Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
Happy Bride Month
Greetings humans, it is your ILTBTA Social Media Manager Basil here. My pawrents gave me the “opportunity” to write the introduction for this post as a birthday present (do not ask my age, it is impolite). I asked for more kibble instead … clearly things did not work in my favor. I regret to inform you that the movie my humans selected, Dog Day Afternoon, has false advertising: there are no dogs! What the heck! Woof woof woof woof bork bork!!! Anyway, I will cross my paws that they will let me cover great cinema like Homeward Bound or Balto next year. Surely those were nominated by your silly Academy …
Previews
What, if anything, did we know about this coming attraction before we watched it?
Ellen: Tyler brought it to my attention. That is all.
Tyler: I picked this movie for Ellen’s Pick Three Choose One solely because it has the word “dog” in the title. That is the extent of my knowledge of this movie.
Plots & Feelings
This one’s pretty self-explanatory.
Short Version (courtesy of IMDb): Three amateur bank robbers plan to hold up a bank. A nice simple robbery: Walk in, take the money, and run. Unfortunately, the supposedly uncomplicated heist suddenly becomes a bizarre nightmare as everything that could go wrong does.
Long Version (modified from Wikipedia and formatted to fit your screen):
Jazzy piano takes us on a sweaty tour of Brooklyn on August 22nd, 1972. A trio of men pull up their car to First Brooklyn Savings Bank and inaudibly discuss its prospects. It’s late enough in the day that Howard the security guard is taking down the flag. One by one, the three men enter. There’s Sal over by the manager, Sonny filling out a withdrawal slip, and young Stevie, who gets the heebie jeebies immediately and bails. The remaining men pull their concealed guns and announce this evening’s program: a robbery!
Tyler: It’s not shown in the pictures below and I couldn’t find a good gif of it, but it was somewhat refreshing to see an Al Pacino character struggle to use a gun for once (Sonny couldn’t get it out of the box). I know him more from his roles in The Godfather saga and Scarface so the bumbling nature of Sonny is a welcome quasi change of pace.
Ellen: Unrelated, it’s extremely funny to me that Stevie dips out as soon as possible and is never seen or referenced again. We salute you!
Tyler: Stevie read the vibes and he was right!
Sonny is in charge, running around frantically trying to spray paint over the security cameras, check for any hidden employees, and showing off an impressive knowledge of bank procedure! He assures the tellers that the bank will send them all a dozen red roses, so long as they stop trying to set off secret alarms. Sal’s only job appears to be “hold a gun and look ghoulish.” (He’s doing great!) Unfortunately for the robbers, they arrived just after the daily cash pickup, and there’s only $1,1001 in the vault. Head teller Sylvia makes it known that she is unimpressed with this heist. After grabbing any lingering cash and traveler’s checks from the tellers’ stations (being sure to avoid the marked bills), Sonny burns the registers to hide the paper trail. Oopsie! Where there’s fire there’s smoke, and where there’s smoke there’s a nosy neighbor who alerts NYPD.
Ellen: I appreciate that the shots of Sonny running around the bank feel as frantic as he looks, not bothering to cut or move when he runs behind pillars, seeming to just barely keep up.
Tyler: Me too! There’s a lot of subtle camerawork that does a great job of adding to the frantic tension.
Tyler: I also find it super interesting to see a bank robber who knows all the tricks and secret alarms. I can’t say I've seen a bank robbery like this before: the knowledge is there but the execution is a bit lackluster.
Riiiing, riiiing! Telephone for Sonny! It’s Detective Sergeant Moretti in the barber shop across the street. Sonny split-second decides that the employees are all hostages now and makes reference to being willing to drop bodies. Sal privately assures him that he is ready to do just that. Okay, bud. Sonny attempts to regain what little control he had as sirens and like 200 cops2 descend on the street, as does a crowd of onlookers. Howard the security guard has asthma, so they let him go in a show of good faith. Sonny is coaxed outside to yell back and forth with the detective that’s nearly as frantic as he is, all while using Sylvia as a shield. The robber has no faith in the lawman saying he’ll get off with just a year. He starts yelling "Attica! Attica!" to invoke the recent Attica Prison riot, and the crowd begins cheering for him, as they are in an ACAB kind of mood.
Ellen: Once again, ILTBTA serves as a vehicle for me to understand Gilmore Girls3 references years after the fact.
Tyler: To a lesser extent, same! With his horrendous haircut, expressionless eyes, and now his explicit willingness to kill hostages if need be, Sal is such an unnerving character. Having no idea of how any of this actually ended, I was half-expecting one of the women to get too casual with Sal and for him to just pop off and kill them.
Ellen: 100%, that was the only real danger I thought the hostages were in.
Sonny is an instant hit, and TV calls to interview him. The newscaster appreciates his frankness about why he’s robbing the bank, but isn’t so excited when Sonny counters by asking what TV salaries are like and swearing a whole bunch. So weird, he’s abruptly taken off the air! Sonny realizes that he and Sal have the power here, and that they should start making demands for things such as planes to a tropical country, such as Algeria. Sallow Sal votes for Wyoming, but mainly wants to remind Sonny of his promise that if they can’t get away clean, they’ll kill themselves. Way to bring down the mood, bud! Sonny goes back outside to list his demands, but the boyfriend of one of the tellers (Maria) tackles him!4 The crowd boos the distraught young man, and Sonny gets it together enough to demand a helicopter to the airport, a jet to take them away, and to bring his wife to the bank. A hostage will be released for each request fulfilled. Clear stakes!
Cut to Sonny’s wife Angie with their two kids at their apartment, talking a mile a minute about how he’s been scaring her lately, but in his heart he didn’t do it. Back at the bank, everyone is just
chillingexcuse me, hanging out but absolutely boiling because the AC has been shut off. While going to the back to investigate, Sonny discovers a unit trying to get in! A shot is fired, and Sonny yells at Detective Moretti to control his guys. Everyone is mad, but nothing a little pizza can’t fix, right? Sonny pays the delivery guy with the marked bills and throws more into the cheering crowd.Tyler: It’s strange enough to see a bank robber walk outside without getting swiftly shot, but to also see the crowd’s embrace of him is jarring. If it wasn’t based on a true story, I’d be a little unsettled at how much the movie was trying to make the audience (via the crowd outside and the hostages) sympathize with Sonny.
Sonny’s wife is brought to the scene and it’s… a man named Leon. He was brought from Bellevue Hospital, and he and Sonny have a very troubled relationship, but they are in fact married! Leon says he’s been diagnosed as “a woman trapped in a man’s body,” but it’s his tumultuous relationship with Sonny and subsequent taking of lots and lots of pills that landed Leon in Bellevue. The going theory is that Sonny is robbing the bank to pay for sex reassignment surgery for his wife. The story is all over the news, and Sal’s main concern is that he was also labeled homosexual. The power is cut, and FBI Agent Sheldon enters the chat (and the bank), making sure the hostages are okay. The bank manager is diabetic, and a doctor is called in to tend to him. Thank heavens, because Sonny was worried they poisoned the pizza. They may be cops, Sonny, but they’re still New Yorkers!
Leon agrees to talk, and he is not pleased with his husband’s antics, especially not his repeated use of the phrase “dyin’ here.” Leon is like, “Look, I took handfuls of pills to get away from you, so just tell them I am not an accessory to this crime and I will be on my way.” That phone call didn’t quite go the way Sonny hoped, so he talks to his other wife. Angie again speaks at a rapid clip, berating Sonny for having a gun in their car and yelling at her at Coney Island. She also does not have time for his “I’m dyin’ here!” bullshit, and he hangs up5. Naturally now is the best time for Sonny’s “mudder” to show up and yell at him to just abandon Sal and throw Angie under the bus for the Leon situation while he’s at it. Sonny instead retreats inside and dictates a will to Sylvia, leaving life insurance money to Angie, his children, and to Leon for the surgery.
Ellen: Angie’s ability to speed through dialogue would make Amy Sherman-Palladino proud.
Tyler: She is … a lot.
A helicopter was not happening, but an airport limousine arrives instead! After checking the car for traps and weapons, Sonny and Sal exit the bank in a human shield of employees. The crowd has had mixed reactions since Sonny was outed, and I don’t know if this is the kind of queer visibility some of them were hoping for! An FBI agent drives the limo toward the airport with people yelling on all sides. Once on the tarmac at Kennedy Airport, a Modern Air jet rolls up. As Maria is released, she gives Sal her rosary beads for his first plane trip. Agent Sheldon suddenly seizes Sonny’s gun from the window, allowing the driver to grab the gun hidden in his armrest and shoot Sal clean in the forehead! Sonny is arrested, and the hostages are freed.
On-screen text reveals that Sonny was sentenced to twenty years in prison, that Angie and her children subsisted on welfare, and that Leon was a woman living in New York City.
Intermission
Even though ILTBTA is free, please indulge us further and enjoy this quick “advertisement.”
This installment of ILTBTA is brought to you by … Modern Air!
Wanna get away?6 Away from your worries? Away from your two wives? Away from your federal crimes?? Let Modern Air be your chariot! Whether you just survived an armed robbery or perpetrated one, let our spacious jets and capable pilots be the ones to whisk you off to beautiful new countries and make your escape today.
And, yes: we do also service Wyoming, since you asked.
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Wiki-Wiki-Whaaat?
Love a good Wikipedia rabbit hole in search of some fun facts? Us too.
Dog Day Afternoon’s Wikipedia page has some interesting facts and anecdotes that we recommend you read through, but here are a few of our favorites:
The events of the Dog Day Afternoon are a lightly dramatized account of a real bank robbery that occurred in 1972 in Brooklyn, further popularized by a Life magazine article (page 66) by P.F. Kluge and Thomas Moore. The article even describes John Wojtowicz, whom the character Sonny is based on, as a “thin fellow with the broken-faced good looks of an Al Pacino or Dustin Hoffman,” three years before Pacino starred in the role.
The film was originally titled The Boys in the Bank after the title of the magazine article.
Pacino agreed to play Sonny after accepting then declining the role three separate times. Much of the rest of the cast consisted of actors that he had worked with in Off-Broadway plays, including John Cazale7, who played Sonny’s accomplice Sal. Cazale improvised the line in the movie where Sal responds to Sonny’s question about what country they should flee to with “Wyoming.”
Each of the real-life hostages received $600 from Warner Bros. to sign a release allowing their names to be used in the film. One hostage asked for more money, and was subsequently removed from the script.
Director Sidney Lumet, who we met previously in 12 Angry Men, opted against building a studio set for the bank, instead using a warehouse in Brooklyn on Prospect Park West. The film’s crew built the bank set with moveable walls, which gave Lumet greater flexibility while filming inside the bank.
Tyler: While playing around on Google Maps, I found a hot dog restaurant near the filming location that is literally just called Dog Day Afternoon. You almost have to respect the direct movie reference and unwillingness to go for a more roundabout pun like most places would. It’s like they’re daring Warner Bros. to sue them.
Lumet also had his cameramen use roller skates and wheelchairs to capture Pacino’s movements in a more natural fashion.
Ellen: I want those BTS photos more than I want a slice of NY pizza right now.
While the temperature during the actual heist reached 87 degrees, the film was shot in the fall. To avoid having their breath be visible during night shoots, the cast kept ice in their mouths to even out the temperature.
Temperature differences also played a role while filming the final scene at the airport, with wind chills dipping to 40 degrees during filming. Dissatisfied with the water that was typically sprayed on actors to simulate sweat, Lumet instead used a mixture of glycerin and water that he created while shooting 12 Angry Men that he felt looked more realistic and lasted longer.
Ellen: Washing that fake sweat off must feel even better than biting into a slice of NY pizza!
Chris Sarandon, who played Sonny’s wife Leon, went on to have roles in a variety of iconic movies, including Jack Skellington in The Nightmare Before Christmas, Detective Mike Norris in Child’s Play, and (in what will be the real “Oooh that’s where I know him from!” moment for the Wendte ILTBTA readers) Prince Humperdinck in The Princess Bride. He was also the first husband of actress Susan Sarandon.
Fill In The Blank
How did we really feel about The Academy nominating this?
Ellen: I’d like a slice of NY pizza, please! Oh and, idk, to pay The Academy for it with marked bills from a bank robbery or whatever. Alright, putting my insatiable pizza-based hunger aside, I really appreciated this one! I think a bottle movie that takes place almost entirely in two places (the bank and the street outside) can be hard to pull off, but there was plenty to explore between Sonny and Sal, the folks in the bank, and the crowd outside, to say nothing of the cops and various members of Sonny’s family. The filmmaking really brings us on the journey with Sonny, even though we never get a really full picture of him and what seemed to make him snap. Both of his wives seem pretty perplexed by it, so it’s not just us! It’s implied there could be PTSD from Vietnam involved, as well as a general anti-establishment sentiment and difficulties being a queer man only a few years after Stonewall, but there’s no capital A Answer, which is how life goes most of the time. On a lighter note, as Tyler mentioned above, Sonny’s expertise without the execution to back it up is not something we get to see in heist movies very often, so that was a fun dynamic to watch. Hit the showers, Al, you did great!
Tyler: I’d like to flee from The Academy as a hostage but smirk as I run away since I now have a good story to tell. I’m of two minds about this movie. On the one hand, I appreciated how unique the storyline was (bonus points for being mostly true!) and how it kept me guessing. This was not your typical bank robbery movie. And, as mentioned in Plots & Feelings and further explained in Wiki-Wiki-Whaaat?, I really enjoyed the camerawork and how it subtly put you more into the movie as opposed to just watching it. (Between this and 12 Angry Men, I think it’s safe to say that Sidney Lumet knew what he was doing.)
That being said, this movie fell into the Taxi Driver trap for me of putting me into the movie too much, particularly the sweat and grime associated with that time and place. To be fair, if anything this is a compliment to these movies because it’s 100% done on purpose, but I just don’t like feeling so unclean after watching a movie. Heck, there’s a guy in Dog Day Afternoon that shows up and sticks out like a sore thumb simply because it looks like he’s showered recently. We even said while watching that it looks like he got stuck in the wrong decade. I’m sure an actual film critic/historian has explained why movies in the 70s leaned into the sweat and grit (I’m sure the Vietnam War has something to do with it; doesn’t it always?), but I’m learning to appreciate the bits and pieces of it while not liking the overall style.
Basil: I’d like to ask The Academy for another pup cup, please! Movie was 0/10 (I fell asleep), custard was 12/10 (I blacked out).
Let The Credits Roll
Thanks for reading! Some quick housekeeping as you exit the theatre:
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Post-Credits Scene
Get a sneak peek at the next ILTBTA installment.
In honor of the official first day of arriving shortly after our next post, we decided to celebrate the opening of sunny season with the 2006 black comedy Little Miss Sunshine. Sporting an ensemble cast that includes Greg Kinnear, Steve Carrell, Toni Collette, Paul Dano, Alan Arkin, and Abigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine tells the story of a dysfunctional family who takes their youngest member to a beauty pageant in their beat up Volkswagen bus. It is available to rent from all of your favorite future techno-overlords.
Until then, try to have a dog day afternoon a little more like this guy:
That’s only about $8,000 in today’s failures!
Among them are a group of the most stereotypical 70s-looking yahoos you’ve ever seen in your life.
Ellen: Tyler, look away! In season six, Paris becomes unexpectedly broke because her parents “flipped the bird at the IRS one too many times.” While describing her very hostile interaction at the bank (complete with men in suits closing in), Paris says she started pacing and yelling “Attica! Attica!” She subsequently fled the scene, as I’m sure Sonny wished to do more than once.
This is not the first time we’ve written about a young man running through the streets of New York City while yelling for Maria.
Sounds like my two wives!
You may think we stole that from Southwest Airlines, but it’s 1975, and they didn’t try that until two decades later, okay?
Loyal ILTBTA readers will remember Cazale from the Wiki-Wiki-Whaaat? of our post on The Conversation.