 31, 2012. The funny thing isand I found this out laterhe met John Cena for that role. Burch: We did one of the premieres at Fenway. They stole their tunes., The interviews also gave The Town an on-tap supply of authentic extras. Two armored car guards were shot to death in New Hampshire in 1994 during one of the robberies. 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. Affleck turns it into a redemption story which beats the bank alarm at under two hours. 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. And they told us all these stories, and all these fascinating things, and built up what this mythology was. 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. David Crockett (producer): They read, and not saying who she was or what she was in, she did the [Boston] accent. 2 hours ago. Hes crazy. Hes from Modesto, and hes kind of got that bulldog, kind of dirtbag sensibility. Hamm: He is a favorite son of Boston for a very good reason. So I read this new version of the script. Hall: I wouldnt really say I did a Boston accent. Hall: Hes just a very good storyteller. He didnt want to option it himself, so they set him up with [producer] Graham King, who got the option. Affleck: There tend to be trends and people feel like at first its fresh, and then its kind of something they like, and then it becomes something that people get tired of. The Town (2010 Jon Hamm and Affleck centers on the Boston neighborhood of Charlestown. Which I like, and its good, but I want to sort of put our perspective on it.. Craig: Adrian was at this really ambitious double-album phase of his career, and he didnt want to cut anything. Although we dont have the exact figures for Charlestowns crime rate in the 90s, statistics suggest that there was indeed a surge in the rate of robberies in Slaine: Im convinced my hearing is still not the same after that film. As for Affleck, the success of The Town helped advance his career as a director. 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. The story was much clearer and cleaner. The gentrification of Charlestown is the huge pile of rotting wood fueling The Towns bonfire of crime. We did not have legal clearance to use the logo. They had all these Blaupunkts. So he uses them in that way. Affleck: The Bruins have been extremely shortsighted and wrong with their policy, where if theres swearing or violence, you cant use their logo. Jem is furious when he finds Doug cozying up to Claire, the bank manager who could finger them to the Feds. But instead, Affleck went with something more bittersweet. Blake Lively was sent into bars, real hoodlums were cast and a wedding party was spooked by gunfire. I went in to audition. Crockett: The Fenway heist was really just a logistical kind of clusterfuck. 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. 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! Stockard: Ben had a good relationship with the Red Sox. Director: Ben Affleck. He was with his mother. 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. Welliver: The upside of that is everybody is rooting for him. Ive been on the force for 20 years and Im not looking for money or anything, but Im originally from Charlestown and I think I could be helpful. Shes like, Well, its really great to talk to you, we do have technical advisers and everything kind of lined up, but if you wanted to drop off a card or something like that. I said, Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. It was like a different world, the actor and filmmaker says. The money was all on the screen. Walking in I was feeling kind of glib. Many of them testified that they had grown tired of a life of stealing, of drugs, of broken relationships.. But the Associated Press, which broke the Coyman story, reported Burke is also from Charlestown and was sent to prison in 1988 for six bank robberies in Florida. 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!. Cooper: I wanted to spend some time in Walpole [at MCICedar Junction] and just observe. And so, constantly, Ben and I are trying to make it as real as possible. You definitely get more of that in BPD and the local cops. 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. 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. Just finding a place to park the trucks. And I said, Yeah, its just so great that he can come back and do this and dig in. By the time Affleck directed and starred in the film, Bostons oldest neighbourhood, a small squarish outcrop situated north of the Charles river, was no longer the crime capital of America. 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. Hes probably still there. He also ran afoul of the law himself, recruiting real ex-cons as extras and giving them guns. 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. Its not The Godfather of caper films, but it is a heist movie must-see. 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 really wasnt gonna work. Its worth bearing in mind that these are state-wide statistics, which do not differentiate betweenneighborhoods. 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.. I had a darker ending in it, like a real 70s ending, where Doug dies. Bill Simmons saysthere were a lot of Boston ladies like Kris in real life. It seems likely that Lively had met a few. Affleck was determined to make sure that his main cast could at least pass as true Massholes. It kind of had a post-apocalyptic feeling to 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. IS Charlestown MA known for Bank robbers? Then they realized that were shooting a movie. The FBI says the vestibule was actually a "man-trap," designed to capture people like Hamilton. Hes been forever. 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. Ive never felt all that interested in literally translating from book to page. He loved it, optioned it. In the film, the crew get away, largely thanks to the kind of driving that puts Daniel Craig to shame. This is based on FBI statistics at the time. So theres a whole range of accents. On Feb. 7, 2019, Brady pleaded guilty to bank robbery. This isnt because those criminals made the sloppiest getaways. When it came time to cast The Town, Affleck had fun putting together a star-powered ensemble on a relatively limited budget. Ben Affleck grew up in Cambridge, only a few miles away from Charlestown, but to him the distance between the two places felt vast. The bank robbers step out of their vehicle. But he also liked this book by Chuck Hogan. Whats better than that? Thousands. The violent film starring Jeremy Renner, John Hamm and Ben Affleck centers on the Boston neighborhood of Charlestown. But they said, We have this project that we think youd be right for. The cunning group is robbing city banks to steal money and making the getaway with diamond Heist. Hes like, What the fuck are you doing? To Charlestown, our one square mile of brick and But he could not have been happier to be there. But it isnt. Afflecks big killing in The Town is Fenway Park, and over 60 years later, the take is the same. Its kind of like a safety thing. Welliver: The character Dino was a cop who grew up in Charlestown. Director: Ben Affleck. We all want to be from Douggies Charlestown and we all know its a fantasy. Carter: Someone was getting married. Everybody wanted to cut it. Iran. In 2010, Affleck directed The Town, a drama about a gang of Charlestown armored car robbers. How are you gonna figure this out because you want to drive an armored car out of one of our gates? The FBI reports agents today arrested Anthony M. Hamilton, 24, of Charlestown, on charges he held up a Malden Citizens Bank branch in December, then shot his way out of a locked vestibule. Unlike them, Doug had a chance at success, a chance to escape following in his father's criminal footsteps. 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. Extremely plausible. . So I was thrilled. Crockett: [Lively] would go out every night and hang out with Townies. If you say its a bank heist movie, people are like, Ill see that. I think it was a great step. 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. But does it? 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. 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. A long moment passes with intensity. Burke: It was not on my radar at all. [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. Its not just an accent, its more of an attitude. And I just came over to him and I was biting my tongue. And Major League Baseball was open to itthat was what I was really afraid of. Susan Matheson (costume designer): Ben at one point wears a zip-up track jacket that looks like a Bruins jacket. Its not a super cheap movie but its not expensive like a studio movie. Most of the heists in The Town were inspired by real crimes from that era. We went back to his hotel room right after. Hamm: Theres nothing weirder than an empty stadium. Its Renners Oscar moment. Theres something so tomb-like and archaic about Fenway. 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? You know, the Kennedys kind of had their own weird accent. 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. I was still in the 70s mindset of, Oh thats how you end one of these movies. I was cutting out pieces of felt while Gina [Rhodes] was stitching themmaking, by hand, the fake Bruins logo. And Ill tell you why: Nobody was rooting for Jon Hamm and the cops. The car contained stolen money an He said, Shes slightly different. Marblehead is a little chi-chi. The two banks 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. In real life, they were not so lucky. The blue-collar neighborhood produced more bank robbers and armored car thieves than anywhere else in the world, according to the movies prologue. Although it certainly felt like he was. The movie opened on September 17, 2010, to overwhelmingly positive reviews and eventually grossed $154 million at the worldwide box office. 1 hospitalized after fire in West Town, CFD says . It was actually in the book. It was wild. He was quite clear. Because along with watching the movie, I was working hard to process it. Location scouting was uppermost in his mind. [The Town] is not just entertainment and popcorn. Hed done his time. He also made sure to populate the movie with people who didnt have to fake their Boston accents. Craig: I was a crime writer already. The cunning group is robbing city banks to steal money and making the getaway with diamond Heist. WebBank Robbery | Detective Mehul ( ) | Hindi Paheliyan | Hindi PaheliDetective Mehul or Mehul Jasoos is the best detective in town. Affleck said he picked up the term from a guy at New Sullys bar:I asked, Whats the thing with the Tunies? And he said the Tunies moved in and the Townies stole all their car stereos. 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. 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. Ben wasnt in Boston. The budget that we had previously was too high for us to make it. And then I realized, Maybe they think I can make movies more on the cheap.. But not everyone was happy with the image of Charlestown given toa generation of moviegoers. This shooting game is the newest brilliant sneaking FPS game. Another botched job referred to in the film the one for which Douggies father (Chris Cooper) was sent down for life for killing two guards was also inspired by a notorious bank heist gone wrong. The gang torches their escape cars and their transfer vehicles. However, everybody will want to go see it. And to that end, its 100 percent on Ben. 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 all of his years of being a criminal, he robbed two banks and seven armored cars, plus robbing Fenway Park during a baseball game. To observe this life. The length of them runs, I would think, like 150 feet. Affleck: I was very self-conscious about being limited to being the Boston guy. I dont know exactly what happened, but I know that the option was running out. Crockett: Pete had a reputation for being kind of a hardass. Slaine: I was hanging with Gronkowski, and hes like, Dude. Hes like, The Town, is there going to be a sequel? He was like, You gotta do it, you gotta be in the sequel. I said, Dude, I died at the end.. Neighborhood of Boston, yet lopped off every map of the city like a bastard cropped out of a happy family portrait. Slaine: Ive seen other cuts of the ending, like the one they put out, the extended version. Unfair or not, Charlestown had a reputation. The movies center is Charlestown, right across the bridge from the rest of Boston, a legend in illicit locales. He was in his early 20s. I dont even think they had sidewalks. And obviously it was in Bostonthat I was comfortable with. 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. What is the penalty for bank robbery in mass? 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. But mostly a Boston accent depends on your socioeconomic status, by and large. Burch: We did it during off days. This makes it a mini-epic. Carter: A woman named Ginaya Green, who was a 20-something- year-old, born and raised in Charlestown, let me come and take photos of her bedroom, and her house, and her decor.