Then on Dec. 15, 1995, the public got its first look at something that would present L.A. in a different light \u2014 and a very different darkness.<\/p>\n
This month marks the 30th anniversary of \u201cHeat,\u201d<\/a> the Michael Mann crime drama<\/a>. Some people love it (me); some people don\u2019t (\u201cAl Pacino is literally chewing up Figueroa Street\u201d). But there is no doubt that the film\u2019s visual style offers an alternative view of L.A. that has influenced a generation<\/a> of filmmakers. \u201cHeat\u201d broke many of the rules about how art interprets the city, recoloring the metropolis and discovering beauty in many of our most demonized neighborhoods.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t take my word for it.<\/p>\n \u201cIt captures Los Angeles, modern Los Angeles, in a way no other film does,\u201d director Christopher Nolan said at an Oscars event a few years ago. <\/a>\u201cThere is no nostalgia to it. It\u2019s a very clear view of modern Los Angeles.\u201d<\/p>\n Val Kilmer and Ashley Judd in \u201cHeat.\u201d<\/p>\n (Warner Bros. Entertainment)<\/p>\n So much has been written about \u201cHeat\u201d that individual scenes have become cottage industries. There\u2019s the choreography of the famous downtown bank robbery<\/a> and shoot-out. There\u2019s the diner scene<\/a> in which Al Pacino and Robert De Niro are on screen together for the first time, lecturing each about how \u201cyou can\u2019t change me.\u201d<\/p>\n But for me it\u2019s less about the plot and more about how the filmmakers captured Los Angeles. Mann, in conversation with Nolan, said he had lived <\/a>in L.A. for years but until \u201cHeat\u201d had rarely explored outside its tonier quarters.<\/p>\n Working in Hollywood, he had lived in a \u201cculturally self-imposed ghetto.\u201d When he decided to make \u201cHeat,\u201d he realized: \u201cI don\u2019t know L.A.\u201d<\/p>\n So instead of using his imagination, Mann said he hit the streets. For several months, he spent Friday and Saturday nights with an LAPD commander responding to police calls<\/a>, \u201crolling through the city seeing whatever was happening. \u2026 The sense of the vibe of Los Angeles at night, that\u2019s where it comes from.\u201d It exposed him to the city that became \u201cHeat\u2019s\u201d protagonist. <\/p>\n In various interviews over the years<\/a>, Mann described some of his favorite finds \u2014 a chop shop in Wilmington, a seedy motel, a stone-encased downtown bank. Mann told one audience he fell in love with the desolate Malibu beach home where De Niro lived, in part because the terrace was covered with bird droppings (to his disappointment, the droppings were cleaned up before filming).<\/p>\n \u201cHeat\u201d was filmed in more than 90 different locations, and it shows. Burrito stands. The concrete jungle under the interchange of the 10 and 110 freeways, a house precariously perched on stilts in City Terrace, a Koreatown mini-mall blindingly illuminated by neon and fluorescent lights, an abandoned drive-in movie theater.<\/p>\n \u201cHeat\u201d is far from the only movie to have great L.A. locations. But film buffs rave about how they are presented here. So many L.A. movies take advantage of the city\u2019s golden light \u2014 especially those dramatic orange vistas that transform the landscape at sunset. \u201cHeat\u201d eschews orange in favor of darker blues and greens. There is one scene that takes place at sunset, with two characters taking in a view of downtown L.A. looking west from atop a parking garage. But instead of nuclear orange, the skyline looks dark, with just a taste of citrus disappearing on the horizon.<\/p>\n Michael Mann on set.<\/p>\n (Warner Bros.)<\/p>\n The secret weapon of \u201cHeat\u201d is not the sun but the city\u2019s own sodium and mercury vapor streetlamps, which gave off green and yellow tints (the lighting scheme is very complex, and the film\u2019s cinematographer breaks it down in detail<\/a> in this American Cinematographer article<\/a>).<\/p>\n The 1990s were a high point of L.A. crime movies. \u201cPulp Fiction,\u201d <\/a>\u201cBlood In Blood Out<\/a>,\u201d \u201cSet It Off<\/a>,\u201d \u201cReservoir Dogs,\u201d<\/a> \u201cJackie Brown,\u201d<\/a> \u201cL.A. Confidential,\u201d<\/a> \u201cDevil in a Blue Dress<\/a>\u201d and so many more. I don\u2019t know if \u201cHeat\u201d is the best. <\/p>\n But simply as a work of L.A. discovery, it is hard to beat.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve lived in L.A. all my life. I brag about how I know all its hidden corners, only to be humbled time and again. A few weeks ago, when I was using a rush-hour shortcut to get from El Segundo to downtown L.A., the city surprised me again. I turned onto 48th Street at Budlong Avenue and was stunned to see a grand public library<\/a>, a striking mix of Prairie and Italian Revival architecture<\/a>. It\u2019s the pride of Vermont Square, but I\u2019d never heard of it.<\/p>\n Mann once told an audience something that I believe applies to all of us: \u201cI thought I knew L.A., and I realized that I was just scratching the surface.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Los Angeles was not looking particularly good in 1995. The previous few years had been marked by racial…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":464851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[32706,211646,1582,276,2451,1020,81102,2096,6276,2961,224,2444,5337,178169,9105,44316,56253,14164,1628],"class_list":{"0":"post-464850","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-al-pacino","9":"tag-alternative-view","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-california","12":"tag-city","13":"tag-film","14":"tag-filmmaker","15":"tag-heat","16":"tag-l-a","17":"tag-la","18":"tag-los-angeles","19":"tag-los-angeles-times","20":"tag-losangeles","21":"tag-mann","22":"tag-month","23":"tag-saturday-night","24":"tag-sunset","25":"tag-way","26":"tag-year"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115764536673965167","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464850","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=464850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/464851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} <\/p>\n
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