Stiller wasn’t specifically looking to do television, but he was eager to try something more overtly dramatic. “It’s not a comedy, but there’s a lot of stuff that’s organically funny, ironic.” “We knew we couldn’t have somebody who lacked a sense of humor,” explains Johnson, speaking by phone with Tolkin. Early in the development process, Stiller was approached about directing. The writers, who were then working on the Showtime crime drama “Ray Donovan,” began to map out a series version of the story while Sweat and Matt were still on the loose. Though Stiller didn’t follow the escape closely at the time it was happening - he was in Italy filming “Zoolander 2” - “Dannemora” co-creators Michael Tolkin and Brett Johnson, like millions of Americans, were captivated by the 2015 breakout. “Prisons are created by people, but people are always going to be people and have human desires and wants.” “The story was always interesting for me on a human level,” Stiller says afterward. The other inmates look up from their piecework and roll their eyes at the brazenness of it all. Standing in front of the raised platform where she sits, Del Toro as Matt tells her he has “aquafina” - prison moonshine - and lures her to the backroom for a sexual encounter. This particular morning, Stiller has been filming take after take of a tense scene between Arquette, whose character, distracted by the escape plot, is struggling to fulfill an order for inmate clothing, and Del Toro, who tries to calm her frayed nerves. And, oh yeah, the first time he’s directed something with a 400-page script and a running time of 7.5 hours. “Escape at Dannemora” represents a number of firsts for him as a director: his first drama, his first fact-based project, his first TV gig since the failed Fox pilot (and cult favorite) “Heat Vision and Jack” in 1999. His work as a director began 25 years ago with the Gen-X touchstone “Reality Bites” and continued with “Zoolander,” “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” and “Tropic Thunder.” A multihyphenate primarily associated with comedy, Stiller is the first to concede he’s not the obvious choice for the material.
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