When New York filmmakers Allison Berg and Frank Keraudren were struggling to find funding for their documentary The Dog, their subject, John Wojtowicz, offered to rob a bank for them. Instead, they took 11 years to complete the project. "We should have thought about it," Berg said at the Berlin International Film Festival.
It wouldn't be the first time Wojtowicz had robbed a bank for altruistic reasons. On August 22, 1972, he held up a Brooklyn branch of Chase Manhattan to pay for his troubled "wife", Ernest Aron, to have a sex change. Without it, Wojtowicz believed, Aron would kill himself.
The plan went awry almost immediately and Wojtowicz was trapped inside the bank, with hostages, by police. A rowdy crowd gathered to watch events unfold, while TV news broadcast much of the 13-hour stand-off live, even interrupting Richard Nixon's televised nomination speech.
Wojtowicz was eventually arrested and jailed. His accomplice, Sal Naturale, was shot dead by an FBI agent. A third man who had fled the scene was also arrested.
Sidney Lumet immortalised the event in 1975 in Dog Day Afternoon, with Al Pacino playing a character based on Wojtowicz. Berg and Keraudren watched the film in 2002, and were intrigued by a card at the end giving the number of years until Wojtowicz's release.
"We thought he was coming out and it would be a great time to find this guy," Keraudren recalled. "Of course, we'd miscalculated, and we found out that he had been out of prison for 25 years or more."
The filmmakers found his mother, Terry, in the phone book, and left a message for him. At around 2am, the phone rang. "It was this really gruff voice saying, 'You got the password?' and we said 'No'," Berg said. The password was The Dog, a moniker Wojtowicz had used since the release of Dog Day Afternoon, despite only considering the film 30 per cent accurate.