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Critical Jim reviews Dog Day Afternoon and Stevie

By Staff Writer Jim Cohn

TWO TOO TRUE

Dog Day Afternoon
(1975) Based on a Life Magazine article by P.F. Kluge and Thomas Moore BR>
Screenplay: Frank Pierson Director: Sidney Lumet Cast: Sonny Wortzik: Al Pacino; Sal: John Cazale; Detective Eugene Moretti: Charles Durning; FBI Agent Sheldon: James Broderick

From Dog Days to Gravy Train

On August 22, 1972, two men held up a Brooklyn, New York bank. Eight employees were held for twelve hours and used as bargaining chips in negotiations with the police. Life Magazine sent two reporters, Los Angeles based P.F. Kluge and fellow journalist Thomas Moore, to cover the event. The article, titled, , was optioned and three years later Dog Day Afternoon premiered to rave reviews.

Kluge went on to write a number of novels, including Eddie and the Cruisers, which generated the movie of the same name. He currently teaches at Kenyon College in Ohio, where he holds the position of Writer-in-Residence.

Of co-author, Thomas Moore, nothing was found. If anyone can fill in this unwanted blank please contact me at ReadersRoom.com.

Perhaps, the best testament to the skill of these two journalists is to read their article, The Boys in the Bank, as it appeared in Life Magazine. Surf over to: velvet_peach.tripod.com/fpacdogdayafternoon.html and scroll halfway down the page.

The Movie

Picture it: New York City, late afternoon on August 22, 1972. The Yankees and Mets are having mediocre seasons: the Yanks in third place behind Detroit and Baltimore; the Mets in second, but eleven and a half games back of Pittsburgh. Kids on summer recess cool down by soaking themselves in the flood from an opened fire hydrant; housewives begin preparing dinners for their husbands who will soon be home; the workforce, millions strong, girds itself for the long, tedious, rush-hour ride in cars, buses, and sardine-packed subway cars. It's deep into the hot, humid, dog days of summer and New Yorkers don't have much to look forward to.

Suddenly, local radio and television stations interrupt regular programming. Two men are holding up a bank in Brooklyn. They have eight hostages, the manager and seven tellers. The New York City Police Department and the FBI have cordoned off the area and are working to gain control of the situation.

New Yorkers smile. Finally, entertainment. If they're lucky, the police won't spoil the fun by rounding up the would-be robbers too quickly.

Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon, opens with some quick takes -- a tour boat pulls up to a slip, idle men hang out near a neighborhood convenience store, kids frolic in a rooftop swimming pool supervised by their mothers lounging on beach chairs, street workers shovel down to bedrock, people sit on wooden chairs under umbrellas at the beach, congested traffic squeezes through a toll booth -- a collage mastershot of workday New York City. On the screen the words appear, "What you about to see is true. It happened in Brooklyn, New York on August 22, 1972." In the background, Elton John, accompanied by his honky-tonk piano, sings the opening lyric of, Amoreena: "Lately… I've been thinking… how much I miss my lady..." The broad irony of these words will not become apparent until later, but, subtly, Lumet has already inserted a hint of the backstory.

Cut to a nondescript car parked on a nondescript block near a small branch bank. The driver, a young man sloppily dressed in tee-shirt and jeans, and sporting a bushy '70's hair style, gets out, sidles nonchalantly toward the bank, looks briefly in the window, then returns to the car. He says something to the other two who are still inside. One of them, Sal, (John Cazale), nicely dressed in a black suit, white shirt, and dark tie gets out and walks toward the bank carrying an attaché case. He nods at the guard, who is lowering the flag. He enters. A moment later, Sonny Wortzik (Pacino), also nicely dressed in a suit and tie, totes a long, white, ribbon-tied flower box past the guard and into the bank. Last, the young man enters. Employing a wonderful economy, Lumet has set the themes and action, and put us at the scene of this complicated story, in five and a half minutes.

Sal walks to the manager's desk and sits. He opens his attaché case and pulls out a sub-machine gun. He tells the manager, Mulvaney (Sully Boyer), to finish his phone call. Sonny is at one of the lobby stands, pretending to fill out a transaction slip for the teller. The young man, accomplice Stevie (Gary Springer), walks up to Sonny and innocently foreshadows the future of this robbery. "I'm getting really bad vibes," he says. His whinny voice makes the line sounds almost funny. Sonny tells the kid, "You're crazy, it's started already. He's got the gun out," meaning Sal, who is still at the manager's desk. Sonny tells Stevie to position himself by the front door.

The three wait for a mother wheeling a baby in a stroller to leave. Now, aside from the staff, they are the only ones in the bank. Sonny picks up his flower box from the table and walks slowly and calmly to the teller's counter. He hands a teller some papers, then suddenly whirls like a dervish as he rips the flower box open and pulls a rifle from it. "Freeze! Nobody move!" he shouts at the tellers.

With Sonny covering the tellers with his rifle and Sal pointing his machine gun at the manager, Stevie turns to Sonny and says, "I can't do it, Sonny." Sonny stares briefly with stunned disbelief. "What?" he says. "I'm not going to make it, Sonny," Stevie replies. Sonny tells Sal, still at the back of the bank with the manager. Sal yells back, "Let him go."

Sonny has the guard unlock the door to let Stevie out and tells him, "Stevie, don't take the car." Stevie looks surprised and whines about not being able to get home. Take the subway, Sonny tells him and watches Stevie turn to run away. "Stevie, the keys," Pacino calls after him. Stevie is leaving the robbery and taking the keys to the getaway car with him.

Get the feeling this robbery is going nowhere? Literally, it's not. It's only the beginning of twelve hours locked inside the close quarters of a bank. A few minutes later, Sonny and Sal find out the armored car had just left with the day's proceeds. They thought it came at this time to bring the next day's cash. The bank has only eleven hundred dollars and a few thousand in traveler's checks. Sonny curses the bad information he's been given and collects the money. Sal keeps his eye on the bank employees. Sonny then makes the mistake of burning the bank register (where manual transactions are recorded). The smoke catches the attention of an insurance agent standing near his office across the street.

Still, with all that's going wrong, the Sonny and Sal still have a chance. But…

Ready to leave, they herd the tellers and the manager into the vault. Before they can exit, the head teller, Sylvia (Penny Allen), tells Sonny she won't make it -- she needs the ladies' room. Sonny asks the other tellers and they all say yes, they too need the ladies room before they're shut inside the vault. Here we learn that Sonny, despite waving a rifle around the bank, is really a nice guy. He delays fleeing to grant the tellers ladies' room privileges.

As Sonny returns from escorting Sylvia, the phone rings. The manager picks it up. He listens and tells Sonny, "It's for you." Sonny is shocked. Why is he receiving a phone call at the bank he's robbing? Sonny mutters a confused, "What?" The manager holds the receiver toward him and says, "Telephone call. It's for you."

On the other end of the line is Detective Sergeant Eugene Moretti (Charles Durning), who tells Sonny he's got him, "…completely by the balls." He's even watching him talk on the telephone from the barbershop across the street, where the police are setting up their operations. A formidable force of 250 police, dozens of police cars, and a police transport bus and helicopter have been assembled at the scene. The FBI has also assigned agents.

Every media outlet in the considerable market of the New York metropolitan area and suburbs has sent crews to cover the story. During this long, hot dog day of summer, each knows the importance of treating news as entertainment. Their presence gives flamboyant extrovert, Sonny Wortzik, his 15 minutes of fame, which becomes twelve hours. Exiting the bank periodically to negotiate with Moretti while partner Sal guards the hostages, Sonny prances in front of the bank, waving the white handkerchief he uses to signal to the police that he's unarmed, whipping up the crowd by shouting "Attica! Attica! Attica!"(1). Even the pizza delivery boy, who opens the bank door so Sonny can bring the food inside, jumps around with exuberance at being, for a brief moment, a part of Sonny's celebrity.

But, if New Yorkers connected with Sonny because they thought he was just like them and that he was robbing the bank only for the money, were they ever wrong. At one point, negotiating with Detective Moretti, Sonny says he wants to see his wife. In return, he'll release a hostage.

Sometime later, Leon Shermer (Chris Sarandon), unshaven, emaciated, and looking harried in a terry bathrobe, steps from a police car. Turns out, Leon really is Sonny's wife. They were married in a church by a priest who was later defrocked. Although Sonny is also married to a woman and has two kids, Leon is the wife Sonny really wants. Moretti talks to Leon first and learns that he and Sonny are estranged. They separated because Leon wants a sex change operation and Sonny is against it. Moretti surmises the truth; Sonny is robbing the bank to pay for Leon's operation.

This gives Dog Day Afternoon a memorable twist, but what ingredients elevate it into that upper echelon we reverently call "The Classics"? Two things:

First, Dog Day Afternoon is more than a movie about a botched bank robbery, even one with a bizarre sexual twist to it. Sprinkled throughout, are scenes of social commentary: a news helicopter encroaches on the crime scene, the crowd chants, "Attica, Attica…," Sonny has a conversation with a TV news anchorman who asks why they are robbing a bank instead of working for the money, the delivery boy basking in Sonny's fame.

These scenes, and more, provide a social framework that supports and complements the story of a bank robbery. You become involved, not only in the story, but in the life of the city and the times in which the story took place.

Second, when you watch Dog Day Afternoon, you are witnessing one of the great performances of the cinema. Baby-faced Al Pacino plays the complex Sonny Wortzik like he's an element of nature. The role demands a range of emotion and mood from subdued to frenetic, and everything in between. Pacino manages this with great energy and impeccable timing. He doesn't look like he's working hard. In mere seconds we are convinced he is bank robber Sonny Wortzik. For the rest of the movie we are held captive to his acting skill as surely as Sonny and Sal held eight bank employees hostage in Brooklyn on a dog day afternoon in August, 1972.

(1) The Attica prison uprising, often called the Attica Rebellion, ended on September 13, 1971, nearly a year before the attempted bank robbery. 1,300 inmates, protesting the poor living conditions and the lack of showers, education, and vocational training, held thirty-eight guards hostage. After four days of negotiations, the National Guard and New York State Police stormed the prison, killing more than forty, including eleven of the hostages. During the early '70's, "Attica" became a political rallying cry.

Stevie
(2003)

Director: Steve James Cast: Steve James: Himself; Stevie Fielding: Himself; Tonya Gregory: Herself; Bernice Hagler: Herself; Verna Hagler: Herself; Brenda Hickam: Herself; Doug Hickam: Himself; Judy James: Herself

The Movie

[Please note: For those of you who noticed the writer's biography is missing, the movie, Stevie, is a documentary. It had no author.]

There is no truer crime than the crime you see in a documentary. Between the opening and closing, what you see is what happened. Sometimes, it's harsh. No Hollywood screenwriter was brought in to doctor the script, no scene was re-shot because it looked more attractive another way, no dialogue was added because it didn't sound right the first time. Documentaries use real settings and real people. They don't always come with happy endings. Stevie is such a movie.

In 1982, while attending Southern Illinois University, Steve James (the director of Hoop Dreams) became a Big Brother to a troubled eleven-year old named Stephen Fielding. After graduating in 1985, James lost touch with Stevie, but never forgot him. Ten years later, in July 1995, James decided to return to rural southern Illinois to visit Stevie Fielding. While in college, James had written in his journal that he should always be there for Stevie. Now, the regret and the guilt of not having kept his word to himself are apparent in James' narration.

We meet Stevie on the porch of his grandmother's house, where he's lived for most of his twenty-plus years. He is shirtless, sports tattoos on his left arm -- one he did himself, the other was applied by someone who learned how in prison. His teeth are browned and crooked; he has on oversized glasses that make him look like a deranged owl; his eyes dart here and there when he speaks, as though he's not able to focus on anything. His hair is long and unkempt under the black trucker cap he's wearing. He is on crutches from an accident -- a tractor tire fell on his knee and "popped it," he tells James.

Stevie is not articulate; at times his speech is halting, at other times it's charged with false bravado. He wants to impress James with who he is, but, sadly he doesn't know how. Despite that, he is unintentionally eloquent when he sums up his life for James. "Wherever I go, people here, there, wherever, it's just nothing but trouble."

If Stevie could live in a world by himself, he would probably think he'd found paradise.

To his credit, James offers no judgments about Stevie. He had intended to re-unite with Stevie and shoot a film about him. Now he tells us Stevie's situation is worse than he'd thought it could be. Film or no film, he tells us, he's decided to take "an irretrievable step back into Stevie's life." Still, the pain that comes from being involved with such a life, and the frustration of being helpless in the face of it, is more than James can handle at this point. He admits he found excuses to stay away for another two years.

In March, 1997, James finally calls Stevie. His Grandma, Verna Hagler, answers, instead. She tells him Stevie had been arrested a few days earlier for sexually molesting his eight-year old cousin while babysitting her. Stevie is 26.

At this point, Steve James keeps his promise to himself to take that "irretrievable step." He returns to Stevie's life. Through interviews with Stevie's grandmother, mother, girlfriend, sister, and brother-in-law, we get an unsettling look at an upbringing so harsh Stevie, the child, could not cope with it. Adult Stevie is collapsing from the weight of it.

He was born out of wedlock; the father didn't stay. His mother (Bernice Hagler) beat him severely, then abandoned him to the care of his grandmother; he was hardly more than an infant. His mother remained close, living 50 yards down the road. Bernice kept Stevie's sister, Brenda. She never beat her. His grandmother and his mother have had a long-running battle about who is at fault for the way Stevie has turned out. They have disagreed and argued in front of him since he was a small boy, not minding the impression they made on him. When his grandmother realized Stevie was beyond her control, even with the Ritalin he was taking, she gave him up to the state. For years, Stevie was shuttled from foster home to juvenile center. In some of these homes and centers, Stevie was repeatedly beaten and sexually abused.

As a rule, makers of documentaries don't become personally involved with the subjects of their films. Doing so runs the risk that the film will be about them and no longer about the subject. In Stevie, Steve James' personal involvement is integral to the story. Nowhere is that more evident than when he's contemplating Stevie's impending trial and probable prison sentence. His frustration at his inability to help, and, perhaps, his guilt for not being there for Stevie those twelve years, becomes apparent when he says, "I know prison isn't the answer for Stevie. But, putting him back on the street isn't either. Right now, doing nothing seems like the safest thing to do."

It probably wouldn't have mattered anyway. At one point James observed that Stevie was like "an accident waiting to happen." Now it has happened. Stevie makes one bad decision after another. He is offered a deal that would have credited him for time served and required him to undergo counseling. That would mean no additional prison time. Stevie refuses the offer, telling James he will not talk to a psychiatrist, not even James' wife, Judy, who professionally counsels sex offenders. He pins his hope on the leniency of the judge. At the sentencing, Stevie receives ten years for the rape. James later learns that the judge would have given him six, but Stevie, against the advice of his attorney, refused to speak on his own behalf. He turned macho at the wrong time. Without hearing even the pretense of remorse, the judge tacked four years onto Stevie's sentence.

At this point, it would be easy to embark on a moralistic rant propounding some social outrage or other. But, that's not the purpose here. Movie reviews are. With that in mind, the only important question is, is Stevie, a movie worth seeing? (The answer in a moment, first I'll play devil's advocate.)

Keep in mind that this is reality: no one wrote in a happy ending because test audiences preferred it, there are no clear-cut heroes and villains, the dialogue is not witty, nor does it contain periodic doses of humor to lighten the mood, the characters go into the future unable to shed the baggage of their pasts. You won't rewind your video or eject your DVD with a warm, fuzzy feeling in your heart. Have I been blunt enough?

(Now, the answer.) It may sound silly, but one of my criteria for judging whether a movie is good is to ask this: Did I wake up the next morning thinking about it? I woke up the next morning thinking about Stevie. After lunch, I was still thinking about Stevie. It didn't go away after dinner, either. Stevie more than meets that particular criteria for judging movies.

This is a film that gets under your skin and settles in like a bad rash. It asks tough questions. It makes you think. Find the material for a moralistic rant on your own time.

Definitely, see Stevie.

Do you have comments about Jim's reviews? He'd love to hear from you. Contact him at: ReadersRoom2@aol.com

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