In June 2015, the nation was captivated by the nearly three-week effort to capture two murderers who escaped from Clinton Correctional facility in Dannemora, New York. The manhunt resulted in Richard Matt being killed and David Sweat wounded and captured. Two years later, actor and filmmaker Ben Stiller announced he would produce and direct a Showtime series based on the escape, much of it to be filmed on location. Stiller is in Plattsburgh tonight for a special screening of the first episode before the series premieres Sunday. He told WAMC’s North Country Bureau Chief Pat Bradley this afternoon it was the human element that intrigued him most.
“What was interesting to me was the fact that these two inmates actually pulled off this escape in 2015 that seemed like something that would have happened 20 or 30 or 40 years ago. In this day and age how could they do that? And the reality was that it came out of the relationships that they developed in the prison and to me that was sort of a greater sort of a background that we could get into which was the whole sort of you know prison system too and how that works.”
“Escape at Dannemora” directed by Ben Stiller premieres Sunday at 10 p.m. on Showtime.
