The Dog Page #9

and it would be yellow roses or flowers

for an occasion or something like that.

Always with the flowers,

you know.

Letters, constant letters,

and then he'd give me orders what

to send him, what he wanted.

He would want this, he would

want that, you know,

things he wanted to eat like chips, the

joy of a Jewish candy, the jelly rings.

WOJTOWICZ:
Get me a couple of candy

bars, you know, like Snickers.

You know, I prefer Mounds.

I like Junior Mints and Mounds.

Not Almond Joy. Mounds.

Mars Bars and then

the 3 Musketeers.

Just put like Chuckles

next to it.

TERRY:

MAN:

Like what kind of stuff?

Mom, what are you

doing down here?

Run. Run. Run.

Where am I gonna run?

HEATH:
I was in prison with

John when the movie came out,

and they showed it

to John first in private

and then they showed it

to the general population.

[Siren]

FILM ANNOUNCER:
For the people of the

neighborhood, it was a sideshow.

Sonny.

CROWD:

Sonny!

FILM ANNOUNCER:
But for Sonny and

Sal, the hostages and the cops,

it was a "Dog Day Afternoon."

WOJTOWICZ:
The warden said,

"We're not showing this."

And I said, "if you don't show this

in the prison, I'll go to the press

"and I'll hang you by

your f***ing cannolis,

"and I'll start the biggest

prison riot you ever saw.

"I want the f***ing movie shown and

I want it shown to the inmates

"because I promised them

for years, because nobody

believed there was

gonna be a movie."

HEATH:
A lot of people from all

over the country wrote to John

because of the movie.

A lot of people liked what

John stood for in the movie.

He would try to answer

as many letters as he could,

and I think that he picked out a lot

of letters that were more romantic,

and he enjoyed it.

BIFULCO:
Everybody knew

who he was. Everybody.

You would see everybody turn around, looking,

you know, "That's the guy from "Dog Day."

You know, everybody

in the prison.

People would come up for autographs,

and he would love that.

Oh, yeah.

He was... ooh!

HEATH:
We never

became cellmates.

He was too hot.

He was a hot potato

because of the publicity

that he was generating

and the publicity that I

was generating also for him

in terms of his criminal case.

Because at the time of sentencing,

he had swallowed pills.

He's already crazy, so he definitely was

out of his mind at the time of sentencing.

So on a legal level, he really was

deprived of his right to due process,

and the court did reduce his sentence

when he went back for re-sentencing.

[Man howling; panting]

New York City is a place of

contrast and contradiction.

Studio 54 here is a shrine to

the city's celebrity cult.

People who come here are either

famous or want to be famous,

but just 50 yards

down the street here

is a building which people enter

for very different reasons.

The Hotel Bryant is a federal

prison halfway house.

One man living in this

fleabag hotel

can lay claim to being one of the most

celebrated losers in recent times.

The story of the life of

John Wojtowicz is so bizarre

that even the jaded people of

New York and Hollywood

find it unbelievable.

WOJTOWICZ:
OK. what happened is that

after the judge out my sentence to 15,

he recommended that the

parole board release me.

So at the end of '78,

I was sent to the Bryant Hotel.

You're only allowed to

stay there for so long,

and you have to get a job or

they send you back to prison.

OK. I finally got a job cleaning toilet

bowls on Park Avenue for the rich people,

and then finally,

I went back to my parents.

HEATH, VOICE-OVER:

I was released in 1978,

and I must have lived with John

and Terry for 9 or 10 months

at their Flatbush Avenue

apartment.

John still saw me as his wife,

and we stayed with each other

while we were out for 2 years.

Eventually, John got work

with Project Return.

This was an inmate organization

that helped ex-cons.

WOJTOWICZ, VOICE-OVER: I only got to work

at Project Return for a couple of months,

and then they had to lay me off

because of a budget crunch and

then they threatened

to lock me back up

because I wasn't working.

I guess everybody don't want to

hire me 'cause I'm an ex-con,

but they can't use that

excuse because of the law,

so they always say

I'm not qualified.

You're a former bank teller?

Yeah, for 8 years.

Specifically, what type of a

job would you like to have?

Well, anything that's got to do

with bookkeeping or anything

that's got to do with finance, but

a lot of people don't like you

handling money because you were

away, you know, for bank robbery.

WOJTOWICZ:
I went to Chase

Manhattan when I first was out

at the halfway house,

and I wanted to be

a security guard.

My reference was

"Dog Day Afternoon".

I says "I'm the guy from

"Dog Day Afternoon,"

"and if I'm guarding your bank,

nobody's going to rob the Dog's bank.

OK. also I could sign autographs for

people that open up new accounts."

So it took them 3 weeks to

finally get somebody to tell me

that I couldn't be

a security guard.

Just like I was gonna drive

Dog Day's Disco Limousine.

And in the limousine, you would watch

my movie and disco music would play,

but my parole guy refused

to let me get a license.

Also I had to be kept

under a psychiatric care,

and then I refused to see the

psychiatrist as part of my parole.

Because how can they claim

I wasn't crazy when I did it

and now that I'm out

on parole, now I'm crazy?

But the judge ruled that parole

is not a right, it's a privilege,

and if I want to be out,

I gotta see the psychiatrist.

MAN:
His life was pretty much of a

mess when he got out of prison.

For him, prison was

really horrible.

Some people use prison to pull

their lives together.

John, I think it helped cement the

personality that he was becoming.

When the movie came out, that

became the essence of his life.

He then became The Dog,

and there was a real personality

change of a major degree.

So it was easy to slip into this

notoriety rather than settle down.

BIFULCO:
When Johnny got out

of prison, the week he got out,

he didn't come straight

home to my house.

He went to visit Ernie or

whoever else he went to visit,

and when he was good and ready, he came

to visit, to stay over that night.

And nothing happened.

And I was upset, because if you come out of

prison and you're not with me in 8 years,

why didn't you come to me

and the kids first?

And I would always say, "Well, he's gay, but

he'll get over it and he'll come back to me"...

always hoping for that white picket fence

that we always used to talk about.

Mm-mmm.

WOJTOWICZ:
My name is John

Stanley Joseph Wojtowicz.

I'm the one they made the movie

about, "Dog Day Afternoon,"

that Al Pacino portrayed,

and I'm the husband of

Carmen Ann Wojtowicz,

who is the mother

of my two children.

I'm also the husband of George Heath, who

got me out of prison by cutting my time,

and I'm also the husband

of Ernest Aron,

the guy that I robbed the bank

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