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Rachel Walther, "Born to Lose: The Misfits Who Made Dog Day Afternoon" (Headpress, 2026)
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- [00:00]
A
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B
Welcome to the New Books Network.
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C
Hi, this is Rebecca Buchanan, host of New Books Network. And today I'm here with Rachel Walther, who is the author of Born to the Myths Fits, who made Dog Day Afternoon. Rachel, thanks for being here with me today.
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B
Thanks so much for having me.
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C
Could you just start out by giving a little bit of an overview of this book? Why did you decide to write this book?
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B
Oh, gosh. I mean, I've been writing about film now for about 10 years, film history, I should say. And I always sort of focus on crime movies, you know, either classic film noir or more contemporary neo noir detective stories, things like that. And I had the opportunity to expand a project into book form. And so I was thinking about what I had written about recently, what stuck with me. And Dog Day Afternoon is a film for me that it sits on a lot of fences. It's a crime film, but it's also really funny. And it was a movie that had this really great story that inspired the film. It was this true crime tale of two guys who rob a bank. It immediately goes sideways, it turns into this big city standoff with the cops and they're holding the bank tellers hostage. And when I was writing about it as a short form essay, there was so much that I had to take out and so much that I wanted to say. And so I thought, oh, this would be great. And to make this a longer story and sort of do a kitchen sink approach of take the time to tell the backstory. And also for me, what was one of the most fascinating things was how the film, once it was released, since it was so successful and folks loved it, it got a lot of Oscar nominations. How that film in turn influenced the folks that were really impacted by the true event. It changed their lives forever, whether they wanted it, whether they liked it or not. And really taking the time to trace everyone's story afterward for the 50 years since the film's been out its legacy and also tracking some of the creative artists who have been inspired by it to make their own work.
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C
Yeah. So you divided this book, like you're saying, into these kind of three parts with fiction, fact and legacy that we can get into. But I'm wondering if you, before we get into that, sort of just for folks who don't know, because this happened, what, over 50 years ago, give a little overview of what happened in. What was it? August of 72?
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B
August 22nd. Yes. It's. Yeah, these. These, these guys walked. They. Three guys from the Lower east side walked into a bank. The main guy who sort of spearheaded the robbery, he had worked in a bank, so he kind of. He thought he knew all the tricks of, oh, don't take the last bill out of the drawer. Cause that'll tip off the alarm, you know, et cetera. They had some guns, but they really. These were not hardened criminals. None of them had records of any kind, actually. And John Wojdowicz, who was the main robber, he was actually a Vietnam vet. He came back from the war and he had been fired from his job for being gay. He also had a messy personal life. He'd left his wife for a trans woman that he had married. And so he had two wives. He desperate for money. So he got some friends of his from the neighborhood, walked into this bank in Brooklyn. But the money that they were thinking was going to be there that day with the Brinks delivery wasn't. So they thought they were going to get quarter million dollars and there was maybe 15 grand and change. Also, the bank manager did manage to tip off the police. So suddenly they go to escape. The bank's surrounded. The story garnered a lot of attention. The standoff lasted maybe eight or nine hours. And they were asking Wadowitz the robber, like, why are you doing this? Why are you robbing the bank? And he said, oh, I'm. I need money for my wife's sex change operation. I'm gay. And just the fact that he was so, so plain about it, like, nope, this is who I am. This is what's going on. At that time. People were really struck by that. And it was just darn interesting. And so a crowd started forming outside in Brooklyn. The Republican National Convention was on tv. And so I think the local newscasters were looking for any excuse to break in on that. It's like, okay, let's. There's these guys coming down to the bank. It's this crazy circus going on. Let's get some camera crews out here and do some live coverage of it. So it really got a lot of attention that evening. And the standoff ended. They got transportation to jfk, but local police and the FBI managed to capture Wojowitz. They ended up killing Sal, who was his accomplice. And so Wodowitz was sent to prison. The hostages were freed, and they never made it to the jet. And Wojowitz ended up in prison for a period of time. He was in prison while the film was being developed, while it was being made. And Life magazine covered the story shortly after it happened, I want to say about a month later. And so that's what got the attention of Hollywood was this. There was so much footage from the night. There was tons of photographers taking pictures. And another thing I should mention, during this robbery, Wojowitz was sort of holding court outside the bank either when he was giving his demands, like, we want, you know, we want a jet, we want fuel. But also, hey, we guys, we got guys that are hungry in here. Can you give us some pizza? Can you give us some coke, Coca Cola? You know, he was just, he was animated, he was funny, he was dynamic, and he was playing to the crowd in a way. He would say things that were really funny or really kind of outrageous and X rated. But there was so much, I think, inherent hostility at that time between law enforcement and communities at large that he really was just a natural at feeding off of that. And with the way he was just as a person in general, that's a big part, I think, of why this story ended up enduring more. So I mean, there's honestly a lot of other bank robberies going on at the time when I was researching this, like, oh, there was one two weeks later, there was one six months later. It's. It was not as rare occurrence as it is today.
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C
Yeah, I found it really fascinating, like in thinking about like that there, like you said, there could be all of these bank robberies or all of these things that they could pick up on, but this is the one that they chose. And so you get into this idea, you start with this kind of the fiction around it, like how they put the movie together. So I wonder if we can talk a little bit about that, like how, how this, like, right, you mentioned there were some articles. There were, you know, a lot of footage. But why. Yeah, why this one? And, and how it kind of came to be. And then maybe we can talk about some of the folks who were in the film, because they're really, they are really important to that sort of time period, too, and how this film launched some of their careers or. Or embedded them in Hollywood.
- [07:18]
B
Definitely. Yeah. No, it's. Right away. The first person that saw was a producer, Marty Bregman. And he. He was a. He was an agent looking. He's now known as a producer, but he was an agent at the time, primarily. And one of his clients was Al Pacino. So he saw this story, and I think he had looks of a Dustin Hoffman or an Al Pacino. And so that immediately he had this verve to him, even in still photographs. Bregman picked up on that. He wanted to develop it as a vehicle for Pacino. He got a screenwriter working on it. And I want to talk about Frank Pearson in a second, the screenwriter, but just to sort of carry along with the story. And so they gave it to Pacino. He was really keen to do it. He loved the story. But admittedly, he was a little nervous about playing a gay character. There hadn't been a lot of focus on gay characters at that time in Hollywood, unless they were supporting characters or comedy relief. And he hit. Pacino was really hot at the time. He had just finished filming Godfather 2. It hadn't come out yet, but Godfather 1 had hit, Serpico had hit. And so a. He was a little nervous about playing a gay character, but also he was just tired. He'd been filming back to back. He was just exhausted. He always wanted to just go back to the theater. And so he said, you know what? I'm gonna pass. And they said, all right, well, we'll call Dustin Hoffman then. He's interested. And he was like, okay, I'll do it. That was, I think, the thing to get him over the line to agree. And what Pearson did, the screenwriter, was he was building this. He talked to not only everyone involved in the robbery, but everyone related to Wojtowicz. He could not get to Wadowitz himself because he was in the midst of being prosecuted for this crime, and he was in federal prison. And also, he was really squirrely about talking. He's like, I'll talk to you, but I want five grand. And then he would show up at the jail that day and say, now it's 10 grand. Just. He was kind of jerking everyone around. So Pearson, when he spoke to everyone involved in woods life, including his first wife, Carmen, his second trans wife, Liz Eden, everyone described a different person. And he said that's what really struck him when he was trying to build a character was that it seemed as though he was hearing about this guy who tried to be everything to everyone. He wanted to please everyone, but in the end, he ended up just pissing everyone off. In his best efforts to be this good guy, he just would always fail. He would always come up short. He was extremely volatile. He had a really quick temper. And that's something that Pearson identified with too. The writer himself, he'd really crawled his way up from working in the mailroom at Life magazine to becoming a Oscar nominated screenwriter by the time this project came across his desk. He was nominated for Cat Ballou a couple years earlier, and he had been a veteran in World War II. He joined up when he was 17, lied about his age, almost died from illness fighting in the Pacific theater. He came out very anti establishment, very anti war. And that really resonated with what he was hearing about Wojowitz, you know, who came back from Vietnam and just found himself, found it that no one cared. You know, he was out of work. He was, you know, he was being discriminated against for who he realized he was being gay. And so as Pearson crafted a character, Sonny, who was based on Wojewitz, but was certainly his own creation, that I think had a lot of Pearson himself in them in that, I should say. And with Sal, the accomplice in the bank, who's this sort of gloomy, strange figure, they ended up casting John Cazale, who was a close personal friend of Pacino's. They worked together a bunch and, you know, not little of which was the Godfather. You know, Cazale played Fredo in the Godfather. So this was an interesting opportunity that both of them wanted to do where the dynamic between Michael and Fredo in the Godfather movies is so loaded and so deep with all this brotherly sadness and betrayal and disappointment. And here in Dog Day Afternoon, they're playing two characters that barely know each other. They've just met, they're casual acquaintances before this robbery happens. And so you get to see over the course of the film, Pacino's character, Sonny, asking Sal questions, getting these really bizarre answers. Sal's just this strange guy, and Sonny's a little afraid of him. Everyone's a little afraid of him because he's the scary guy with the gun, saying, I'm ready to take everyone out. I don't care. And it's nice that this role reversal because, you know, Pacino's character has such the upper hand in the Godfather films. And now it's Cazale's character who's the loose cannon. So that was something that they both really relished and they got Sidney Lumet to direct, which was perfect for a number of reasons. Pacino worked with him before on Serpico. Lumet worked fast. He also kind of ran the production like a theater performance. The whole story takes place in and around the bank. And so that really suited Pacino's preference of doing these long rehearsals. The whole cast would show up for all the rehearsals, whether they had lines or not, that day, just to make sure everyone would absorb things. And Lumet also encouraged, you know, all the supporting actors and actresses that were playing the bank tellers, the guard, the. The manager, you know, just come. Well, not the guard. Sorry. Just wear your own clothes or pick clothes that you like. We'll get a couple copies of it for wardrobe. But just wear what you would wear if you were working to working in a bank, and just speak in your normal voice. We don't. No one had character names. They kind of were just. They were just playing variations of themselves so they could be natural within the confines of the script. So when they were doing rehearsals, they also just added in a lot of improvisation. Lumet would tape everything as they went, listen back to the tapes afterwards, and then redo the script based on anything that he'd gleaned during that day that he really liked. And I'm trying to think some of the other characters outside the bank. They cast Charles Durning to play the main police officer who's interfacing with Sonny during the standoff. And Durning was a theater veteran at this point that had just started breaking into films in the last five, 10 years previous to that. He came into acting a little older. He was in his mid to late 40s by this time. Again, he had a hellish experience during World War II. He sort of found solace and got over his PTSD through becoming a professional dancer. So I was delighted to learn that he would always fall back on his professional dancing skills. When the acting work dried up, he. He would teach ballroom dancing and things like that. I say that just because he's a fairly heavyset fellow, but he was extremely nimble on his feet. And you really see that in some of his more physical standoffs with Sonny. When they're fighting with each other or running around or arguing in the street, he just does it really well. And I think the genius of how Pearson wrote Durning's character is how sympathetic he is to Sonny even after he learns why he's robbing the bank after he brings his trans wife, Leon to the bank. There's no Snickering. There's no. He doesn't treat him any differently, put it that way. Once he learns that he's gay, to him, it's like, who cares? None of this matters. I'm just trying to get everyone safe, including Sonny himself. You know, Durning wants the best outcome for everyone. And the fact that that character, he's not necessarily on Sonny's side, but he's, he's empathetic and he's relatable, which is a nice level of depth from a cop that you get in that movie, which wasn't, you know, was not standard at the time. They also have some FBI characters that are a bit more hard nosed and reptilian. Lance Hendrickson, it was one of his early film roles, plays one of the FBI cops in a really great creepy way. So those guys are really the villains of the film. And frankly, in real life too, they were the ones who brought the hammer down. And so you don't get a lot of depth from them.
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D
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C
Well, and can you talk? I think one thing before we get into Sarandon and Sarandon's character, like. Yeah, but. But before that, like. Because I thought one thing that was really, for me, I thought was really interesting is this relationship between Pacino. I can't even talk Pacino. And like thinking about. They were much older in the characters, were much older than the actors and. Right. The actors were much older than the actual people they were portraying. And this idea. And there was like some concern about that idea, like, do we have sort of someone who's much older being a part of that role? So can you talk a little bit about that too? Because I think that was really interesting thinking about casting and how they really convinced the casting choices.
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B
Yeah, well, you know, in the real robbery, you know, John Wojowitz, at the time it occurred, was in his mid-20s and Sal, his accomplice, was 18. And since Sal was killed in night of the robbery, you know, he's. We just have some grainy mug shots of him, but he looks kind of like a 50s juvenile delinquent type, you know, but he always remained this mysterious figure. And so when they cast Pacino, Pacino was a little bit older, but not too much, early 30s. So that. That was an okay fit to sort of get someone. And he. He changed his voice, too. His voice is very different than in, say, the Godfather or Serpico, which I think adds a bit of bounce and youth to the way he portrayed Sonny. And. But Kazale was a hard sell because first off, they were having a hard time casting Sal because they were looking for these young kids, these young men. And, you know, Lumet wasn't satisfied with anyone. And Pacino was sitting in on the casting, and he finally was just getting fed up. He's like, can't we just use Cazale? Can't we just use my friend John? And Lumet was like, what are you talking about? You know, this is a guy who. He's older than Pacino. He's in his late, late 30s, he's balding. He's all wrong for this sort of pretty boy, JD Type. But then Lumet said, pacino's like, okay, well, we'll just bring him in anyway. Let him read. And Lumet just said, oh, once he read in five minutes, I was sold. That was this magic quality that John Cazale had. Was he just fit? And he was so talented. But I think a part of why he could do that role was a bit of the fact that so little was known about Sal. If he had his own distinct voice, cadence, personality, if there was footage of him and how he behaved, it might have been harder to convert that role so much from a young kid to an older man. But since he was this mystery, Kazale was already a bit of a mystery. You know, he. He was one of those actors that could disappear into his role. So in no way is he trying to play a younger character. He's just trying to play a character, period. But he really took it seriously. I was. I was able to read some interviews that he did to local papers at the time. And he. There was some audio footage of Teller. When Pearson wrote the screenplay, he interviewed a lot of the bank tellers about the night of and how the two robbers behaved during those hours. So he would hear about how Sal was, how he behaved, how he spoke, and he really tried to match that. And he said part of the reason why he took it so seriously was since Sal has. Sal had been killed, this was going to be one of the few records of him. He wanted to do him Justice. He wanted to respect the fact that he wasn't here to sort of defend himself or counter that portrayal. So even though he knew it wasn't a impersonation or it was more of just an interpretation of this figure, he really wanted to get it right. And everyone, folks, even at the time, I mean now John Cazale was known as this almost mythic figure because the story goes, is he only appeared in five films. He was really just getting going with his career. He had come from the stage, so he'd been acting for quite a while. But he only was in five films. But every film he was in was nominated for best picture. So he was just this gem. And he was finally starting to get noticed. He did really specialize in these supporting characters. So it took a while but really sadly developed lung cancer and died within a year afterward. And so he's just left this amazing legacy. But I think part of my job was trying to fight through the fog of, of myth and really determine who was he on a day to day basis, how was he to hang out with, how was he to work with. And one of the actresses on the set I was able to speak with on until marching everyone but he people sort of worked at his pace, if that made sense.
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C
So I love to talk about the character of Liz Eden Leon. So the Sunnies wife, second wife. Right. In trying to find an actor for that at this time there were not a lot of trans actors available. So. Yeah, can we talk about that casting and that role?
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B
Yeah, I mean I've got to admit I don't think it even crossed the folks involved in the production and casting. I don't think it crossed their mind to specifically look for a trans actor. I think the distinction between cross dresser transvestite and someone who identifies as trans or non binary, that wasn't the landscape in the early 70s. It wasn't that nuanced or sensitive. And even though, you know, obviously folks in that community felt a certain way, they. I'm trying to think of how to put it. It was really. They were just, they were looking for guy. Sorry to answer the question in a different way. Chris Sarandon was so generous with me. He sat down and talked to me all about the process of being cast and working on the film. And he said to me when he walked into the audition, he thought oh no, I screwed up because it was literally just a bunch of guys wearing dresses. And he didn't, you know, he was just in jeans and like a normal outfit. And so he thought oh no, did I misread what this role called for, because the way that Pearson wrote Leon was a bit different than Liz herself, you know, the trans woman that aspect of the story was based on. Even though, gosh, they got him visually down to a T with the Life magazine photographs, he looks just like Liz at the time. But the day of that robbery, just to go back a bit, and part of what instigated the robbery, when it occurred at that time, was that Liz and John and, you know, this is real life story, had had a big blowout. It was Liz's birthday. She suffered from depression, and she just. They had a very volatile relationship. She wanted to escape that, escape her situation. So she attempted suicide, and she survived, but she ended up in Bellevue Hospital. And Wojtowicz was so broken up with seeing her in the hospital and seeing how unhappy she was because she wasn't able to get the sex change operation. She didn't have the money for it. That was really what galvanized him in thinking, okay, this is how we're gonna get the money together. We're gonna go ahead and make this robbery happen. And so the day of the robbery, when things go sideways and Wodowitz is thinking he might not survive this ordeal, he might get killed by the police, he says, I want to see Liz. Bring her down to this. Bring her down to the bank. I want to talk to her. And they did. They went to the hospital, and she was just totally loopy on, you know, pain medicine, you know, other types of sedatives. They brought her down in her bathrobe. She's like, got a bathrobe, you like a five o' clock shadow. And she did not want to talk to him. She was really scared of him. She thought he might kill her. So they sort of parked her in a barbershop across the street and they. They spoke on the phone a little bit, but not quite the way that it is in the film. And so that was like, sort of the extent of her involvement that evening. But then when they'd written the role, it was not as nuanced in the sense that, to me, Leon in the film is. He's a trans character, but he's still masculine, if that makes sense. That's how I refer to in the book, as he. Because they hadn't. They kind of didn't know how to talk about these things quite at the time. But I think there's a difference between making things caricature ish and strange or wanting to do things sincerely and not having the correct vocabulary and not Having the understanding. And so for Chris, when he. Once he was cast, when he was building the role, he really took something to heart that Lumet had said during the audition was he came in and he was reading with Pacino. They knew each other a little bit from the theater scene, so it was a little comfortable. And Lumet said, he's like, okay, you know, basically, like, I think he got the role. I want you to come back, but next time a little less Blanche dubois and a little more Queen's Housewife. And that's how it really clicked in for Chris. And he was going through a breakup himself at the time. He had been married to Susan Sarandon. That's how she has the name. And they bought this big house out in the country together. And to him, that was, you know, the end of the rainbow. They were gonna have kids. They were gonna build this family and this life together. And so when that didn't pan out, and here he is rattling around in this big house by himself. And so the fact that it's more. You're not playing this grandiose dame. You're playing a normal woman who is just sort of at loose ends and fraught. So he said he grabbed stuff around the house that Susan had left, like some clogs on a shawl and some makeup here and there. And so he really just embodied it physically at first, trying to get into the character, changing his center of gravity with the shoes, changing the way that he walked. And he said it was rather naive at the time, but he thought, okay, I'm gonna dress up in sort of a semi drag. You know, like, put on some makeup, a nice attractive top, but pants, go into New York and see what kind of looks I get and see and sort of determine how it feels to be gazed at in that way. And he just laughed to me. He said, yeah, I went to New York, and no one turned ahead. No one gave a shit. Like, it's New York. This is the home of the other. Like, what was I thinking? So he took some advice from folks of his in the theater world who were gay or new folks that were transitioning in various stages. And so he talked to them to get some idea. But really, I think he said he really kept falling back on some of the experiences he has with Susan where when you're at a breakup like that, that level of vulnerability and anxiety. He said, that's how I got the character of Leon was. It was me, you know, like, so much of. I identified so much with where he was at that that's what helped feel that performance. It was his first role in a film. You know, he'd done some soap opera work, he'd done a lot of theater. And he got nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his first performance. And so that Dog Day Afternoon launched his career.
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C
Well, on Dog Day Afternoon, like you say, like, won a lot and did really well in Hollywood once it was released and once it came out, I think was Pacino one of the only ones who didn't really do as well as the rest of them in it?
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B
Just actually just won the one Oscar for Best Best Best Screenplay. But. But Pacino was nominated. Lumet, it was nominated for Best picture. Sarandon was nominated and. Oh dear, I think I might be forgetting one. But the trouble is, is it was up against One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, which really flew out the awards that year. So that was sort of the downside. And so that's. It didn't do as well winning, but it was nominated for a lot. And it really kind of. To me, I think it's. You know, when I was telling folks over the year I was writing this film, you know, so many making of movie stories is usually. Sometimes it's more interesting with the productions that go with that go sideways. Movies that never get finished because it's such a mess. Or like Apocalypse now where it's just this horrible, torturous process to get the movie made. But this is kind of the opposite of that. I loved writing about the backstory of this film because this is really everyone at their best. 70s cinema is still such a high watermark for movies they don't age. You can just watch them again and again and it's. Everyone's just on fire. Everyone is at the top of their game. And, you know, sadly for some folks, it was the last time that they had the, you know, for. Honestly, for Pacino, he hadn't had a bomb yet. His first bomb was the next film he made, Bobby Deerfield. And it really, you know, nowadays he's like one of the greatest actors in the world. You know, he just can't get any bigger. When I was growing up in the 90s, but it took writing this book to realize he had a fallow period in the late 70s, even the 80s. He stepped away from films for four years. So it took him a while to find his footing. This was sort of the last hurrah of success he had Lumet. Conversely, with Cooking with Gas, he went on to do Network, which also was a huge Oscar contender and, you know, has stood the test of time. So he had a great period. And like I said, sadly for Kazale, it was one of the last performances he was able to do.
- [28:18]
C
So you could have, like, written this book and just told the story of the film, but you didn't.
- [28:22]
B
Right.
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C
You talk about also the fiction behind it. Like who these or the facts behind this fiction. I guess I love that.
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B
That's part of the thing is we always. I swap these words too, because it all blends together. That was the fascinating about this.
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C
Right. And so can you talk? I mean, I think it's really interesting too, of how you had to piece together these facts, because I don't think any of the sort of the major folks involved are alive still. Correct, Right? Yeah. So you had to kind of. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about that and kind of trying to put this together and telling the story of like, the people behind this sort of larger than life situation.
- [29:01]
B
Yeah. Well, luckily, the one someone from the real story that was still alive and sat down with me was PF Klug, the guy who wrote the Life magazine article. And he went on to write Eddie and the Cruisers. And he's become a. Oh, geez, I'm spacing on the college now. He's a longstand professor, so he's taught writing for a number of years. So him and his wife gave me the recounting of that week's events and talking to everyone in person. And I. I say that because, like, you're the. The slip you made earlier. I don't mean to. I don't mean. But it was such a great thing because then his wife was saying, oh, yeah, you know, and we remember the crowds outside the bank were chanting, Attica, Attica. And that is not something that happened in reality. That was an im. That was an ad lib line that the assistant director gave to Ficino when there's a scene outside that wasn't really working and they had all these extras. So he yelled at the extras, just responded like crazy. And Lumet said to Pacino, oh, my gosh, this movie's out of our hands now. This is an amazing thing. But that was not in the script. It was not in the Life magazine article. So what I love is the fact that the film's reality was so visceral that it's bled into people's actual memories of the event. And also there's a great documentary called the Dog that really followed Wojowitz during, sadly, the last few years of his life as he developed cancer and passed away from it. But he sat down and gave a lot of candid interviews about that time. But I. What I love about, or what I love about the publisher, they gave me the opportunity to sort of craft the story how I wanted, and I felt that. So I noticed that so much of the oxygen with the real story was taken up with Wojdowitz. He's such a live wire volatile character, very foul mouthed, but also he's not to be trusted with the truth. He tells these really great, colorful yarns. But then how much of that is real? And also how much of his. You know, he's also still very misogynist. You know, despite being gay, he was. The way he treated Liz was pretty shabby, and the way he talked about her wasn't always right. And so I wanted really to take the opportunity to focus on all the folks that had been, I think, overshadowed by his larger than life presence. And so, no doubt his story had to be told because it's just so interesting with how he was able to get out of jail early and things of that nature. But I really wanted to take the opportunity to sit down with Liz as much as I could. And thankfully, even though she did pass away in the late 80s from AIDS, she did a lot of really in depth interviews that are now on Arxiv at the LGBTQ center in Lower Manhattan. And she also published some really great interviews in long defunct X rated men's magazines that I was able to get my hands on the courtesy of the Internet. And so between all of that together, I have a. I do offer a section where it's her in her own words, going back and talking about her childhood growing up in Brooklyn, Queens, the state that she was in during her relationship with Wojewitz. They got married at a cafe in Greenwich Village. And just her state of mind at the time, she did not want to get married to him, but for various reasons, he kind of like cajoled her into it, thinking that it would be good for him. And also her talking about how being in the film affected her life good and bad. And so to sort of go back and talk about the. The case. Waddle was tried to commit suicide the night before he was due to be sentenced. And so he, when he was sent, you know, they were. He was right in the hospital. He was right in the jail, though. So they were able to patch him up. You know, he slit his wrist. So they were able to help him out. Medically he was okay, but. But he was still on heavy sedation, a lot of pain medication when he was sentenced. And that's important to note because he. His third wife, who he met and married while he was in jail. George Heath was a sort of a jailhouse attorney. And over the course of the years he was in prison in the mid to late 70s, he made the case that because he was not in his right state of mind while he was being sentenced, he was due to have his sentence of 20 years reduced. And in fact, he was released in the late 70s on parole early because of those circumstances. So when he got out of jail, Wojdowicz thought, oh, my gosh, I'm a big star. I'm the guy from Dog Day Afternoon. I'm the dog. He gave himself this nickname. He rolled around town with clippings about the film and about himself, thinking like, okay, where's my money? Where's my job? Let's go here. And he even made a shirt that said, I robbed this bank. And stood outside the bank in Brooklyn as like a PR stunt. And that, you know, that rubbed people. Some people thought it was hilarious. And it also rubbed some people the wrong way, including tellers that he had held up that were still working at that bank being, oh my gosh, you know, this guy's getting attention and maybe some money out of this while we're still suffering. You know, we're still a bit traumatized from what we went through. And so he just, he wanted to do a limousine service calling, like the dogs limousine service, taking. Playing the movie in the limo and then taking them to the. All the real life places that, you know, where the robbery was, jfk, things like that. And just nothing panned out. And so he spent the next 10 years sort of going in and out of jail on parole violations, sometimes not through his own making. You know, like, he would get a job, he'd get laid off, and then they'd say, oh, well, you need to have employment or we're putting you back in jail. And he couldn't find another job in time, so he was back. So it was definitely a situation where some of it was. Some of his trouble was of his own making, and some of it was more circumstantial of how hard it is to be an ex con living in. Living in the country at that time. And this time, and Liz ended up suing the film, she sued Warner Brothers because of a weird postscript that they have at the end of the film saying, like, Leon is now happy and living as a woman in Brooklyn. Or, you know, forgive me, I can't remember the exact language. But she was able to say that that was a violation of the contract that she had signed as to how she was going to be depicted in the film. And she got a decent amount of money which she was able to live off of for the rest of her life. It wasn't a ton, you know, nothing like what the people in. Related to the film production made. And that was something that struck me about this when I was tracing the real story of how much the real people that sort of like, quote unquote, loser outsiders that are on the fringes of the fringes. Fringes of the fringe. You know, I really learned through this story that the trans community at the time were really persecuted and put down even within the gay community. They were not. They, you know, they were. They were not treating what treated well. How much folks that inspired all this magic and these amazing examples of humanity and comedy and tragedy, they end up, you know, the Wadowicz's first wife who's depicted in the film, the actual wife, she got 50 bucks from Warner Brothers. So it was always this thing of, you know, like millionaire Hollywood types playing losers, being nominated for Oscars. And then the real people just sort of have to go on with things. And that's, you know, good and bad. That's sort of how things work. But that was something that I definitely wanted to make mention of. I was also. There was a few small examples of just completely touching humanity that I found in the archives, like the Daily News, other now defunct newspapers in New York, who did cover the story for years afterwards. Like all the people involved, like Josephine Tatino, I think it was, who was one of the bank tellers she ended up transferring to another bank. But she read that Bobby Westenberg, who was this third robber who got scared and ran off immediately. He didn't even make it into the bank. He did get a couple of years in jail for his role in the robbery. So she read that he was out of jail and not doing so well. He was on hard times. So she brought him over a box of food and some warm clothing and wanted to help him out. She just felt bad about how folks. This whole sense of folks taking care of each other. But something that I think the movie does a great job of portraying is all these strange alliances that crop up in really heightened circumstances and unusual situations. It's that sort of us versus them. And so much of what Sonny's attitude is, is when he's in the bank is, they don't care about us. They'll kill the tellers. Just as, you know, they're Just trying to. It's an us versus them with the law enforcement. And we're just working day. Work a day. People in a bank where no one. And so they have much more in common with the robbers than they do with the law enforcement outside.
- [37:38]
C
Yeah. And because of this, right? Because you're talking this idea, we have this film that was made, we have these characters, the fictional characters, but also sort of the factual characters who are characters that people are intrigued by. You also talk about some of the legacy from this, what happens even after this, like, what are some of the more recent things? So can you talk a little bit about that, too? Like how both of these stories have kind of inspired continued stories around this.
- [38:08]
B
Yeah, And I think this was one of the. I might have even seen this before I saw the film itself. I remember I was young in New York. Pierre Hui is a French video artist. And there was this exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum that he did. It was a short video, 10 minutes long, and it's called the Third Memory. And what he did was he hired John Wojowitz to come to a studio in Paris and act in this short film reenacting the robbery. Only Wojtowitz himself, who was now, you know, kind of graying. He's, you know, he gained a ton of. You know, he gained a decent amount of weight. So some commentator mentioned, oh, he looks more like Charles Durning now than Al Pacino, but he just has that amazing. That Brooklyn accent, the cadence, the foul mouthedness, if that's a word he said to John, like, okay, you know, all he populated this set. He had a bank set up. He had some tellers. He had a guy standing in for sale, and he's like, john, just go to it. You push everyone around, you tell them what to do, you tell them what to say, and we will reenact things the way that you remember them. And this video is so strange because it's part art film, part. I don't know what you want to call it, like, true crime reenactment. And so he would say, okay, Sal, now you go ahead and you tell them, give me the money out of the drawer or I'll blow your head off. And then the guy that's playing Sal says, give me the money out of the drawer, I'll blow your head off. Like, it's this really weird puppet master thing happening. But you do learn through the course of the film that as Huey mentioned in an interview, John has no memory anymore of the real event. It happened so long ago and so much of his memory of that day with his heightened emotions has been mixed in with this film that he can watch over and over again. And even there was one moment in the movie where Wojowitz says, okay, so in the real movie I do this and this and that. And so that's something that folks cite as like, oh, wow. So that, that movie, you know, that. Sorry. The film that Hui made inspired this Dutch documentarian, Walter Stokman, who saw the Third Memory and thought maybe similarly to me, but obviously, you know, he was years ahead of me. He thought, well, I want to hear about everyone else involved in the story. You know, I've heard, I know I kind of know what John's about, but where's Liz? Where's Bobby? Where's Carmen? I want to talk to all these people. So he went to New York. He of course tried to interview Wojowitz, but he was being his usual strange for snickety self. And so you see a lot of his behavior in that movie tangentially in audio, but still went down and interviewed everyone. And so that was a. And then Stokman himself sat down with me and talked to me about the process of making the film, which is that that's in the book. And luckily at that time a lot of folks were still around. And so I was able to sort of secondhand rely on Stokeman's materials, which she generously shared with me. The interview footage of. You get to see Carmen finally for the first time. You know, she really gets to tell her story. John's first wife, you hear about his kids who don't want anything to do with him, but the son, his favorite actor's Al Pacino. So that's fantastic. You hear about, you hear from bank tellers what their experience was that day. One woman even wrote like a. It was like sort of a self published version of a 45 record. She did an audio single called Lollipops and Shotguns that she self produced and plays for Walter in the film. You also hear from the FBI agent that shot Sal and what his experience was that day. And I think sadly, Liz had passed away by then, but you still really get to hear her voice loud and clear through friends of hers from that community and Richard Wendell that works at the archive. So that movie just really kind of filled out the story and it made you realize that everyone else is just as lively and interesting as Wojdowitz, who again had sucked up so much of the attention of the story. And I just, I really appreciate Walter sharing all of that with me. And more recently, this keeps going. There was a young choreographer who's super hot right now in New York. He's up and coming still. Raja Feather Kelly, who has his own troop, feather theory, in 2018, 2019. He'd always been really engaged with Dog Day Afternoon, particularly Chris Sarandon's character. And he had that same question, too, like, what? How would this story look if we told it from Liz's perspective? So he went back, and I love it, because listening to him tell his story, he was following all this. He was following the same trail that I'd been going down. He went to the archives, he talked to Chris Sarandon. He did all this research to turn it into a performance piece called Wednesday about the real event and again, how it was translated into film. And his project got derailed a bit by Covid. So his initial plans for a big production fell through. He had to do a hybrid work that had video involved and adding in his interview with Sarandon. But he was really inspired by trying to think of Liz's endurance. You know, she went through so much. She finally did get her sex change surgery, and she honestly just went and lived a quiet life in Rochester, New York. She had to utilize the limelight when necessary, you know, to either honestly make money, you know, get by, survive. But she just endured so much and so many harsh portrayals by the media at the time. And what I was left with, hearing Raja talk about his journey, researching all of this, was how much he was struck by the prison letters between John and Liz. When John was in Lewisburg, was just really how much they did love each other. Through all the fighting and the tension and the nuttiness of everything, there really was a connection that the two of them had. And I think that's why. That's a big reason why this story still resonates and it's still continuing to inspire people. Since it's just had its 50th year reunion, it's in the midst of its anniversary, I should say. Sorry, not Reunion. The movie screened a lot lately, and it, of course, has a lot of resonance today because of how the trans community is being persecuted so hard. And it's just really frustrating to see how little we've moved the needle with how we've been depicting these characters. I think, if anything, Dog Day Afternoon is ahead of its time, even with where we're at now, because I'm watching even Sydney Lumet films 10, 15 years later have either transvestite characters or transgender characters. They're very cartoonish. They're part of the seedy underworld. They're these kind of, like, outre wacky types. And it was just a little. It's a bit of a bummer to see how far he had to even pull things back based on where the sensibilities shifted in the 80s.
- [44:51]
C
So, like, what do you hope? You've written this book, right? What do you hope that people kind of take from it? Like, I mean, can you talk a little bit? Just.
- [44:59]
B
Yeah.
- [44:59]
C
About, like, what is your hope for it?
- [45:02]
B
Gosh, I guess it's. Well, a. I mean, Frank, this is maybe like a small wish, but I'm so happy that it's encouraged so many people to watch the movie, which, you know, it's maybe a small goal, but that the movie. There's two types of people. There's the folks who have not seen the film yet, and there's the folks that love the film. I have yet to hear anyone who is really kind of lukewarm on it or said, oh, yeah, I saw that. Wasn't that great. And that's honestly almost unheard of. Even, you know, with the great films of the 70s, not everything is to everyone's taste, but this movie, it just really grabs you in such a way. It's entertaining, it's funny, it's heart rending. And I think at its heart, it really is a film noir, which is sort of the movement that I dwell in with the work that I do. But what I hope folks come away with is a much better and clearer understanding of how. Of the struggle of folks in the LGBTQ community, what they were dealing with during that time, and hopefully getting a bit of insight into the past and how things were in the 70s will hopefully inform our language and how we operate in the present. And then also really just giving folks an understanding of all these amazing dynamic people that are involved in the story, how much we all influence each other and how much, like, it's this ecosystem of a story and no one's all good and no one's all bad. You know, John Wojowitz had a lot of awful qualities to him, but he was able to. At the same time, he was able to get his. Her sex change operation. After all, he used the money that he got from Warner Brothers for rights to portray him in the film, and he gave it to her, and she. So what I mean to say is it did not happen the way that he wanted to, but he finally got it in the end. And I think. Sorry, I'm kind of almost like trying to figure out the answer to this question. As I'm talking to you. But it's also really so often people are overlooked as oddballs or losers or, you know, not. The victory is always written by the winners. And I think that if anything, this is a story where victory is written by the losers and victory is written by the people who maybe they didn't come on top, out on top financially, and maybe they did go to jail for a bit or, you know, even on the film side of things, you know, they had their. They had their good years and their bad years, but for the film, everyone was doing it because they loved what they were doing and they were true artists. And I think I want folks to realize what a special thing that was with this film. And then on the real side, it's much more. So like I said, it's not always the people on top that are the ones we want to pay attention to because we can learn a lot more from the folks who have a hard time in life than those who have all doors open for them before they step outside.
- [47:46]
C
So the book comes out early March. My final question, promotion. So either sort of self promotion for this book, anything that you know is going on or how people can find out what's going on, or anything else you're working on that you kind of want to promote.
- [48:01]
B
Oh, thank you. Yes. Well, I'd say I do know for sure that for folks in the San Francisco Bay area, there is going to be a screening of Dog Day Afternoon at the Four Star Theater in the Richmond. That's going to be on March 19, which I think is a Thursday. There'll be a screening and I'll talk a bit about the book so you can get the book in person. I'll sign it and you'll get to watch the film, which is awesome. And, and I also know the other dates that are for sure. As of this, as of our talk. April 9th, there's an event at a bookshop in Portland. Details to follow with that. And then April 30th at the Beacon Theater in Seattle, there'll be a screening of the film and I'll talk about it then. But to keep up on details and updates, honestly, it's my Instagram WALTH R W A L T H. I'll be posting all the events as they get confirmed. Also Head Press, the publisher, they're based out of the UK on their website, they're going to have updates as to where you can get the book. You know you can. You'll be able to buy it through all your normal channels, US Distributors will carry it, so you'll be able to order it into your local shop if they don't already stock it, Amazon, you name it. And then to follow along more with the writing work that I do and what I have upcoming on that front, I do have a website called Sleeping All Day. Just spelled like it sounds sleeping all day.com and there is a way that you can subscribe to updates through that. And I promise I don't send out newsletters nearly as often as I should put it that way. So it'll be very infrequent emails if you subscribe, but I will be keeping folks updated on the live dates as they come together.
- [49:35]
C
Awesome, Rachel. Thank you so much. Rachel Walther is the author of Born to the Misfits who Made Dog Day Afternoon. Thanks for talking with me, Rebecca.
- [49:44]
B
Thank you so much for having me.