We understand you’ve been having some trouble keeping folks in Cook County Jail.
First a convict escaped using the ol’ hide-in-a-laundry-truck trick. The next night six inmates skedaddled after one guy threw hot soapy water into a guard’s face, threatened him with a homemade knife, stole his uniform, handcuffed him to a pole and started opening cells.
We’re sorry, but don’t you guys watch movies? Don’t you know that you never let a prisoner handcuff you to a pole?
Now they’re saying the guard might’ve been in on that last escape — a.k.a., an inside job. Gee, we haven’t seen one of those since last week’s “Arrested Development,” when Iraqi prison guards kept trying to help George (Will Arnett) escape by leaving the keys in his cell door.
Mike, you probably don’t have time to do all of the homework necessary to prevent further made-for-movies breakouts, so we hearby offer these lessons:
If a loner keeps tapping on his cell wall with a tiny rock hammer, make sure he doesn’t escape through the sewage system as Tim Robbins did in “The Shawshank Redemption.”
Count your spoons. Clint Eastwood used one in “Escape From Alcatraz.”
Be suspicious if inmates start emptying pant legs full of dirt onto the prison grounds. As Steve McQueen et al. in “The Great Escape” showed, that tunnel soil has to go somewhere.
Watch the concrete trucks, which Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton used to get out in “Bandits.” And if you’re transporting inmates by bus, drive carefully or they’ll flee the wreckage as Harrison Ford did in “The Fugitive” or Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis did in “The Defiant Ones.”
If for some reason there’s a prison rodeo, be on high alert so the inmates can’t quietly slip away as Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder did in “Stir Crazy.”
Pause thoughtfully if you find that one of your inmates boasts a full torso tattoo containing the prison’s blueprints, as on the Joliet-set TV series “Prison Break.”
Take note if you see a giant, homemade wooden flying machine being piloted by a chicken. This worked in “Chicken Run,” though, truth be told, if you’re not incarcerating poultry, you may not need to worry.
Sincerely,
Robert K. Elder
Mark Caro
