The Dog

If anybody gets up, they're dead.

Anybody moves, they're dead.

Anybody makes a sound before I leave this movie,

they're fucking dead.

My name is John S. Wojtowicz.

You can call me The Dog because that's my nickname.

Hi. I'm Jeanne Parr, and this is John Wojtowicz.

Right now, he's in jail.

It was 5 1/2 years ago when he attempted

to rob a Brooklyn bank to get money

for his lover's sex change operation.

They made a movie about John.

It's called "Dog Day Afternoon,"

and Al Pacino played the part of John.

This is John's lover Liz Eden,

who wanted that sex change operation.

Well, she got it, and today she's living happily as a woman.

John is still in jail, and we'll reveal

for the first time in my exclusive interview with him,

his side of this very dramatic love story.

So stay with us. We're live.

That's the abbreviated version.

OK. The reason I call myself a pervert

is that I'm sexually oriented.

It's very easy because you got to look at it this way.

Most people drink. Most people smoke.

A lot of people do drugs, and they have sex.

So they have all these outlets, OK?

I don't smoke. I don't drink.

I don't do drugs. I don't gamble.

So I'm an angel... ha ha!... but I got horns,

OK, and the trouble is, when you got horns,

you only can do one thing, OK. And that's fuck.

I consider myself a romantic.

There's sex, and there's love. I'm a lover.

When I met Ernie for the first time,

it was love at first sight, and because I loved him,

on August 22, 1972, I had to do something.

All in all, August 22, 1972,

was a summer day just like any other summer day...

hot, humid, with everyone trying to get a bit of relief

from the oppressive heat and humidity,

and then it happened.

At 2:58 P.M. that afternoon,

two men entered a bank in Brooklyn

and began what turned out to be the most sensational,

most bizarre, most unbelievable bank robbery

in the history of crime, and before they were through,

what should have been an ordinary bank robbery

turned into a 3-ring circus.

Nobody would ever did what I did.

Nobody would ever rob a bank

to cutoff a guy's dick to give him a sex change operation.

That's why they made a movie about it.

You know something, people?

You're gonna be remembered

the rest of your lives for the day

you got held up and kidnapped.

We made history here.

We did it.

AI Pacino.

A true story.

OK. What you got to understand

is that in my lifetime, I have had 4 wives.

I also have 23 girlfriends

because, remember, I'm a pervert.

They all know each other because I'm like Prudential.

I'm the rock, OK,

and I give a piece of myself to everybody,

and you go, "How can you do that?"

I says, because, idiot... it's very simple...

you can love more than one person.

One of the strangest hijack attempts

to date began when two gunmen held up a bank

in Brooklyn, New York.

The gunmen got $29,000,

but before they could leave, police moved in,

and the bank robbers seized 8 hostages.

With his partner inside pointing a shotgun

at 8 employees, the other robber spent much of his time

pacing outside the bank, either negotiating with police

or screaming at them to back off.

Police, in turn, tried to keep the pressure down

by ordering the hundreds of spectators to move.

All right, fellas. You got to move back.

The more visible bank robber

is 27-year old John Wojtowicz,

an out-of-work New York City resident

and an admitted homosexual who left his wife

and two children 3 years ago.

That day, I was with my girlfriend

and my two kids on the beach in Rockaway.

It was a hot, hot day... oh, God... and I'm listening to the radio,

and I hear, "an admitted homosexual

has just robbed a bank in Brooklyn, Avenue P,"

and they said his name and everything,

and I'm listening to it.

I'm listening to it at the beach.

I listened to it on the train.

I went home and watched it on TV.

I'm listening and listening. I didn't hear Wojtowicz.

I heard John something.

So I says to my girlfriend,

"That sounds like my name, doesn't it?"

She starts laughing. We went in the back yard.

We had a barbeque, not realizing it's Johnny all the time.

After I graduated high school,

I met my female wife called Carmen Ann. Bifulco.

She worked for Chase Manhattan, as I did.

So we're your friends at Chase Manhattan.

I was a teller, and it's what I call love at first sight.

He called me up to go on a date.

He picked me up with two other girls, and he says,

"One of you is going to be my lucky bride in the future."

I thought the guy was crazy already.

Then we started talking to each other

and dating, and then, boom, I got drafted.

I'm a Goldwater Republican, which means I'm conservative,

which means I'm also a warmonger,

So I was willing to go to the war and fight in the war.

I would remind you that extremism

in the defense of liberty is no vice.

When then I went to basic training,

that's when I had my first gay experience.

I met a hillbilly by the name of Wilbur.

One night, I was dreaming that I was getting a blow job,

and instead, it was the real thing,

and Wilbur was blowing me, and just before I came,

I woke up, and I go, "What are you doing?"

and he said, "Well, doesn't it feel good?"

and I go, "Yeah. It feels good."

He said, "Well?" I said, "Well, keep on going,"

and then we kept having this relationship

because he blew great.

He was like a summer breeze. Ha ha!

I went to Vietnam in October of 1966.

I first went to Saigon,

and a few months later, they shipped me up to Da Nang,

OK, up by the DMZ,

and that's where we got into action...

and then in February of 1967,

there was the first rocket attack

on the Da Nang Air Force Base,

and 90% of my fellow soldiers were killed.

So what happened is,

I went from being a Goldwater conservative in 1964

to a McCarthy peacenik in 1968

because if we're not gonna win the war,

why should all these young kids get killed and die for nothing?

We lost 50,000 people over there

because they wouldn't let us win it.

So if you're not going to win it,

let's get out and end it.

I married Carmen in 1967 in October.

We wanted to get married before I went to Vietnam,

but my in-laws said no

because they were hoping I didn't make it back.

Soto disappoint my in-laws, I lived through the Vietnam War

and came back and married her.

My father didn't want me to get married at all.

My relatives despised him, but I got married.

These are the pictures from my wedding...

October 21, 1967.

Got married at St. Rita's Church in Brooklyn.

The whole neighborhood was there.

There was a big thing at the end.

It was terrible.

My priest wanted to annul the wedding that night.

Annul it.

The night of the wedding, we almost broke up

because we had a fight over the wedding money.

The father wanted me to pay for part of the wedding.

So we got into a big fight, me and Carmen, that night.

So I took the money and just threw it at him

and walked the fuck out.

Ha ha ha!

I went home one night. Everything was gone.

My kitchen set was gone. My engagement gifts were gone.

"I left. Go to your mother." That was it. Ha!

Carmen and I broke up June 20,1969.

That's when the first man walked on the moon, Neil Armstrong,

and then they had the Stonewall riots on June 26, 1969,

and that's what they call the birth of the gay movement, OK?

So the gay movement happened at the same time

that the guy walked on the moon and I walked on Carmen.

So it logically follows that that's where I would wind up.

Homosexuals who acknowledge their homosexuality

and pattern their lives accordingly are known as gay,

and the gay liberation movement is challenging

a society that abhors homosexuality.

The Gay Activist Alliance is the largest

and most vocal of several homosexual groups.

I got interested in the gay movement

after the Stonewall riots.

So what happened is, I joined the Gay Activist Alliance.

We used to meet in different locations.

Then finally, they got their own headquarters,

which was called the Firehouse,

and it was on Wooster Street over in the Village.

The Gay Activist Alliance