Double trouble: Tony Kiritsis kidnapping plot the subject of American Hostage and Dead Man’s Wire

Two characters in two different screen projects. One, Dead Man’s Wire, a movie by Gus Van Sant. The other, American Hostage, a TV series starring Jon Hamm.

Picture this scene. A downcast and tense-looking man arrives in the lobby of an office building. He’s wearing a chartreuse-coloured short-sleeve shirt and dark pants, he’s carrying a long package, and asks to see his mortgage broker.

A man wearing a striped business shirt greets him, ushers him back to an office. Not long afterwards, the green shirt man pulls out a shotgun with a wire contraption attached to it, and takes the other person hostage, securing the wire around his neck.

It’s a mechanism that ensures if the gun-holder is taken down, the weapon will fire into the back of the hostage’s head.

In one version of the scene, the one in Dead Man’s Wire, the gunman is played by Bill Skarsgard. In the other, in American Hostage, the actor is Giovanni Ribisi.

You’re not imagining it. You have already deja-ed this vu. It’s the exact same story, adapted by two different filmmakers and within the same year.

The man in the green shirt was Tony Kiritsis, an American man famous for the kidnapping he perpetrated on February 8, 1977 against Dick Hall, the son of a family-run loans business, Meridien Mortgage Company, who was about to foreclose on a piece of land Kiritsis had hoped to develop.

Kiritsis was feeling particularly aggrieved by the actions of Meridien, and particularly Dick’s father, M.L. Hall, who was in Florida and when contacted, refused to comply with demands for an apology, even though his son was being held at gunpoint. Father of the year.

According to Time, Kiritsis said to the younger Hall as they were leaving the Meridien offices, “This company’s done me wrong, so I’m going to let the world know what you and your dad have done to me”.

He alleged that the older Hall had deliberately manipulated him into taking out a $US130,000 mortgage on a 17-acre plot, a loan he couldn’t afford, and sabotaging his shopping centre development so that he would default, which would give Meridien control of the land for cheap.

Kiritsis wasn’t trying to keep it lowkey, he wanted everyone to know about all of his righteous anger, and in the spectacular way possible.

He called the police on himself, and through a throng of cops, he led his hostage to a car and drove Hall back to his apartment which had been rigged with explosives.

For 63 hours, Kiritsis held Hall in his flat, sometimes secured to the bathtub while he vented about the many bad hands he felt he had been dealt.

Kiritsis would only negotiate with one man, a local radio newscaster named Fred Heckman (played by Hamm in the TV version, and reinvented as a radio DJ named Fred Temple in the film iteration, portrayed by Colman Domingo).

Kiritsis understood that if he negotiated through a prominent local media personality, his story would reach far and wide. And it did, it became a national breaking story, and news broadcasters at the time had to contend with how much of Kiritsis’s expletive-laden rants they put to air.

Demanding immunity from prosecution as well as millions in compensation, Kiritsis acquiesced to ending the hostage crisis and freeing Hall, but only after he is granted a televised press conference.

For 23 minutes, with his hand on the trigger of the shotgun, Hall’s neck still attached to the dead man’s switch wire mechanism, Kiritsis basked in the attention of all those cameras and microphones. The news channels were genuinely worried they were about to broadcast a live execution.

He freed Hall and was immediately arrested, but eight months later, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Kiritsis spent the next 11 years in custody across different state hospitals and institutions. He died in 2005.

Kiritsis was an angry man. His mother had died when she was 41. He was a veteran of the Korean War, he had many jobs in varied fields, and was unattached. He had previously been arrested for assault, and another time for firing two shots at his brother Tom. Both charges were later dismissed.

Perhaps that’s why Kiritsis’s story has emerged twice this year, because as much as his acts were violent and villainous, there is something resonant in the grievances he aired. He cast himself as the David and everyone else, especially his mortgage brokers, as the Goliath.

Technically, Meridien had followed the rules in its dealings with Kiritsis, but many people will still side with the gun-toting hostage taker over a financial institution. No one supports something as drastic as holding a gun to someone’s head, but it does make Kiritsis a more complicated figure than a generic madman.

Dead Man’s Wire is available on digital rental and purchase, American Hostage is streaming on Stan