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. Alexander Witt (second-unit director): We talked and we said, Lets do it as classic as possible.. He was not doing great [health-wise]. Slaine: Im convinced my hearing is still not the same after that film. 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. 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. He didnt want to option it himself, so they set him up with [producer] Graham King, who got the option. And there were probably a couple of guys there who were still robbing banks.. The former bank robber-turned-aspiring-movie producer who tried to claim it is back to prison. Crockett: I vividly remember it. Thats how you drive a f----n caaar, declares the getaway driver, Gloansy (played by rapper Slaine). If youre gonna make a film of it, you have to add something to it, or try to. With the premiere of The Town 10 years ago, the No R genre peaked. Craig: I was a struggling crime writer. He is the TV Editor at Entertainment. He was charged with armed bank robbery and making threats. Tensions between the locals and wealthier transplants underscore the film. This shooting game is the newest brilliant sneaking FPS game. We did not have legal clearance to use the logo. 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. He gets punished. I just still really thought that way. Just let me go in. She opened the door and I just walked in and Ben was there and he just burst out laughing. Affleck: Hockeys such a big thing in Charlestown. Ive never felt all that interested in literally translating from book to page. Date Updated: Jan 18, 2023. R Thriller Drama Crime Movie 2010. hd. The gentrification of Charlestown is the huge pile of rotting wood fueling The Towns bonfire of crime. Now, William shares his story after his Caught in Providence case went viral. Find out more, The latest offers and discount codes from popular brands on Telegraph Voucher Codes, That's how you drive a f----n caaar: the second bank robbery was based on the 1995 Harvard Square heist, The moment when a cop sees a carload of nun-masked robbers and turns away was based on real life, Affleck sent Blake Lively to hang out in Charlestown bars to prepare for her role, Ben Affleck directs Jon Hamm on the set of The Town, Close, review: a soul-scorching portrait of boyhood friendship and loss, Whats on TV tonight: Stephen Fry: Willem & Frieda Defying the Nazis, Anorexic and more, When are the Oscars? This was a garage that NO NAME GANG: CHARLESTOWN bank robbers. After all, there are only so many Massachusetts-set crime stories about Irish American antiheroes that you can tell. Its more general American but with a kind of East Coast, sort of slightly privileged vibe. It has a broad appeal. But not everyone was happy with the image of Charlestown given toa generation of moviegoers. Afflecks Doug almost got out of his predetermined life. In the film, the crew get away, largely thanks to the kind of driving that puts Daniel Craig to shame. Its fucking brilliant. 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. The cunning group is robbing city banks to steal money and making the getaway with diamond Heist. The robbers were waiting. The Telegraph values your comments but kindly requests all posts are on topic, constructive and respectful. Those are the blueprints, thats the template. Affleck: I had great stunt drivers. WebThe Town (2010) is a heist film that follows a group of bank robbers in Charlestown, Boston, and the law enforcement personnel attempting to stop them. Carter: Someone was getting married. Theyre incarcerated. CONCORD, N.H. (AP) _ Three men who were convicted in a deadly string of bank and armored car robberies after prosecutors finally broke the ``code of silence in And everyone was like, Ah, you cant, really. The Town was initially supposed to end with Doug paying for his sins with his life. Ill use them because Im from Boston to get into Fenway. The one thing I miss about Boston is you saw a fistfight every day. Its not the same town as it was in the early 1990s and the 1980s.. Los Angles police on high alert for grand theft and planned robbery in town. So I read this new version of the script. And I was like, Who the hell is this guy? That would be the equivalent of approximately $5 million today. All three were from Charlestown. WebThe crew consisted of Doug MacRay, Jem Coughlin, Desmond Elden, and Albert MacGloan, four veteran Charlestown bank and armored car robbers. They wore wigs, fake bears and masks; in the film, brilliantly, these became nun masks and habits. I wanted to be a part of that. There have been dozens of films and television shows filmed in the Bay State over the last decade, but by the time the 2010s came to a close, the popularity of the No R genre had faded. Doug MacRay ( Ben Affleck) is not cut from the same cloth as his fellow thieves. 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. Burch: When theyre down in Gate D, where the shoot-out scene was before they exited the ballpark, that was probably the most challenging part of it. Director: Ben Affleck. He claims that Ben Affleck played him in the movie, but now this former bank robber i. 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. Its been in development here for a while. He was definitely a bad guy and was going to take as many people with him as he could, but you still kind of went, You know what, this is a kid that came along, and in a different environment he wouldve been a different person but he is a product of all of this dysfunction and horror that hes grown up in. Its brilliant. 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!. But what about in the 1980s and early 1990s? According to the Associated Press, Shea, along with Patrick McGonagle, Michael OHalloran, Stephen Burke, and Matthew McDonald, were all from the same Even with the shorter length hes afforded, Affleck tells multiple stories. However, everybody will want to go see it. 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. Eventually, homogenization came for those tales, too. Staging a chase scene in the North End was difficult, but shooting a robbery inside and around Fenway Park was unprecedented. Its not The Godfather of caper films, but it is a heist movie must-see. The crew at the center of The Town resembles a gang of five masked robbers who pulled holdups from 1990 to 1995. When fans of The Town think of Charlestown, they think of banks and bars and punchlines. Or rather, close enough for himto understand how little he knew about it. When I got there, I went up on the walkway, on the first-base side, looking down. Two guards -- Lawrence Johnson, 57, and Ronald Normandeau, 52 -- were shot to death while delivering money to the bank for North East Armored Transport Inc. of Manchester, N.H. Chuck gets credit for that. WebWhitey Bulger and his friendss and some of the Charlestown robbers operated from Marshall Street Garage was actually in Winter Hill, Somerville. This is their story. All they see are yuppies. 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. By contrast, Afflecks Doug MacRay heads a four-man gang. Affleck: The hothead friend. Thats the one moment that gives you a glimpse into how damaged and how profoundly broken Jem is. Im gonna do a movie about Iran.. Stockard: There is this over-the-top sense to these movies. My father insisted that I go over. The way we did that was to make the days inexpensive. The annual average hovered above 10,000 for the next 15years. Burke: It was not on my radar at all. 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. Affleck: When this movie came out, the Boston Phoenix review said it had horrible Boston accents. Theres like four people in the whole bar, which is a huge bar. 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 story appealed to Affleck. When youre underneath in the concourse space, you could drop a keg at one end of the ballpark and have it reverberate all the way around. Funny enough, I have shot in Boston twice since then. 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 obviously it was in Bostonthat I was comfortable with. And we got in the car and kept going. I totally put that directly in the movie. And I hadnt seen it with the new one tacked on. You know, the Kennedys kind of had their own weird accent. They were all from Charlestown. They dont squeal. Adrian was off the project. He was kind of hemming and hawing a little bit and I said, Look, unless they make you wear the fucking purple outfit and the mask, you gotta do this. He went, I know.. Everywhere we went people were so excited to see him. 'The Town': Is Charlestown really America's 'bank robbery capital'? Ill tell you what Im gonna do. And so we were a little bit extra, extra respectful. 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.. He was able to hold his own with a lot of those dudes who are the real deal. Honestly, people just wouldnt have liked the movie [with my ending]. 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! And then he was out, so we were using him again for research. See more. And a lot of older actors, [when theyre] told, Go here, do this, a lot of these guys are like, Fuck off. You didnt really know what was coming. David Fincher does an even more exaggerated version of that. I dont know exactly what happened, but I know that the option was running out. An earlier version of this piece misspelled Roslindale. 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. Hed be happy to settle down with his former hostage, Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall). I love Adrian. [Chairman] Tom Werners a friend of mine. Hall: I just remember him being so mercurial. He said, Theyre looking for guys like you. And so I went over and I read a few lines, they took my picture. When its not, its predictable and obvious and trite. Hall: Hes just a very good storyteller. 10 Patty Hearst Adrian had wanted to do one of my books, which was kind of unadaptable because it took place over like, 30 years. Theres two ways that this can go. Starring: Ben Affleck Rebecca Hall Jon Hamm Jeremy Renner Blake Lively. They had seen Gone Baby Gone, which opened in like sixth place to $5 million or something and wasnt seen widely. Carter: They were looking at Chris Pine in the very beginning, because of course Star Trek had just come out. 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. Im like, You know what, if its terrible, Ill get a great story out of it. I sit down and I watch it, and it was really bewildering. 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. So all of a sudden, while theyre getting married, they hear gunshots at Fenway. Affleck also embarked on a series of interviews with locals, including convicted robbers and members of the FBI violent crimes force. 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. In 2010, after his gang was eliminated, he fled to Tallahassee, He humanized that character in that moment. But it isnt. Heist movies are filled with criminals who want to pull one last big job and settle down. The Den of Geek quarterly magazine is packed with exclusive features, interviews, previews and deep dives into geek culture. Itd be good to have him around for authenticity. Hes in the movie. Hogan: I went in to go see it in a screening room in Manhattan like two months before it came out. That was the most important part, because he could so easily lapse into clich. McCoy, 29, was reportedly a member of the Utah Air Affleck: I made sure that we had enough money to do the Fenway heist sequence in total, which was a lot. Hall: It felt like cinema in the classic sense. [Lively did not respond to a request to be interviewed for this article. 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. First of all, it was about 20 pages shorter. 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. The guy that I spoke with, who was kind of our head technical adviser from the FBI, was from Nebraska. And more than anything, just from a noise standpoint, it was kind of unique. Thousands. The whole reason Matt and I wanted to do Good Will Hunting was kind of as an acting reel so that we could get jobs as actors. She prepped for that for God knows how long. But it was very real. Culture Editor Tony Sokol is a writer, playwright and musician. Welliver: It [was] like doing photo shoots in front of Graceland with Elvis when Elvis was still alive. They blew it up and both sides of the street, all the brick buildings were totally covered in soot. Theyd closed off the street, working on this story that I had cooked up in my bedroom at home. In the 2000s, critically acclaimed, Irish Americancentered crime dramas like Clint Eastwoods Mystic River, Martin Scorseses The Departed, and Afflecks Gone Baby Gone had turned the Massachusetts capital into a Hollywood hot spot. I lived in South Boston, Roslindale. The blue-collar neighborhood produced more bank robbers and armored car thieves than anywhere else in the world, according to the movies prologue. It kind of had a post-apocalyptic feeling to it. A kind of unique producer ] Graham King, who was kind of East Coast, of... 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Does an even more exaggerated version of that everyone was happy with the premiere of the Town years!

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