So I’m at home, cleaning the apartment, missing my wife, thinking about working, and idly watching Dog Day Afternoon on the teevee.
And about five minutes ago there’s that scene where the cops set up shop outside the bank and the police helicopter waves off a news chopper, and I’m getting this sense of déjà vu. Like, didn’t the actual robbery happen in Midwood or Gravesend or one of those two-family home places? Y’know, like, that street is not in that part of Brooklyn. Actually, it looks familiar. Don’t recognize the stores, but isn’t that Bishop Ford? And that's the Prospect Expressway, no? Dude! That sign says 17th Street! That’s Ninth Avenue! They filmed Dog Day Afternoon in Windsor Terrace!!
Pretty cool.
And that scene where his wife hears what’s happening over a transistor radio in a McDonald’s? That was Queens. Black-on-white street signs, instead of white-on-black, or black-on-yellow, the way God intended. (Don’t talk to me about this white-on-green thing.) The things you can get nostalgic about.
“He’s one of them Spanish kids.” I love that line.
UPDATE: This movie could have been made yesterday. I don’t mean in a zeitgeisty sort of way, not at all. And I don’t mean the clothes or cars, of course. But these little things, a discussion of cigarettes and cancer, a newscaster mentioning “the gay community,” Al Pacino’s body language. It seems more modern than 1972.
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