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Eric D. Snider and Mental_Floss<\/a><\/b>\u00a0present 13 Fascinating Facts About Dog Day Afternoon<\/em><\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0 Here are three of my favorites…<\/p>\n 2. THE REAL BANK ROBBER LOOKED A LOT LIKE AL PACINO.<\/strong> \n 9. THEY LOST A DAY\u2019S WORK BECAUSE OF PACINO\u2019S MUSTACHE.<\/strong> 10. IT\u2019S THE ONLY TIME LUMET EVER INCORPORATED IMPROVISATION INTO ONE OF HIS MOVIES.<\/strong> But as Lumet and the cast rehearsed Dog Day Afternoon<\/em>\u2014especially the parts where the robbers and bank employees are just sitting around killing time\u2014someone asked about the possibility of improv, and Lumet realized it could be useful for helping the actors bond, as well as making the characters\u2019s interactions feel more natural. With screenwriter Frank Pierson present, Lumet let the actors improvise in rehearsal; recorded it; and ended up adding some of their conversations to the script (which won the film\u2019s only Oscar, by the way).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Eric D. Snider and Mental_Floss\u00a0present 13 Fascinating Facts About Dog Day Afternoon.\u00a0 Here are three of my favorites… 2. THE<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17,51,72,54,65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebs","category-crime","category-history","category-movies","category-trivia","comments-off"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13446"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26909,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13446\/revisions\/26909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\nFluge\u2019s magazine article described John Wojtowicz as \u201ca dark, thin fellow with the broken-faced good looks of an Al Pacino or Dustin Hoffman,\u201d so naturally the screenplay found its way into both actors\u2019 hands. (Pacino was Lumet\u2019s first choice, but Hoffman was reportedly approached when Pacino, seeking to take a brief break from movies, initially turned it down.) We see a bit more De Niro in Wojtowicz than Pacino or Hoffman, but Pacino was a good fit, too.<\/p>\n
\nOne of the things the actor did as a means of getting into character was grow a mustache\u2014not because the real robber had one, but because the character was gay, and in the mid-\u201970s, many gay men had mustaches.\u00a0In Lumet\u2019s words, however, Pacino\u2019s mustache \u201clooked terrible.\u201d And after the first day of filming, Pacino agreed. Watching the footage, Pacino told Lumet, \u201cThe mustache has got to go,\u201d and asked if he could shave it and redo that day\u2019s work. Lumet agreed, and the mustache was gone\u2014as was a day’s worth of footage.<\/p>\n
\nSidney Lumet\u2019s first film was 1957\u2019s 12 Angry Men<\/em>. He made 20 more between that and Dog Day Afternoon<\/em> (and 22 more afterward), and by his own account, he never used improv. \u201cI don\u2019t like actors to improvise, to use their own language,\u201d he said in the Dog Day Afternoon<\/em>DVD commentary. \u201cThey are not going to come up with something … better than a really talented writer who has done months of work on something.\u201d<\/p>\n