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The Towering Inferno

The Towering Inferno is a 1974 American disaster film directed by John Guillermin and produced by Irwin Allen, featuring an ensemble cast led by Paul Newman and Steve McQueen. It was adapted by Stirling Silliphant from the novels The Tower by Richard Martin Stern and The Glass Inferno by Thomas N. Scortia and Frank M. Robinson. In addition to McQueen and Newman, the cast includes William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Fred Astaire, Susan Blakely, Richard Chamberlain, O. J. Simpson, Robert Vaughn, Robert Wagner, Susan Flannery, Gregory Sierra, Dabney Coleman and Jennifer Jones in her final role.

The Towering Inferno was released theatrically December 16, 1974. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, and earned around $203.3 million, making it the highest-grossing film of 1974. It was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, winning three: Best Song, Best Cinematography and Best Editing.

Plot
Architect Doug Roberts returns to San Francisco for the dedication of The Glass Tower, a mixed-use skyscraper that he designed for developer James Duncan. The tower, 1688 ft tall and 138 stories, is the world's tallest building. During testing, an electrical short-circuit starts a fire on the 81st floor after another short occurs in the main utility room. While examining the latter short, Roberts sees the wiring is inadequate and suspects that Roger Simmons, the electrical subcontractor and Duncan's son-in-law, cut corners. Roberts confronts Simmons, who feigns innocence.

During the dedication ceremony, chief of public relations Dan Bigelow turns on all the tower's lights, but Roberts orders them shut off to reduce the load on the electrical system. Smoke is seen on the 81st floor, and the San Francisco Fire Department is summoned. Roberts and engineer Will Giddings go to that floor, where Giddings is fatally burned pushing a guard away from the fire. With the dedication party now in full swing in the tower's Promenade Room on the 135th floor, Roberts reports the fire to Duncan, who is courting Senator Gary Parker for an urban renewal contract and refuses to order an evacuation.

SFFD Chief Michael O'Hallorhan forces Duncan to evacuate the guests from the Promenade Room. Simmons admits to Duncan that he cut corners to bring the project back under budget, and suggests other subcontractors did likewise. Fire overtakes the express elevators, killing a group whose elevator stops on the engulfed 81st floor. Bigelow and his girlfriend Lorrie are killed when another fire traps them in the Duncan Enterprises offices on the 65th floor. Lisolette Mueller, a guest and resident of the tower being wooed by con man Harlee Claiborne, rushes to the 87th floor to check on a deaf mother and her two children. Security chief Jernigan rescues the mother, but a ruptured gas line explodes, destroying the stairwell and preventing Roberts and the rest from following. They traverse the wreckage of the stairwell to reach a service elevator that takes them to the 134th floor, but the door to the Promenade Room is blocked with hardened cement. Roberts uses a ventilation shaft to reach the room, while Lisolette and the children stay behind.

As firefighters begin to bring the fire under control on floor 65, the electrical system fails, deactivating the passenger elevators; O'Hallorhan abseils down the elevator shaft to safety. As firemen ascend to free the blocked door at the Promenade Room, another explosion destroys part of the remaining stairwell, blocking the last means of escape from the upper floors. After the stuck door is freed, reuniting Lisolette and the children with Roberts and the others, Simmons tries to escape down the stairwell, but is blocked by flames and retreats. Meanwhile, Claiborne reveals his true identity and intentions to Lisolette, who says she does not care and still wants to be with him.

An attempt at a helicopter rescue fails when two women run up to the aircraft; the pilot tries to evade them and crashes, setting the roof ablaze. A Navy rescue team attaches a breeches buoy between the Promenade Room and the roof of the adjacent 102-story Peerless Building, and rescues guests, including Patty Simmons, Duncan's daughter. Roberts rigs a "gravity brake" (fall arrest) on the scenic elevator, allowing one trip down for 12 people, including Roberts' fiancée Susan Franklin, Lisolette, and the children. An explosion near the 110th floor throws Lisolette from the elevator to her death, and leaves the elevator hanging by a single cable. O'Hallorhan rescues the elevator with a Navy helicopter. As fire reaches the Promenade Room, a group led by Simmons attempts to commandeer the breeches buoy, which is destroyed in an explosion, killing Simmons, Senator Parker and others. In a last-ditch strategy, O'Hallorhan and Roberts blow up water tanks atop the Tower with plastic explosives. Most of the remaining partygoers survive as water rushes through the building, extinguishing the flames.

Claiborne, in shock upon hearing of Lisolette's death, is given her cat by Jernigan. Duncan consoles his grieving daughter, and promises such a disaster will never happen again. Roberts accepts O'Hallorhan's offer of guidance on how to build a fire-safe skyscraper. O'Hallorhan drives away, exhausted.

Development
In April 1973, it was announced that Warner Bros. production chief John Calley paid $350,000 for the rights to Richard Martin Stern's The Tower, prior to that book's publication. This amount was larger than originally reported. The book had been the subject of a bidding war between Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox and Columbia Pictures; Columbia dropped out when the price reached $200,000 and Warner Bros. offered $390,000. Irwin Allen, who recently had a big success with a disaster movie, The Poseidon Adventure, was at Fox, and persuaded that studio to make a higher offer when the book was sold to Warner Bros.

Eight weeks later, Fox was submitted a novel, Thomas N. Scortia and Frank M. Robinson's The Glass Inferno, which was published the following year, and which Allen says had "the same sort of characters, the same locale, the same story, the same conclusion". They bought the novel for a reported fee of $400,000.

Allen was concerned that two films about a tall building on fire might cannibalize each other, remembering what happened in the 1960s when rival biopics about Oscar Wilde (with Oscar Wilde and The Trials of Oscar Wilde in 1960) and Jean Harlow (with Magna Media Distribution's Harlow and Paramount Pictures's Harlow in 1965) were released. He convinced executives at both studios to join forces to make a single film on the subject. The studios issued a joint press release announcing the single film collaboration in October 1973. Stirling Silliphant, who had written The Poseidon Adventure, would write the script and Allen would produce. It was decided to split costs equally between the studios, but the film would be made at Fox, where Allen was based. Fox would distribute in the United States and Canada, and Warner Bros. outside those territories. Warner Bros. also handled the worldwide television distribution rights. Incidents and character names were taken from both novels.

The total cost for the film was US$14,300,000.

Casting
Several actors who appeared in small roles, including John Crawford, Erik Nelson, Elizabeth Rogers, Ernie Orsatti and Sheila Matthews (Allen's wife) had previously appeared in The Poseidon Adventure, which Allen also produced. Additionally, Paul Newman's son, Scott, played the acrophobic fireman afraid to rappel down the elevator shaft.

Lead actors Steve McQueen and Paul Newman were each paid $1million.

Although famed for his dancing and singing in musical movies, Fred Astaire received his only Oscar nomination for this film. He also won both a BAFTA Award and a Golden Globe Award for his performance.

Filming
Principal photography took place over 14 weeks. Guillermin says that Newman and McQueen were very good to work with, and added considerably to their roles.

Music
The score was composed and conducted by John Williams, orchestrated by Herbert W. Spencer and Al Woodbury, and recorded at the 20th Century Fox scoring stage October 31 and November 4, 7 and 11, 1974. The original recording engineer was Ted Keep.

Source music in portions of the film includes instrumental versions of "Again" by Lionel Newman and Dorcas Cochran, "You Make Me Feel So Young" by Josef Myrow and Mack Gordon, and "The More I See You" by Harry Warren and Mack Gordon.

A snippet of a cue from Williams' score to Cinderella Liberty, entitled "Maggie Shoots Pool", is heard in a scene in which William Holden's character converses on the phone with Paul Newman's character. It is not the recording on the soundtrack album, but a newer arrangement recorded for The Towering Inferno.

One of the most sought-after unreleased music cues from the film is the one in which Williams provides low-key lounge music during a party prior to the announcement of a fire. O'Hallorhan orders Duncan to evacuate the party; the music becomes louder as Lisolette and Harlee are seen dancing and Duncan lectures son-in-law Roger. Entitled "The Promenade Room" on the conductor's cue sheet, the track features a ragged ending, as Duncan asks the house band to stop playing. Because of this, Film Score Monthly did not add this cue to the expanded soundtrack album.

The Academy Award-winning song, "We May Never Love Like This Again", was composed by Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn, and performed by Maureen McGovern, who appears in a cameo as a lounge singer, and on the score's soundtrack album, which features the film recording, plus the commercially released single version. Additionally, the theme tune is interpolated into the film's underscore by Williams. The song's writers collaborated on "The Morning After" from The Poseidon Adventure, an Oscar-winning song that was also recorded by McGovern, although hers was not the vocal used in that film.

The first release of portions of the score from The Towering Inferno was on Warner Bros. Records in early 1975 (Catalog No. BS-2840).

 * 1) "Main Title" (5:00)
 * 2) "An Architect's Dream" (3:28)
 * 3) "Lisolette And Harlee" (2:34)
 * 4) "Something For Susan" (2:42)
 * 5) "Trapped Lovers" (4:28)
 * 6) "We May Never Love Like This Again" – Kasha/Hirschhorn, performed by Maureen McGovern (2:11)
 * 7) "Susan And Doug" (2:30)
 * 8) "The Helicopter Explosion" (2:50)
 * 9) "Planting The Charges – And Finale" (10:17)

A near-complete release was issued on the Film Score Monthly label April 1, 2001, and was produced by Lukas Kendall and Nick Redman. Film Score Monthly's was an almost completely expanded version, remixed from album masters at Warner Bros. archives and the multi-track 35mm magnetic film stems at 20th Century Fox. Placed into chronological order and restoring action cues, it became one of the company's biggest sellers; only 4,000 copies were pressed, and it is now out of print.

Reports that this soundtrack and that of the film Earthquake, also composed by Williams, borrowed cues from each other are inaccurate. The version of "Main Title" on the Film Score Monthly disc is the film version. It differs from the original soundtrack album version. There is a different balance of instruments in two spots, and in particular, the snare drum is more prominent than the album version, which also features additional cymbal work. Although the album was not a re-recording, the original LP tracks were recorded during the same sessions, and several cues were combined. The film version sound was reportedly better than the quarter-inch Warner Bros. two-track album master. Although some minor incidental cues were lost, some sonically "damaged" cues — so called due to a deterioration of the surviving audio elements — are placed at the end of the disc's program time following the track, "An Architect's Dream", which is used over the end credits sequence.

 * 1) "Main Title" (5:01)
 * 2) "Something For Susan" (2:42)
 * 3) "Lisolette and Harlee" (2:35)
 * 4) "The Flame Ignites" (1:01)
 * 5) "More For Susan" (1:55)
 * 6) "Harlee Dressing" (1:37)
 * 7) "Let There Be Light" (:37)
 * 8) "Alone At Last" (:51)
 * 9) "We May Never Love Like This Again (Film Version)" – Maureen McGovern (2:04)
 * 10) "The First Victims" (3:24)
 * 11) "Not A Cigarette" (1:18)
 * 12) "Trapped Lovers" (4:44)
 * 13) "Doug's Fall/Piggy Back Ride" (2:18)
 * 14) "Lisolette's Descent" (3:07)
 * 15) "Down The Pipes/The Door Opens" (2:59)
 * 16) "Couples" (3:38)
 * 17) "Short Goodbyes" (2:26)
 * 18) "Helicopter Rescue" (3:07)
 * 19) "Passing The Word" (1:12)
 * 20) "Planting The Charges" (9:04)
 * 21) "Finale" (3:57)
 * 22) "An Architect's Dream" (3:28)
 * 23) "We May Never Love Like This Again (Album Version)" – Maureen McGovern (2:13)
 * 24) "The Morning After (Instrumental)" (2:07)
 * 25) "Susan And Doug (Album Track)" (2:33)
 * 26) "Departmental Pride and The Cat (Damaged)" (2:34)
 * 27) "Helicopter Explosion (Damaged)" (2:34)
 * 28) "Waking Up (Damaged)" (2:39)

Release
The Towering Inferno was released in theaters December 14, 1974, in United States and Canada by 20th Century Fox, and internationally by Warner Bros.

Top billing
Steve McQueen, Paul Newman and William Holden all wanted top billing. Holden was refused, his long-term standing as a box-office draw having been eclipsed by both McQueen and Newman. To provide dual top billing, the credits were arranged diagonally, with McQueen lower left and Newman upper right. Thus, each appeared to have "first" billing, depending on whether the credit was read left-to-right or top-to-bottom. This was the first time this "staggered but equal" billing was used in a movie, although it had been considered earlier for the same two actors regarding Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, until McQueen turned down the Sundance Kid role. McQueen is mentioned first in the film's trailers. In the cast list rolling from top to bottom at the film's end, however, McQueen and Newman's names were arranged diagonally as at the beginning; as a consequence, Newman's name is fully visible first.

Critical response
The Towering Inferno received generally positive reviews from critics and audiences alike on its release. The film has an approval rating of 68% based on 37 reviews with an average rating of 6.50/10 on Rotten Tomatoes. The site's consensus states: "Although it is not consistently engaging enough to fully justify its towering runtime, The Towering Inferno is a blustery spectacle that executes its disaster premise with flair." Metacritic gave the film a score of 69 based on 11 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three stars out of four, and praised it as "the best of the mid-1970s wave of disaster films".

Variety praised the film as "one of the greatest disaster pictures made, a personal and professional triumph for producer Irwin Allen. The $14 million cost has yielded a truly magnificent production which complements but does not at all overwhelm a thoughtful personal drama."

Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote that the film is "overwrought and silly in its personal drama, but the visual spectacle is first rate. You may not come out of the theater with any important ideas about American architecture or enterprise, but you will have had a vivid, completely safe nightmare."

Pauline Kael, writing for The New Yorker, panned the writing and characters as retreads from The Poseidon Adventure, and further wrote, "What was left out this time was the hokey fun. When a picture has any kind of entertainment in it, viewers don't much care about credibility, but when it isn't entertaining we do. And when a turkey bores us and insults our intelligence for close to three hours, it shouldn't preen itself on its own morality."

Gene Siskel of Chicago Tribune gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four, calling it "a stunt and not a story. It's a technical achievement more concerned with special effects than with people. That's why our attitude toward the film's cardboard characters is: let 'em burn."

FilmInk called it "brilliant fun".

Box office
The film was one of the biggest-grossing films of 1975, with theatrical rentals of $48,838,000 in the United States and Canada. In January 1976, it was claimed that the film had attained the highest foreign film rental for any film in its initial release, with $43 million, and went on to earn $56 million. When combined with the rentals from the United States and Canada, the worldwide rental is $104,838,000.

The film grossed $116 million in the United States and Canada and $203 million worldwide.

title: The Towering Inferno


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Talk:Dirichlet's theorem on arithmetic progressions

 * Chowla proved this for the case of three consecutive terms.

What exactly did Chowla prove? AxelBoldt 02:20 Oct 10, 2002 (UTC)
 * Chowla proved there are infinitely many three consecutive terms in every arithmetic progression. We should also correct this piece of sentence:
 * ...where n is a... --XJamRastafire 12:28 Oct 11, 2002 (UTC)

I think the part Note that the theorem does not say that there are infinitely many consecutive terms in the arithmetic progression

a, a+d, a+2d, a+3d, ..., which are prime. Would be easier to read if it said "Note that the theorem does not say that there are infinitely many consecutive prime terms in the arithmetic progression..."--or perhaps better: "...infinitely many consecutive primes...". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.185.249.234 (talk) 01:34, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Euler's contribution
At present, the History section states: "Euler stated that every arithmetic progression beginning with 1 contains an infinite number of primes, … " This is incorrect.

I checked this claim about Euler, and Euler didn't say that. Euler's work on this problem appeared in: Leonard Euler (1737) "Variae observationes circa series infinitas" (Various observations about infinite series), Commentarii academiae scientiarum imperialis Petropolitanae, 9 : 160–188 ; specifically, Theorema 7 on pp. 172–174. Euler wasn't considering arithmetic progressions. Instead, he proved the sum-product formula for the Riemann zeta function for the value s=1. He did not conclude from that result that there were an infinitude of primes.

Euler's article is discussed in: C. Edward Sandifer, The Early Mathematics of Leonhard Euler (Providence, Rhode Island:  The Mathematical Society of America, 2007), pp. 249–260. On p. 254, Sandifer states: "This result [i.e., Theorem 7] is sometimes cited as Euler's proof that there are infinitely many prime numbers.  Because the harmonic series diverges, the product diverges, and a product can diverge only if it is an infinite product.  Hence there must be infinitely many prime numbers.  Though the infinitude of primes is immediate, Euler does not explicitly make the connection here."

VexorAbVikipædia (talk) 02:38, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

 * I don't know about Euler's contribution precisely, but currently the article states "Some preliminary work on the problem was done by the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler in 1737. Specifically, he proved the sum-product formula for the Riemann zeta function for the value s=1." I don't know what this is supposed to mean: the zeta function has a simple pole at s=1, is this what Euler proved? The main point in Dirichlet's proof is that the Dirichlet L-functions for nontrivial characters have neither pole nor zero at s=1 and this then gives rise to Dirichlet's theorem. VexorAbVikipædia, could you add a more precise statement what Euler actually proved and also look for a secondary source on the matter? Thanks! Jakob.scholbach (talk) 07:39, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
 * I have removed this unclear statement and provided a reference for the claim that the case a=1 can be proven in an elementary way. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 11:29, 9 August 2016 (UTC)
 * I apologize for the delay in replying to your comment of 21 July 2016. Wikipedia did not alert me about your comment.
 * Euler did not prove that the zeta function has a simple pole at s=1; instead, he showed that for s=1, the zeta function has a pole of at least order 1, but he did not prove that the order of the pole is exactly 1 (i.e., simple). Specifically, he proved that for the case of s=1, the zeta function reduces to a ratio of two infinite products, which appears in his paper of 1737 — which (incidentally) is mentioned later in the History section but which you did not delete, so the reader has no idea when Euler did work related to the zeta function or what that work was.
 * I'll replace "he proved the sum-product formula for the Riemann zeta function for the value s=1." with "he proved that for the value s=1, the Riemann zeta function reduces to a ratio of two infinite products, ∏ p / ∏ (p–1), for all primes p."
 * Regarding your request for a secondary source, that's provided by (Sandifer, 2007), p. 253, which I cited and to which I provided a link.
 * VexorAbVikipædia (talk) 18:52, 9 August 2016 (UTC)
 * OK, that sounds more reasonable. However, this is, as far as I can see, unrelated to Dirichlet's theorem. (Euler's result implies that there are infinitely many primes, which is a much weaker statement than Dirichlet's theorem). For this reason, I would not include this statement here. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 08:36, 10 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Almost every account of Dirichlet's theorem on arithmetic progressions mentions both Euler's and Legendre's earlier work on the problem: Dirichlet's paper of 1837 cites Legendre's work, and Legendre, in turn, cites Euler's work.  Since they cited their predecessors' work, that work should be included here, so that readers can conveniently discover and access the sources that Dirichlet and Legendre cite.  (They apparently thought that it was worthy of note.)  More importantly, some readers will wonder:  where did Dirichlet and Legendre get the idea that a simple arithmetic progression might include an infinite number of primes?  … and that the zeta function might be a route to a proof?  Answer:  Euler.
 * VexorAbVikipædia (talk) 16:39, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

 * I have tweaked this a bit: the fact that Euler did not at this point note the infinitude of primes is not terribly important, IMO. This is a basic fact known since Euclid. Also, formulas such as $$\zeta(2)=\pi^2/6$$ (known to Euler) make it obvious that there are infinitely many primes. Let's not draw the reader's attention to minor bibliographical aspects of the history here. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 11:51, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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Dog Day Afternoon

Dog Day Afternoon is a 1975 American biographical crime drama film directed by Sidney Lumet and produced by Martin Bregman and Martin Elfand. The film stars Al Pacino, John Cazale, James Broderick, and Charles Durning. The screenplay is written by Frank Pierson and is based on the Life magazine article "The Boys in the Bank" by P. F. Kluge and Thomas Moore. The feature chronicled the 1972 robbery and hostage situation led by John Wojtowicz and Salvatore Naturile at a Chase Manhattan branch in Brooklyn.

Elfand brought Bregman's attention to the article, who proceeded to negotiate a deal with Warner Bros. and clear the rights to use the story. Pierson conducted his research and wrote a script that centered the story of the robbery around Wojtowicz. The cast was selected by Lumet and Pacino, with the latter selecting past co-stars from his Off-Broadway plays. Filming took place between September and November 1974, and the production was finished three weeks ahead of schedule.

Upon theatrical release on September 21, 1975, Dog Day Afternoon was a critical and box office success. The film was nominated for seven Golden Globe Awards and six Academy Awards (including Best Picture) and won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. In 2009, Dog Day Afternoon was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress, and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Plot
On August 22, 1972, first-time crook Sonny Wortzik, and his friends Salvatore "Sal" Naturile and Stevie attempt to rob the First Brooklyn Savings Bank. The plan immediately goes awry when Stevie loses his nerve and flees. Sonny discovers they arrived after the daily cash pickup, and find only $1,100 in cash.

Sonny takes the bank's traveler's checks and burns the register in a trash can, but the smoke raises suspicion outside, and the building is surrounded by police. The two panicked robbers take the bank employees hostage.

Police Detective Sergeant Eugene Moretti calls the bank and Sonny bluffs that he is prepared to kill the hostages. Sal assures Sonny that he is ready to kill if necessary. A security guard has an asthma attack and Sonny releases him as a display of good faith. Moretti convinces Sonny to step outside. Using the head teller as a shield, Sonny begins a dialogue with Moretti that culminates in his shouting "Attica! Attica!" to invoke the recent Attica Prison riot. The crowd begins cheering for Sonny.

Sonny demands a vehicle to drive himself and Sal to the airport so they can board a jet. He also demands pizzas to be brought for the hostages, and for his wife to be brought to the bank. Sonny's partner, Leon Shermer, arrives and reveals that the robbery was intended to pay for Leon's sex reassignment surgery, and divulges that Sonny has children with his estranged wife, Angie.

As night sets in, the bank's lights are shut off as FBI Agent Sheldon takes command of the scene. He refuses to give Sonny any more favors, but when the bank manager Mulvaney goes into diabetic shock, Sheldon lets a doctor inside. Sheldon then convinces Leon to talk to Sonny on the phone. Leon had been hospitalized at Bellevue Hospital after a suicide attempt. Leon turns down Sonny's offer to join him and Sal in their escape, and Sonny tells the police that Leon had nothing to do with the robbery.

Sonny agrees to let Mulvaney leave, but the manager refuses to leave his employees. The FBI calls Sonny out of the bank to talk to his mother, who fails to persuade him to give himself up. Back inside, Sonny dictates his will to one of the hostages, acting as a secretary, leaving money from his life insurance for Angie, and for Leon to have the surgery.

When the requested limousine arrives, Sonny checks for hidden weapons or booby traps, and selects Agent Murphy to drive him, Sal, and the remaining hostages to Kennedy Airport. Sonny sits in the front beside Murphy with Sal behind. Murphy repeatedly asks Sal to point his gun at the roof so Sal will not accidentally shoot him.

As they wait on the airport tarmac for the plane to taxi into position, Sal releases another hostage, who gives him her rosary beads for his first plane trip. Murphy again reminds Sal to aim his gun away. Sal does, and Sheldon seizes Sonny's weapon, allowing Murphy to pull a revolver hidden in his armrest and shoot Sal in the head. Sonny is immediately arrested, and the hostages are freed.

The film ends as Sonny watches Sal's body being taken from the car on a stretcher. On-screen text reveals that Sonny was sentenced to twenty years in prison, that Angie and her children subsisted on welfare, and that Leon was a woman living in New York City.

Cast

 * Al Pacino as Sonny Wortzik (based on John Wojtowicz)
 * John Cazale as Sal Naturile (Salvatore Naturile)
 * Charles Durning as Sergeant Eugene Moretti (Louis C. Cottell)
 * Chris Sarandon as Leon Shermer (Elizabeth Eden)
 * Penelope Allen as Sylvia 'Mouth' (Shirley "Mouth" Ball)
 * Sully Boyar as Mulvaney (Robert Barrett)
 * Susan Peretz as Angie (Carmen Wojtowicz)
 * James Broderick as FBI Special Agent Sheldon (Richard J. Baker)
 * Lance Henriksen as FBI Special Agent Murphy (James Murphy)
 * Carol Kane as Jenny 'The Squirrel'
 * Beulah Garrick as Margaret
 * Sandra Kazan as Deborah
 * Estelle Omens as Edna (Josephine Tuttino)
 * Marcia Jean Kurtz as Miriam
 * Amy Levitt as Maria
 * Gary Springer as Stevie (Robert Westenberg)
 * John Marriott as Howard (Calvin Jones)
 * Philip Charles MacKenzie as the doctor
 * Dick Anthony Williams as the Limo Driver / Undercover FBI Agent
 * Judith Malina as Sonny's mother (Theresa Basso-Wojtowicz)
 * Dominic Chianese as Sonny's father
 * Edwin "Chu Chu" Malave as Maria's boyfriend

Background
On August 22, 1972, John Wojtowicz, Salvatore Naturile, and Robert Westenberg attempted to rob a branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank at 450 Avenue P in Gravesend, Brooklyn. The robbers aimed to take the US$150,000–$200,000 (equivalent to $ million in ) that they expected to be delivered at 3:30 p.m. that afternoon by an armored truck. According to Wojtowicz, a Chase Manhattan executive that he met at a gay bar in Greenwich Village tipped him off. They entered the bank at 3:00 p.m. to discover that the armored truck had instead taken money away at 11:00 a.m. The robbers took the $29,000 that was available at the branch and tried to escape. Westenberg was successful, but Wojtowicz and Naturile were left behind as the police arrived on the scene. The robbery then turned into a hostage situation.

Two hours into the negotiations Wojtowicz and Naturile extended a list of demands to the police: release Elizabeth Eden (Ernest Aron) from Kings County Hospital Center in exchange for a hostage, bring hamburgers and Coca-Cola, and provide transportation to John F. Kennedy International Airport for them and the hostages. In the words of Wojtowicz: "I want them to deliver my wife here from King's County hospital. His name is Ernest Aron. It's a guy. I'm gay." They also requested a plane to fly to a safe location, where the unharmed hostages were to be released. After more than fourteen hours of holding the hostages, Naturile was killed, and Wojtowicz was arrested at Kennedy Airport.

Wojtowicz told Judge Anthony J. Travia that the motive for the robbery was to pay for a sexual reassignment surgery for Eden. Shortly after a suicide attempt in 1971, Eden expressed to Father Gennaro Aurichio the desire to marry Wojtowicz. Aurichio recalled Eden told him, "I'm all mixed up. I want to be a girl. I have to marry the boy I introduced you to. If I don't, I'll be more successful next time." Aurichio, who counseled Eden, agreed to perform a ceremony. He told Eden that he would "perform a blessing" but that he was unable and unwilling to "perform a homosexual marriage". Aurichio was subsequently defrocked. Arthur Bell, an investigative journalist, expressed his belief that the surgery was a peripheral motive for the robbery. Bell met Wojtowicz before the hold up through the Gay Activists Alliance, under the alias of "Littlejohn Basso". In his article published by The Village Voice, he laid out Wojtowicz's connection to pornographer Mike Umbers and proposed that the heist was organized by the Gambino crime family instead.

Development
Life published in its September 22, 1972, issue a chronicle of the robbery. The feature, written by P. F. Kluge and Thomas Moore, was titled "The Boys in the Bank". It detailed the holdup and the hostages' eventual fraternization with their captors. The authors compared Wojtowicz's appearance to that of Dustin Hoffman or Al Pacino. The feature caught the attention of producer Martin Elfand. Elfand took it to Martin Bregman, who piqued the interest of Warner Bros.' executive Richard Shepherd. Elfand hired Kluge and Moore to interview the people involved in the story. Before the script was written, Elfand wanted to ensure he had signed releases by all the interviewees for the story rights. After the negotiation, each hostage received $600 ; one hostage asked for more money and was not included in the script. Initially, Westenberg was offered $2,000, but he turned it down following the advice of his lawyer, as he was still serving a two-year sentence. After his release, he settled for $750. Wojtowicz received $7,500 for the rights to the story. From the money, he earmarked $2,500 to Eden's reassignment surgery. News outlets reported Wojtowicz was granted one percent of the film's net profit; Bregman later denied that his company, Artists Entertainment Complex, granted Wojtowicz a percentage of the gross. Bregman added he would give him $25,000 if the film performed as well as Serpico (1973) at the box office. Wojtowicz's lawyer, Mark Landsman, retained $3,500 of the payment he received. Meanwhile, Warner Bros paid for Naturile's funeral. The working title of the film was The Boys in the Bank. The budget was set at an estimate of $3.5 million (equivalent to $ million in ), or $3.8 million (equivalent to $ million in ).

Frank Pierson was hired to write the screenplay. Aside from Kluge and Moore's research, Pierson conducted his own. He contacted journalist Randy Wicker, who covered the story of the heist for gay publications, and provided technical assistance regarding Manhattan's gay nightclub scene. Pierson decided he wanted to center the story around Wojtowicz, who refused to receive Pierson in prison while he was in a financial dispute with Warner Bros. Pierson analyzed the tapes of the interviews and news articles about the robbery and approached those involved for additional information. Pierson could not define Wojtowicz's character because a different impression was left on each of the interviewees. The project overwhelmed him, but he could not quit, as he had spent his cash advance. Pierson reviewed his material and found the unfulfilled promises Wojtowicz made as the common trait. Pierson viewed them as "the story of the bank" and the failure of the robbery. Pierson finished the screenplay by Christmas 1973. Author Leslie Waller later worked on a novelization of the Pierson script, to be published after the release of the film by Dell Publishing.

Casting
With the finished script, Bregman met with director Sidney Lumet and Pacino in London. Pacino, who was at the time represented by Bregman, agreed to play the role. He then backed out, and Dustin Hoffman expressed interest. Bregman did not meet with Hoffman; he felt Pacino could bring the "sensitivity" and "vulnerability" needed for the role. After more discussion, Pacino accepted the part but then rejected it again. Bregman attributed it to Pacino's use of method acting and said it "might have been a world [Pacino] did not want to explore". Bregman added that "no major star had ever played a gay". He wanted to make the film with Pacino. The actor backed out of the project a third time and told Bregman he wanted to return to the theater. He said he would "never make the adjustment necessary for the movies". Pacino again returned to the project and attributed his behavior to stress and drinking, and that he needed "a life outside work". Lumet mentioned the characterization of Sonny Wortzik's (Wojtowicz) "insane framework of life" as the stress factor for Pacino. In a meeting before the rehearsals, Pacino asked Pierson and Lumet to tone down Sonny Wortzik's behavior; his request was rejected. Eden described Wojtowicz as "a very domineering person", and added: "he is good-natured ... but sometimes went overboard ... and he terrified me". Wicker later said that the screenplay of Dog Day Afternoon portrayed Wojtowicz to be "more rational than he really was".

Much of the cast consisted of actors Pacino performed with in Off-Broadway plays. Pacino asked Lumet to cast John Cazale as Sal Naturile, whose was the only name that did not change for the film. Pacino had worked with Cazale on Israel Horovitz's play The Indian Wants the Bronx, and then in the 1972 film The Godfather. Lumet was not initially convinced he should cast Cazale. He was thirty-nine years old, while Naturile was eighteen years old at the time of his death, but the director agreed after meeting him. Penelope Allen starred as Sylvia "Mouth" (based on Shirley "Mouth" Ball), and had worked with Pacino before on Scarecrow. For the role of Wortzik's mother, Pacino asked Lumet to cast Judith Malina, co-founder of The Living Theatre. Lumet wanted to portray the difference between a street police officer and one with an office job. Charles Durning and James Broderick were cast as Moretti and Sheldon respectively, though Lumet initially decided on Durning being the bank manager and Broderick playing Moretti until Pacino intervened. Because Durning was also working on Robert Wise's Two People, Lumet and Wise had to coordinate his schedule, as he flew between California and New York. Lumet did not worry about Broderick's recasting because of his reputation for method acting. Sully Boyar was cast as bank manager Mulvaney (based on Robert Barrett). Chris Sarandon convinced Lumet and Pacino during his reading and was cast as Leon Shermer. Lumet asked him to shift the focus of his characterization to "a little less Blanche DuBois, a little more Queens housewife".

There were three weeks of rehearsals, and the name of the project was changed to Dog Day Afternoon. Pierson flew from Los Angeles to New York at Lumet's request. Pacino refused to kiss Sarandon in a scene as he thought it was "exploitative"; he felt that the script kept "pushing the gay issue" on the audience. He expressed the view that viewers already knew the characters were homosexual and wanted to convey the failure of the relationship instead. Pierson agreed; he realized the couple did not actually kiss and that they had actually carried on a phone conversation. Pierson modified the scene to include the call. The National Gay Task Force approved of the script. Ronald Gold, then director of the organization, welcomed it as "sensitive and tasteful".

Opening scene
Filming took place between September and November 1974. The opening montage shows New York's traffic, bridges, beaches, and neighborhoods before moving to a view of the Manhattan skyline from a cemetery. Lumet wanted to convey "a hot boring day, a dog day afternoon". The director shot the footage from a station wagon, and ended in front of the bank, showing the robbers. The footage was silent, as Lumet decided that he did not want a score for the film. The director felt that "he could not reconcile trying to convince an audience that this really happened ... with putting a music score into it". Editor Dede Allen played Elton John's composition "Amoreena" in the editing room. Lumet added the song to the film, which comes out of the getaway car's radio.

The bank
Most of the film took place inside of the bank. Lumet discarded the idea of building a studio set; instead, the director found a street with a warehouse on the lower floor of a building that used to be an automotive workshop. The crew built a bank set with movable walls, which allowed Lumet to place the cameras as he desired, and to use long lenses to shoot from a distance. The warehouse's location also allowed Lumet to transition freely between the bank and the street, and he avoided changing film locations, and allowed the street to be visible from the inside of the bank. The scenes were shot on Prospect Park West, between 17th and 18th streets. The bus line that ran through the street was re-routed for filming, and the second storey of the building housed the production offices and catering.

To capture Pacino's movements in a natural fashion, and to allow the actor greater mobility, Lumet integrated the use of roller skates and wheelchairs for the cameramen in the panoramic shots. Lumet would order the camera operators to be pulled as Pacino acted to make the scene look "naturalistic", and "like it was shot by television cameramen, fighting their way through the crowd". He wanted the production to have the appearance of a newsreel. The film featured close-ups centered on Sonny and the situation in the bank.

Two different cameras were used to cover the negotiations from Durning and Pacino's side. Lumet and cinematographer Victor J. Kemper relied on long shots to depict the point of view of the police, and the robbers' "entrapment". Lumet wanted to use the light available on the set to avoid additional luminescence. He fitted the bank with extra fluorescent lamps to achieve desired exposure, and he used other fluorescent lamps of lower power as fill light in close-ups. The film required seven nights of filming. Lumet needed the neighbors' cooperation for the use of their fire escapes to hold additional lights. The production was challenged by the weather, as temperatures dropped. On the day of the heist in August 1972, the temperature reached 87 F when the robbers entered the bank. The film was shot during the fall; to avoid having their breath be visible, the cast placed ice in their mouths to even out the temperature. Lighting was provided for the scenes by emergency vehicles, that were specially fitted with four 7,500 watt lamps. The white brick façade of the building provided light reflection. An existing lamp post was utilized, and its lighting reinforced to keep the crowd visible. Emergency lights were used on set in scenes where the power was shut off by the police.

Pacino shot the first scene wearing sunglasses, but he asked the director to re-shoot it after watching the dailies, as he felt that Sonny "wanted to get caught". He also shaved off a moustache he grew for the role after the replay. Lumet allowed the cast to ad-lib lines with the condition that they did not deviate greatly from the script by Pierson. The production team had recorded improvisations during the rehearsals that were added to the script. Lumet wanted the dialog to "feel natural", and he encouraged the actors to wear their own clothes and to not use makeup.

A crowd of three to four hundred extras was hired. Meanwhile, Lumet asked the neighbors to appear in the film by watching from their windows. The director offered to relocate to a hotel for those who did not want to be disturbed by the shooting. The crowd grew as filming progressed, and pedestrians joined the actors. Lumet directed the crowd and "whipp[ed] them up to a frenzy". By the second week, he felt that the crowd could improvise on its own. To amplify the effect in the film, he utilized hand-held cameras. In regards to the project while it was filming, Lumet said "It's out of my hands. It's got a life of its own". In a scene on the street, before Pacino left the bank, assistant director Burtt Harris whispered to him to ask the crowd about Attica. Pacino then improvised the complete dialog with the crowd.

Phone conversations
Lumet decided to shoot the phone conversations Sonny had with his wife and Leon back-to-back. As Pacino acted the scene, he increased the intensity of the portrayal. While both conversations lasted a total of fourteen minutes, Lumet's camera could only shoot ten at a time, and he had to bring a second camera. For the scene, Lumet separated Pacino from the rest of the bank with a black velvet mask to isolate him. He left a hole for both cameras, and for himself to look in. Lumet wanted a second take. An exhausted Pacino accepted, and he kept the same intensity. At the end of the scene, Lumet and Pacino cried. The director later remembered it as "an amazing moment, as good a moment of directing as I've ever had in my life".

The call between Pacino and Sarandon was improvised. Lumet felt that Sarandon "had great taste", and that the actor would not resort to "homosexual clichés". He deemed the humor of his improvisation as "genuinely funny", and that it was not "laughing at a gay character". Sarandon felt that the conversation was welcomed by the audiences because it "wasn't about a drag queen and his boyfriend", and that it reflected two people that were "trying to come to grips with what is wrong in their relationship." The film was characterized by its "light comic touch", and according to critic David Thomson, for its "ear and instinct for comedy". In Pierson's script, Wortzik's question regarding which country Sal wanted to escape to did not have a scripted response, but Cazale improvised by answering "Wyoming". Lumet had to cover his mouth, as he nearly interrupted the scene by laughing.

Final scene
The start of the final scene at the bank was shot on a 40 F night with wind. Pacino was sprinkled with water to simulate sweat; Lumet mixed the artificial sweat himself, as he felt that the makeup crews often used it in excess, or that it was insufficient. The director used a mixture of glycerin and water that he learned to make during the shooting of 12 Angry Men. The mixture lasted longer and allowed him better continuity throughout the scenes.

Harris directed the scene of the caravan that headed to Kennedy Airport from a helicopter. A plane and squad cars on the tarmac were used. Senator Jacob Javits, an acquaintance of Lumet, facilitated the negotiations with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The production team was given one day to shoot in an area of the airport that was not a terminal. The international flights that headed to the main runway had to go around the shooting location. Lumet directed the scene at the airport from the ground. He chose to cut from the close-up after Sal was shot and a gun was held to Sonny's head, to a long shot; the view presented a panorama of the scene at the airport. Lumet centered on Pacino and ordered the crew to roll Cazale on a stretcher to be visible by the actor. Pacino used the image to improvise his reaction.

The shooting was completed three weeks ahead of schedule. After editing the film, Lumet and Allen felt that the slow-paced scene of Sonny 'dictating' his will/testament conflicted with the rest of the fast-moving sequences, so they decided to restore six to seven minutes of discarded footage to balance the tempo of the film. Lumet stated the scene of the last will was the reason for his decision to work on the film; he considered it "moving", but worried about the audience laughing at it. His worries were based on what he considered "the defensive attitude on sexual subjects": to avoid it, he focused on portraying emotional performances by the actors throughout the film. Lumet had access to the footage of Wojtowicz and Eden's ceremony, originally broadcast by Channel 5 at the time of the robbery, which featured Wojtowicz in his army uniform presenting a wedding ring with a flash cube to Eden, who wore a wedding dress. Wojtowicz's mother and eight male bridesmaids were present. Lumet planned to use it in the film; the scene would have featured the footage broadcast on a television in the bank, but he decided not to include it, as he felt it would be "unrecoverable" and that the audiences would not "take the rest of the movie seriously".

Release and reception
Dog Day Afternoon opened on September 20, 1975, at the San Sebastián International Film Festival. The film premiered in New York City on September 21, 1975, and released nationwide in October. It grossed between $50 million (equivalent to $ million in ) and $56 million (equivalent to $ million in ).

The New York Times delivered a favorable review. It called the film a "gaudy street-carnival", and Lumet's "most accurate, most flamboyant" depiction of New York. The reviewer remarked the "brilliant characterizations" of the cast: Pacino's display of a "bravura style", Sarandon's performance of "fear, dignity and silliness" and the acting "that one remembers" from the supporting cast. New York Daily News gave Dog Day Afternoon four stars: it described the film as a "gut-level human comedy" and called Pacino "stunning", "brilliantly erratic and terribly touching". The publication felt that Pacino portrayed "a rich, volatile character". It favored Durning and Sarandon, and called the female cast "marvelous". The Record welcomed the performances as "very natural". It determined that "all the slickness" was on Pierson's script, and it attributed it to its closeness to the real events portrayed on the film. For The Village Voice, critic Andrew Sarris opined that Pacino acted "assiduously with the whites of his eyes". Sarris also noted that "pain [came] pouring out of Pacino's eyes" as he deemed Sonny a "Freudian tragic hero", and that the combination with Cazale's character's "deadpan death wish" produced "much emotional debris". The piece declared the "high point" of the film to be the phone conversation between Pacino and Sarandon. Sarris pointed that the dialogue featured "two wounded creatures capable of an extraordinary emotional audacity", and concluded that the film was to be "seen, but not swallowed whole" and "making heroes out of felons" was "a short step to utter chaos". Film critic Roger Ebert rated it with three-and-a-half stars out of four, welcoming its "irreverent, quirky sense of humor". Gary Arnold of The Washington Post called it "a triumphant new classic of American movie naturalism". Penelope Gilliatt of The New Yorker wrote, "Though the farcical tone of the movie is blusterous, falling into the common show-biz habit of supplying energy in place of intent, the movie succeeds, on the whole, because it has the crucial farcical value of not faltering."

Gene Siskel gave Dog Day Afternoon four stars on his review for the Chicago Tribune, and rated the film as "superb", noting the "scenes mixing the fear of violence with insane laughter". He felt that Pacino, Cazale, and Durning kept the film from "degenerating into silliness". Siskel talked about Pacino's display of "so much energy" that made him "believe the unbelievable" and Cazale's "haunting, sallow-cheeked silence". Lumet and Allen were praised for the "terrific, roller-coaster" pace of the film. United Press International defined it as an "exceptionally fine film—outrageously funny and deeply moving", and welcomed Pacino's acting as a "dazzing display". The supporting roles by Cazale, Durning, Allen and Broderick were deemed "excellent", while Peretz and Sarandon's performances were singled out. For Joe Baltake, Pacino's appearance was a "raw, high voltage, uproariously funny performance". His review on the Philadelphia Daily News continued by calling the film "super-charged", and "multi-leveled" by "a slapstick comedy, tense drama, caper tale, biographical material and character study". Baltake compared Cazale's appearance on the film to that of a Coonskin character by Ralph Bakshi. In regards to the rest of the cast, he determined "everyone [was] good". He praised Kemper's cinematography as "you-are-there" and Allen's "razor-sharp editing".

The Boston Globe praised Lumet's "wonderful" direction of "in-depth, psychological probing". Critic Kevin Kelly hailed the editing by Allen as "brilliant", and defined Pacino's performance as "virtuose" and Cazele's as "shyly and sorrowfully eloquent". The review also favored the "fine performances" by the supporting cast. The Evening Sun applauded the humor in the movie. Critic Lou Cedrone felt that it was "natural and true"; he stressed that Pierson's script, combined with the work of Pacino and Lumet, made the drama "never uncomfortable". The Detroit Free Press expressed that the picture relied on Pacino's "tender, forthright, generous and affecting in extreme" performance.

The Miami Herald praised Dog Day Afternoon as "a movie of fascinating realism". Critic John Huddy expressed that the street scenes were "magnificently staged", and that Lumet "finds order in chaos, sense in insanity". The Atlanta Constitution applauded Durning as "absolutely real", and the reviewer opined that the cast was "consistently fine". It concluded by mentioning "the excellent script and editing", and defined the film as "funny and poignant".

The Montreal Gazette mentioned the variety of characters presented in the film. The reviewer concluded that it was "a monument to the thought and care" by the production team. Pacino's "remarkable performance", and Pierson's "all-inclusive" script were noted. The Guardian opined that Dog Day Afternoon presented Lumet's "best film for some considerable time", and deemed Pacino's acting as "brilliant" and Cazale's as "well-observed". The Sydney Morning Herald considered it "beautifully directed" by Lumet, and "another mature American picture which faces and mirrors reality".

Lawsuits
Wojtowicz's wife, Carmen, received $50 from Artists Entertainment Complex for her contribution to the story. She signed the documents to Wicker, who recorded in exchange a tape with her account on behalf of the company. The depiction of her character, Angie, in the film affected her, as she felt she was deemed "repulsive". The novelization of Dog Day Afternoon described her as "a fat cunt", "no-good pusbag" and a "guinea broad", among other pejorative terms. In the film, Angie laments her weight gain as the reason for Sonny's distance. Wojtowicz was also angered by her depiction in the film, and defined his then-wife as "a sweet kid". Pierson declared that the character was presented "farthest from the truth", and that he could not "stand how [Lumet] casted the role", or how Peretz portrayed her. He further stressed his disappointment at the publicity campaign that presented the film as a "true story", and remarked its differences with the Life article. Pierson presented a complaint to the Writers Guild of America. Kluge, a coauthor of the Life feature, believed the film-makers "stayed with the surface of a lively journalistic story" and that the film had a "strong, fast-paced story" without "reflection" or "a contemplative view of life".

Carmen took legal action against Warner Bros. On behalf of her, and her daughters Carmen and Dawn, Wojtowicz filed a lawsuit alleging invasion of privacy and requesting $12,000,000 in damages. The appellate division of the New York Supreme Court ruled in favor of Warner Bros, as the court determined that the true names or pictures of the family and robbers were not used in the film or the book. Wojtowicz then sued the studio for 1% of the earnings he claimed were included in the deal for the use of his story; he received $40,000 after lawyer's fees were deducted. The New York Supreme Court ordered that $100 were to be given weekly to Carmen Wojtowicz, plus $50 weekly for both children. The rest of the money was placed in escrow of the New York State Crime Victims Compensation Board to pay for the claims of the victims of the 1972 robbery.

Legacy
Analysis in the 21st century of Dog Day Afternoon has interpreted it as an "anti-authoritarian film" that "defied the establishment," particularly with the emphasis on the Attica Prison riot and the character's resentment toward the police. Commentators also mentioned its contemporaneity with the aftermath of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. It became one of the first motion pictures to portray a bisexual male character as the protagonist. In 2009, Dog Day Afternoon was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress, and it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

On November 11, 1979, a censored and shortened version was broadcast on NBC's Sunday Night Big Event, which marked the film's television premiere. It was released on VHS in 1985. In 2006, Warner Home Video released Dog Day Afternoon on a double-disc DVD. For the film's fortieth anniversary, a two-disc blu-ray was released in 2015. Meanwhile,

AllMovie gave the movie five stars out of five. The review defined it as "a quintessential 1970s story", and focused on the film's "contemporary tensions over law, media, and sexuality". Christopher Null wrote in 2006 that the film "captures perfectly the zeitgeist of the early 1970s, a time when optimism was scraping rock bottom and John Wojtowicz was as good a hero as we could come up with". During the 2011 San Francisco International Film Festival, the film was included as a tribute to Pierson for his recent death. The San Francisco Chronicle reflected on the time of its release, and the reviewer felt that "it seemed as if the great movies would never stop, when the extraordinary creative burst we'd been seeing in the 1970s looked as though it might go on forever". The A.V. Club called it a "frank social melodrama that's also a celebration of quotidian bravery", while it praised the cinematography by Kemper that "captures the joy as well as the decay of a crowded city". IGN delivered a good review, and considered Pacino's performance to be "spectacular, and achieves a kind of nuance and complexity that few actors from his or any other generation have before or since achieved". Meanwhile, the reviewer considered that the movie displayed the reason Cazale was "one of the great character actors of all time".

In popular culture
The 1977 Italian film Operazione Kappa: sparate a vista was loosely based on Dog Day Afternoon. The 1987 Hong Kong action film Yan man ying hung (People's Hero) was a remake of the film. For his audition on The Simpsons, actor Hank Azaria used an imitation voice based on Pacino's Dog Day Afternoon character. It was the basis for the final voice of Moe Szyslak. A bank robbery featuring Sonny and Sal was featured on The Simpsons' episode "I Don't Wanna Know Why the Caged Bird Sings". In 2006, Marcia Jean Kurtz and Lionel Pina reprised their Dog Day Afternoon roles as Miriam Douglas and a pizza delivery man in the heist thriller film Inside Man.

The names of several television series episodes referenced the film, including All in the Family, Welcome Back, Kotter, Alice, St. Elsewhere, Sledge Hammer!, Hill Street Blues, Perfect Strangers, The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, The New Lassie, Kenan & Kel, King of the Hill, Bob's Burgers, Supernatural, and 2 Broke Girls. The shout "Attica! Attica!" was also reproduced in multiple films and television series.

Accolades
Dog Day Afternoon was nominated for six Academy Awards. Pierson received the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. The film was nominated for seven Golden Globes but won none. It received six British Academy Film Awards nominations: Pacino was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role and Allen won the Best Editing. Pierson also received the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Written Drama, and Durning the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actor. At the San Sebastián International Film Festival Pacino won Best Actor, while the movie was nominated for Best Film.

The film ranked at number seventy on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills list. Meanwhile, the line "Attica! Attica!" placed at number eighty-six on 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes. It was nominated for 100 Years...100 Movies in 1998 and 2007. In 2006, Premiere issued its "100 Greatest Performances of All Time". The magazine placed Pacino's performance as Sonny as the fourth-greatest ever. In 2012, the Motion Picture Editors Guild listed Dog Day Afternoon as the twentieth best edited film of all time based on a survey of its membership.

title: Dog Day Afternoon


text:
Talk:39/Smooth

Reception and Live Sections Cleanup
Same person writing the Reception section for this and Kerplunk? Difficult to read, will allocate some time to fixing it up. Hopefully we can get the article from C to B. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tbfoster (talk • contribs) 02:30, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:39Smooth.jpg
Image:39Smooth.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in Wikipedia articles constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale.

If there is other other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 04:32, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 18:57, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

B-Class
I've been editing this page for a few days now, and I managed to get it from Stub to C. I think if we can get a copy of the album, there's a lot of info we could fill in about this album and possibly get it to B. I don't think there's anything left that I can do, but if there is somehting you can, than good luck! Kiraisgod666 (talk) 19:16, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Genre
I'm pretty sure that this album wasn't Pop punk, but just Punk rock. Also, I'm sure you will find something about this on allmusic or kerrang. Their sound was raw, similar to the one of the first punk bands. Their first pop punk album was Dookie. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.71.91.63 (talk) 08:29, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree that Dookie is their first pop punk album but I have to disagree with this being punk rock, it seems more fitting that it would be classified as alternitive rock 'cuase well just listen to the lyrics; however I see where you're coming from —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.11.174.161 (talk) 07:06, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

"Punk Rock - Rock music with simple arrangements and lyrics expressing anger and social alientation." Seems like Punk to me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Titantuff27 (talk • contribs) 05:18, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Maid?
What does "April Navarro - maid" - mentioned in this article - mean?--92.237.84.183 (talk) 15:17, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on 39/Smooth. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20151123185853/http://www.blender.com/guide/reissue/52045/1039smoothed-out-slappy-hours.html to http://www.blender.com/guide/reissue/52045/1039smoothed-out-slappy-hours.html

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Divided by smooth
What is the origin of the title? And how do you say it – 39 over smooth? MBG02 (talk) 11:22, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

No idea about the origin and most people say "39 Smooth" St. Jimmy (talk) 21:01, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Single
"Ultimate Collectors 7" Vinyl Singles Box Set" has Going To Pasalacqua as a single should that be added? St. Jimmy (talk) 16:41, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

title: Talk:39/Smooth


text:
Talk:Class Warfare

Untitled
Yo, we need to mention the general concept of "class warfare" before discussing a specific book by Chomsky.

 * See Class warfare

The general concept is at class warfare. This article is first and foremost about the book. --mav

title: Talk:Class Warfare


text:
Maotianshan Shales

The Maotianshan Shales are a series of Early Cambrian sedimentary deposits in the Chiungchussu Formation, famous for their Konservat Lagerstätten, deposits known for the exceptional preservation of fossilized organisms or traces. The Maotianshan Shales form one of some forty Cambrian fossil locations worldwide exhibiting exquisite preservation of rarely preserved, non-mineralized soft tissue, comparable to the fossils of the Burgess Shale of British Columbia, Canada. They take their name from Maotianshan Hill in Chengjiang County, Yunnan Province, China.

The most famous assemblage of organisms are referred to as the Chengjiang biota for the multiple scattered fossil sites in Chengjiang. The age of the Chengjiang Lagerstätte is locally termed Qiongzhusian, a stage correlated to the late Atdabanian Stage in Siberian sequences of the middle of the Early Cambrian. The shales date to ≤. The shales also contain the slightly younger Guanshan biota from Malong District in Yunnan, Kaili biota and Balang fauna in Guizhou, Shipai fauna in Hubei, and sponge faunas of Guizhou and Anhui.

Along with the Burgess Shale, the Maotianshan Shales are remarked as "our best window into the Cambrian 'explosion'", especially on the origin of chordates.

History and scientific significance
Although fossils from the region have been known from the early part of the 10th century, Chengjiang was first recognized for its exquisite states of preservation with the 1984 discovery of the naraoiid Misszhouia, a soft-bodied relative of trilobites. Since then, the locality has been intensively studied by scientists throughout the world, yielding a constant flow of new discoveries and triggering an extensive scientific debate surrounding the interpretation of discoveries. Over this time, taxa have been revised or reassigned to different groups. Interpretations have led to many refinements of the phylogeny of groups and even the erection of the new phylum Vetulicolia of primitive deuterostomes.

The Chengjiang biota has all the animal groups found in the Burgess Shale; however, since it is ten million years older, it more strongly supports the deduction that metazoans diversified earlier or faster in the early Cambrian than does the Burgess Shale fauna alone. The preservation of an extremely diverse faunal assemblage renders the Maotianshan shale the world's most important for understanding the evolution of early multi-cellular life, particularly the members of phylum Chordata, which includes all vertebrates. The Chengjiang fossils comprise the oldest diverse metazoan assemblage above the Proterozoic-Phanerozoic transition and, thus, the fossil record's best data source for understanding the apparently rapid diversification of life known as the Cambrian Explosion.

One of the most intriguing locations of the Chengjiang biota is the Haiyan Lagerstätte where hundreds of juvenile specimens have been found. This unique location offers insights into the development of most animal groups and as such is a unique deposit in the Cambrian.

IUGS geological heritage site
In respect of 'the Chengjiang fossils represent[ing] an uparalleled record of the fundamentally important rapid diversification of metazoan life in the early Cambrian', the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) included the 'Cambrian Chengjiang fossil site and lagerstätte' in its assemblage of 100 'geological heritage sites' around the world in a listing published in October 2022. The organisation defines an 'IUGS Geological Heritage Site' as 'a key place with geological elements and/or processes of international scientific relevance, used as a reference, and/or with a substantial contribution to the development of geological sciences through history.'

Preservation and taphonomy

The fossils occur in a section of mudstone 50 m thick in the Yuanshan Member of the Qiongzhusi Formation. The Yuanshan Member is extensive, covering multiple 10000 km2 of eastern Yunnan Province, where there are many scattered outcrops yielding fossils. Studies of the strata are consistent with a tropical environment with sea level changes and tectonic activity. The region is believed to have been a shallow sea with a muddy bottom. The preserved fauna is primarily benthic and was likely buried by periodic turbidity currents, since most fossils do not show evidence of post-mortem transport. Like the younger Burgess Shale fossils, the paleo-environment enabled preservation of non-mineralized, soft body parts. Fossils are found in thin layers less than an inch thick. The soft parts are preserved as aluminosilicate films, often with high oxidized iron content and often exhibiting exquisite details.

The Chengjiang beds are very deeply weathered, as evidenced by their low specific gravity (i.e., they are very lightweight). Trace fossils are abundant.

Chengjiang fauna

The Chengjiang biota comprises an extremely diverse faunal assembly, with some 185 species described in the literature as of June 2006. Of these, nearly half are arthropods, few of which had the hard, mineral-reinforced exoskeletons characteristic of all later arthropoda; only about 3% of the organisms known from Chengjiang have hard shells. Most of those are the trilobites (of which there are five species), all of which have been found with traces of legs, antennae, and other soft body parts, an exceedingly rare occurrence in the fossil record. Phylum Porifera (sponges; 15 species) and Priapulida (16 species) are also well represented. Other phyla represented are Brachiopoda, Chaetognatha, Cnidaria, Ctenophora, Echinodermata, Hyolitha, Nematomorpha, Phoronida, and Chordata. Possible molluscs include Wiwaxia and Nectocaris.

About one in eight animals are problematic forms of uncertain affinity, some of which may have been evolutionary experiments that survived for only a brief period as benthic environments rapidly changed in the Cambrian. Chengjiang is the richest source of the Lobopodia, a group including many early panarthropods, with six genera represented: Luolishania, Paucipodia, Cardiodictyon, Hallucigenia (also known from the Burgess Shale), Microdictyon, and Onychodictyon.

Perhaps the most important fossils from Chengjiang are eight possible members of phylum Chordata, the phylum to which all vertebrates belong. The most famous is Myllokunmingia, possibly a very primitive agnathid (i.e., jawless fish). Similar to Myllokunmingia is Haikouichthys ercaicunensis, another primitive fish-like animal.

The enigmatic Yunnanozoon lividum is considered to be the earliest hemichordate, possessing many of the characteristic chordate features and providing an anatomical link between invertebrates and chordates. Haikouella lanceolata is described to be the earliest craniate-like chordate. This fish-like animal has many similarities to Y. lividum, but differs in several aspects: It has a discernible heart, dorsal and ventral aorta, gill filaments, and a notochord (neural chord).

At present, there is no agreement as to the systematic placement of the Vetulicola, represented by seven species from Chengjiang. Originally described as crustacean arthropods, the Vetulicola were later erected as a new phylum of primitive deuterostomes by D.G. Shu et al. (Shu 2001). Another researcher places them with the urochordates, based on putative affinity with the phylum Chordata. They are thought to have been swimmers that either were filter feeders or detritivores.

Some two dozen animals from the Chengjiang biota are problematic regarding phylogenetic assignment. Among these,  'Anomalocaris' saron, the alleged predatory terror of the early Cambrian, was the most famous, although that species is later reclassified to Houcaris saron and Innovatiocaris maotianshanensis. Shu (2006) recently described Stromatoveris psygmoglena as a possible bilateran missing link between Ediacaran fronds and Cambrian ctenophores. Cambrocornulitus had a tubicolous shell which probably was biomineralized. It shares some affinities with cornulitids and lophophorates.

The Chengjiang biota is believed to have inhabited a delta front environment rich in oxygen, with high sedimentation rates and major fluctuations in salinity being the main environmental stressors.

Guanshan biota
Located at the Yunnan Province of South China, the Guanshan biota are also Burgess shale-type fossils but slightly younger than the Chengjian biota, and is dated to 515–510 Myr falling within the Cambrian Stage 4. Brachiopods are the most abundant species, followed by trilobites. Other species belong to sponges, chancelloriids, cnidarians, ctenophores, priapulids, lobopodians, arthropods, anomalocaridids, hyoliths, molluscs, brachiopods, echinoderms, algae and vetulicolians. There are also the earliest-known eocrinoids, unidentified soft-bodied animals and abundant trace fossils.

The Guanshan biota are regarded as successors of the Chengjian biota, and share many species. The unique species include arthropods like Guangweicaris and Astutuscaris, vetulicolians like Vetulicola gantoucunensis and V. longbaoshanensis.; chordates like Cathaymyrus haikouensis and Zhongxiniscus intermedius.

title: Maotianshan Shales


text:
Encyclopédie

, better known as Encyclopédie, was a general encyclopedia published in France between 1751 and 1772, with later supplements, revised editions, and translations. It had many writers, known as the Encyclopédistes. It was edited by Denis Diderot and, until 1759, co-edited by Jean le Rond d'Alembert.

The Encyclopédie is most famous for representing the thought of the Enlightenment. According to Denis Diderot in the article "Encyclopédie", the Encyclopédie's aim was "to change the way people think" and for people to be able to inform themselves and to know things. He and the other contributors advocated for the secularization of learning away from the Jesuits. Diderot wanted to incorporate all of the world's knowledge into the Encyclopédie and hoped that the text could disseminate all this information to the public and future generations. Thus, it is an example of democratization of knowledge.

It was also the first encyclopedia to include contributions from many named contributors, and it was the first general encyclopedia to describe the mechanical arts. In the first publication, seventeen folio volumes were accompanied by detailed engravings. Later volumes were published without the engravings, in order to better reach a wide audience within Europe.

Origins
The Encyclopédie was originally conceived as a French translation of Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia (1728). Ephraim Chambers had first published his Cyclopaedia, or an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences in two volumes in London in 1728, following several dictionaries of arts and sciences that had emerged in Europe since the late 17th century. This work became quite renowned, and four editions were published between 1738 and 1742. An Italian translation appeared between 1747 and 1754. In France a member of the banking family Lambert had started translating Chambers into French, but in 1745 the expatriate Englishman John Mills and German Gottfried Sellius were the first to actually prepare a French edition of Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia for publication, which they entitled Encyclopédie.

Early in 1745 a prospectus for the Encyclopédie was published to attract subscribers to the project. This four page prospectus was illustrated by Jean-Michel Papillon, and accompanied by a plan, stating that the work would be published in five volumes from June 1746 until the end of 1748. The text was translated by Mills and Sellius, and it was corrected by an unnamed person, who appears to have been Denis Diderot.

The prospectus was reviewed quite positively and cited at some length in several journals. The Mémoires pour l'histoire des sciences et des beaux arts journal was lavish in its praise: "here are two of the greatest efforts undertaken in literature in a very long time" (voici deux des plus fortes entreprises de Littérature qu'on ait faites depuis long-temps). The Mercure Journal in June 1745, printed a 25-page article that specifically praised Mills' role as translator; the Journal introduced Mills as an English scholar who had been raised in France and who spoke both French and English as a native. The Journal reported that Mills had discussed the work with several academics, was zealous about the project, had devoted his fortune to support this enterprise, and was the sole owner of the publishing privilege.

However, the cooperation fell apart later on in 1745. André le Breton, the publisher commissioned to manage the physical production and sales of the volumes, cheated Mills out of the subscription money, claiming for example that Mills's knowledge of French was inadequate. In a confrontation Le Breton physically assaulted Mills. Mills took Le Breton to court, but the court decided in Le Breton's favour. Mills returned to England soon after the court's ruling. For his new editor, Le Breton settled on the mathematician Jean Paul de Gua de Malves. Among those hired by Malves were the young Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, Jean le Rond d'Alembert, and Denis Diderot. Within thirteen months, in August 1747, Gua de Malves was fired for being an ineffective leader. Le Breton then hired Diderot and d'Alembert to be the new editors. Diderot would remain as editor for the next 25 years, seeing the Encyclopédie through to its completion; d'Alembert would leave this role in 1758. As d'Alembert worked on the Encyclopédie, its title expanded. As of 1750, the full title was Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, par une société de gens de lettres, mis en ordre par M. Diderot de l'Académie des Sciences et Belles-Lettres de Prusse, et quant à la partie mathématique, par M. d'Alembert de l'Académie royale des Sciences de Paris, de celle de Prusse et de la Société royale de Londres. ("Encyclopedia: or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts, by a Company of Persons of Letters, edited by M. Diderot of the Academy of Sciences and Belles-lettres of Prussia: as to the Mathematical Portion, arranged by M. d'Alembert of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Paris, of the Academy of Sciences in Prussia and of the Royal Society of London.") The title page was amended as d'Alembert acquired more titles.

Publication
The work consisted of 28 volumes, with 71,818 articles and 3,129 illustrations. The first seventeen volumes were published between 1751 and 1765; eleven volumes of plates were finished by 1772. Engraver Robert Bénard provided at least 1,800 plates for the work. The Encyclopédie sold 4,000 copies during its first twenty years of publication and earned a profit of 2 million livres for its investors. Because of its occasional radical contents, the Encyclopédie caused much controversy in conservative circles, and after the publication of the second volume, it was briefly suspended from publishing by royal edict of 1752. Joly de Fleury accused it of "destroying royal authority, fomenting a spirit of Independence and revolt, and...laying the foundations of an edifice of error, for the corruption of morals and religion, and the promotion of unbelief."

Following the publication of the seventh volume, on the initiative of the Parlement of Paris, the French government suspended the encyclopedia's privilège in 1759. Despite these issues, work continued "in secret," partially because the project had highly placed supporters, such as Malesherbes and Madame de Pompadour. The authorities deliberately ignored the continued work; they thought their official ban was sufficient to appease the church and other enemies of the project.

During the "secretive" period, Diderot accomplished a work of subterfuge. The title pages of volumes 1 through 7, published between 1751 and 1757, claimed Paris as the place of publication. However, the title pages of the subsequent text volumes, 8 through 17, published together in 1765, show Neufchastel as the place of publication. Neuchâtel is safely across the French border in what is now part of Switzerland but which was then an independent principality, where official production of the Encyclopédie was secure from interference by agents of the French state. In particular, regime opponents of the Encyclopédie could not seize the production plates for the Encyclopédie in Paris because those printing plates ostensibly existed only in Switzerland. Meanwhile, the actual production of volumes 8 through 17 quietly continued in Paris.

In 1775, Charles Joseph Panckoucke obtained the rights to reissue the work. He issued five volumes of supplementary material and a two-volume index from 1776 to 1780. Some scholars include these seven "extra" volumes as part of the first full issue of the Encyclopédie, for a total of 35 volumes, although they were not written or edited by the original authors.

From 1782 to 1832, Panckoucke and his successors published an expanded edition of the work in some 166 volumes as the Encyclopédie Méthodique. That work, enormous for its time, occupied a thousand workers in production and 2,250 contributors.

Contributors
Since the objective of the editors of the Encyclopédie was to gather all the knowledge in the world, Diderot and D'Alembert knew they would need various contributors to help them with their project. Many of the philosophes (intellectuals of the French Enlightenment) contributed to the Encyclopédie, including Diderot himself, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Montesquieu. The most prolific contributor was Louis de Jaucourt, who wrote 17,266 articles between 1759 and 1765, or about eight per day, representing a full 25% of the Encyclopédie.

The publication became a place where these contributors could share their ideas and interests, still, as Frank Kafker has argued, the Encyclopedists were not a unified group:

"... despite their reputation, [the Encyclopedists] were not a close-knit group of radicals intent on subverting the Old Regime in France. Instead they were a disparate group of men of letters, physicians, scientists, craftsmen and scholars ... even the small minority who were persecuted for writing articles belittling what they viewed as unreasonable customs—thus weakening the might of the Catholic Church and undermining that of the monarchy—did not envision that their ideas would encourage a revolution."

Following is a list of notable contributors with their area of contribution (for a more detailed list, see Encyclopédistes):

 * Jean Le Rond d'Alembert – editor; science (especially mathematics), contemporary affairs, philosophy, religion, among others
 * Claude Bourgelat – manège, farriery
 * André le Breton – chief publisher; article on printer's ink
 * Louis-Jean-Marie Daubenton – natural history
 * Denis Diderot – chief editor; economics, mechanical arts, philosophy, politics, religion, among others
 * Baron d'Holbach – science (chemistry, mineralogy), politics, religion, among others
 * Chevalier Louis de Jaucourt – economics, literature, medicine, politics, bookbinding, among others
 * Jean-Baptiste de La Chapelle – mathematics
 * Abbé André Morellet – theology, philosophy
 * Montesquieu – part of the article "Goût" ("Taste")
 * François Quesnay – articles on tax farmers and grain
 * Jean-Jacques Rousseau – music, political theory
 * Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune – economics, etymology, philosophy, physics
 * Voltaire – history, literature, philosophy

Due to the controversial nature of some of the articles, several of its editors were sent to jail.

Structure
Like most encyclopedias, the Encyclopédie attempted to collect and summarize human knowledge in a variety of fields and topics, ranging from philosophy to theology to science and the arts. The Encyclopédie was controversial for reorganizing knowledge based on human reason instead of by nature or theology. Knowledge and intellect branched from the three categories of human thought, whereas all other perceived aspects of knowledge, including theology, were simply branches or components of these human-made categories. The introduction to the Encyclopédie, D'Alembert's "Preliminary Discourse", is considered an important exposition of Enlightenment ideals. Among other things, it presents a taxonomy of human knowledge (see Fig. 3), which was inspired by Francis Bacon's The Advancement of Learning. The three main branches of knowledge are: "Memory"/History, "Reason"/Philosophy, and "Imagination"/Poetry. This tree of knowledge was created to help readers evaluate the usefulness of the content within the Encyclopédie, and to organize its content. Notable is the fact that theology is ordered under "philosophy" and that "Knowledge of God" is only a few nodes away from "divination" and "black magic".

Religious and political controversies
The authors of the Encyclopédie challenged religious authority. The authors, especially Diderot and d'Alembert, located religion within a system of reason and philosophy. They did not reject all religious claims, but believed theology and notions of God must be proven. Louis de Jaucourt therefore harshly criticized superstition as an intellectual error in his article on the topic. The writers further doubted the authenticity of presupposed historical events cited in the Bible and questioned the validity of miracles, such as the Resurrection. However, some contemporary scholars argue the skeptical view of miracles in the Encyclopédie may be interpreted in terms of "Protestant debates about the cessation of the charismata."

These challenges led to suppression from church and state authorities. The Encyclopédie and its contributors endured many attacks and attempts at censorship by the clergy or other censors, which threatened the publication of the project as well as the authors themselves. The King's Council suppressed the Encyclopédie in 1759. The Catholic Church, under Pope Clement XIII, placed it on its list of banned books. Prominent intellectuals criticized it, most famously Lefranc de Pompignan at the French Academy. A playwright, Charles Palissot de Montenoy, wrote a play called Les Philosophes to criticize the Encyclopédie. When Abbé André Morellet, one of the contributors to the Encyclopédie, wrote a mock preface for it, he was sent to the Bastille due to allegations of libel.

To defend themselves from controversy, the encyclopedia's articles wrote of theological topics in a mixed manner. Some articles supported orthodoxy, and some included overt criticisms of Christianity. To avoid direct retribution from censors, writers often hid criticism in obscure articles or expressed it in ironic terms. Nonetheless, the contributors still openly attacked the Catholic Church in certain articles with examples including criticizing excess festivals, monasteries, and celibacy of the clergy.

Politics and society
The Encyclopédie is often seen as an influence for the French Revolution because of its emphasis on Enlightenment political theories. Diderot and other authors, in famous articles such as "Political Authority", emphasized the shift of the origin of political authority from divinity or heritage to the people. This Enlightenment ideal, espoused by Rousseau and others, advocated that people have the right to consent to their government in a form of social contract.

Another major, contentious component of political issues in the Encyclopédie was personal or natural rights. Articles such as "Natural Rights" by Diderot explained the relationship between individuals and the general will. The natural state of humanity, according to the authors, is barbaric and unorganized. To balance the desires of individuals and the needs of the general will, humanity requires civil society and laws that benefit all persons. Writers, to varying degrees, criticized Thomas Hobbes' notions of a selfish humanity that requires a sovereign to rule over it.

In terms of economics, the Encyclopédie expressed favor for laissez-faire ideals or principles of economic liberalism. Articles concerning economics or markets, such as "Economic Politics", generally favored free competition and denounced monopolies. Articles often criticized guilds as creating monopolies and approved of state intervention to remove such monopolies. The writers advocated extending laissez-faire principles of liberalism from the market to the individual level, such as with privatization of education and opening of careers to all levels of wealth.

Science and technology
At the same time, the Encyclopédie was a vast compendium of knowledge, notably on the technologies of the period, describing the traditional craft tools and processes. Much information was taken from the Descriptions des Arts et Métiers. These articles applied a scientific approach to understanding the mechanical and production processes, and offered new ways to improve machines to make them more efficient. Diderot felt that people should have access to "useful knowledge" that they can apply to their everyday life.

Influence
The Encyclopédie played an important role in the intellectual foment leading to the French Revolution. "No encyclopaedia perhaps has been of such political importance, or has occupied so conspicuous a place in the civil and literary history of its century. It sought not only to give information, but to guide opinion," wrote the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. In The Encyclopédie and the Age of Revolution, a work published in conjunction with a 1989 exhibition of the Encyclopédie at the University of California, Los Angeles, Clorinda Donato writes the following: "The encyclopedians successfully argued and marketed their belief in the potential of reason and unified knowledge to empower human will and thus helped to shape the social issues that the French Revolution would address. Although it is doubtful whether the many artisans, technicians, or laborers whose work and presence are interspersed throughout the Encyclopédie actually read it, the recognition of their work as equal to that of intellectuals, clerics, and rulers prepared the terrain for demands for increased representation. Thus the Encyclopédie served to recognize and galvanize a new power base, ultimately contributing to the destruction of old values and the creation of new ones (12)."

While many contributors to the Encyclopédie had no interest in radically reforming French society, the Encyclopédie as a whole pointed that way. The Encyclopédie denied that the teachings of the Catholic Church could be treated as authoritative in matters of science. The editors also refused to treat the decisions of political powers as definitive in intellectual or artistic questions. Some articles talked about changing social and political institutions that would improve their society for everyone. Given that Paris was the intellectual capital of Europe at the time and that many European leaders used French as their administrative language, these ideas had the capacity to spread.

The Encyclopédie's influence continues today. Historian Dan O'Sullivan compares it to Wikipedia:

"Like Wikipedia, the Encyclopédie was a collaborative effort involving numerous writers and technicians. As do Wikipedians today, Diderot and his colleagues needed to engage with the latest technology in dealing with the problems of designing an up-to-date encyclopedia. These included what kind of information to include, how to set up links between various articles, and how to achieve the maximum readership."

Statistics
Approximate size of the Encyclopédie:

 * 17 volumes of articles, issued from 1751 to 1765
 * 11 volumes of illustrations, issued from 1762 to 1772
 * 18,000 pages of text
 * 75,000 entries
 * 44,000 main articles
 * 28,000 secondary articles
 * 2,500 illustration indices
 * 20,000,000 words in total

Print run: 4,250 copies (note: even single-volume works in the 18th century seldom had a print run of more than 1,500 copies).

Quotations

 * "The goal of an encyclopedia is to assemble all the knowledge scattered on the surface of the earth, to demonstrate the general system to the people with whom we live, & to transmit it to the people who will come after us, so that the works of centuries past is not useless to the centuries which follow, that our descendants, by becoming more learned, may become more virtuous & happier, & that we do not die without having merited being part of the human race." (Encyclopédie, Diderot)
 * "Reason is to the philosopher what grace is to the Christian... Other men walk in darkness; the philosopher, who has the same passions, acts only after reflection;  he walks through the night, but it is preceded by a torch.  The philosopher forms his principles on an infinity of particular observations.  He does not confuse truth with plausibility; he takes for truth what is true, for forgery what is false, for doubtful what is doubtful, and probable what is probable.  The philosophical spirit is thus a spirit of observation and accuracy." (Philosophers, Dumarsais)
 * "If exclusive privileges were not granted, and if the financial system would not tend to concentrate wealth, there would be few great fortunes and no quick wealth. When the means of growing rich is divided between a greater number of citizens, wealth will also be more evenly distributed; extreme poverty and extreme wealth would be also rare." (Wealth, Diderot)
 * "Aguaxima, a plant growing in Brazil and on the islands of South America. This is all that we are told about it; and I would like to know for whom such descriptions are made. It cannot be for the natives of the countries concerned, who are likely to know more about the aguaxima than is contained in this description, and who do not need to learn that the aguaxima grows in their country. It is as if you said to a Frenchman that the pear tree is a tree that grows in France, in Germany, etc. It is not meant for us either, for what do we care that there is a tree in Brazil named aguaxima, if all we know about it is its name? What is the point of giving the name? It leaves the ignorant just as they were and teaches the rest of us nothing. If all the same I mention this plant here, along with several others that are described just as poorly, then it is out of consideration for certain readers who prefer to find nothing in a dictionary article or even to find something stupid than to find no article at all." (Aguaxima, Diderot)

Facsimiles
Readex Microprint Corporation, NY 1969. 5 vol. The full text and images reduced to four double-spread pages of the original appearing on one folio-sized page of this printing.

Later released by the Pergamon Press, NY and Paris with ISBN 0-08-090105-0.

title: Encyclopédie