Stiller Directs Showtime Miniseries About 2015 Dannemora Prison Break

Upstate New York is often a place that one hears little about, unless you are a local, like myself. In June 2015, Upstate New York was a place that made national news, specifically Dannemora, New York. How did a small rural town of roughly 5,000 people draw nationwide attention?

Two prisoners by the names of Richard Matt and David Sweat managed to escape from the Clinton Correctional facility and were missing for 23 days. They broke out of the prison on June 6 and it was noticed that they were gone during an early morning bed check. This was a shocker to so many people because the Clinton Correctional Facility is a maximum-security prison.

So, how could two prisoners manage to escape? They did so through deliberate planning and cooperation from employees. One in particular, Joyce Mitchell, a seamstress who taught prisoners to sew, was proven to have had relations with the two convicts who managed to escape. According to The New York Times, they both cut rectangular holes in the back of their cells and created dummies from clothing to trick the guards. Matt and Sweat were both serving sentences for murder, and had adjoining cells during their time in Dannemora. They crawled through some pipes to a manhole and continued their escape on foot.

The prisoners were on the loose for nearly a month, managing to stay hidden and weave their way through rural towns even when 1,300 officers were searching for them day-in and day-out. On June 26, 2015, Matt was killed by three gunshots to the head near Lake Titus.

Two days later, Sweat was captured 15 miles north of where Matt was killed, approximately 30 miles from the Clinton Correctional Facility. Prior to the two being found, they had ransacked a cabin leaving behind their DNA, and had been spotted a couple of times by locals. Their time on foot was not easy. Because the forests are thick, there are abrupt elevation changes and some bogs as well.

The escape would not have been possible without the help of Joyce Mitchell. She was the instructor in the prison tailor shop. She became infatuated with Matt and Sweat, who seduced her and promised they would run off with her if she brought them tools. Mitchell managed to smuggle in chisels and gave blades to them in frozen hamburger meat. With her assistance and the lack of effort by correctional officers to ensure security, they were successful. The events inspired Ben Stiller to direct a new series for Showtime, called “Escape at Dannemora.”

The seven part Showtime miniseries aired last Sunday and has received great reviews nationwide. The media is giving a lot of attention to the series, in which Stiller has made morning talk shows and has received a full-page article in The New York Times entitled, “Ben Stiller takes a dark turn” according to the Adirondack Daily Enterprise.

Reviews made by The Washington Post and the Emmy magazine suggest that the miniseries could earn recognition when the Emmy nominations are announced next year. The episodes can be viewed every Sunday at 10 p.m. on Showtime and create a vivid story of something that happened not far from St. Lawrence.