The series is set in a region known as the North Country, and “the wind hits heavy on the borderline” there as much as it does in the upper Midwest.

“That’s expert filmmaking,” Tolkin suggested.Īlthough ostensibly about Minnesota, the Bob Dylan-Johnny Cash duet of “Girl From the North Country,” which accompanies the opening credits, seems equally well-suited to the story. There’s a tight synchronization of Jessica Lee Gagné’s intensive cinematography and the eerie music composed by Ed Shearmur: a horn, maybe an oboe, then a guitar, followed by a drum and finally a flute. He burrows or runs, crouched, through the prison’s heating and cooling system, with a headlamp that furnishes a ghostly dim light. But tension remains high, never more so than in a mesmerizing eight-minute sequence when the camera tracks David Sweat’s trial run along the elaborate route the convicts have devised in order to flee. It doesn’t draw blood.” ‘The wind hits heavy on the borderline’īlood is not on display in most of the “Escape at Dannemora” episodes. Tolkin’s endeavors on TV shows and theatrical films were low-key, until he adapted his novel “The Player” as a cinematic venture for director Robert Altman in 1992.Ĭritic Vincent Canby of the New York Times was enthusiastic, with praise for Tolkin’s “clever and knowing screenplay.” The review surmised that, “As a satire, ‘The Player’ tickles. But then I remembered I wanted to be in movies.”Īfter he married Mogel in 1978, they relocated to Los Angeles, where she’s a noted psychologist and author. “It was still possible in those days to get by on $7,500 a year. Tolkin’s next stop was the antithesis of a pastoral environment: New York City, where he freelanced for the now-defunct Village Voice, among other newspapers.

“It wasn’t Vermont in quotes back then,” he observed, underscoring his affection for the “pre-Ben & Jerry’s” bucolic nature of the state. They befriended Tolkin, who rented a house in Cornwall. “By day five, we had started making outlines for a script.”Īmid all the turmoil of the early 1970s, he had been finding it difficult to focus, but was able to graduate magna cum laude after two years as an American literature major at Middlebury.ĭuring that time, one of his professors in that field was Horace Beck, the late husband of folklorist Jane Beck.

“Someone asked me, ‘Are you following this prison break?’ At first, we were laughing, riffing on it,” he recalled. While otherwise busy with the Showtime drama “Ray Donovan,” Tolkin and his colleagues - writing partner Brett Johnson included - were watching the extensive news coverage. The seven-part production traces how two Clinton Correctional Facility convicts and their enablers kept Americans riveted for three weeks in 2015.Įven as far away as California. Tolkin is an executive producer and co-writer of “Escape at Dannemora,” a Showtime television mini-series that begins broadcasting on Sunday. In the 48 years since then, he’s become a successful novelist and Hollywood wordsmith, perhaps best known for 1992’s “The Player.” Recently, that filmmaking career brought him only as close to Vermont as the New York state side of Lake Champlain. “In the spring, you could smell the manure.” haven’t been to Route 7 in a long time,” lamented Michael Tolkin, who was quite familiar with the road and its rural setting before his 1974 graduation from Middlebury College. In a scene from “Escape at Dannemora,” David Sweat (Paul Dano) and Richard Matt (Benicio Del Toro) plan their prison break.

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