It sounds like every 11-year-old’s dream scenario: hiding out inside a Toys “R” Us, unbeknownst to anyone, for six months. Jeffrey Manchester lived out that fantasy in real life, albeit under less-than-ideal circumstances. The former Army Ranger resorted to robbing McDonald’s locations to help support his family, gaining the nickname Roofman because he’d break into the restaurants through the roof. The law eventually caught up with Manchester, but his time behind bars was curtailed thanks to a daring escape right under the guards’ noses. On the run and with nowhere to turn, Manchester holed up inside a Toys “R” Us for six months without being detected, living a double life in the local community during that time. Writer-director Derek Cianfrance, who broke into the scene with his 2010 romantic drama, Blue Valentine, recognized the cinematic potential in Manchester’s story and spent years speaking with the former fugitive through prison phone calls. The resulting film stars Channing Tatum as Manchester, with Kirsten Dunst playing Leigh, his girlfriend during the Toys “R” Us stint. Cianfrance approached the film from a documentary perspective, shooting in the local town where the actual story took place and even casting Manchester’s friends and associates. Boxoffice Pro spoke with the filmmaker ahead of the film’s world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, delving into his interest in Manchester’s life, the challenges of casting a ripped-from-the-headlines story, and his love for the moviegoing experience.
Roofman is a departure from your prior films, which shared similar themes and often had a deeply personal relationship to you. With Roofman, it feels like you’re coming to the story as an outsider—it’s based on a true story, but one you don’t seem to have an immediate personal or emotional connection with. How did you come to develop this project? What was it about Jeffrey Manchester’s story that convinced you to make a film out of it?
I finished my HBO series, I Know This Much is True, feeling like I had fully expressed what I had been trying to for the last dozen years. Every movie I had made dealt with themes of ancestry, inheritance, sins being passed on through generations, and legacy. I felt that had finally been exorcised from me, and I was looking for something that reminded me of all the movies I grew up watching. That’s when I heard this story about Jeffrey Manchester, this guy who had robbed 45 McDonald’s and been sentenced to 45 years in prison, who had broken out of prison and hid out inside a toy store for six months.
That’s the type of world I know. I grew up in the suburbs of Denver, and I used to work at a Walmart. For a couple of years, I must have been the fastest checker in the history of all Walmarts in Colorado. I was the menswear employee of the month once. I grew up in a world dominated by big box stores and fast-food restaurants, and it’s rare to see movies set in such a familiar environment. I felt I could make a movie in this type of setting, so I started talking to Jeff, who is currently in a maximum security prison in Raleigh, North Carolina. Since he’s in prison, I couldn’t call him, so I sent him my number, and he had to call me. We spoke about four times a week for the next four years.
How do you even start that conversation? Did you mail him a Blue Valentine DVD with your phone number on it?
Jeff hasn’t seen any of my movies. He’s heard about them, but he hasn’t seen them. I don’t think they’re playing Blue Valentine in Cell Block D. One of my producers got in contact with him and gave him my information. He reached out and, bit by bit, he started telling me his story. I remember one of the first questions I asked him: What do you miss most about life on the outside? He said it was an apple, that he hadn’t had an apple in 20 years in prison, since they can be used to make wine.
Jeff is a very interesting storyteller. One of the things we shared was a love of the movies we both grew up with from the 1980s and ‘90s. I think he was hyper-aware that he was the star of his own movie when he was doing all these crazy things. He was very open, and after the first year or so of talking to him, I got in contact with everyone in his life who would speak to me. I talked to his mother, stepfather, and his brother. I spoke to Leigh, the woman he had a relationship with while he was hiding inside the Toys “R” Us’ walls. I talked to the pastor of the church he attended. I talked to the police sergeant who arrested him. I talked to a lot of correctional officers. I talked to the guy who drove the prison truck that he hid under to escape prison. I talked to almost everyone willing to share their part of the story. I felt like a detective, piecing together all the pieces of his life to uncover the cinematic truth of Jeff’s story.
When I eventually sent the script to Channing Tatum, he infused himself into it. The person you see on the screen in our movie is an amalgamation of the real Jeff, of Channing, and of me. We all put ourselves and our truths into that character to make an honest and emotional movie about this experience.
How did you settle on casting Channing Tatum?
I first met Channing back in 2006 after seeing A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints. I thought he was like [Marlon] Brando in that movie; he was incredible. I had been writing Blue Valentine at that point and was struggling to cast the movie. I sent Channing the script and ended up meeting him at a party for A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints. He said, “I really liked your script, but I just don’t know who this guy is,” so he passed on it.
I met him again 17 years later while writing Roofman and was already thinking about him as a possibility for this role. We met at Prospect Park, and I asked him if he remembered our meeting 17 years earlier, and he answered, “I think about that all the time.” So I told him, “Next time I offer you something, just say yes.”
I’ve always loved Channing. He’s amazing in everything he’s in, particularly his ability to balance comedy and drama. He can tap into his emotional side, revealing a vulnerable dimension that he doesn’t often explore in his movies. I knew from seeing A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints and Foxcatcher that he could bring humor and physicality to the role. The story of a guy living alone in this toy store needs an aspect of physical comedy, and Channing, being a dancer, can really control his body in a way very few actors are able to. There are so many actors who are asked to just be talking heads, these dialogue delivery machines. For this movie, a lot of silent filmmaking was required, as it’s about a guy alone in a toy store. So I needed someone who could command the screen with his physicality and movement, telling the story silently.
We have a shared love of Buster Keaton—of course, who doesn’t?—and talked about Jerry Lewis and Gene Kelly quite a bit. He suggested that Jeff should be very thin in the movie, as he needs to fit into tight spaces. Channing showed up on set like 65 to 70 pounds lighter than the last time I saw him. He committed fully to the role. As a filmmaker, there’s no better ally to have than an actor like him. He’s a defender of the movie and the director’s vision. I can’t imagine anyone else in the world playing him.
Kirsten Dunst is an actress I’ve always loved. I grew up watching her in movies like Interview with the Vampire, The Virgin Suicides, Spider-Man, and Bring It On. But when I saw her in Melancholia, I knew it was one of the great all-time performances. I met her around that time, and we were talking about maybe doing The Light Between Oceans together, but I felt that having her speak with an accent was going to be too weird, since the audience would already be familiar with her. I had a silent pact with myself that we would work together someday. I sent her the script for Roofman, and she immediately understood the heart of it.
When I first met with Leigh, Jeff’s girlfriend when all this happened. I entered the meeting with several assumptions about how she would feel about him. I thought she would feel betrayed and even hard on him, possibly still mad at him. And when I talked to her for the first time, I was surprised because she had so much grace.
She loved Jeff and even forgave him. She looked back at her time with him as one of the greatest times in her life. I needed to find an actor who had the same kind of grace and ability to forgive. Kirsten immediately related to the role. She’s spent her whole life in front of the camera, and she’s just the most real, salt-of-the-earth, true-blue person that you could know. Her performance is fantastic, and her presence grounds the movie, opposite Jeff, who’s flying all over the place. She’s our truth in this movie, and it was a great experience working with her.
The third lead in your film is the setting. Not only the Toys “R” Us where Jeff is hiding out, but the entire community that surrounds it.
I spent many years as a documentary filmmaker, so anytime I tackle a piece of fiction—even if it’s based on a real story—I go into it as a documentarian. I want my actors to be thrown into this aquarium of real life. That’s why I made a choice early on to shoot down in Charlotte, North Carolina, where all these events occurred. I wanted to chase the ghosts of the past and go where all the people in the story still live. I thought that if I went down there, people who had experienced the story in real life could be part of the movie.
My whole life, I’ve been making home movies. My mom, dad, sister, and grandma were in those movies, and I wanted to go back to a place Jeff called home and make a movie with those people. I offered a role to everyone who wanted one. Sometimes they play themselves, and other times they play other characters. There are a million Easter eggs in the movie, featuring real people who were involved in the actual story.
The actual Toys “R” Us from the real events went out of business a number of years ago; that building is now a megachurch. Most spaces that used to house Toys “R” Us in America have been converted into Spirit Halloween stores or furniture or rug stores. The musical director of that church was the musical director of the band for our movie. I put myself in the position where my choices in this movie would be born from the real people who lived the story, and if they wanted to be a part of it, it was their movie.
We shot in the real church that Jeff attended. And when it came to finding our Toys “R” Us for the movie, we found a former location 20 minutes away from the one he lived in. It was 40,000 square feet, all vacant, and we rebuilt it one tile at a time, repopulating it with toys from the era. Every shelf in that store, we’re talking about three or more toys deep for every item. I wanted everyone who walked onto that set to feel it was the actual place. I wanted Channing to have an experience in there similar to Jeff’s.
Has Jeff Manchester seen any of the trailers or footage from the movie?
He had seen pieces of the trailer on the local news that played in prison. And the next time we spoke, he asked me about this image of Channing Tatum in his underwear with a pool floatie around his waist and a teddy bear on his shoulders. And he flat-out asked me how we came up with that image. I explained we were preparing a shot, and Channing came around the corner wearing some Heelys already looking like that. He was thrilled to hear that, saying living in a toy store for six months brings out your inner child.
You studied under two luminaries of experimental cinema, Stan Brakhage and Phil Solomon, at the University of Colorado at Boulder. How did that influence your approach to filmmaking?
I remember my first day at CU, when they showed Mothlight by Stan Brakhage, a 12-minute movie comprised exclusively of moth wings taped directly onto the celluloid. As a kid who grew up going to the video store in the suburbs of Lakewood, Colorado, I only knew narrative cinema before I got there. Then, all of a sudden, I discovered experimental cinema, where people were playing with the plasticity of the medium and using it beyond purely narrative purposes. It blew my mind, and I knew I was in the right place.
I developed such strong bonds with my college professors, especially Phil Solomon, who became a personal Jiminy Cricket: He was my cinematic conscience. Going to CU’s film school helped me understand the possibilities of filmmaking and that it didn’t always have to be strictly narrative. We never talked about budgets or the reception of movies. We just talked about film and filmmaking. Phil Solomon passed away a few years ago, but he still plays that Jiminy Cricket role for me and my editor, Jim Hilton, who also went to CU Boulder. Phil’s voice will possess one of us as we’re watching cuts of our films; he’s still very much a big part of us.
Another big element about my time at CU is that I remember Phil and Stan Brakhage, these extreme artists, would still go out and see everything. Stan Brakhage, especially, would go out to see movies every week, from the most commercial movies to the most art house movies and the experimental. They loved all kinds of cinema; there was no snobbery about them. I took film history with Brakhage, and he would accidentally leave his microphone on during screenings, so his personal laugh track became part of so many movies we saw in that class. His love of movies was infectious.
I thought about those guys a lot while making Roofman. During the pandemic, back in 2020, I remember sitting in my house want wanting to make the type of movie I loved watching as a kid. Roofman is the type of movie I would have been psyched to see when I was a teenager growing up in Colorado and falling in love with movies.
What does the moviegoing experience mean for you as a filmmaker?
Movie theaters have always been my safe space, the place I feel most comfortable in. The communal experience of sharing a kind of anonymity in a dark room with a bunch of strangers, all of you sharing a feeling, it’s very personal and private, but shared at the same time. Movies have always felt like friends to me, and some of my favorite movies feel like friends that I get to revisit at different times and different places in my life. Seeing those movies on the biggest screen possible is like a shared spiritual experience, akin to going to church.
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