'Dog Day Afternoon': The Story

Making of Dog Day Afternoon, The (2006)

**** (out of 4)

Excellent documentary on the making of Sidney Lumet's DOG DAY AFTERNOOn with Al Pacino. The documentary features interviews with both Lumet and Pacino as well as producer Martin Bregman, writer Frank Pierson, Charles Durning, Chris Sarandon and Lance Henriksen. At just over an hour the documentary does a very good job at putting you directly into the making of the film and at the end you almost feel as if you were actually on the set. The documentary is broken into four parts (The Story, Casting the Controversy, Recreating the Facts, After the Filming) with each of them containing great stories and plenty of detail. Some of the most interesting stuff deals with how they approached Pacino and after originally agreeing to do the movie he suddenly changed his mind and had to be talked into it. There's also quite a bit of talk about the controversial storyline involving the homosexuality and certain things that were changed before filming. It's also very interesting hearing Lumet talk about how he wanted the entire thing to be shot on location and what the production had to do in order to get that documentary style feel. If you're a fan of the movie then this here is going to be a must-see. The majority of the major actors are on hand and hearing from Pacino and Lumet really gives you a great idea of everything that went on.

THE STORY mainly centers on the actual case and how the screenwriter decided to come up with the certain angle now seen in the film. Pierson also talks about some of the other ideas he had that didn't make it into his Oscar-winning story.