Roofman

Front Row at the Movies by Shirrel Rhoades

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My North Carolina hideaway is located about 70 miles from Gastonia, a little town outside of Charlotte. When I passed through there last winter, I noticed a movie being filmed. Turns out, it was “Roofman,” a crime comedy based on the true story of Jeffrey Manchester, a former Army reservist turned cat burglar.

Manchester got the nickname “Roofman” from his modus operandi of burglarizing his target locations (mostly McDonald’s) by coming down through the roofs. He engaged in meticulous planning before drilling, hacking, or sawing through the roof of the building during the night and waiting, often in a restroom, for the morning shift workers to arrive. Once normal activities had begun, he would “storm out of the bathroom carrying a firearm and hold up employees before ushering them into the walk-in refrigerator, locking them inside while he robbed the cash registers.”

Throughout his 40 – 60 robberies across the country, Manchester maintained a gentlemanly demeanor, often suggesting that his victim don a coat before being locked in the freezer.

After a two-year robbery spree, Jeffrey Manchester was apprehended by North Carolina police on May 20, 2000, after robbing two McDonald’s on the same day. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison but managed to escape by concealing himself on the undercarriage of a truck with black-painted cardboard and plywood.

Hitchhiking to Charlotte, he hid out in the backroom of a Toys R Us store and then in a room under the stairwell of an abandoned Circuit City building next door. After robbing the Toys R Us, he was identified by his fingerprints on a DVD (ironically “Catch Me If You Can”) and apprehended by a trap at his girlfriend’s house.

While serving time at North Carolina’s Central Prison in Raleigh, Manchester has continued to attempt to escape. His current expected release date is December 4, 2036.

“Roofman” is based on Manchester’s time hiding at Toys R Us.

Channing Tatum has fun with this role of a burglar hiding out in a Toy R Us store, living on snacks and baby food, exercising by riding through the store at night on a bike.

Kirsten Dunst plays his girlfriend, a single mother who works at the Toys R Us store.

Peter Dinklage is cast as the Toys R Us manager.

And Ben Mendelsohn joins the cast as a pastor.

Directed by Derek Cianfrance (“Blue Valentine”), “Roofman” was filmed at North Carolina’s Freedom Park, Mecklenburg County Jail North, and the Gaston County Courthouse. The production also found and refurbished an abandoned Toys R Us in Charlotte after the chain filed for bankruptcy in 2017.

Cianfrance calls “Roofman” a “ripped-from-the-headlines Robin Hood saga.”

“Making this movie, building that Toys R Us, was an extreme choice, and Jeff pushed it as far as he possibly could,” says Cianfrance. “Jeff was our North Star.”

The director estimates he and co-writer Kirt Gunn spent 400 hours speaking to Jeffrey Manchester on the phone. Tatum would eventually speak to him as well.

“I hope that Jeff loves the movie,” Tatum says. “I hope that Jeff loves the spirit in which we made it, because we tried to walk the line of not making him the hero – and also loving him.”

Robin Hood? Well, Manchester did give toys he stole from Toys R Us to his girlfriend’s children.

Email Shirrel: srhoades@aol.com