One of the most important films of the 1970s that continues to resonate today is Dog Day Afternoon. Directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Al Pacino, John Cazale, and Chris Sarandon, to name just a few, the film’s battle cry, “Attica,” is familiar to film fans, even if they haven’t actually seen the movie.
Writer Rachel Walther’s new book on the classic 1975 film, Born to Lose: The Misfits Who Made Dog Day Afternoon, was recently released by Headpress and traces the film’s history.
Here’s the log line: August 22, 1972: Two men attempt to rob a bank in Brooklyn. They fail miserably: the money they’d hoped for isn’t there, the cops get tipped off immediately, and within 30 minutes they’re in a hostage situation with the FBI. Things really get crazy when reporters learn that one of the robbers is gay and married to a trans woman. The crowd of journalists and onlookers grows into the hundreds, desperate for a glimpse of this charismatic live-wire who’s robbing the bank not for greed or thrills, but to fund his partner’s sexual reassignment surgery.
Sound familiar? This is the plot of Dog Day Afternoon, the 1975 film directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Al Pacino, John Cazale, and Chris Sarandon. It remains a high-water mark of New Hollywood, where the best acting talent of the day came together on a film that was truly exceptional. But equally exceptional was the fact that the film was based on a true-life incident.
Drawing on extensive archival research, film historian Rachel Walther delves into the film’s backstory, tracing how an unbelievable true crime tale of love, bank robbery, and LGBTQI+ activism became a box-office smash and catapulted a group of Brooklyn outsiders into the media spotlight. Name-checked on TV shows from The Simpsons to Drunk History, and now a Broadway play, Dog Day Afternoon’s legacy continues to inspire filmmakers, writers, and actors. Walther’s deep dive interrogates the film’s place in the 1970s zeitgeist, set against a background of antiwar activism and the fight for gay and trans rights, and in doing so shows its continuing relevance today.
Rachel Walther recently answered some questions about Born to Lose: The Misfits Who Made Dog Day Afternoon via email.
Andy Burns: What is it about Dog Day Afternoon that inspired you to write Born to Lose: The Misfits Who Made Dog Day Afternoon?
Rachel Walther: The backstory, as well as the film’s afterlife. When I compared what I knew about the film to the real-life bank robbery, the similarities were amazing. It’s rare that a film from that era is so scrupulous about getting the real story correct. When I learned through several documentaries the extent to which the release of the film influenced the lives of those involved in the real event, that fascinated me. I wanted to learn as much as I could.
Andy Burns: Do you recall the first time you saw the film, and how it made you feel?
Rachel Walther: No! I started watching movies pretty religiously from a young age—seven or eight—and Dog Day Afternoon is a film I’ve always known. I don’t remember my first watch. More recently, when I was viewing the DVD at home to start writing about it, what struck me was the high-wire feeling Pacino carries from start to finish—he’s zipping around at a million miles an hour, knowing that tragedy will strike the minute he stops.
Andy Burns: Can you tell me about your process – how did you start off writing your book? What sort of research did you begin with?
Rachel Walther: I watched every available documentary/featurette/commentary available about the film, and thankfully there are some good ones. I read every bio and review I could get my hands on about the artists involved. Then I reached out to the artists connected with the film who are still with us (and, in the case of screenwriter Frank Pierson, who has passed on, his son, Mikke). I then connected with some of the documentarians who covered the story over the years—P. F. Kluge, for Life magazine, who wrote about the robbery the month it happened in 1972, and Walter Stokman, a Dutch filmmaker who traced the real-life folks involved in the robbery and spoke to them in the mid-2000s. Sadly, most everyone involved in the real case has passed on, so I relied on my interview with Stokman and archival clippings and videos to round out those narratives. Along the way, I asked friends and other writers: What stood out to you about the film? What questions came up while you were watching? I wanted the book to be able to answer those common questions and touch on favourite themes as much as possible.
Andy Burns: As you were writing, did anything surprise you about the film? Stories, anecdotes, or even the process that Sidney Lumet, Al Pacino, or John Cazale used for their work?
Rachel Walther: So much! Actress Marcia Jean Kurtz, who played the bank teller in the green dress, was so generous in sharing her memories from that time. She worked with Sidney Lumet over the years on a number of his films, and it sounds like he really tried to maintain a party atmosphere on set—jubilant, yet professional. How he would gleefully run around first thing in the morning during the Dog Day shoot with a bottle of water and glycerin, to spray actors’ faces to mimic the perma-sweat of a muggy summer afternoon. An assistant could have done that, but Lumet enjoyed spraying everyone with the glee of a little kid.
Chris Sarandon gave me a line of Lumet’s that I’ll never forget. He was in his first audition for the role of Sonny’s lover, Leon, and had developed a good rapport with Pacino during the reading. As he left, Lumet took him aside and gave him one suggestion: “Now Chrissy, when you come back for your next reading—and I want you to come back—just one thing: Less Blanche DuBois, more Queens housewife.” That was all Sarandon needed to drop into the right tone. He got the role—his first in a feature film—and was nominated for Best Supporting Actor.
Andy Burns: So much research clearly went into Born to Lose: The Misfits Who Made Dog Day Afternoon; how did history treat the film at the time of its release, and even leading up to it?
Rachel Walther: It was unanimously enjoyed, and it received both commercial success and critical acclaim. It was nominated for six Oscars, and the only reason it didn’t win more than one was that it had the misfortune of being pitted head-to-head against One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, another audience favourite. I read a few reviews where writers who were clearly bigoted toward gay characters felt “betrayed” when the big reveal happens halfway through the film; they felt that they’d been manipulated into liking these. That was upsetting for me to read, but thankfully, it was very much in the minority. Most reviewers fell in love with Sonny and Sal and were rooting for them from the first reel.
Andy Burns: What were the most challenging aspects of writing Born to Lose: The Misfits Who Made Dog Day Afternoon?
Rachel Walther: How much time has gone by—memories fade or get mixed up after fifty years. One of the most fascinating aspects for me was learning how much of the action in the film that was invented by the screenwriter Frank Pierson had embedded its way into the real robber, John Wojtowicz’s, memory of the event. He could no longer distinguish what he himself had done and what Pacino-as-him had done on-screen. I found that this carried over to everyone connected with this story—even Life journalist P. F. Kluge distinctly remembers people telling him that the crowd outside the bank was chanting “Attica!” the evening of the standoff, when in reality that was a moment ad-libbed three years later on the set between the assistant director and Pacino. The fiction has become the fact.
Andy Burns: What did you learn about yourself as a writer as you worked on the book?
Rachel Walther: My writing style is chattier and more conversational than I expected. I wish I wrote in a more dense, elegant manner, and perhaps for another project, the vocabulary will naturally flow to a more sophisticated height. I also learned that I have to wait to get anything down on paper until my brain is oversaturated with information. If I try to build a narrative while I’m still researching, it always falls flat. Thankfully, I also learned that I’m able to write relatively fast, so even though I have to wait for “inspiration” to strike, I can usually crack it out by the deadline.
Andy Burns: Finally, for anybody who loves Dog Day Afternoon, what other films do you think they should watch?
Rachel Walther: Network, Lumet’s follow-up to Dog Day, which features a lot of the same themes and really amps up the satire. Serpico, made a few years beforehand with Lumet directing and Pacino starring—it was the film that put the young actor on the map just as much as The Godfather. And Cool Hand Luke, a film written by Dog Day Afternoon’s screenwriter, Frank Pierson, that showcases his anti-authoritarian bent. There are more similarities between Paul Newman’s Luke Jackson and Pacino’s Sonny Wortzik than you might think.
Thanks very much to Rachel Walther for her time, and to Jen at Headpress for making this interview happen. You can order Born to Lose: The Misfits Who Made Dog Day Afternoon here.
