'Dog Day Afternoon': Recreating the Facts

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.

RECREATING THE FACTS is basically about the shoot of the picture. This includes a lot of talk about how Lumet chose the location and what he needed to make sure the look of the film was captured. There's also a rather nice sequence talking about the importance of the extras and especially when people started to show up just to watch the filming of the movie.