From The Hollywood Reporter · Michael Rechtshaffen · · 1m 30s
The pizza bomber heist gets a black comedy
Courteney Cox turns America's strangest bank robbery into a pitch black comedy with Patricia Arquette and David Harbour.
In brief
Courteney Cox turns America's strangest bank robbery into a pitch black comedy with Patricia Arquette and David Harbour. A true crime case too absurd for drama finds its natural register as black comedy, and Cox nails the tone. Originally reported by The Hollywood Reporter.
A heist too strange to invent
The 2003 Pizza Bomber case sits in the you-can't-make-this-up file. Two Erie, Pennsylvania residents plotted to rob a bank using a pizza delivery driver as their front man.
“There are few true crime stories worthier of being filed under "You Can't Make This Sh*t Up"”
The collar bomb plan
The driver walked up to the tellers' window posing as a hostage, with a fake explosive device locked around his neck. The bomb was supposed to be a prop.
It went wrong fast
Police apprehended the would-be robber outside the bank. Then the bomb went off anyway and killed him on the spot.
“the bomb nevertheless detonated, instantly killing him”
Netflix got there first
A four-part 2018 series, Evil Genius: The True Story of America's Most Diabolical Bank Heist, laid out the tangled events before and after the explosion.
Cox directs it as comedy
In her second feature behind the camera, Courteney Cox plays the material as a wildly devious, perfectly pitched black comedy rather than a grim reenactment.
Arquette and Harbour go all in
Patricia Arquette is fearlessly gung-ho as ringleader Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong. David Harbour, buried under a bushy grey beard and thick glasses, plays her brainy accomplice Bill Rothstein.
The short version
A true crime case too absurd for drama finds its natural register as black comedy, and Cox nails the tone.
