John Wojtowicz was a loud potty-mouthed self-absorbed oddball whose ill-conceived bungled bank robbery brought him an infamy that he clung to desperately for the rest of his life. He was a brash Brooklynite, who fresh out of the army at the age of 22, married the first girl he set his eyes on. Before the wedding reception was over Carmen the bride tried to get the whole thing annulled when her new husband got into a fight with her father. The newlyweds survived together just 2 years and had 2 children before they separated for good. The year was 1969.
After a deeply depressed Ernest tried to commit suicide, Wojtowitz decided to get him the money for his operation even though he was opposed to the sex change. Being totally broke he hit on the hare-brained idea of robbing a bank and roped in two of his less-than-bright friends to help. What happened next is well known to the world as it was made into a Oscar winning movie called ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ with Al Pacino playing John.
In real life though Wojtowitz got jailed for 20 years and once in prison he met George Heath another inmate who became his lawyer and his next ‘wife’. Heath successfully fought to get Wojtowitz’s sentence cut, and he was released after just 5 years. Ernest had become Evelyn after Wojtowitz used part of his proceeds from the movie to pay for the operation, but they never met again and Evelyn died of an Aids related illness ten years later.
This, the third documentary of his life, has interviews with Wojtowitz from 2002 when filmmakers Alison Berg & François Keraudren started filming, until his death from cancer in 2006. They show a charismatic determined man who is never less than obnoxious as, in a constant stream of profanities, he claims that the world has got him all wrong. Especially Warner Brothers who are responsible for the film that gave him the notoriety he still clings too. They also expose a more intimate side as under this brash exterior there is this sentimental man who takes his mentally challenged brother under his wing, and also has an almost creepy co-dependent relationship with his tiny old mother.
The Wojtowitz who is seen here is a sad pathetic creature, but somehow the telling of his hard-to-stomach story is completely fascinating.
Labels: 2013, biography, documentary, gay
