No one believed he would go through with it.
Former MIT Professor Joe Gibbons proudly bragged to friends and family about holding up a Chinatown bank on New Year’s as part of a bizarre film project — but they ignored his felony confession as just a big joke.
“I left a message with my girlfriend’s sister and I told her, ‘Yeah, I’ve got into the city, I’ve got myself a room at The Bowery Hotel, I filed for Social Security, I robbed the bank and I went to the drugstore,’” the 61-year-old told The Post in an exclusive interview at the Manhattan Detention Complex on Sunday. “I told them, but they just didn’t pay any attention to the ‘robbed the bank’ part.”
Gibbons said that he had to work up the courage to do his New Year’s Eve holdup, which he filmed for what he called an art project.
“But to be honest, I stood outside the bank talking into the camera for quite a while … going over the different reasons to do it and not to do it,” he said. “The police detective told me that they had me on film outside the bank for quite a while … that’s probably why the [camera] battery started going dead during the actual robbery.”
The nutty professor said he was inspired by French poetry to create his criminal cinéma vérité — and that he pioneered his technique when he stole a painting in the 1970s.
“I read the works of Arthur Rimbaud, who essentially believed a poet had to descend into the depths of all that was bad and report back,” he said. “This whole thing has been one long project about discovering the disenfranchised portions of society.”
Gibbons admitted that, although art was on his mind, he was also motivated to rob the bank for the usual reason — because that’s where the money is.
“What got me over the final hurdle was the desperation of not having any money and not having a place to stay, not having anything to eat, that’s what gave me the final desperation to do it,” he said.
Gibbons robbed his first bank in Providence, RI, in mid- November. He handed what he thought was a humorous note — demanding cash to give to his church — to a terrified teller, who forked over $3,000, he said.
“I tried to make it a funny note, something to get it on the news,” he said. “The upsetting thing there was that the teller was jolted by the note. It really upset her.”
The heist didn’t garner many headlines, however, and he decided to give it another go in New York on New Year’s Eve at a Capital One at Bowery and Grand Street. He found that tellers in New York are a little tougher.
“This teller, in Chinatown, he was unflappable … I thought for sure he was pressing the silent alarm button. He didn’t even flinch,” he said.
“The note itself said ‘Yes … this is a bank robbery.’ In the note I asked for large denominations and no dye packs and unfortunately he gave me small denominations and an exploding dye pack,” he groaned.
“I was filming while I was running down Grand Street into the subway. I felt the dye pack go off while I was running, but I wanted to keep it because I thought it would make a great souvenir,” said Gibbons, who got $1,002 in the heist.
He said he later went to his hotel and started telling pals. Eventually someone took him seriously.
“It was one of my former students who turned me in,” Gibbons said. “He was worried about me.”
The former visual arts and film professor, whose contract was not renewed by MIT in 2011, said he had no regrets and wasn’t afraid he would do hard time. “This latest project is akin to ‘bank robbing for dummies,’ ” he said, noting that he expects to get probation.