CANNES — Showtime’s limited series “Escape at Dannemora” marks a departure for Ben Stiller as a director, by design as he tackled eight hours of the stranger-than-fiction story of the 2015 prison break in upstate New York that led to a three-week manhunt.
During a Q&A after Monday’s world premiere screening of “Dannemora” at Mipcom, Stiller said he sought to evoke the gritty tension of some of his favorite 1970s crime dramas a la “Dog Day Afternoon,” “The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3” and “Straight Time.” The drama starring Benicio Del Toro, Patricia Arquette and Paul Dano, revolves around two inmates who hacked their way of a prison in Dannemora, N.Y., with help from a female prison official who had a sexual relationship with both men.
In fact, Stiller passed the first time around on the directing offer for “Dannemora” when the scripts came in from “Ray Donovan” team of Brett Johnson and Michael Tolkin and producer Bryan Zuriff. But a year after the breakout, when the New York state report came in on all that went wrong at the Clinton Correctional Facility, Stiller and the trio reconvened and realized that the report read like a movie script.
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Arquette was the first to commit to “Dannemora.” Stiller knew she would commit to the complicated, highly unsympathetic character of Tilly Mitchell, who manipulated inmates Richard Matt and David Sweat as much as they used her to smuggle in hacksaws and other items for their great escape.
In the end, after months of shooting, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (played in “Dannemora” by “Sopranos” alum Michael Imperioli) granted the production access to shoot on the prison grounds, Stiller said.
The prison setting itself is highly evocative and creates an instant atmosphere, Stiller said. “There’s something about prisons that are timeless,” he said, noting the lack of modern-day communications tools behind bars. “You can’t bring your phone in, people are forced to pass notes, or give a nod or a look.”
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