Back in Boston You Didnt Know What to Do Movie Quote

Chuck Hogan'due south novel Prince of Thieves opens with a toast:

Raise a Drinking glass. Solemn now:

To The Town.

To Charlestown, our one square mile of brick and cobblestone. Neighborhood of Boston, notwithstanding lopped off every map of the urban center like a bastard cropped out of a happy family portrait.

Ben Affleck grew up in Cambridge, just a few miles away from Charlestown, but to him the distance between the two places felt vast. Unfair or not, Charlestown had a reputation. "It was like a different earth," the histrion and filmmaker says. "When I was a child, I was scared to become in that location. Violence, unsolved murders ..."

And armed robbery.

In 1995, The Boston Globe reported that the neighborhood was "a customs 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. It later served as inspiration for the Massachusetts native's third book. Published in 2004 and fix in the '90s, it follows a team of stick-up men led by Doug MacRay, a done-up NHL draft choice and recovering addict whose traumatic childhood has led him to follow his incarcerated father into the family business organization.

The story appealed to Affleck. A decade afterward establishing his Boston bona fides by cowriting and actualization in Good Will Hunting with Matt Damon, he was offered a gamble to adapt Prince of Thieves for the screen. "It was concealing a graphic symbol-based drama centered around themes that I was interested in, particularly the theme of children paying for the sins of their parents," Affleck says. "But wrapping that in the sort of candy vanquish of a heist movie." Beyond the flashy heists, The Town—renamed because Prince of Thieves had already been used as the subtitle of Kevin Costner's version of Robin Hood—is a picture show almost fate, loyalty, and morality, and how those things commingle. MacRay is pulled between the devil and angel who sit on his shoulders: Jem, who spent ix years in prison for killing someone who was supposedly planning to kill Doug; and Claire, the bank managing director Doug falls for after a task.

In so many means, the projection came along at the exact right fourth dimension. In the 2000s, critically acclaimed, Irish American–centered crime dramas similar Clint Eastwood's Mystic River, Martin Scorsese'southward The Departed, and Affleck's Gone Baby Gone had turned the Massachusetts upper-case letter into a Hollywood hot spot. "I call them 'No R' movies," Hogan says. "Not 'noir,' French for black. But 'No R.'"

Because of oversaturation in the final decade, Boston movies have been rightfully skewered. Affleck unequivocally contributed to that proliferation. The imitators that his opus spawned, however, couldn't recreate what he managed to. With the premiere of The Town 10 years agone, the "No R" genre peaked. Affleck didn't only direct, he played the lead aslope a cast of present and future superstars and locals. With a relatively modest upkeep of $37 one thousand thousand, he fabricated a classic heist movie that's 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 downward Fenway Park.

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Office 1: "You Just Have to Add together Something to It"

In addition to including the statistic most Charlestown's armed-robbery predilection, the preface of Prince of Thieves features a quote in The Globe by an bearding Townie. "I'thousand mighty proud of where I come from," he says. "It's ruined my life, literally, just I'm proud."

Chuck Hogan (author, Prince of Thieves ): When the book came out, I was scheduled to do a reading at the Charlestown Public Library. I recollect the librarians called me the solar day earlier, merely to confirm. And they were similar, "Just so you know, nosotros've had some calls and threats of violence." People didn't know what the book was, I think they were expecting something that would really knock Charlestown. I showed up, I did the reading. Everybody in omnipresence loved it; no automobile windows smashed or anything like that. Merely as I was signing books subsequently, I see this guy coming upwards. He's perhaps iv people away. The top of his caput was really messed up. He had actually bad scars. He was with his mother. He came over and he was a little bit shy but she was speaking for him. He was in his early 20s. But he pointed out the quote. He was like, "That'southward me. That'due south my quote that you lot used in the book." I was like, "Oh human being, what's upwards?" He was excited.

Peter Craig (cowriter): In that location's a really great detail that I always loved where Doug simply sticks his gun in one of those portholes in the armored car, and so the bullets similar ricochet and rattle around in there. And that looks like a item you'd come with writing a script. Information technology was actually in the book. Chuck gets credit for that. Chuck's such a good writer that you get the tone from his details.

Hogan: Dick Wolf from Law & Order somehow read [the volume] early. He loved information technology, optioned it. There was a script written. I don't know exactly what happened, only I know that the option was running out. And I got a phone call saying that [Fatal Allure and Indecent Proposal director] Adrian Lyne had read it and really wanted to practise something with information technology. He didn't want to choice it himself, so they ready him up with [producer] Graham King, who got the option. And and so Adrian developed it for quite some time.

[Adrian Lyne did non respond to a asking to exist interviewed for this article.]

Craig: I was a struggling crime author. Adrian had wanted to do ane of my books, which was kind of unadaptable considering it took place over like, 30 years. It really wasn't gonna work. But he also liked this book by Chuck Hogan. And he got really excited.

Hogan: Adrian really idea in more operatic terms, and he really wanted to practise the volume. The full version.

Craig: Adrian was at this really ambitious double-album phase of his career, and he didn't desire to cut anything. He saw it and he was like, "This is perfect. This is the script I want." And I said, "Adrian, this is gonna exist a three-and-a-one-half-hour movie." He'south like, "Well, if Scorsese can make a iii-and-a-one-half-hour moving picture, I want to."

Ben Affleck (director/star): He had an adaptation that was very, very different and it was actually focused on the dear story. It was really more of an erotic thriller: The criminal who falls in dearest with the captive kind of thing.

Craig: Adrian wanted 90 shooting days and $90 [one thousand thousand] to do information technology. By the manner? I honey Adrian.

Hogan: Warner Bros. didn't want to make the pic for that corporeality.

Craig: [Jeff] Robinov, [the president] at Warners, actually wanted to make the movie. At i indicate we even had Brad Pitt ready to exercise it … and so information technology was really close. [But] Warners gave information technology back to Adrian and said, "You lot know what, shop it around." He took information technology to Imagine; he took it to Universal. They were about to buy it but they wanted to cut information technology, too. Everybody wanted to cut information technology. It eventually just blew up. Adrian was off the project.

Jeremy Renner, Slaine, Owen Burke, and Ben Affleck in The Town.

Warner Bros.

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. They had seen Gone Baby Gone, which opened in like sixth place to $5 million or something and wasn't seen widely. Just they liked it and they wanted to run into with me, and I was like, "of class." I was willing to meet with anyone who was interested in hiring me as a manager. And they said, "We similar what you did, we recollect yous're a good director and we believe in you." And I was kind of struck by the enthusiasm they had considering for the most office, Hollywood operates based on success. Peculiarly commercial success. Merely they said, "Nosotros take this project that we call back you'd exist right for. It'southward been in development here for a while. The upkeep that nosotros had previously was also high for us to make it." And and so I realized, "Peradventure they retrieve I can make movies more on the cheap."

I was fine with that. I'd made Gone Baby Gone for $18 million. It'south not a super inexpensive moving picture merely it's not expensive like a studio movie. And so they said they had this script based on this volume, and I said, "OK, let me look at information technology." I read the adaptation, and it had been adult past Adrian Lyne, who I merely worked with.

Hogan: I was just checking out the internet one day in my part and I saw a Variety headline: "Affleck moves to The Town." I called my wife over and said, "I think they're making a movie of the book." And that was it.

Aaron Stockard (cowriter): Ben called me upward and said, "I know what I want to direct next. It'south this movie and it's already got a script. Which I like, and it's practiced, but I want to sort of put our perspective on it."

Affleck: What I liked most [the volume] was that information technology was similar to [Dennis Lehane'due south] Gone, Baby, Gone in that I both could utilize the basic and the structure of the story and in that location was adept dialogue and interesting characters in there, but too they kind of inspired me to create more than and add on to it. I've never felt all that interested in literally translating from volume to page. So it might every bit well only stay a book. If you lot're gonna make a film of it, you have to add together something to it, or endeavor to. I idea I had something to add to it. And apparently it was in Boston—that I was comfy with.

Stockard: As much as it felt like, "We know this story, nosotros know these people," there was besides this entire world for usa to observe.

Affleck: I [set] that movie in the 2000s, but it was really about the '80s and '90s in Charlestown. I sort of pretended that Charlestown was still the style information technology used to be. Only it really wasn't. Information technology was taking a menstruum of time that had passed and pretending it was still a reality.

Stockard: Obviously you lot're making a motion-picture show so yous mythologize it a petty bit. Merely it was very real.

Affleck: I was able to go admission to the FBI and the division that chased and caught almost of these armored machine robbers, especially in Charlestown.

Stockard: Ben and I went and spent a mean solar day with this FBI task force. And they told usa all these stories, and all these fascinating things, and congenital up what this mythology was. Ben wasn't in Boston. He flew in. We went back to his hotel room right after. 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 beingness similar, "They robbed this affair here, and they had to go to that bridge there." So we basically mapped out where this little road was. "What's the best way to get at that place?"

Chay Carter (coproducer): We found a couple of existent bank robbers that we did existent research with, which is what these four [thieves] were based on. They're incarcerated.

Affleck: That was fascinating. That'southward where I got my all-time stuff.

Carter: Ben actually went and sat down with the guy that his character was based on, and was able to meet him and take notes in person. Well, not take notes, considering yous couldn't bring in a pencil.

Affleck: My favorite moment in the movie, cinematically, came direct from a conversation I had with a guy who was in MCI-Norfolk at the time. He was doing a long judgement. He'south probably still there. He had participated in a bunch of these armored motorcar robberies, and nosotros had been talking for two hours, and time was most upward. And I said, "Is there anything just weird or strange or unexpected or bizarre in the class of this?" And I mean, the guy had lived a pretty bizarre life. And he said, "Well, there was a time I recall when we all had just robbed a truck and we pulled upwardly to the switch car, and we all had our masks, and nosotros were carrying a bag of money, and we pull up to the car, and we look over, and there'south a cop doing 'lazy construction.' And he simply looked at us, and nosotros looked at him, and he looked the other way. And we got in the auto and kept going.'" I totally put that direct in the picture show.

Role 2: "I Wanted a Guy Who Was Really Unpredictable and Scary."

When it came time to bandage The Town, Affleck had fun putting together a star-powered ensemble on a relatively limited budget. He too made sure to populate the movie with people who didn't take to fake their Boston accents.

Affleck: Because it was the get-go time I was gonna star and direct, and because I didn't have a lot of money to pay a agglomeration of stars, I had the luxury of being able to only cast the best actors. If possible, it's really bully to hire people with whom an audience isn't overly familiar, because audiences have developed expectations and kind of anticipate what an histrion might do if they've seen them a bunch. For example, with my blood brother [Casey] in Gone Baby Gone, I thought it really benefited from the fact that he wasn't so well-known. Yous weren't sure exactly what he was gonna exercise, or how he was gonna carry, because it wasn't Matt Damon, who's always the hero and e'er wins out in the end. Jason Bourne kills the bad guys.

Jon Hamm (FBI special amanuensis Adam Frawley): I knew he had some serious Boston cred. So I read this new version of the script. Showtime of all, it was about xx pages shorter. The story was much clearer and cleaner. Information technology just read like a skillful former-fashioned, kind of '70s cop motion picture, where the good guys are the bad guys and the bad guys are the good guys.

Rebecca Hall (Claire): I remember I had to wing to New York to meet Ben because I was based in London at the time, in the middle of this theater tour. I wasn't really in the motion picture world. It all felt sort of very impossible and glamorous. And Ben Affleck was incredibly famous already. He's been forever. In my imagination, he's always been Ben Affleck.

Titus Welliver (Officer Dino Ciampa): I chosen the product role and I got [Carter] on the phone and I pretended I was a Boston detective. I said, "Wait, you know, I understand that you're making this movie about robbers out of Charlestown. I've been on the force for 20 years and I'm non looking for coin or annihilation, but I'm originally from Charlestown and I think I could exist helpful." She's like, "Well, information technology's actually peachy to talk to you, nosotros 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, yep, sure, sure. I'll do that."

My place in Connecticut is only iii hours from Boston, and then I simply, on a whim, jumped in the machine, 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 y'all doing?" And I said to Chay, "Oh, I'one thousand Detective such and such." And she was like, "You fucker." I said, "Is he here?" And she said, "Yep, he'due south downward doing auditions downstairs."

I kind of slipped in and waited in line and and then said to the production assistant, "Don't say my name. Simply let me go in." She opened the door and I but walked in and Ben was there and he just burst out laughing. I said, "Really, I've got to bulldoze all the way to fucking Boston to become a coming together with you?" He looked at me and went, "You're crazy." I said, "No, I'm not." He said, "So, y'all really desire to exist in this film?" I went, "Yeah." And so he went, "Dino?" I went, "Yes." He went, "OK. Yous could've just called me."

Jem (Renner) and Doug (Affleck) approach Fenway Park.

Warner Bros.

Chris Cooper (Stephen MacRay): Ben had me at "prison." It was great. I wanted to be a function of that. I knew it was one scene and information technology was gonna be an of import scene: [Doug's] relationship with his father.

Affleck: Blake Lively took the train from New York. She was doing Gossip Girl, which at the fourth dimension people idea like, "Oh, that's just a CW Y.A. soap."

David Crockett (producer): They read, and not saying who she was or what she was in, she did the [Boston] accent. She prepped for that for God knows how long.

[Lively did non answer to a request to exist interviewed for this article.]

Affleck: Having been through an experience myself where I felt that people had a sense of me that wasn't actually fair, I'm very sympathetic to and interested in people who are, I call up, sort of pigeonholed. Blake came in and read the scene and was amazing. And I thought, "Not only is she the all-time actress for the part, she'due south gonna be able to really surprise people."

In one of his terminal roles, Academy Award–nominated English actor Pete Postlethwaite plays Fergus "Fergie" Colm, a menacing mob boss/florist who gives Doug orders while chomping gum and stripping roses .

Hamm: I got to meet Pete Postlewaite, rest in peace, at the hotel bar. There'south like iv people in the whole bar, which is a huge bar. I look over and information technology'southward Pete, and he's having his breakfast, and he's reading the paper, and I hadn't met him before considering I didn't have whatsoever scenes with him. Merely I certainly was familiar with his work. And I just came over to him and I was biting my tongue. There's two ways that this tin can go. Information technology tin exist a terrible experience, pregnant you tin can interrupt somebody when they're trying to have a prissy moment, or they can be pleasant. I said, "I'one thousand then sorry to bother you Mr. Postlethwaite, only I'm on the motion picture, sorry we don't have any scenes together, but I'grand so excited to be in a picture show with you." I gushed for a while, and he but smiled every bit broad equally he could, and he's similar, "Come up on, come on, sit downward, accept a potable." I was similar, "Well, it's 11 in the morning."

Crockett: Pete had a reputation for existence kind of a hardass. And a lot of older actors, [when they're] told, "Go here, do this," a lot of these guys are like, "Fuck off. I'll tell you what I'm gonna do." So we were a little chip extra, extra respectful. He was non doing cracking [health-wise]. Merely he could not have been happier to be there.

Affleck'due south crew of banking concern robbers needed genuine local flavour. They had to look and sound like they merely rolled out of Old Sully'due south at two a.grand. on a Sunday. The actor who played James "Jem" Coughlin, Doug's ex-con buddy, however, wasn't from Boston. Although it certainly felt like he was.

Owen Burke (Desmond Elden): I was going to a community higher in Charlestown, I was working under the table, I had simply gotten past some legal trouble in my teenage years.

Slaine (Albert "Gloansy" Magloan): I was built-in in Dorchester, grew up in that location as a kid. I lived in South Boston, Roslindale. Every bit I got older I lived in [Jamaica Evidently], West Roxbury, where my son was born.

Shush: I was at a point where I was still looking for what I was gonna do with my life. They happened to be casting this action moving picture across the street from where I live. My father insisted that I go over. He said, "They're looking for guys similar y'all." And then I went over and I read a few lines, they took my picture show. And then a few months subsequently I got a phone call and they were like, "Oh, we desire you to come back in and audition for the director." I prove up at this function in Cambridge to become in and read and all of a sudden I come across Ben Affleck walk in. And I'm like, "Whoa, so he must be the managing director."

Slaine: When he cast me in Gone Baby Gone I had no acting experience—and I wasn't the but i.

Shush: It was not on my radar at all. I had never even been in a drama grade or zippo similar that.

Slaine: I recollect he was merely really going for authenticity.

Crockett: He knew from the beginning that [Magloan] was gonna exist Slaine. The funny thing is—and I found this out later—he met John Cena for that role. They're both from Boston and they're doing the whole Boston thing, and Ben existence Ben, in a very playful way, tries to similar, wrestle him. Just John is plain a much bigger guy. The way John tells the story is, "Of course I exercise two [moves] on him and I've got him and he can't move," and [Affleck's] similar, "alright, alright, alright!"

Affleck: The hothead friend. That was the most important function, considering he could so easily lapse into platitude. When it'southward done peachy it's Joe Pesci in Goodfellas. When it'due south not, it'due south predictable and obvious and trite. I didn't know, physically, how I wanted the graphic symbol, but I knew that I wanted a guy who was really unpredictable and scary and you felt nervous when they were on screen. Like you didn't know what they were gonna exercise.

Carter: They were looking at Chris Pine in the very beginning, because of class Star Trek had just come out.

Affleck: With Jeremy Renner, somebody said to me, "There's this guy, he's got this movie coming out that you should see, information technology's supposed to be really good. It's called The Hurt Locker." The only affair that I had seen of him was the Jeffrey Dahmer movie, which couldn't have been more unlike from what I wanted.

Hamm: I had also seen Dahmer. And I was similar, "Who the hell is this guy? He's crazy." He'due south from Modesto, and he'southward kind of got that bulldog, kind of dirtbag sensibility.

Affleck: Jeremy came in and was simply crawly. He had the beginnings of the accent, clearly he had the ability to practice it—a bad Boston emphasis would ruin that part. And he read and blew me away.

[Through a representative, Renner declined to be interviewed for this article.]

Hamm: It was impressive. He was able to hold his own with a lot of those dudes who are the existent bargain.

Affleck: The attitude in that scene where [Jem] shows up and discovers me with Claire, in front of Grendel'due south in Cambridge, and the audience knows what he knows, merely she doesn't know, and I know that he's discovered me ...

Hall: Jeremy Renner'southward character was merely so vivid and frightening. One of those characters you lot love to hate and find sort of intoxicating and moving; all of those things at the aforementioned time.

Affleck: He played that then deftly, and fabricated that scene work so well, when he'southward sort of smiling and laughing, but there'southward and then much menace underneath it.

Hall: I just call back him being so mercurial. So unexpected. Every take had the same amount of tension and edge but it was simply all over the place. And in an heady way. You lot didn't really know what was coming. And that was really thrilling to respond to. He gave me so much armament all the time to play off and to feel. He made my job piece of cake.

Welliver: [Renner] switches it on and I love watching him piece of work. I call back 1 day going to prepare because he and Ben were doing that great scene where it ends up with them having a fight.

Cooper: I don't know Jeremy'southward meridian, but Ben is a pretty big boy. And human, he stood up actually well to Ben.

Welliver: On the page it was 1 affair, and he beat the page because rather than information technology being a scene that was nearly anger and aggression, Renner turned that scene into a scene nigh heartbreak and devastation. That's the ane moment that gives you a glimpse into how damaged and how profoundly broken Jem is.

Cooper: I recall he was just having a brawl with this character.

Crockett: I vividly call up it. It'due south Renner's Oscar moment.

Office three: "You're Built-in in Charlestown, You Play Fucking Hockey and Yous Rob."

Referring to a location as a vital character in a movie is a cliché, but in the case of The Town, it'south impossible not to. An alternating title for the flick could be Ben Affleck's Boston, and no one would accept had information technology any other way.

Affleck: In a world of increasing homogenization, having this fresh place that I think stood out, it was appealing. In the '70s, New York was that. Everyone was making New York movies.

Welliver: If anything, people were kind of burned out on the New York gangster genre.

Affleck: There have been a lot more New York city movies than at that place have Boston, for sure. I feel like we're still in the black.

Welliver: He said, "Hey, we've got great stories in this city that nobody's telling."

Affleck: It'due south parochial and kind of a modest town in some ways. It's kind of insular.

Hamm: He is a favorite son of Boston for a very skillful reason. I could tell information technology was hard on Ben because literally going out to dinner was not really an option.

Carter: He's half dozen-foot-3. He'south not someone that blends in easily.

Hall: You lot'd be shooting this tiny little intimate scene, Ben and I, and I'd look to my left and there were simply thousands of people watching the set. Thousands. You lot don't know where they come from. Information technology would become from completely quiet at v o'clock in the morning to suddenly it'due south similar doing theater on a massive scale. Everywhere we went people were so excited to come across him. He has a sure thing in that town.

Welliver: It [was] like doing photo shoots in front of Graceland with Elvis when Elvis was yet live.

Hall: It was like being alongside Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in London.

Hamm: We could all go, hang out at the bar; me and Rebecca, and Renner, and Titus, that whole oversupply. You've got nothing to do, information technology's like, "Let'southward go try out an awesome restaurant." I felt bad that Ben didn't get to have that experience.

Jon Hamm and Ben Affleck in The Town.

Warner Bros.

Welliver: The upside of that is everybody is rooting for him. They're so proud of him and they're so happy. That'due south the thing, that at that place'south a kind of ownership and it'south cute.

Crockett: I remember existence on the streets of Charlestown talking to some people. Ben'south standing there and he's doing his public relations things, and people are swarming him. And I was talking to people correct next to him. And I said, "Yeah, it's simply so great that he can come up back and exercise this and dig in. Information technology'due south merely dandy that he's from here and he'southward back." And this woman looked at me and she's like, "He'south not from heah!" OK, he's from, like, three miles abroad.

Hamm: Another smart move by Ben was to populate this movie with people that have an bodily, real-life connection to these things. We had depository financial institution robbers, nosotros had career criminals, people that couldn't show up certain days considering they'd be violating their parole.

Carter: There was a guy, Joe Lawler, who was helping the states. He had robbed a couple of banks in Boston years earlier. He'd done his time. And then he was out, so we were using him once again for enquiry. Nosotros're similar, "Wait, he's about the right size, height, and all that other, he could be Ben's stand-in. It'd exist practiced to have him around for authenticity." He's in the motion picture. He's part of John Hamm'south FBI crew.

Cooper: I wanted to spend some time in Walpole [at MCI–Cedar Junction] and simply find. They set up a date and Jeremy Renner and I both arrived at Walpole to go through the screening. In that location are 3 tiers of cells. The length of them runs, I would think, similar 150 anxiety. And they walked me over to this locked door and once you opened information technology, at that place was an old, dusty cobwebby round staircase. And they led me into this little alleyway. What information technology allowed me to practise is privately observe the prison population. I was up in that location for what I'yard sure was a adept half hour. To notice this life. Needless to say, it really shook me upwardly. Good God, some of them may still exist there today.

Welliver: The character Dino was a cop who grew up in Charlestown. When nosotros started, I said, "I demand a driver who's Charlestown born and bred." Interestingly enough, my driver was a guy named John Fidler who was a major suspect in many banking concern robberies, and also bread truck robberies. I had an interesting moment with him at one indicate, nosotros were in the automobile and I said, "What's the deal?" And he called me Ty, every bit all the guys did because they didn't want to say Titus. He goes, "Yes, you lot know, I'll tell you, Ty. Here's how it works in fucking Charlestown: Yous're built-in in Charlestown, you play fucking hockey and you rob." And I went, "OK, that sums it up."

Affleck: Hockey's such a big matter in Charlestown.

Susan Matheson (costume designer): Ben at one point wears a nil-up rail jacket that looks like a Bruins jacket. Just information technology isn't. We did non have legal clearance to apply the logo.

Affleck: The Bruins have been extremely shortsighted and wrong with their policy, where if in that location's swearing or violence, you can't employ their logo.

Matheson: I volition never forget sitting there with some felt and pair of scissors at 3 or 4 in the morning. I was cutting out pieces of felt while Gina [Rhodes] was stitching them—making, by hand, the imitation Bruins logo. It had to experience similar Bruins. But information technology couldn't be Bruins.

Affleck: I'thou similar, "Why the fuck do yous think people go to hockey games?" Swearing and fighting. Information technology's similar 50 percent of why people buy tickets.

Part three.5: "Information technology'south Non Just an Accent, It'due south More of an Attitude."

Cypher kills a Boston-set movie like bad Boston accents. Affleck was determined to make certain that his main cast could at to the lowest degree pass as true Massholes.

Welliver: I had an experience several years earlier for a David Kelley prove called The Practice which took identify in Boston. I went in to audition. I was playing a character that was from Boston and I worked actually hard on the accent and went in and did my showtime rounds and the manager said, "That was great. Yep, don't do the emphasis." I said, "Well, wait, this bear witness takes place in Boston and this guy is from Boston." He went, "Yeah, yeah, only you know, we don't do the emphasis." I was kind of, "Well, what's the fucking point of basing this in Boston? Then put information technology in Connecticut."

Affleck: At that place did kind of become to be a glut of Boston movies, and everybody did a Boston accent. The whole reason Matt and I wanted to do Proficient Will Hunting was kind of as an acting reel and then that we could become jobs as actors. And then we wrote parts for characters with Boston accents because we thought that was something that we could practise well and that y'all saw done badly.

Stockard: I call up the rule that Ben and I always kind of operated with, was like, "Wait, in that location are people similar me and you lot who are very much from Boston who don't talk like that." Information technology'southward not some weird thing that someone from Boston doesn't take a Boston accent. And then if you lot tin can't exercise it, only don't exercise information technology.

Affleck: Typically people you saw who did it badly would err on the side of doing the Kennedys. Yous know, the Kennedys kind of had their own weird accent. It was sort of trying to be patrician and they had, and still do, a very distinct manner of talking that'south not actually common to most people in Massachusetts, in my experience. But mostly a Boston accent depends on your socioeconomic condition, generally. So there'south a whole range of accents.

Carter: A woman named Ginaya Green, who was a xx-something- year-quondam, born and raised in Charlestown, let me come and accept photos of her bedroom, and her house, and her decor. We did all that kind of stuff. And then she recorded her voice, read some of the pages, then that we shared that with Blake Lively, and so she could try to get the accent down. And Blake spent some time with her. And then we put her and her cousin in the movie.

Crockett: [Lively] would get out every dark and hang out with Townies. That whole character she did was really kind of based on her own preparation.

Affleck: Rebecca worked just as difficult on the accent. I had somebody from Marblehead quote all her dialogue. And she really focused specifically, not only on like, an American emphasis, but what information technology sounded like in Marblehead, which doesn't sound similar Charlestown.

Hall: I wouldn't really say I did a Boston accent. He was quite articulate. He said, "She's slightly different." Marblehead is a little chi-chi. Information technology'due south more general American simply with a kind of East Coast, sort of slightly privileged vibe. I was doing that.

Cooper: He got me about five [recorded] voices and i in detail—this 1 of somebody who had washed time—was just so full of character and I just loved information technology, and so that'due south what I glommed onto. Information technology was as simple as that.

Slaine: Owen and I didn't take to listen to anybody.

Burke: I've heard people say, "Oh, we don't sound like that!" And I'thou like, "I don't think you guys actually listen to yourselves. I don't think you know how you sound." Actors tell me that that's 1 of the toughest ones they have to do. Information technology's not only an accent, it's more of an attitude.

Craig: I lived in Somerville for a while in the '90s. The 1 thing I miss about Boston is yous saw a fistfight every twenty-four hours.

Hamm: I met with Ben and he was similar, "You know, I call up we're gonna accept enough of Boston accents in this." I was like, "You know what, you're absolutely right." One time I started meeting all the Federal agents in the [FBI] office, very few of them are actually from Boston. Y'all definitely get more of that in BPD and the local cops. The feds, they get shuffled around all over the country. The guy that I spoke with, who was kind of our caput technical adviser from the FBI, was from Nebraska. The just time I attempt it is when I'1000 basically making fun of Ben, his character, about the Stah Mahket.

Affleck: When this movie came out, the Boston Phoenix review said it had horrible Boston accents. I was only comforted past the thought that no one with a Boston accent has always actually read the Boston Phoenix. If the Herald said that, I might've taken it more than personally.

Office four: "I'chiliad Getting to See Something That Not a Lot of People Get to Meet."

The North End, Boston'due south Little Italy, is i of the city's smallest, densest, oldest neighborhoods; the asymmetrical Fenway Park, which fits snugly on a single block, is picturesque merely impossibly cramped. The Town stages heists in both places.

Affleck: I certainly didn't want to set myself up to neglect, say yep I could do something, shortchange myself [and] produce a substandard sequence because I didn't accept the fourth dimension. The coin was all on the screen. No above-the-line people got paid any money. Information technology all went to the actual product of the movie.

Stockard: The picture show that we idea about was [Michael Isle of man'southward] Heat. And so I think at first we were sort of similar, "Oh, how can we not exist Heat?" And at some point we said, "Look, cover Heat. Don't run away from information technology." We love that movie, don't be afraid of doing things that they did that worked.

Affleck: I'd been in action sequences plenty, so I kind of knew how they worked. I'd been in good ones and bad ones, but I knew that it took fourth dimension, that they were the result of the assembly of a lot of piddling pieces.

Alexander Witt (2d-unit director): We talked and nosotros said, "Allow's do it as classic every bit possible."

Burke: In that location were the most narrow streets y'all could discover in the North End. I don't even call back they had sidewalks.

Witt: Information technology's not similar New York or Los Angeles where you take wider streets.

Affleck: I had great stunt drivers. They actually loved the idea of putting these masked avengers in minivans.

Matheson: Nosotros've had this official tour [of Boston's FBI office] and every bit we're leaving, I notice a moving picture across the room, pasted to the wall, of a person in a mask, from the CC Tv. And I say, "What's that?" And they say, "That'southward a still of someone robbing a bank." And I said, "Did they rob the bank in that skeleton mask with the dreadlocks?" They said, "Yep." So I became obsessed with that mask. That was the moment where I realized that I could differentiate i banking concern robbery from another.

I knew that many of these bank robbers had gone to Cosmic schools as children and been taught past nuns. I said, "Is there any way in hell that yous tin imagine that someone would ever rob a banking concern if they're from Charlestown dressed every bit a nun?" And the FBI agent I was meeting with turned to me and said, "You know what, that's not a bad idea at all." And that'southward where that idea started. I came back and met with Ben, and I was and so excited.

I showed Ben the skeleton and Ben said to me, "How can we make it expect tougher?" And I said, "Why don't nosotros put them in tactical gear?" And so that started this riff, this juxtaposition of skeletons and tactical gear. And well, why not nuns and tactical gear? That's what happened.

Affleck: Those petty streets created something visually interesting that you don't run across in many machine chases. It very much had a sense of place.

Witt: Yous don't want to become, like, Breakthrough of Solace at the beginning where you really don't even know where you are, where you shot information technology. In that location'due south and then many shots then quickly, that at the end, "OK, what happened? Who was in which car?"

Shush: I call up we were all standing around and they were similar, "Oh yeah, we're gonna blow this thing." There was a van parked there and they fucking blew it up. They blew it upward and both sides of the street, all the brick buildings were totally covered in soot. And I was like, "Why are the people who live here letting us practice this? Did they know that this was in the plans?"

Affleck: The only other thing I'll say well-nigh the hunt sequence, it definitely reminded me of Jimmy Tingle in the '80s. During the Cold War he had a great joke: "The Russians won't invade Boston, at that place'southward nowhere to pahk!" I thought, "Yup, there'southward a lot of truth to that." That was our greatest hurdle. Merely finding a identify to park the trucks.

Staging a chase scene in the N Terminate was difficult, only shooting a robbery inside and around Fenway Park was unprecedented. Pulling off the heist—Doug and his squad steal the $3.5 meg in cash amassed during a four-game serial confronting the Yankees—without it devolving into a cartoonish homage to the iconic setting took precise coordination.

Stockard: There is this over-the-top sense to these movies. And and so, constantly, Ben and I are trying to make it equally real as possible. And then yep, they rob Fenway, only it'due south not like he's running across the outfield getting tackled by Tom Brunansky with a purse of money in hand.

Affleck: I made sure that we had plenty coin to do the Fenway heist sequence in total, which was a lot. And we had a lot of days for a movie that was relatively inexpensive. The fashion we did that was to brand the days inexpensive. That was sort of the fob. It'southward something I've seen other directors exercise. David Fincher does an fifty-fifty more exaggerated version of that. He often has a very small crew. Gone Girl we shot a hundred days for a two-hour thriller.

Crockett: The Fenway heist was actually only a logistical kind of clusterfuck. How are you lot gonna figure this out because yous desire to drive an armored motorcar out of 1 of our gates?

Stockard: Ben had a good relationship with the Ruby Sox.

Affleck: The Yawkey Red Sox, I'm certain, would've been impossible.

Crockett: Every bit he puts it, you lot have so many fame fries you can use. Then he uses them in that way. I'll use them because I'thou from Boston to become into Fenway. We literally took over Fenway.

Affleck: The Red Sox were actually smart and understood how vital and central their organization was and is to the city, and they loved the idea of it. And Major League Baseball was open to it—that was what I was actually afraid of. Only the Red Sox were definitely in the spirit of, "This is gonna be fun. It'southward a fun heist movie." [Possessor] John Henry visited the set. [Chairman] Tom Werner'southward a friend of mine. They were excited.

Colin Burch (vice president of marketing and broadcasting, Boston Ruby-red Sox): We had filmed a number of movies before at Fenway, starting with Fever Pitch, and nosotros did Ted, and RIPD, and Moneyball. [It was] probably the most intense production that nosotros've had at the ballpark—from both an overall action perspective, but besides the grandeur of it.

Hamm: We had this 15-day stretch where we had to shoot at Fenway.

Burch: We did it during off days. September 2009.

Hamm: In that location's aught weirder than an empty stadium. Specially when you're in a park that's not open to the public. So we had access to all of the underneath [of information technology], because that's where we shot a lot of it. It was wild. It definitely felt like, I'1000 getting to see something that not a lot of people become to run across.

Burke: To go sit in the stands with Jeremy Renner in an empty stadium, it was surreal. It kind of had a post-apocalyptic feeling to it. If the world was empty, what would you exercise? I'd go sit down in Fenway and be the just guy there.

Hogan: I had a friend who worked at Fenway Park, who snuck me in while they were shooting that whole sequence. And then that's cool. I kind of got to tiptoe effectually and watch them shooting from afar without them knowing I was there. Which was nice. When I got in that location, I went up on the walkway, on the commencement-base side, looking down. There were 150 people downwardly there working. They'd closed off the street, working on this story that I had cooked up in my sleeping accommodation at home.

Jon Hamm and Blake Lively in The Boondocks.

Warner Bros.

Craig: I was a crime writer already. So if yous give somebody a space, all they want to practice is figure out how to practice a heist in there. 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's something so tomb-similar and primitive about Fenway.

Welliver: We've got a couple of great little homages to The Friends of Eddie Coyle when they're in Fenway: "You live at such and such a street …" That'southward completely Alex Rocco talking to the bad guy and he'southward saying like, "We accept your wife and your children are in the business firm. Exercise everything yous're supposed to exercise, they won't be harmed."

Slaine: I worked at Fenway Park when I was a kid, so to become in there and be shooting machine guns was pretty cool, pretty surreal.

Burch: When they're down in Gate D, where the shoot-out scene was earlier they exited the ballpark, that was probably the virtually challenging part of it. Because you're in a bars space, not a soundstage. And more than annihilation, just from a noise standpoint, it was kind of unique. Just considering the repeat in the ballpark. When you're underneath in the concourse space, you could drop a keg at 1 end of the ballpark and accept it reflect all the way around.

Slaine: I'grand convinced my hearing is still not the same after that movie.

Carter: Someone was getting married. And someone had forgotten to tell them that we were downstairs shooting. Then all of a sudden, while they're getting married, they hear gunshots at Fenway. So they realized that we're shooting a movie. It was kind of a moment for them.

Affleck: The day that we're shooting the shoot-out with Jeremy, where he gets killed out in front of the McDonald's backside Fenway—when y'all practise these stunts with cars, you lot have to really clean the streets immaculately because these drivers are precision drivers. They're stopping at an exactly certain point and if they get likewise far, people'south lives are at pale—it'south a very serious thing. Just the machines they employ to clean the streets are very loud and we were cleaning the streets at like vii in the forenoon and out of this apartment building comes Jonathan Papelbon. He'south like, "What the fuck are you doing? You woke me up."

Carter: That scene at the cease, where you see [Jem] running beyond the street trying to get away from the cops, and the cars, manifestly those are stunt drivers, they're stopping actually quick. The kickoff or 2d take that he did, Jeremy wanted to do it on his own. And anybody was like, "Ah, y'all can't, really. It's kind of like a safety thing. What if something happens to you?" Just he'due south and then agile, and he'due south so athletic, and he has no fear, only absolutely no fear. And this was toward the end of the shoot. He'due south merely cracking. We all sat there, and he did information technology.

Welliver: So, when [Jem] gets killed at Fenway, when the cops dump him and [there's] that brilliant thing of him reaching down and taking a sip of the soda behind the mailbox, it was a trivial bit of, "Pinnacle of the world, ma!" It's heartbreaking. He humanized that graphic symbol in that moment. He was definitely a bad guy and was going to take as many people with him as he could, but yous still kind of went, "You know what, this is a kid that came along, and in a different surroundings he would've been a unlike person simply he is a product of all of this dysfunction and horror that he'southward grown up in." Information technology'southward brilliant. It'due south fucking brilliant.

Slaine: I was hanging with Gronkowski, and he'southward like, "Dude." He's similar, "The Town, is there going to be a sequel?" He was like, "You gotta do information technology, you gotta be in the sequel." I said, "Dude, I died at the terminate."

Part five: "You Get to Root for the Bad Guys. What's Better Than That?"

The Town was initially supposed to terminate with Doug paying for his sins with his life . Merely instead, Affleck went with something more bittersweet. After managing to evade a manhunt and escape to Florida, his grapheme says cheerio to Claire via a alphabetic character.

Craig: Nosotros went into a bit of a quandary about the ending. I watched a screening with a dissimilar ending and information technology hadn't been testing well. There was one of my endings and Ben wrote a couple endings, and that'due south Ben's catastrophe that they used. I had a darker ending in it, like a real '70s ending, where Doug dies. I was still in the '70s mindset of, "Oh that's how you end 1 of these movies. He gets punished." I just still really thought that mode.

Stockard: Do we want to punish this person or exercise we not? Or do we want to requite him a take a chance to live and a better life?

Craig: I hadn't actually processed the new ending. And I hadn't seen information technology with the new one tacked on. When I saw it, I idea, "Information technology'due south fine." I wound up learning a lot from how Ben did that. Honestly, people just wouldn't take liked the flick [with my ending]. They like walking out with a little bit of hope. It at least had that upswing.

Hall: Information technology felt like cinema in the classic sense.

Slaine: I've seen other cuts of the ending, similar the 1 they put out, the extended version. I liked the way information technology was released, human being. And I'll tell y'all why: Nobody was rooting for Jon Hamm and the cops. That's what makes information technology great. It's an action movie where you get to root for the bad guys. What'south ameliorate than that?

Affleck and Chris Cooper in The Town.

Warner Bros.

Hogan: I went in to go run into information technology in a screening room in Manhattan like two months before it came out. Walking in I was feeling kind of glib. I'm like, "You know what, if it'due south terrible, I'll become a great story out of information technology." I sit down down and I watch it, and it was actually bewildering. Because along with watching the moving-picture show, I was working difficult to process it. I wrote the volume, then I went away for a while, then I worked on the script for a year, so I went away for a while, then other people wrote the script.

So I leave the flick theater and I'm really kind of numb, trying to figure it out. I walked the urban center for something similar 2, three hours, and by the end of information technology, I realized two things: The commencement thing was, I actually like the motion-picture show and I tin't wait for it to come out. The second thing was, I realized what a fool I was to remember like, "Oh, if it's bad I'll have a story." I realized that I would've been crushed if that picture was bad. So I was thrilled. And I still am.

Hamm: It was an ambitious shoot and it was pulled off without a hitch. And to that end, information technology's 100 pct on Ben. He was the leader that he is.

Burch: Nosotros did ane of the premieres at Fenway. Nosotros had this huge screen over the third base dugout.

Cooper: It was kind of this well-baked evening. And we saw the film for the starting time time and I must say: I was across the aisle and upwardly two or three rows from Jeremy, and I don't know if I'grand letting the cat out of the bag, simply I retrieve he was thrilled watching that pic.

Welliver: When we were doing The Town is when he was up for the function of Eagle. He was kind of hemming and hawing a fiddling scrap and I said, "Look, unless they make yous wear the fucking regal outfit and the mask, yous gotta exercise this." He went, "I know."

Cooper: He's had a wonderful career, but [The Town] was a big shot in the arm for him.

Hall: I remember going to the premiere and a group of Charlestowners were there and they all said to me, "Y'all ever come back to Boston, we'll get you lot a motorcar. Y'all can come over to my house for dinner." It was merely short of, "If you need protection, we're here for you." It was incredible.

Funny enough, I take shot in Boston twice since then. And information technology is a fleck like visiting royalty there, for me, in a way that I don't get in any other town or city in the world. I'1000 fairly good at being invisible and disappear quite hands, but Boston? Forget it.

The movie opened on September 17, 2010, to overwhelmingly positive reviews and eventually grossed $154 meg at the worldwide box office. For his plow 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 some other pic set in Massachusetts: The Fighter.

As for Affleck, the success of The Town helped advance his career as a director. And for better or worse, it was as well a hit that—in addition to taxation incentives —helped temporarily cement Massachusetts as Hollywood Eastward. There have been dozens of films and telly shows filmed in the Bay Country over the last decade, but past the time the 2010s came to a close, the popularity of the "No R" genre had faded. Later all, there are merely so many Massachusetts-set criminal offense stories about Irish American antiheroes that y'all can tell. Somewhen, homogenization came for those tales, too.

Crockett: Gone Baby Gone, which I did with him, was a relatively small picture show. And was critically acclaimed. Just how many people, speaking frankly, want to meet a movie about a child murderer? Or a child abduction? It's a difficult movie to spotter. [The Town] is not only entertainment and popcorn. However, everybody will desire to become meet it. It has a wide entreatment. If you say it's a depository financial institution heist movie, people are like, "I'll see that." I think it was a dandy step. It took him to the next level because information technology made him a filmmaker who as well had box function entreatment.

Hall: He's just a very expert storyteller. He knows how to go a story from one place to some other and connect all the dots in betwixt so that you are in it and immersed in it and believe it and it's thrilling and it's really entertaining, too as being serious. He has that chapters, and I recollect that makes him a classic American filmmaker.

Welliver: I nevertheless retrieve that The Town and Gone Infant Gone, that's the bar. He set the bar with those films—you [must] reach a modicum of the depth and the artistry of those films if you lot're going to do a Boston motion-picture show. Those are the blueprints, that's the template.

Affleck: I'm glad to have worked on movies that are part of that tradition.

Hogan: I was playing on a softball team, and this friend, he works for one of the prisons here and he was walking by someone's desk and they had a moving picture of Ben Affleck on her screen saver. And he's like, "Where's that from?" And she's like, "Oh, he was here. They were shooting a scene. He wanted to tour the prison house and see it." And the guy said, "Oh, the guy who wrote the book that that movie'south based on is on my softball team." And she said, "Dennis Lehane is on your softball team?" And that's when I was like, "It'southward a minor circle here."

Stockard: It's a little weird existence a piece of that, as somebody who wrote two of those movies.

Affleck: There tend to be trends and people feel similar at kickoff it's fresh, and then it'southward kind of something they like, and then it becomes something that people get tired of. And that'south simply sort of the natural progression.

Hogan: I think we've played out the Irish Boston gangster thing. In that location's a lot of unlike stories to tell. I keep waiting for someone of color, anyone who'due south not like me, this sort of Irish American crime author, to effigy it out and write another smashing Boston crime movie that doesn't look like all the ones we've seen. I think it'due south ripe for the picking.

Affleck: I was very self-conscious about beingness limited to being the Boston guy. I was similar, "I'm non gonna practice another movie in Boston. Nobody's gonna rent me to do annihilation except Boston."

Stockard: I said, "You tin practise Boston again, merely let'southward go out of in that location for a while."

Affleck: Which is why I was like, "Great. Iran. I'm gonna do a movie nearly Islamic republic of iran."

These interviews have been condensed and edited for clarity.

An before version of this piece misspelled Roslindale.

Back in Boston You Didnt Know What to Do Movie Quote

Source: https://www.theringer.com/movies/2020/9/16/21438005/the-town-oral-history-10-year-anniversary

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