{"id":304743,"date":"2025-10-15T07:11:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T07:11:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/304743\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T07:11:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T07:11:11","slug":"michael-mann-gets-real-about-his-inspirations-for-thief-and-heat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/304743\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Mann Gets Real About His Inspirations for ‘Thief’ and ‘Heat’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIt\u2019s fitting that Michael Mann<\/a> should be honored at the Lumi\u00e8re Festival in Lyon, since the director of \u201cAli,\u201d \u201cHeat\u201d and \u201cThe Insider\u201d began his filmmaking career in France. After graduating from the London Film School in 1967, Mann \u2014 who grew up in Chicago and switched course from a literature degree to filmmaking after seeing Stanley Kubrick\u2019s \u201cDr. Strangelove\u201d \u2014 was dead-set on directing dramatic features.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the meantime, he found his way to Paris, documenting the student uprisings of 1968 as they happened. Mann adopted the protestors\u2019 slogan, \u201cPrenez une cam\u00e9ra et descendez dans la rue\u201d (or \u201cpick up a camera and take to the streets\u201d), achieving what the American networks could not: He talked student leaders Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Alain Geismar and Alain Krivine into granting him interviews, edited into a segment called \u201cInsurrection\u201d and broadcast on NBC. Mann subsequently reshaped that footage into an abstract 8-minute short film (\u201cJaunpuri\u201d), which screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 1971.<\/p>\n

\n\tSkip forward 10 years, and Mann was invited to world premiere his first theatrical movie, \u201cThief,\u201d in competition at Cannes \u2014\u00a0quite an honor for a helmer so early in his career. \u201cAt that time, \u2018The Jericho Mile,\u2019 which is the Movie of the Week I did before \u2018Thief,\u2019 got theatrical distribution and was playing on the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es down the street from \u2018Thief,\u2019\u201d Mann explains. \u201cIt was completely bizarre, particularly in those years when you couldn\u2019t make a movie on an iPhone, after a decade or more of trying to get a film made, to have two of them [released] at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHosted by Cannes chief Thierry Fr\u00e9maux, the Festival Lumi\u00e8re will screen all 12 of Mann\u2019s theatrical features this week, before presenting him with the Lumi\u00e8re Award, following a master class on Friday, Oct. 17. The retrospective will also include his pilot for the Max series \u201cTokyo Vice\u201d \u2014 the apotheosis of where Mann\u2019s elevated aesthetic and commitment to authenticity intersect \u2014 and \u201cThe Jericho Mile,\u201d a sports movie shot inside Folsom Prison featuring real inmates as extras.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHuman intelligence does not diminish when you confine a geographical space. If anything, the opposite happens,\u201d says Mann, who was impressed by the prisoners\u2019 interest in the craft. The director remembers one who asked him questions for half an hour, by the end of which he understood the principles of blocking and coverage.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe production arranged for several inmates to get Taft-Hartley permits, Mann explains, \u201cwhich meant they got SAG minimum, on their commissary as opposed to making, you know, three cents an hour stamping license plates or something.\u201d The one condition: There couldn\u2019t be a race war between Folsom\u2019s three gangs \u2014 the Black Guerrilla Family, the Bluebirds (a precursor to the white supremacist Aryan Brotherhood) and \u201cLa eMe,\u201d Mexican Mafia \u2014 or the warden would pull the plug.<\/p>\n

\n\tThree minutes into the movie, a member of the Black Brotherhood tells a journalist, \u201cEverything\u2019s for real. That\u2019s our motto,\u201d and while that isn\u2019t exactly Mann\u2019s mantra, the sentiment certainly aligns with his commitment to authenticity.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe real is where I go. That\u2019s where richness is for me: in real people, real circumstances, real trials and emotional tidal waves that happen to people,\u201d Mann says. That applies whether he\u2019s telling contemporary stories such as \u201cThe Jericho Mile\u201d and \u201cThe Insider\u201d or adapting a work of historical fiction, \u00e0 la \u201cThe Last of the Mohicans.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor that film \u2014 a pre-revolutionary American epic starring Daniel Day Lewis and Madeleine Stowe \u2014 Mann not only insisted on period-accurate set dressing and wardrobe, but also endeavored to channel the psychology of the time: What a young woman growing up in London\u2019s updwardly mobile Portman Square neighborhood in 1757, would have thought, what kind of music she might have listened to (the answer: Handel) and so on.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe Insider\u201d was inspired by Mann\u2019s friendship with Lowell Bergman, the \u201c60 Minutes\u201d producer (so ferociously embodied by Al Pacino) whose bombshell segment featuring a Big Tobacco whistle-blower spooked the upper ranks of CBS. Mann had been talking to Bergman about other projects when the network self-censored his interview with Jeffrey Wigand (played by Russell Crowe in \u201cThe Insider\u201d), giving him personal insight into a big-business scandal.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhether I\u2019m doing \u2018Manhunter\u2019 or \u2018Heat 2\u2019 or \u2018The Insider,\u2019 it\u2019s the deep dive into real people \u2026 what it felt to be in their shoes and look through their eyes,\u201d Mann says. \u201cThat\u2019s what occupies me in the writing or the preparatory stage of it, and that\u2019s where I find things that you cannot make up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the case of \u201cManhunter,\u201d Mann had been in contact with a convicted killer named Dennis Wayne Wallace, around whom he was trying to write an original screenplay, when he read Thomas Harris\u2019 \u201cRed Dragon.\u201d The novel presented Mann with a plot in which to place his character, overwriting Harris\u2019 ideas for \u201cthe Tooth Fairy\u201d serial killer Francis Dollarhyde with details that interested Mann about Wallace, who had a fantasy relationship with a woman.<\/p>\n

\n\tWallace had told Mann that their love song (in the killer\u2019s imagination, at least) was \u201cIn-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,\u201d which is why the director used that music over the end credits. More important still was Dollarhyde\u2019s dark humor, also drawn from Mann\u2019s correspondence with someone who had truly been capable of such crimes. \u201cJust because something\u2019s real doesn\u2019t mean you have to use it,\u201d Mann clarifies. The director, who defined the ultra-stylized \u201980s look of \u201cMiami Vice\u201d and brought a similarly heightened aesthetic to \u201cManhunter,\u201d famously fills entire notebooks with the research and background material that go into preparing each project.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn \u201cThief,\u201d he cast John Santucci, the thief on whom James Caan\u2019s title character was based, as a corrupt cop. But his commitment to authenticity went one step further: \u201cAll the props in \u2018Thief\u2019 weren\u2019t props. They were all his burglary tools,\u201d Mann says. The thermal lance Caan uses to penetrate the safe was Santucci\u2019s own burning bar. Other facets, like problems the characters had with wives and kids came from Mann\u2019s interviewing Santucci and immersing himself in the man\u2019s life. (Mann helped him get a SAG card and made him a series regular on his series \u201cCrime Story\u201d in the late \u201980s.)<\/p>\n

\n\tIn studying both criminals and law enforcement officers over the years, Mann has repeatedly been fascinated by both the complexities and contradictions in their personalities. \u201cI\u2019ve interacted with some spectacular people in law enforcement who do things that are quite incredible and so complicated, they could be CEOs of major Fortune 500 companies, and nobody will know because they\u2019re taking down Khun Sa, who was responsible for producing 65% of the world\u2019s heroin.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMann invites interactions with anyone who could potentially be a character, adapting their life experience into details for his movies. Perhaps the most impactful example is Chicago police officer Chuck Adamson, whose experience informed aspects of Mann\u2019s spectacular 1995 crime film \u201cHeat.\u201d Adamson once told Mann about how he\u2019d sat down to coffee with Neil McCauley, a highline professional thief he later killed in a shootout \u2014 the basis of a dramatic t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate between Pacino and Robert De Niro in what has arguably become the director\u2019s most iconic scene.<\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to Mann, Adamson highly respected his quarry. \u201cWhen he met him, he realized they had a kind of unique rapport. He really liked this guy, and at the same time, as he put it, he\u2019d blow him out of his socks without thinking twice about it.\u201d Mann appreciated that paradox and understood why McCauley might agree to meet with Adamson at the Belden Deli on Clark St. in Chicago. It was a way for both men to assess one another, since they understood \u2014 as the audience does in \u201cHeat\u201d \u2014 that they were on a collision course where only one would walk away alive.<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019m partial to the terse, reality-based psychology of \u201cThe Insider\u201d and \u201cThief,\u201d and the sleek, darker-than-noir elegance of \u201cCollateral.\u201d Still, \u201cHeat\u201d is Mann\u2019s most elaborate film \u2014 in terms of both logistics and the sheer breadth of its ensemble \u2014 and the one many consider to be his masterpiece. In making it, Mann issued a challenge to himself: Could he construct a vast panoply of three-dimensional people (where even the most minor supporting characters have fully imagined lives) and program a meticulously precise structure that brings everything to that explosive collision?<\/p>\n

\n\tNo wonder it\u2019s the only sequel he intends to make. The way Mann works, his characters are so fully realized that their lives seem to continue even when the cameras aren\u2019t rolling. It\u2019s only a matter of time before they do on \u201cHeat 2\u201d (which picks up right after the original with Val Kilmer\u2019s character, Chris Shiherlis, a role Leonardo DiCaprio has reportedly been considering). The novel\u2019s been published, and the notebook is being prepared. Because when Mann calls \u201caction,\u201d he means it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s fitting that Michael Mann should be honored at the Lumi\u00e8re Festival in Lyon, since the director of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":304744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[9],"tags":[171,154540,75932,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-304743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-lumiere-award","tag-michael-mann","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115376939687516673","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}