Michael Mann: ‘I make movies for the big show’ | Michael Mann

HAnnibale Lecter’s first appearance was in the 1986 film Manhunter, starring Brian Cox. It took director and writer Michael Mann just five weeks to adapt Thomas Harris’ novel Red Dragon for the screen.

But when it came to adapting his work — Heat 2, which he co-wrote with Meg Gardiner as a prequel and sequel to his 1995 film Heat — Mann discovered the pain of self-editing. “I think, well, 10 weeks, 12 weeks,” he said in a Zoom interview from Los Angeles. “Instead, it took about 10 months and was daunting because I wanted to get the same effect as the novel, which required repackaging events to fit a two-and-a-half-hour time frame. This choice became agonizing to say the least.”

According to media reports, Heat 2 will have a budget of $150 million after moving from Warner Bros to United Artists, with a cast rumored to include Christian Bale and Leonardo DiCaprio. Mann remains reserved and cautious. “Listen, a picture won’t happen until it happens, but now we’re looking to start on August 3,” he says.

For Heat fans, it’s been a long wait. When the three-hour crime epic was released 30 years ago this month, the movie industry was in a different place. Blockbuster videos dominated the market, Netflix didn’t exist, computer-generated imagery (CGI) was expensive and rare, and artificial intelligence was mostly the realm of science fiction. The box office hits were Toy Story, Apollo 13, Die Hard With a Vengeance, and GoldenEye.

Notably, a report on Heat 2 in Deadline stated: “Shooting in California for 77 days, Filmman expects it will employ 40 main cast members, 800 “core crew members” and 1,350 background actors (not a lot of AI there).”

It was a small but telling reminder that Mann is a Hollywood craftsman, a traditionalist who graduated from the London Film School in 1967 and whose work contains a kinetic authenticity. But now artificial intelligence is advancing and is able to produce compelling videos. It was a subject of contention during a landmark labor dispute in 2023 that achieved some protections from AI, though some artists were unhappy with the deal.

“Everyone is very interested in what’s possible with AI, from a very cautionary perspective among the Screen Actors Guild and the Writers Guild and the Directors Guild because it could turn into a new kind of performance,” Mann comments.

“Well, that performance has to be acted by an actor, written by a writer, and directed by a director regardless of whether the execution is from artificial generative intelligence or not. The other thing is that at the same time one notices that technology never goes backwards. Then there are copyright ownership issues where the studios are very much in line with creators like me and other writers, actors, and directors.”

Recent turmoil has seen Disney buy fellow studio 21st Century Fox, Paramount merge with Skydance Media and, most recently, streaming giant Netflix agree to buy Warner Bros. in an $83 billion deal that still faces various hurdles, including a hostile takeover bid from Paramount. Some observers fear a Netflix win will lead to fewer films getting a theatrical release.

“Unless someone has a crystal ball, there’s no way to know the outcome,” Mann says. “I know what I’d like the outcome to be, but I’m not in the inner circle. I know that.” [Netflix CEO] Ted Sarandos But I don’t know their thinking.

“The most important question from an audience perspective is: What is the inherent logic? The inherent logic is that when you have a movie like the new Avatar with an Imax projection or a great Dolby laser with a great sound system, people will come, they will flock to it. Will the exhibition three years from now depend on becoming more experimental, similar to concert venues?”

Mann is a creature of cinema and has described Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove” as having a formative influence on his career. “I make films for a big show,” he adds.

“My ambition is to powerfully and effectively impact an audience through story using all the tools at my disposal to transport them into that world for two or two-and-a-half hours. This is what I’ve always wanted to do since I was at film school in London, so watching our films in 16 x 9 on an iPhone is a disparagement to any – or any number of – other directors I can think of. The full power of performance and expression is what I make films for.”

Heat, released on December 15, 1995, is a case in point. Set in Los Angeles, the film follows the lives of master thief Neil McCauley and stubborn detective Lieutenant Vincent Hanna, whose private life is equally dysfunctional.

One of the main reasons for its persistence is the casting of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino as opposing and equal heroes. Mann recalls that the idea came up over breakfast with his co-producer, Art Linson. “I said, ‘Let’s think about who’s going to be in it;’ and we said, ‘What about Bob, what about Al?’

“It was a spontaneous ‘That’s a great idea’. I mean, the greatest actors of their generation! The strength and the inner strength that De Niro has and the verve and the ability to perform that Al can bring to a character, because within the character of Hanna, there’s a certain burlesque that he uses with his informants to keep them off balance, because in real life all informants lie some of the time. So it’s a constant game of managing the informant, to keep him off balance, to get the information you want.”

The cast also includes Val Kilmer, Jon Voight, Amy Brenneman, Ashley Judd, and Diane Venora. The plot of Heat is based on the experiences of Chuck Adamson, a famous Chicago detective who hunted down and eventually killed the real Neil McCauley, a career criminal who spent eight years on Alcatraz Island prison. Adamson became a friend and advisor to Mann.

“He had great respect for McCauley professionally,” the director recalls. “If you’re the kind of driven detective like Adamson, it’s like being a rock climber and your ambition is to free-climb Half Dome. So, the better the crew you’re working on, the bigger the challenge.”

“He had a high regard for Macauley’s professionalism but there was also a certain relationship discovered between them because it was as if Macauley looked at aspects of life and how he adjusted himself similarly to Adamson.

“Both were highly self-aware, disciplined, completely conscientious, and almost devoid of self-deception. At the same time, in a confrontation, each would blow the other out of their socks without thinking twice about it. That was the attitude.”

In 1963, Adamson discovered McCauley in a Chicago restaurant. Instead of arresting him, he invited him to have coffee. Much of the dialogue in the film’s pivotal scene was taken directly from Adamson’s memories of that meeting. The two men admitted that they were professionals on opposite sides, and that if they met again “in close proximity,” they would have to kill each other.

Hitt’s reenactment of that diner encounter marked the first time De Niro and Pacino had appeared together on screen, although they were present in The Godfather Part II but in separate time periods. They didn’t rehearse the scene, a decision made at De Niro’s suggestion to really keep the tension fresh.

“That’s the pivotal moment, the nexus of the drama — and we all know that,” Mann recalls. “We discussed the scene, we analyzed the scene, and we probably reframed it a little bit in a nice discussion because we wanted to fully understand the multiplicity of motivations behind each character wanting to observe each other, to interact with each other. Both characters realized that they were getting an intuitive sense of the opposite number because they were potentially facing off.”

“They both have murderous intent. What they don’t expect but discover is the connection when they start talking about their private lives, and Hannah talks about a dream he had about bodies sitting around the table staring at him with eights bleeding from gunshot wounds. Then De Niro asks: ‘What are they saying?’ Al says: ‘Nothing.’ They don’t talk.”

“Then De Niro expresses his dream of drowning, which basically translates to: Does he have enough time to achieve what he wants in life? It becomes very intimate — intimacy with strangers. You don’t want to rehearse a scene like that. Everyone realizes that the magic of a unique scene or shot is going to happen, and we all want it to happen spontaneously on camera, not in rehearsal.”

Another indelible scene is a downtown shootout with a gritty, visceral quality that the AI ​​would struggle to replicate. McCauley’s gang successfully robs a bank, but is betrayed and ambushed. Facing crowds of police, they try to shoot their way out.

Mann hired former SAS agents Andy McNab and Mick Gould to train the actors in realistic firearms handling. “We have redacted here how this ambush occurred and here is how they responded and attacked.

“When I found the location in downtown Los Angeles, I blocked the choreography across two city blocks. They jump: one guy fires rounds while the other goes up, then fires rounds, etc., and it goes on. We trained at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s shooting ranges under the appropriate strict safety procedures and the sheriff’s shooting masters.

“The players have trained three days a week, in the morning, for months to get to this good level. They can probably outperform 95% of the players.” [Los Angeles police department]. You discover very quickly as a director that actors have tremendous eye-hand coordination and a hockey stick-like learning curve.

He adds: “For the actors, they were living it and were using full blanks during filming, which echoed off the glass walls of the urban valleys we were in. The initial sound of the rehearsals was so eerie that I threw maybe 10 or 11 microphones around the set, so we ended up using recorded audio during filming.

“Traditionally, a sound effects designer would create 60 to 70 tracks, and post-production would take place during three days of pre-dubbing the sound effects. I had an excellent sound designer, Lon Bender, but I ignored most of him and mainly used sound from the dailies.”

The heat ends with Hannah chasing McCauley into a wide open field adjacent to the runways of Los Angeles International Airport. The place is dark and industrial but periodically bathed in bright light from passing planes and flashing runway markings. The two men play a high-stakes game of hide-and-seek among massive shipping containers and electrical boxes.

“I wanted to leave the audience in a state of fugue—to use a musical analogy—because you sympathize with Macaulay and want him to get away with it,” Mann recalls. [his girlfriend] ready. Then with Hannah you are sympathetic to his pursuit of Macauley. There is no compromise between the two countries. She made sure they were both there 100% in a deadly confrontation between the two that only one would survive.

As the plane approaches landing, landing lights illuminate the field. McCauley prepares to ambush Hannah, but as he moves, shifting lights cast shadows on the ground in front of him. Hannah spots the shadow, wanders in, and shoots first, killing McCauley.

“Then there’s the note of grace where he holds Hanna’s hand, recalling their similarity, as if Macauley had the good fortune to be led to his death in tactical contact with one of the only other people on the planet who understands him. That counterpoint is the way I wanted to leave it that tends to be committed to memory.”