*Courtney B. Vance’s upcoming film “Heist 88” will debut on Showtime this month and we caught up with the screenwriter to unpack this hotly anticipated thriller.
Vance, a two-time Emmy winner, produced the project with his wife, actress Angela Bassett, and the story is inspired by one of the largest bank robberies in U.S. history.
Menhaj Huda directed the film from a script by Dwayne Johnson-Cochran, who told EUR in an exclusive interview, “Courtney’s really amazing in the film. And all the characters, all the young people in the film and Keith David and everybody, they just are wonderful.”
Keesha Sharp, Bentley Green, Keith David, Xavier Clyde, Nican Robinson, and Precious Way also star in the film that centers on “Jeremy Horne (Vance), a criminal mastermind with an innate ability to convince anyone to do just about anything. After deciding to pull one last job before going to prison, Horne recruits four young bank employees to steal close to $80 million dollars in a daring and brazen assault on the nation’s banking system,” per Deadline.
In our conversation with Dwayne, he explained why he wanted to bring this tale to the small screen. Check out our Q&A below.
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What motivated you to want to bring this particular story to audiences?
Dwayne Johnson-Cochran: I’ll start from the beginning. I used to be a reporter. As a producer in Chicago in 1988, I was working for a local station there, and this was one of the stories that we actually covered. I was young, a producer working for the PBS station in Chicago. And we covered this story, this heist that happened with this guy who tricked a few people working at a bank and his cousin, actually his nephew, to take all this money. And I thought, “Wow, what an interesting story.” And I forgot about it.
I made a career in Los Angeles as a writer, director, producer. And then a good friend of mine in Chicago, another producer, Beverly Price, she called me up and said, “Dwayne, don’t you remember that story we were on that we were actually at the same hit?” They call it a hit when you have the truck there and your reporters there and you do a hit, the live hit, from the location.
And I said, “I don’t remember.” She says, “Yeah, it was amazing.” And she said, “I’m going to send you the information.” So she sent me the story and I thought, “My god, this is amazing.” I’m a Chicagoan. And when you think about Chicago in 1988 and how Harold Washington, he was the mayor and then he died and all this conspiracy about him, what happened? Did he die in office or…? It was all these things going on in Chicago with Black folks and the power structure.
And then this guy, Armand Moore, decided that he wanted to rob this bank right around that same time. And something about the disenfranchisement of Black folk and this heist stuck to me as a Chicagoan, a South-Sider. And I said, “You know what? I’m going to try to tell this story.”
I can see how these four people were lured, making so little money at a bank, working there for such a long time, I could see how they were lured to the idea of easy money, even though they worked at the bank. And it hit me because I come from a working-class family from the South Side and I could relate to them completely. So that’s why I started writing it.
I’m a huge fan of heist drama thrillers. What would you say sets Heist 88 apart from similar movies that unpack some of the themes explored this this film?
Dwayne: There’s a film by Stanley Kubrick that I looked at early on, and that was his first film, I think it was called The Killing. And it was a big heist that happened at a racetrack. A lot of money. And a lot of downtrodden people were drawn together, brought together, they didn’t know each other, by one powerful mastermind. And the turnabouts and the people who backstabbed and all the things that happened in the process was very much a story that I looked at. And I said, “You know what? This is very similar to that.” And I read the transcripts.
What makes this different, though is it’s young Black people who are very smart. Very, very smart about what they have, what they don’t have, and they are very clear about their situation in life.
I think what drew me to it and what makes this different is that you, as a viewer, the way this character, Jeremy Horn, explains to them their circumstances and how easy this can happen, you will put yourself in their shoes and say, “You know what? If this man came to me with this, I may do it too.” That’s what I think makes this different than most heist films. You will put yourself in their shoes and say, “Maybe I would go for this too.”
These kids were making $3.35 an hour in 1988 at a bank, and they’ve been working there 5, 6, 7 years on the midnight shift and these terrible hours, and they weren’t getting raises. They lived in a part of Chicago that was basically neglected and has been neglected and still is neglected. And you sit there and you think, “You know what? Boy, you know what? Someone says, let’s take $80 million, we can do it because we can do it and I know how to do it. This could be something I can get away with and not feel so bad about it.”
Heist thrillers often incorporate twists and turns to keep the audience engaged. So, without giving away any spoilers, can you hint at some of the unexpected elements viewers can look forward to in this movie?
Dwayne: The screws are turned tighter and tighter in this story. And you think it’s going to be a pretty well-honed story where you think that they’re going to just follow the directions, follow the plan.
But there’s a twist and another twist, and I won’t, of course, give that away, but I believe it will make you feel a little bit like, “Whoa, this I didn’t expect coming.” And there’s also a bit of a mystery at the end, which I think will keep people thinking and wishing there was more.
There’s sort of a big reveal and then another reveal and then you’re like, “Oh, wait. There’s more.” And you just say, “What’s going to happen? What’s going to happen? What’s going to happen? What’s everyone thinking?”
Can you describe your experience working with Courtney to bring your story to life?
Dwayne: I’ve had this story for many years. Courtney and I have worked together on my very first film that I directed was called Love in Action in Chicago, and we made it in 2000. And it was an HBO movie. We’ve been friends and colleagues and working together as partners on different projects for years and years.
I told him about this a few years ago and we went and sold it to FX after he got his Emmy for The People Versus OJ Simpson. And then we sold it again, after they didn’t make it, to HBO. And there was a different idea how they wanted to do it. We sold them as TV shows, as actually a series, a limited series.
And then, when we got aligned with Paramount Showtime, they felt it was more of a movie. So I rewrote it in a way that would work. And Courtney and I got together as producers and thought about it and talked about it and said, “How can we make it happen?” And we brought together a good team. We really looked hard for the right director.
We had a time crunch. We wanted to make it in 2022. We wanted to really make it last summer. We just wanted to get it out there. And we found, just really by luck, we found Menhaj Huda. I liked him. I thought he understood the story, had a really good music background and a good sense of style that I really liked. And I said, “Let’s go with him.”
And producing this film with him was really fun. We worked really hard together, really close together. It was one of those things when you have something for a long time, you want to find the right people to work with. And he was good, he was really good. He has a great visual vocabulary that matched mine and that was really, really wonderful.
What do you hope viewers are left thinking about or talking about after they watch Heist 88?
Dwayne: I think I want them to talk about urban life and the idea that you think money can buy you happiness and that money can change your situation and money could change… Everything that you think could be your dream. But sometime, money can get you into a lot of situations that you can’t get out of. Money can get you around people that you should not be with. And sometimes, your eyes are bigger than your stomach, as they say.
I think I want to leave people with the idea that you can tell a slick, sophisticated story about the avarice of trying to make it rich, trying to get out of your situation, trying to find the quickest way to get out of your situation. But sometime, you got to deal with the reality of life. And the reality of life is that there’s no easy road and you have to deal with that.
I think that at the end of the day, it’s a very entertaining story about some people that you’ll really, really like, but you’re going to really wish the best for them in the end. The best for them.
You’re from Chicago. I’m from Chicago and we know this city can serve as an additional character in any film or TV show, so in what way does the Windy City add to this narrative?
Dwayne: Well, I agree with you. This story, you really couldn’t really make this film anywhere else because what Chicago was going through in 1988… And, as I mentioned earlier, we had a very popular mayor who died in 1987. And this took place about six to eight months later.
Chicago is a racially divided city. Chicago is a have-and-have-not city. Chicago is a city where Black folks and Brown folks and white folks tend to stay away from each other, at least they did in ’88. And I think now in 2023, there’s probably a little bit more hope that maybe the violence that people say it’s in Chicago can be a little bit put to the side.
Because I’ve lived in Chicago for years. I’ve lived there when I grew up and I went to school there, and it is not a violent place. It’s a place where families raise their children. Black, white, Brown, Asian, everybody really tries to get along. And I think that the city of neighborhoods is what it’s known as, it’s a city where I feel that when you watch it in the film, you’ll taste it and feel Chicago.
You’ll see the skyline, you’ll see obviously the L. And, of course, the banks and the financial district and LaSalle Street. And you’ll see just the feelings of the neighborhood on the west side, Austin and on the south side. And you also see the haves in Hyde Park and the suburbs. I think you’ll see the whole gamut of Chicago in this film. I think that will give people a sense of place, a sense of ownership, a sense of, “Wow.”
And then there’s a bit of a political element here. It’s very subtle, but you’ll feel it. And when you do feel it, only people from Chicago understand what I’m talking about. So it’s in there, it’s laid in there in the story, it’s laid in there in the way the characters interact with each other. It’s a subtle bit of texture that I wanted to put into the story, and also into the visuals.
“Heist” 88 is set to debut exclusively on Paramount+ with Showtime on September 29 before making its way to Showtime for its linear debut at 9 p.m. ET/PT on October 1st.
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