 Starring: Al Pacino, John Cazale, Charles Durning, Chris Sarandon
Director: Sidney Lumet
Year Of Release: 1975
Plot: Sonny needs money because his transgendered lover wants a sex-change operation but doesn’t have the cash. So along with his friend Sal, he decides to hold up the Chase Manhattan Bank in Flatbush, Brooklyn. The job is supposed to be quick and easy, but they soon discover there’s little money in the bank as most of the cash has already been picked up for the day. Things go from bad to worse when the police phone in and say they’ve got the entire bank surrounded, leading to a lengthy stand-off. |
The Move-A-Day Project is a series of articles based on a multiude of subjects inspired by a different film each day. To find out more about the project click here, or for the full list of previous articles and future movies we'll be covering click here.
When people talk about the ‘New Hollywood’ in the 70s changing the movie business forever, sometimes it’s easy to forget just what an unusual period this was in movie history. Films that would have been virtually impossible to make within the mainstream just a few before years (and would become so again a few years later) were suddenly having money thrown at them by the studios. Plots that seemed to break every convention going were all the rage as Hollywood tried to capitalise on the counter-culture mood and revitalise the film industry, which had been suffering from collapsing audiences and outmoded ways of operating.
Perhaps most significantly, these unusual films became critical and commercial hits. And it wasn’t just polite applause and managing to make their money back, as they were amongst the biggest movies around at the time. It really was a unique period for experimentation, not simply because a new generation of filmmakers were emerging, but because the likes of Scorsese, Coppola, Hal Ashby and Sidney Lumet, were given the money and freedom by the studios to do things differently to how they’d been done before or have since.
Whenever I watch Dog Day Afternoon – which was a huge hit, based on a real-life event and released by Warner Bros. – I can’t help imagining what would happen if you pitched it to a studio today...
SCREENWRITER: Hi, glad to meet you. I know you’re a busy studio executive looking for big hits, and I think I’ve got just the film for you!
STUDIO EXEC: Great, we’re always on the lookout for new ideas, as long as they’re based on a toy, board game, videogame or 1980s horror movie. So what have you got? The new Avatar? The new Pirates of the Caribbean? The new Lord of the Rings?
SCREENWRITER: Better, it’s about a robbery.
STUDIO EXEC: Great, the new Ocean’s 11 then. We could do with a cool heist film. So what’s your angle? Is it an old con doing one last job to help rescue his daughter who's been kidnapped, before he takes violent, bloody revenge on the bad guys?
SCREENWRITER: Umm, no.
STUDIO EXEC: Is it about a gang using cutting edge technology to get past one of the most advanced security systems ever devised, so they can steal something belonging to a crazy criminal who needs his comeuppance? That would be great, as we’ve only seen that three or four hundred times before!
SCREENWRITER: Wrong again, I’m afraid.
STUDIO EXEC: Wow, you must he thinking so far outside the box that I’m already thinking of calling security to throw you out! So is it a robbery in space?
SCREENWRITER: No, it’s great, no one will have seen anything quite like it. It’s about a guy robbing a bank to try and get money for his transsexual lover’s sex change operation.
STUDIO EXEC: Excuse me?
SCREENWRITER: Yeah, good isn’t it? His lover doesn’t have the cash, so he’s going to steal it for her. But here’s the kicker, the bank doesn’t have any money.
STUDIO EXEC: Ah, I see, this is a gross-out comedy where we get to make lots of homophobic jokes and then pretend the film isn’t prejudiced because it's got a gay character in it. It's I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry meets Heat!
SCREENWRITER: No, it’s a drama.
STUDIO: So I take it the robber is the bad guy, and we can boo at him for wanting to buy someone a sex change and being gay?
SCREENWRITER: No, he’s the hero, we’re on his side.
STUDIO EXEC: I assume then he’s some sort of genius who devises a brilliant way to escape (after all, I can always force you to stop him being gay once you’re under contract and we own your creativity).
SCREENWRITER: Nah, in fact as bank robbers go, he’s a bit useless. Much of the film is a character study of the man and society at the time. So he spends a lot of time waiting around, we learn about his wife and kids...
STUDIO EXEC: I thought you said he had a transsexual lover?
SCREENWRITER: He does, but he’s got a wife and kids as well.
STUDIO EXEC: Ok, he’s a cheating, bisexual, useless bank robber. This just gets better and better. Are you sure he’s the good guy?
SCREENWRITER: Yep,
STUDIO EXEC: So at least there’ll have to be lots of action, shoot-outs and frantic editing?
SCREENWRITER: Well, there’ll be a bit of shooting, but I figured I’d write the screenplay around only 12 sequences, and they’ll be fairly slow paced. Sometime it’ll just be two people talking on the phone for quarter of an hour.
STUDIO EXEC: There’s only going to be 12 full sequences in the entire movie?
SCREENWRITER: Pretty much, although I should point out that you’re not going to be able to see the script we’re actually going to film before the movie gets the greenlight.
STUDIO EXEC: I won’t?
SCREENWRITER: No, because after I write the screenplay, we’re going to having weeks of rehearsals – at your expense of course – during which time the cast are going to do a lot of improvisation. After that we’ll use their input to create the final screenplay. However by that point, it’ll be too late for you to call things off if you don’t like it.
STUDIO EXEC: Well, I suppose perhaps if we get someone to write some really good music to make things seem exciting...
SCREENWRITER: Nope, no score. We’re gonna have an Elton John song at the beginning, but that’s about it. Oh and we’re not going to bother with make-up, or any of that sort of stuff either.
STUDIO EXEC: So let me get this straight. You want my studio to fund a movie about a bank robber who’s trying to fund a sex-change operation for the transsexual lover he’s cheating on his wife with. However he’s a useless bank robber, who doesn’t steal much money and then waits around in the bank because the police are outside. There’s only going to be 12 sequences in the entire movie, no score, no make-up and it’s largely going to be improvised?
SCREENWRITER: Oh, and I forgot to mention, it’s going to be anti-war and pro-prison riots.
STUDIO EXEC: Pro-prison riots?
SCREENWRITER: Yeah, at one point the robber is going to go outside and start shouting about a prison riot that happened a couple of years ago1. That’ll really get the crowd riled up and ensure they’re on his side.
STUDIO EXEC: The crowd?
SCREENWRITER: Well, because of the stand-off between the robbers and the police, a massive crowd gathers and they’re all on the side of the bank robber.
STUDIO EXEC: But why are they on his side?
SCREENWRITER: Because they hate the authorities. You see the film is essentially about how everyone outside the white, middle class, heterosexual, conservative, pro-capitalist status quo is pissed off and doesn’t want to take it anymore. They see the robbery as a sort of rallying point to express their dissatisfaction with what they see as a broken system.
STUDIO EXEC: Umm, you do realise this is Hollywood, and we’re a giant mega-conglomerate that’s one of the most visible parts of the American capitalist system. So essentially what you want is for us to bankroll a movie that sets out to denigrate and undermine everything that allows this studio to exist, and which says the sort of system we rely on to make money is corrupt and needs to be destroyed?
SCREENWRITER: Yep. I figured you might have a problem with that, so I just want to assure you it’s going to be a huge hit. So even if it’s against everything you stand for, at least you’ll make some money from it – and what could be more capitalist than that!
STUDIO EXEC: And what do you base your assessment that it’ll be a hit on? Have you done focus groups that told you the world is crying out for movies about rubbish bisexual bank robbers trying to fund their lover’s sex change operation? Is it from all the other anti-status quo bank robbery movies that have set the box office on fire?
SCREENWRITER: Nope, but I reckon it’ll be the fifth highest grossing movie of the year, and I’ll win an Oscar for the screenplay. It could be an even bigger hit, but someone might make a movie about a libidinous hairdresser or a guy rebelling when he’s locked up in a mental institution, and if they do, those are bound to make more money than our film. And Dod help us if they make a movie about a giant killer fish, as that’d probably be the biggest movie of all time!2
STUDIO EXEC: Yeah, right, that’s going to happen. And who do you suppose is going to play your cheating, sexually confused, incompetent thief? It doesn’t exactly sound like a sexy proposition for a movie star. In fact it sounds like the sort of role that might destroy their career.
SCREENWRITER: Well, I figured we’ll just get one of the biggest stars in the world to do it. Perhaps someone who’s really popular, has starred in a couple of Best Picture winning movies, but is still fairly new to cinema.3
STUDIO EXEC: It’s simply not going to happen. Their agents would laugh you out of the room for even mentioning it.
SCREENWRITER: Well, what if I said they’d get an Oscar nomination. Even the guy playing the transsexual will get an Oscar nomination.
STUDIO EXEC: I’m sorry to cut this short, but I have to say this is the most ridiculous pitch I’ve ever heard. The film is bizarre, it’s never going to get made, no star will agree to be in it, and if you’re expecting the public to take a man to their heart who’s trying to help his lover get his penis chopped off, you’re clinically insane. Even if you did by some miracle get funding, it'd probably play two festivals and in a couple of arthouse cinemas before being completely forgotten.
SCREENWRITER: You’re wrong, it’ll be a classic! The lead actor’s performance will go down as one of the greatest of all time. It’ll catch the mood of the nation and become a huge hit. And in 35 years time people will still be quoting the line ‘Attica, Attica’, even though they have no idea what Attica is, or why anyone might have been shouting it during a bank robbery.
STUDIO EXEC: Can’t you just come up with an idea which is exactly the same as most other movies, but tweaked slightly? To be honest, if you’d walked in and said the word ‘it’s exactly like Avatar meets Ice Age 3’, I’d have bought your pitch without even listening to what your actual idea was.
SCREENWRITER: I just wanted to do something a bit different, but I guess I’d better try elsewhere.
STUDIO EXEC: This is Hollywood, we don’t do ‘a bit different’! Even the title, Dog Day Afternoon, is awful, what the hell does that mean? It sounds depressing and arty.
SCREENWRITER: Well, thank you for your time.
STUDIO EXEC: If you can think of a way a bisexual bank robber can fit into a movie based on Boggle or Connect 4, give me a call, but otherwise don’t let the door hit you on the ass on your way out.
NOTES:
1. The classic chant, ‘Attica, Attica’ refers to the prison riots that took place at the Attica Prison in 1971, with many people taking the prisoner’s side because of the perceived institutional racism of the correction system. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attica_prison_riots
2. Dog Day Afternoon was the fifth highest grossing movie of 1975 in the US, while Hal Ashby’s Shampoo and Milos Forman’s Once Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest were even bigger hits, and Jaws set all time box office records – despite the fact that only months before many saw the film as a b-movie folly.
3. Al Pacino had starred in the first two Godfather movies and Serpico, but was still new to cinema, and took a real risk with Dog Day Afternoon, particularly in respects to playing a character who wasn’t straight.
TIM ISAAC
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