#Escape from dannemora series#

Sometimes the actors had to jump between different time frames on the same day. It was like, ‘Whoa, when am I coming up?’ I never saw land for the longest time.” And it’s fast you have to prepare for the unknown. I just go under, navigate, do the best I can, finish, forget.

#Escape from dannemora series#

Shooting seven episodes was challenging for the director and his actors, especially series newbie Del Toro. “Escape at Dannemora” Christopher Saunders/SHOWTIME Invaluably, they were able to shoot a few days on the distinctive exterior north yard, and found a similar prison in Pittsburgh to shoot inside, with tunnels underground. Production designer Mark Ricker took a sketch pad on their tour and later duplicated the entire three-story, 60-cell prison block at the Kaufman Astoria Studio soundstage. While they couldn’t shoot inside the prison confines, they were able to examine the inside of the prison - without cameras. Once we saw it in real life, it was so big, so stark, a lot cleaner than I thought it would be, almost ’30s Brutalist architecture: cell blocks and cell blocks and lawns and open spaces.” We didn’t have anything else to go on until we got inside the prison. “Also the inspectors did trace David Sweat’s route. “They inspected the prison cell and steam pipes with GoPro video,” said Stiller. They had already pored over photographs covering 100 years inside the Dannemora prison, as well as videos shot on the day of the 2015 escape by inmates Richard Matt (Del Toro) and David Sweat (Dano). Once production was underway that fall, Stiller and his team didn’t know until the last minute if New York Governor Cuomo would give them access to the Clinton Correctional Facility, in the chilly northwest corner of the state.

“You know you can go to a world you’ve been in before, but when something out there is fascinating - ‘Oh, I could really screw this up’ - OK! Something inside me says, ‘I want to see this, and figure out a way.'” “You get to this point in your career and there’s a sense of wanting to do things that really excite you and scare you a little,” he said. How did this old-fashioned prison escape happen in this day and age? As we were finding out the interesting details and story, I felt a lot of fear of not getting it right.” Paul Dano and Benicio del Toro in “Escape at Dannemora” Chris Saunders / Showtimeįear drives Stiller. What’s interesting about this escape is it actually happened in 2015. I knew so little about this world, that I wanted to cling to the facts in order to tell the story as truthfully as possible. “The prison, and that area, was a character in the story. “I knew we needed to have access to the real prison and shoot up there,” he said. He was concerned: Would he be able to sustain a character for seven or eight hours? How would that work? That conversation was new for me too.” He convinced Del Toro with his answer: “I can’t tell you, except that you chip away at it, as a movie, scene by scene, sequence by sequence, and take it as it comes.”īy June 2017, with Del Toro and Paul Dano on board as two inmates who break out of jail with the help of a romantically involved prison worker played by Arquette, Showtime greenlit a seven-hour series.įrom the start, Stiller wanted to hew as close to the true story and locations as possible. “He needs to know where the character is headed,” said Stiller. And he was used to figuring out his character from the ending backwards. Paul Dano (“War & Peace”) had also shot a series, but Benicio del Toro had never experienced such a lengthy production. Russell’s “Flirting with Disaster,” Stiller knew she was game for anything. Having worked with Patricia Arquette (“Medium”) on David O. Stiller managed to commit his three stars before all the scripts were finished. Benicio del Toro in “Escape at Dannemora” Chris Saunders / Showtime Critics and awards voters have taken notice, not only to the performances and production values - the show scored 12 Emmy nominations - but Stiller has already collected a directing win from the DGA.

How Will Ben Stiller Play ‘Three Identical Strangers’ Brothers in Series Based on Acclaimed Doc?īy looking at the series as one long movie, and tackling it one day at a time, Stiller applied studio standards and painstaking verisimilitude to an intricate and cinematic limited series.