The Rewatchables - The Three-'Heat' With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Michael Mann

Episode Date: November 2, 2021

For The Ringer’s Bill Simmons and Chris Ryan, the action is the juice. They are joined by the director of ‘Heat,’ Michael Mann, to once again revisit the 1995 crime drama starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Val Kilmer. Hosts: Bill Simmons and Chris Ryan Guest: Michael Mann Producer: Craig Horlbeck Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, if you love the rewatchables podcast, are you aware that the entire library of, I think, 211 films that we've done at this point is available only on Spotify? Yeah, that's right. All new episodes, 45 days or less, they're available anywhere. But if you want the old ones, including the first time we did heat and the second time we did heat, you can find them on Spotify along with all the other podcasts we've done since 2017 on this great feed. We appreciate your support.

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where you can find the Bill Simmons podcast, where you can find the watch with Chris Ryan, where you can find the prestige TV pod as well as the big picture. Those are probably our signature pop culture pods at this point. Coming up, boy, this has been an Odyssey. We've done over 200 rewatchables at this point. The first one we ever did was heat. I think the 100th one we did.

We did the reheat. Well, now we're going to do the three heat. And there's only one person we could ever do this with. We are going to introduce him right after. You listen to the trailer for heat, which came out in 1995. Here it is when we come back. It'll be me and Chris Ryan. And our mystery guests, see you then.

You search for the scent of your prey, and then you hunt them down. It keeps me sharp where I got to be. In a world where violence is wholesale. The bank is worth the risk. You're up. There's a saga waiting to unfold. If I'm there and I got to put you away, you are going down. You will not get in my way for a second.

Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Val Kilmer, Heat, Rated R, starts Friday, December 15th at a theater near you. All right, it's the three heat. Chris Ryan is here. This is the podcast that started. The rewatchables way back went on my pod in 2015. Chris and I did a podcast about how much we loved heat. And then we did it again with all the categories of the rewatchables after with that. Now we're doing the three heat.

And the only person we could think to have on with us is Michael Mann, who directed this movie, who wrote this movie, who, it was an obsession for you. Is that fair? How many years are you thinking about this movie? cultivating it working on it. Yeah, it wasn't, well, I wouldn't call it an obsession. It was fascinating.

And, you know, everything comes from something else. I first probably heard the, you know, the basic, you know, the kind of genome of the story from a friend of mine named Charlie Adamson in sometime in the middle 70s, maybe late 70s, something like that. and who was a detective. And his partner, by the way, was Dennis Farina. And Charlie killed the real Neil McCauley in 1963 in Chicago. And in talking about him, he, you know, he was so enthused about what a terrific thief this guy was. And how fascinating and interesting was to talk to. and he had a lot of respect for the guy.

And the, because he had picked him up once or twice, and they had meetings. And then he, then he quite accidentally bumped into him outside the Belden Deli on Lincoln Avenue in Chicago, actually on Clark Street in Chicago. And, and they looked at each other across his cars and,

and shut us up by a cup of coffee. And they sat down and had, not the version I wrote of the meeting, but they, you know, They talked, and both guys had an agenda in the conversation, but it was the respect. And so it really got me as the kind of genome of this was that duality, that there was a rapport. They both were processing very intense lives in similar ways, even though they were, I mean, Adamson had a moral, something, some version of a moral compass.

McCauley didn't, but they both were encountering and within their own life the details that flow to them in very unself-deceptive ways. They were both raw to the real world in a way that was unique. And that became the kind of the nodal point of their rapport, if you like. At the same time that Adamson had respect for him and almost the kind of rapport or affinity, he would blow him out of his socks without thinking twice about it, as he said, and I used that line, and then eventually he did. So that became this little kind of germ of an idea, and then subsequent to that,

I was spent time in Folsom Prison with Dustin Hoffman when he started directing straight time. And then I went back in 79 to Folsom and shot a, prison movie inside falls, some men amongst the mainstream population, and got to know a lot of the convicts, very, very heavy-duty group of convicts, who I had cast into speaking parts, and guys from Black Corrilla family, some of the guys from Bluebird, who eventually became Aaron Brotherhood, and some people from MA, and the depth, nothing in the prison, system was, as I had imagined, all my preconceptions were naive. They were completely wrong. And so there was something so vital and interesting about the contact with these guys.

That's not to say that the vast majority of these men didn't belong to. They belonged in prison. They committed some heinous crimes, but putting that sides in terms of human beings who found themselves in these circumstances. So anyway, so that, putting that together and a number of other ideas kind of produced. I wouldn't call it an obsession. It became something I really wanted to do. I mean, at 92, I did Mohicans, last to Mohicans, and then 95, you know, by that point, a shot heat.

Do you remember from way back when you first started working on it? Was there anything from the earliest versions of it? Because I think, you know, Walter Hill was rumored to have been involved with it at certain points. Anything from those early versions that made it to the screen in 95? Well, there was only one version, and there was a very large, you know, 170-page screenplay. And then that had difficulty getting it going and then kind of condensed from it some material that became this movie The Week I did. So the movie of the week doesn't predate heat.

It's a derivative of heat. And Walter Hill is one of my closest friends and has been such about 1974. And at one point I asked Walter if he wanted to do it, he was tied up. Then it occurred to me, you know, you've got to, I've got to do this. So it occurred to me to do it in a conversation I had at the Broadway deli with Art Linson. and I asked him if you wanted to produce this thing with me and we would go, I thought I was out to Walter Hill all the time and maybe there'd be some other directors we'd go out to.

And Art Linson said, you're out of your mind after he read it, you know, you're nuts, you've got to do this. And that's how Art and I were the two producers and we put it together. A Broadway deli is interesting because that's where EAD comes and sits down when, Neil McCauley with his book on metal sits down next to her. We actually shot that in the Broadway, Delhi.

Oh, wow. Why are you so interested in what I do, lady? I love that you just casually skip by the Jericho Mile, which was the greatest TV movie of all time. I enjoyed that part. I got to ask you about you were always fascinated by bad men who live by certain codes. And this became basically in the 21st century prestige TV. became obsessed with these type of people, right?

Like whether Tony Suprano, the people on Succession right now over and over again, the Breaking Bad. Neil McCauley was kind of the early prototype for that stuff. You have a way in your movies because you did it in Thief 2. If you take these people who, they're up to bad stuff, but by the halfway point of the movie, I'm rooting for them. Like in heat, in the famous bank robbery scene, Seismore grabs a young child at one point as a body shield,

And there's a small part of me that's like, good move, that's going to work. You can get away. Like, how did, why are you so fascinated by evil as a hero protagonist? When did that start? And what is it about it? I don't think I am. I don't think I'm interested in. There's a couple of answers to that.

One is that I'm interested in conflict. And to me, drama's conflict. It's very much a dialectic. And that's what I, that's what one, if you're going to author a drama with conflict, It's a dialect. You search for those points that can, okay? And so if you think about it, what can be more, what's a better conflict than two characters in which you are emotionally engaged with both of them, both of them like each other, both in each of them is on, has, it's a commitment to take down or kill the other at the same time. So it becomes kind of like a fugue in music.

In other words, there's many points of counterpoint. There's many counterpoints happening simultaneously. And then the challenge became, can I, you know, have a structure. This also became interesting to me. Can I have a structure in which we are empathetically engaged, not partway, 100% with each of these characters. And each of these characters, all of whom are in collision with each other, are quite different. than each other. So it's Hannah who has many flaws. We didn't get into it very much, but he's probably doing a lot of blow to stay up all night. As he says to his wife, Justine, all I am is who

I'm going after. He's kind of an action junkie in discovery and pursuit. He's a big game hunter. He's a man hunter. Okay. And Neil McCauley, who has put together a fabricated mechanistic view of what his life is going to be because of his origins and operates with a strict causality. Everything is measured by risk versus reward. That's why he's anonymous. He tries to achieve total anonymity. Who was that guy?

I don't know. He was middle age. What was he wearing? Well, it was kind of gray. And he had a white shirt. He's like everybody, just blending into.

and, you know, Chris Scherlis is kind of postmodernist, who's driven by more passions and impulses than he can control with one exception. And that is he's disciplined when he's working. And the rest of his life, he's a fuck-up. But he's kind of a postmodernist and without real serious cause and effect operating in his thinking. So consequently, he skates. Neil McCauley, when he abandons that rigid doctrinaire approach to what he's doing because he's met Eadie and he scored. He was spontaneous and asked her to go with him and she agreed to do it. And so now it's kind of like that navigational system that's kept him safe.

He's abandoned it. And consequently, he's vulnerable to this revenge impulse to go get Wangro. and it becomes his undoing. So what I'm saying is that there's that fuglite structure, but what really was exciting for me was to have a story in which what happened to each of these characters, all of whom you're emotionally engaged with, what happens to them in their lives is a function of who they are

and how they think. So how they think determines their fate, okay? all of which is in a structure driving towards this one conclusion which is Hannah and Neil on the approach to L.A.X. You know, this movie is probably the movie

that I've thought about the most, that I've talked about the most, this is the third time Bill and I have done a podcast about it. We've probably also referenced it in other podcasts more than anything else. And this time around, I felt like I was really obsessed with the ideas of time that come up in the movie. You know, people are always talking about time, both as like a construct of moving

forward. Guys are always talking about not having enough time. That's, that's the dream, right? That's, that's Neil's dream. There's the idea of doing time, not ever wanting to go back to prison. But there's also this thing that Vincent keeps putting forward where he's saying, like, I don't have enough time. I don't have enough time. He's always moving, moving, moving. when you rewatch Heat, when you talk to people who want to talk to you about Heat, do you find that you've changed any of your thinking about what the movie is about? Does this idea of time, you know, was that something that you were thinking about when you made the movie? I'm just really curious what this film is about for you now all these years later.

Well, it's about exactly what was about when I invented it. So I was thinking about those things before the film. I mean, one of the experiences I had doing the Jericho, and Folsom, is I wanted to cast the associate warden. You had to do a casting and conflicts I was going to have, actually in a picture. And the associate warden said, oh, I've got some great guys for you. And he sent them around. And they were all like those Charles Atlas ads, like the guy, like the before person

of the Charles. Yeah. They were like skinny and shrunken. I mean, and so I worked something. I worked a different deal out with a terrific guy who was a producer Tim Zineman and a man named Eddie Bunker. Eddie Bunker is probably wrote the best prison novel in American literature called No, called No Be So Fierce, which Dustin made into straight time. So I was friendly with and knew the real Eddie Bunker who was an old-time Southern California bank robber and had done time in Folsom and I think wrote that novel in Folsom. And through him, we were able to make contact surreptitiously with the shot callers in M.A. in Black Gorilla family and some of the white convict.

Sonny Barger was in Folsom at that time. And we made a deal with them that we will put. 10 of your guys, it's a speaking rolls. And because they're not sag, they will be tapped heartily, meaning they'll be paid minimum what actors pay. Now, normally people make two cents an hour stamping license place in Folsom. And now they're going to have about $1,200 or $1,200 a week, all of which is going to go in their commissary.

The quid pro quo was that if I do this, you cannot, You guys got to make sure there's no gang war or race war while we're shooting. Because if there was during these 19 days of shooting, we would be kicked out and we'd not be able to make the film. So I had this, suddenly I had a really terrific population of, and casting sessions that was conducted in the oldest cell block in Folsom. And I, this one guy who came in and, you know, I said, I would like to, you know, I like to give you this part.

I'd like to have you be in a film. And he said, no, man. He said, I can't do it. I said, why not? He said, because I'd be allowing you to appropriate the surplus value of my bad karma. And he wasn't trying to put me out. You'd come in with a fifth grade education after those years in Folsom. He had remarks and angles, and understood labor theory of value.

And the surplus value, you know, part of it, which is you get paid two bucks. to build something that they sell for five bucks, three dollars is the surplus value. And the surplus value was his presence. And he wasn't there because he actually did anything. He was there because of bad karma because he's also a Buddhist. And the realization that I had only known kind of from reading of what was going on in these prisons at a moment of time in which there were significant programs in the prison systems. and our college professors and teachers from Oakland and Sacramento and San Francisco were coming down and teaching courses in history and philosophy.

And in a prison like Folsom with a mature prison population, the reason I'm going into this is because here's where Neil McCauley came from. This is where he came from. This is what formed him. This is why his attitudes on the street are the attitudes that they are. In a mature prison population like Folsom, people aren't acting out. They're not crazy. they're doing three life sentences, they know how to do a hard time. And they start to have fundamental questions, and many of them are very bright.

Like, what is time? Why should I just not kill myself? You know, hey, librarian, give me a book to read. I got to find out about time. I got to find out about what this is about, this whole thing called life. Why am I even here? And so they start reading Sart and Camus and. and Hobbs and

and they started reading about the nature of time, let's say. And that's you've had this acquired knowledge by people who really want these answers. These are answers to be put to use.

This isn't to get a degree. And McCauley put together a very, given the fact he was institutionalized and state raised and his mother probably left when ran away from the family when he was four. His father couldn't handle he and his brothers. By the time he's six or seven,

he'll call he is sent out to foster homes. He's resentful. He's angry. He's violent. He's getting into fights. Juvenile delinquent juvenile homes. That becomes his whole trajectory. So he's angry.

He's resentful. And by the time he's in Folsom, he wants to know, he wants to figure out life. And that's where that's where the kind of, I want to say mechanistic attitudes he has about I'm going to acquire this much capital. I'm going to Fiji. Here's my suit.

Here's my white shirt. Here's risk versus reward. Everything I do. Cost benefit analysis. That's why he is so doctrinaire because he figured out himself. So that's really a long way of saying that McCauley is. Dr. Nare and deterministic. And when he deviates from that, everything goes wrong.

So that's the central conceit of the film in the way that, as I said earlier, that everything, the way you are and how you think will determine in the universe of the heat movie what happens to you in your life. And it's all different for each of these characters. So that meant that the perspective I would have on each character, everything from the wardrobe to the music that's playing to how it's cut and how it's shot was different depending if I was with Hannah or was

Neil McCauley. So Jericho Miles tapped into that a tiny bit too with a what was he? Lickety Split? That was the lead character, right? I haven't seen that one a while. It's never on anymore. But same thing. He's trying to keep the stability of day-to-day

running on the track at the same times. And as soon as that gets twisted a little bit, he starts to unravel. I had a question about De Niro and Pacino. So you're working with these guys. It's 1995. I remember, and Chris remembers too, when we heard this movie was coming out,

you're involved. We're like, uh-oh, that's our guy. Pacino and De Niro, at that point, are the elite of the elite. And there's actually, like, arguments that people would have about who's better,

who would you rather have, whose career would you rather have, who had the best performance? These guys are basically like the LeBron and Kobe, the bird and magic, of acting at this point. A, how did you convince them to be in the same movie?

And B, what do you remember about, they're really only in that one great scene together and then the ending, obviously. But what do you remember about them sizing each other up? Was there a competitiveness with them? Like, how did that whole thing work? Because they're both at the peak of their powers. I'm going to give you a completely different picture.

It worked because of complete artistic respect that everybody had for everybody else. So there wasn't a competition. people who would feel competitive are actually probably insecure and they manifest themselves in a competitive nature. And that's not these guys. And it wasn't just Bob and Elle. Bob and Al regarded John Voight and Val Kilmer as being on the same plane of serious committed people that they were. And Val would show up in a day when I was shooting, say, John Voight, between John Void and Bob because he wanted to see what they were going to do.

So the experience, the real truthful experience was that, for me, it was working in this spectacular ensemble company. And people who really had a sense that they were part of something great, it seems like, because you hear about some of the quotes all these years later, people kind of knew that this movie was going to last, it seems like. Well, maybe. I mean, I think at the time the experience was that this is wonderfully ambitious and really got to concentrate.

on this, you know, on the coffee shop scene, which on what I'm doing, I'm getting into my character, I'm understanding why my character is the way he is in acquiring all the skill sets that their characters have to do. That's very, very important. Acquireance that each actor could do the things that his character was supposed to do, like do it in real life. And, you know, and you were asking about time. I didn't really get to the answer. It's really that time is short. And if you're doing time, you know how precious it is outside.

You know, you're doing time. Time suspended for you. People are out there squandering times, staring in a space, getting a pizza. And you're thinking, man, if I was out on the street living in the real technicolor world instead of the gray damp walls of the smell of disinfectant and urine as a constant. You know, if I was there, I would just live through every. minute with a certain intensity. So, and there's some, you know, there's some, you know, there's some, you know, there's some prison poetry where, um, fantastic poet in his spoon, jacks said, the man too sure, the woman

too easy, the pace too fast, the love too short. Wow. You know, so it's powerful stuff, you know. getting back to your story about the about the experience with him you know Bob was so in character that when he had that scene to do

in which he was going to try and abandon the the doctrina modality about how he'd been living life and somehow reached deep into him to try and convince you to go

Bob De Niro didn't have trouble trying to find that. Bob is Neil McCauley had trouble trying to find that. And Neil McCauley would have had trouble trying to find that. And I remember this, you know, about two or three times saying, now, Neil is, this is, he's got to pull, you know, pull it out of him. He'd rather, everything he'd thought of about where the future might be for the rest of days on the planet Earth was meaningless if you couldn't convince this woman to go with you. You know, and so, and it was a very different process, whether I was directing Bob or Al or Vail or

or John. Can I ask you a little bit about Al? Because it seems like you've got like a tiger by the tail in this movie. You know, it's like I'm sure that there are things that he brought to it that maybe weren't on the page, although I've read the script and most of it is, but, you know, there are scenes like where he goes to see Albert and the chop shop or, you know, like where you can tell there's just an electricity in the air and you're capturing what he's doing. What was that like? I mean, how much did he bring to the character in an impoveristory way on a day on the set basis?

Well, the first thing, I could barely shoot that scene with a kid to Josh. Albert's! I had operated. And I was on a camera that was, I was operating a camera that was over the L's shoulder. to Ricky Harris, who tragically passed away in the last year and a half. And Al was so, he was so funny, I was kind of cracking up during some of this, because he was improvising some of that dialogue that showed up. But like everything else, it's rooted in, in character. And then it's come, then it emerges through this brilliant artist named Al Pacino.

all really good detectives work informants the way he was working at informant. All informants lie. They lie some of the time. And if you have an informant, you have to keep your informant off balance. You have to keep them constantly guessing. Whether they're going to bust them back, dot bust them back, you like them on Tuesday, you hate him on Wednesday. You know, and that's exactly what he was. He was rattling his informant.

That's precisely the way you're. you know, you would do it. In real life, John Santucci, who was the thief I based thief on, was an informant for Charlie Adamson and Dennis Farina. And that's where some of this, some of these skill sets came,

you know, kind of came from. So this movie comes out, 1995. It was one of the highlights of my 1995. I didn't have a lot going on that year. It was one of the highlights of mine and I graduated high school that year.

You can imagine how big of a deal it is. You have, it comes out one month after, casino. I think a pretty good movie year. One of the most loaded casts ever. You got two of the biggest stars in the world in their primes. It made $187 million. It gets $60 million budget, so profitable. And yet, you look at the Oscars and it's nowhere to be seen. Now, I know like when asking director stars, like, do you care about the Oscars, stuff like that? But I felt like I was living in an alternate universe because me and all of my friends and everybody I knew were like, oh my

God. Like this was a, you see this movie twice in the theater and you talk about it for days after and this was like everything I wanted from an action drama. And it seems like it took a while for that to settle in with people as this being like a great, great movie. Or do the Oscars just not matter and they get it wrong? Like, were you surprised that it didn't get more attention? Yeah, I thought it should have had attention. I wasn't really surprised that it wasn't because there was a perception in the year that pictures come out, they get categorized, and there was a perception in whatever the cultural gestalt was in 1995,

this was a genre picture. It's not a genre picture. It's a full-on drama, you know, kind of fueled by some, you know, not trivial ideas. And it's very, very ambitious. So I wasn't taught. I wasn't that surprised. I wasn't shocked.

I'm, you know, rewards are great. I'm not reward-driven. The guy who was shocked was out and not on his behalf. So, you know, the night that the foundations were announced, he came over to the house. You know, I think he's because he was worried I was feeling bad. I wasn't feeling bad. But he was shocked. And I don't think he was shocked on his own behalf, but for the whole of the,

for the whole of the picture. What did he come over and bring takeout? What did he do? No, he came over and sat in the kitchen with my wife myself. And we were trying to console Al who was there to console him. But he wasn't concerned for himself. It was, you know, it's gratifying that the, you know, that the kind of reevaluation that it sustains,

that the picture sustains in memory. And it doesn't, you know, I don't know. In my own experience, I don't make pictures to an award, make pictures to sustain a memory, don't do any of those things. You know, we do something because it takes you over and you've got to make this, you have to shoot this film, make this idea. But there's specific reasons in the way the narrative is constructed, why it sustains in memory. There are things people discover because there's layers to it and there's depths to it. And if there isn't, that's great. I love, there's all kinds of pictures I really like that are a one-time experience.

And others, you go back to and you go back to, you know. Well, you mentioned going back to it. This is why we have the podcast, the rewatchable. Part of it is like, you know, I grew up as a kid, cable came into my house. We got HBO in 1982 and the whole thing, and you just start VCRs. All of a sudden, we get to watch the same movies over and over again. And certain movies, the 20th time, watched it, you would pick out different things. And that was one of the things we love about this

podcast is there's just certain movies that when they're on, and especially this one where it's like, uh-oh, oh, he's about, he's about to run into Edy for the, ah, watch 10 minutes. Oh, oh, they're about to go to the bank. I can't miss this. And this movie just has a way of pulling you in. It's two hours and 50 minutes. And I do think it's a really complicated, you know, it's got a million people in it and it does take a couple times to soak everything in. And maybe that's why I didn't do a, what do you think, Chris? Yeah, I don't know. For the Oscars, I meant. For the Oscars part, I mean, it's not an easy package to sell, right? You know, it's got a lot of ideas. It's got a lot of darkness to it. It's got a lot of unresolved tension and it's got a lot of answers that people

might not be wanted to be confronted with. And the Oscars tends to reward stuff that's a little bit more like here. I can tell you what this is about in one sentence, you know? Yeah. This podcast is brought to you by Carvana. Selling your car should feel like one less thing on your list. Not one more. With Carvana, it is. Just go to Carvana.com, and to your license plate or VIN

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Visit Carvana.com to sell your car today. Carvana. Pick up fees may apply. All right, we're going to do some lessons from heat, Michael, man. We did this on the last pod. We wanted to throw these at you and maybe we left one out.

Here are the lessons from heat if you're just telling a 17-year-old who's ready to go to college. Never fall for a guy with no furniture. I think that's words to live by. Never leave a living witness. Never sell bearer bonds back to the guy you stole them from.

If you're dating a married lady and her husband is a robbery homicide detective, maybe have her come to your place. Never stay in town after someone calls and tells you, I'm talking to an empty telephone because there's a dead man on the other line. Leave. At that point, get the fuck out. Find a better place to put your money than Malibu Ekri and investments. Never ever have a life that revolves around barbecues and ball games and never have anything in your life that you can't walk away from in 30 seconds if the heats around the corner. Did we hit everything? Were there any more

lessons? It sounds like, you know, it sounds like, you know, sociopathic manufacturer of fortune cookies. That would be great. You should market that. Heat fortune cookies. Yeah. Get those out. People are like, what the hell is this?

Never have a life thoroughbos or barbecues ballgames? All right. So we're going to do some of the categories that we normally do with the pod. We're not going to do all of them, but we do some of them with you. And the first one we always do is the most rewatchable scene. So this is every movie, every great rewatchable. movie has somewhere between five and ten rewatchable scenes. I'm going to read them quickly and then we want to dive

into four of them. So the first robbery, obviously, the Big Boys Diner, Edy and Neil meeting the first time. Neal's gang debates the heist. The diner scene, the bank robbery, Vincent's crew gets caught, and then Neil kills Wayne Groh walks away from Eddie. I'm going to concentrate on three of these. The diner scene. So, oh, I'm sorry, not the diner scene. The Big Boys' diner scene.

Wayne Grove escapes. So now you're filming this. This is, I know we had a robbery. I know we just had a heist, the whole thing. This is when the movie takes off. Now it's like,

now we see Neil in action. We see Treo opening up the trunk. It's the plastic inside. That's ever good. And it's like, oh, these guys, these guys are ruthless, but Wayne Groh gets away.

As you're framing a scene like that, what are you trying to accomplish? in that three minutes because you have to move along the plot. You've got to work all these things in. It's got to look cool. You love doing diners. You've done a lot of good stuff in diners. What are the big factors for you? The first one is that these guys are really terminal. I mean, this crew is, they are serious heavy,

they are a serious heavy-duty crew. And they're going to just kill this guy. And it's completely set up. One of the little gems of that is, is Seismore, that look that Seismore gives, where, after Neal... Yeah. After, you know, Neil sits down and he takes, he doesn't, he's, he's, he doesn't care who sees him, he takes, Blanco's head and slams it against the, against the table. That looked real, by the way.

That actually looked like he did it. I know, I know he did it, but that was incredibly realistic. Yeah, he pretty much did it. I mean, it's also, you know, it's also the actor, Kevin Gage, saying, no, no, man, go ahead and hit my head on the table, you know. It's like Will Smith and Ali when Joe Fraser connects and just about knocks them out, but Will and I had to convince the actor playing Joe Frazier, who's a boxer, to know, connect, because he didn't want to really connect with Well. And Will says, no, man, I could take a punch. You've got to connect.

It's not going to be right. So there is that willingness of actors to put them. Anyway, so that happens. And the look on Seymour's face is like 200% in character. You know, that's it is. You know, and you're seeing this peacock tattooed on his arm to high track marks. And they're lethal and they're total. There is no compromise.

There is no uncertainty. They are certain in the actions that they're going to take. and carried out with zero hesitation. And then, of course, Wayne Groh, you know, Waingrove gets away. Amazing job, Bo Waingrove. What do you got, Chris? Well, we've long debated the success of first dates in your movies.

Legendary one being obviously Tuesday Weld and James Conn and Thief. Eadie and Neil have, like, you know, a little bit of a rough start to the beginning of it. And then he's just like, why you're so interested in what I read and what I do? Chris fractures in titanium. What kind of work you do? Lady, why are you so interested in what I read or what I do? I've seen the store from time to time. What store?

Missing angles. I went there. If you don't want to talk to me, it's okay. Sorry, I bothered you. What was the, you know, there's a moment in that Edie and Neal scene, though, when he scoots over one seat. And the look on Amy Brennan's face is so perfect. It says so much without saying anything where she's just like, this guy's kind of scary,

is kind of interesting, what's he doing now? He's trying to make up with me. What was, tell us a little bit about casting Amy Brennamet and what the E.D. character is sort of doing

in this movie. You're very right about the expression on her face because, you know, she's uncomfortable. You know, she was just being friendly

and yeah, he's attractive. She's being friendly, she's curious. She's also lonely, as she tells us. Yeah. And she's not trying

to pick him up or anything, but she's just lonely, you know? I mean, she gets stuff. working all day. She goes to suit at the counter, the deli to eat.

She's not going home and hooking up with some guy, you know, doesn't have a family. She's embarrassed him. And so she's striking up a conversation. And then his rebuff is so, you know,

brutal. And she becomes uncomfortable inside her own body. She becomes uncomfortable with itself and that wonderful expression on her face. And, you know, the mysteries of casting. I mean, it gets down to a lot of, you know, kind of purely analytical thinking about actors and actresses and

who is going to embody this character. And then it becomes, if I have this actress embodying Edy, and I look at the imagery, the images of all the other cast, you know, what's the totality of the world that we're in? Perfect example of that, by the way, is Hannah's crew with, you know, with West Studius, Casales and, you know, and Michael T. is Drucker and how the, it just looks like real people, you know, it's more polarized than normal, if you like. So something I like, but when all that is said and done, and you look at the work and everything, you're sitting in the room with the person, and they hit that point, they hit a tone, they hit a line, and you just know

when you know, and you just, it's purely emotional on my part, right? It becomes a number. emotional decision. She's it. You know, you just know it, you know. Well, the next thing, we'll skip over quickly. This wasn't totally on the list. But it's on the most rewatchable list. But when Neil's gang is debating the heist,

Chris and I love this scene because, you know, it goes around, it goes to Kilmer. Kilmer gets his moment. The bank, the bank is worth the risk. And then it goes to Seismore. And DeNiro's trying to talk Seismore out of this, right? Neil's like, come on, you get a family. But if I were you, I wouldn't do it.

and then Seismore takes a breath. Well, you know, for me, the action is the juice. I'm in. And he just goes for it. And you can see kind of, we always joke like he's seeing his eyes. He's like, this is my moment. I'm going toe to toe against Deere right now. I am his equal.

I am one of the greatest actors in the world. And he does, you know, for me, it takes the long pause. The action is the juice. And he just like, and DeNiro's like the light air. And it cuts to Kilmer. Kilmer is just kind of like, yeah. And it just feels like we love it because Seismore is just going for it. It seems like he's going for it this whole movie.

Just tell us a little about Seismore. Well, he says the action is the juke. He's a reformed junkie. And he's gotten his life together. He has a wife. He's got a family. He's, you know, Nancy Reagan family values. That's who he personifies.

He loves his kids. He kids around with them. He gets down with them on their level when they're five and six years old. He's a great daddy. But your kid, he would use as a body shield. Right. So, you know, that's the reality of it. And he's performed himself to live a bourgeois life.

Okay. But it all goes up in smoke when he just hesitates. He just says, hey, man, you know, the action is a juice. I'm in. So that's where that's what's coming from. There's other, by the way, I don't know if you, that set is because the reason I shot that location is because if you wanted to, if there were some bugs on their vehicles, they've discovered that they've been under surveillance. And their vehicles may be bugged. They may, they may discover two bugs on the vehicle and maybe a third one because the cops planted two for them to discover and one not, whatever.

So they go next to that transmission station because, and. any interference from the exposed diodes would scramble any kind of radio signal. That's why they're standing. That's why they happen to go. They're small. Right. Let's go to the diner scene. So when I moved out to her in 2002, even though the Internet was in its early Googling stage,

I knew Kate Manilini's. I knew what it was. Right. Went there within the first two months. It felt like it was like one of the five things I had to do. It's a pilgrimage. It really was. They had the picture.

of De Niro and Pacino, it's no longer with us. It went away, I think, like six, seven years ago. So this rumor starts, I don't know, sometime in the mid-2000s, that De Niro and Puccino weren't in the same scene together, that you had to actually shoot them with body doubles. Now, we know this isn't true, but when did you first hear that this was actually a rumor that people were saying that these guys weren't in the same shot? It was very silly. I don't know, about maybe about 10, 12, about the same time you did, about 10, 12 years ago. I mean, the reason, I shot the whole scene with three cameras. So there were two overs, and there was a wide shot of the two guys.

And the design on, which I had for safety, but the design on the scene was to be as intimate as possible to reduce anything that would distract you. So consequently, I wanted everything else in a frame to be black and white, except their skin town. hence Kate Mandelini because everything in that restaurant is just neutral it's all black and white. The tiles, the floor, the decor, everything's black and white or gray. And then the two cameras

were like one quarter of an inch away from seeing each other. The ones that were over L onto Bob and over Bob onto L. And I played around at one point trying to use the two shot and I couldn't because every time you went to it, you lost that wonderful organic

connection between the two of them. And you also, I wouldn't want to, but if I did want to, you really couldn't use one take, like take eight for L and take 11 for Bob because they were so attuned

and to this scene, this moment between them, the two actors were, that there was this organic unity. They were so tuned in to each other so that if Al shifted in this seat the slightest inch, McCauley, you know, I think, Bob would do the same thing

or something different because his hand are reaching for a handgun I mean they were so body language there was an organic unity to each take so I think the whole most almost all the scenes take 11 or something take 8 of nothing I forget

the online you can find the script pages you can find the script but I think you can find your handwritten notes for that scene and it's so dense you have all these different like maybe this and all these notes to yourself, notes of the actors. I was wondering, you obviously planned this, you had thought so much about it. Was there anything that happened during the shooting in that scene that you were like, holy shit, I can't believe this is happening. I didn't think this was

going to happen. Yeah, the big thing that happened is by about take four, I'm saying, this is so damn good. These guys are so great. This is so, the scene is so powerful. And then it was cut by one of my closest friends who edited like four or five movies, Dove Honig. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, we tried a couple of different versions because you have to try a couple of different versions. But, no, he just knew it was good. But, you know, why wouldn't it be good?

You know, both Al and Bob separately were so we all knew the significance of the scene. It's the only time they meet. So this is a big challenge to get this right. And so from day one, you want to be very careful. careful with it. So, for example, I wanted to only have us, Al Bob and I in my office in pre-production, I wanted to only have us talk about the scene somewhat, not rehearse it, you know, or maybe run some of the lines but with nothing on it, meaning flattened affect, you know, like you've got a lithium drip in, putting nothing on it, no emotion. And I want to save it

all for when we're there with complete understanding of these two moments for these two men and save it for the moment when we're actually shooting. You know, we're sitting here, you and I like a couple of regular fellows. You do what you do, I do what I got to do. And now that we've been face to face, if I'm there and I've got to put you away, I won't like it. But I'll tell you, if it's between you and some poor bastard whose wife you're going to turn into a widow,

brother you are going down there's a flip side to that coin what if you do got me boxed in and I got to put you down because no matter what you will not get my way we've been face to face yeah but I will not hesitate

not for a second I think it's one of the most famous scenes I think ever you have these two guys that the peak of their powers. It's the central scene of the movie. It's the only time. You see this so rarely, right?

Like in The Godfather, Brando and Pacino had the one scene together near the end when he's like, there's not going to be enough time, Pop. Pacino's still young at that point. He's, you know, he's on his way. He's amazing in that movie. But, you know, he's young, Brando's old. You're catching these two guys.

It's almost like a sporting event. And it felt that way. The first time you saw in the theater, I remember when it was over, I almost didn't know what to do. Like I think I was about myself. It was turned in people in my world. Like, do you see that?

What just happened? But I think that's stood this time. Do you think that's the most famous scene you've ever shot? I don't know. I don't really spend a lot of time clocking. Yeah, that's for people like us. But, you know, if there's something else about that scene, it was a very, very moving scene.

They start as two antagonists, right? Protagonists and antagonists. That's how we take them. Each guy is both. And Pacino has cut into Neil McCauley's crew. And Neil McCauley has discovered somebody cut into my crew. He then has Nate, his fixture, do what detectives do. Who is that guy?

I want to know all about him. how much they have on me. And so he gets a package of intel from Nate and it's seen underneath the freeway in Calac, which is exactly like Hannah, the detective, would get about a suspect. Yeah. And Nate warns him, he says, you know, you ought to split.

You can, you can, you can, this guy can hit or miss. You can only, you know, you got to hit every time. You can only miss. You can't miss. and he stays for it anyway. So now you have this situation where Hannah, in one of these courses where you take everybody home to their personal lives, is completely alienated from his wife in his best situation.

And, of course, he, in a way, kind of evades into having a brilliant idea. There's no point in not sitting down with this guy. This guy knows I'm on him. He knows we're all over him. I know it. He knows it. There's no point they're not getting face to face. And so then he launches in the helicopter, stops him on a freeway.

And when they sit down at the beginning of that scene, these really are like two predators who are hunting each other. And by the end of the scene, Hannah's saying, I have this dream, this obligation. And my life's a mess. I'm on my third wife, a downhill slope of my third marriage. And I'm haunted by this dream where all these people are on the table sitting there.

You know, eight-ball hemorrhages from gunwounds, gunshot, from head wounds. And I'm looking at me. And McCauley, like an analyst or as close friends, what did they say? And Hans said, they don't say anything. They just, look. And then McCauley offers up, I got a dream. What's that? He said, you know, I'm drowning.

And I won't, you know, and if I can't take a breath, I'm going to drown. And he says, and Hannah, I figure, Hans says, you know, you know, what it's about. He says, yeah, it's about time, having enough time. You know, so, and if you look beyond the words to the expressions on their face, you see all of that, you see the connection that these guys have made. So they go from these external predators who have never seen each other to this intimate intimacy within that one scene. And then the cap to the scene is, of course, you know, now that we sit down here face to face, you know, I won't like it, but if you're going to come out of a score, this is what Hannah says, you know, I won't get that way away.

And Neil says there's a flip side to that coin. And then they say, well, who knows? It may never happen. We may never see each other again. You know, so the trajectory of these two brilliant actors, you know, looming these characters from this external relationship that they have to each other into this intimacy is really, you know, it is so impressive to me, the work that they did.

Yeah, when Chris and I talk about that scene, to me, that's like an acting class, because it's like, just even the way they shift their bodies, De Niro's body language, he's leaning back at one point. Pacino's all hands. He's doing all this stuff. Yeah. He's trying to connect their eyes or locked the entire time. Anyway, anytime they look away, it's for a reason.

And it's just amazing to watch. What's your favorite thing about that scene, Chris? I think this time around watching it it was the way in which Vincent disarms Neil a little bit by saying my life's a disaster zone because I think in the beginning there's that kind of boxer circling each other

and there's a vulnerability even if it's a sort of theatrical vulnerability where it seems to offset Neil a little bit and he's like all right we're having an actual conversation here not just bust each other's jobs it's honestly one of the great scenes of all time all right Chris it's time you want to set up the robbery

Yeah, I mean, I want to understand I don't want to sound like the Chris Farley character where I'm just like the robbery scene is just amazing and that's all my question. But the thing that I always freak out about is your understanding of physical space in that scene. You know what I mean? And like that basically I can always tell

even though you're running around guerrilla moviemaking style handheld with all these guys, where somebody is in relation to another. And that's something that like very few filmmakers understand, very few action scenes can depict. So can you tell me a little bit about planning out like the space, the spacing, the geography of that scene? Yeah, it wouldn't have occurred to me to do it any other way except to have it play out like that. And to use the street, to find the right street.

And it started from an idea. I met a, we were scouting locations in Maputo, Mozambique, on Ali, years after I shot, you know, six years after I shot, Pete. and we're in this, and we were looking at this location. It turned out to be a community dance hall that had no power, electricity, no running water, and this amazing neighborhood dance troupe

with a choreographer. And the whole crew, we just stopped and watched this dance routine that was happening inside this place quite by accident. Why, my good friend, because Mono, says already, who was with us, folks in Portuguese,

asked the guy, I'm fascinated by it. What's happening? This is what I understand is happening. And he told me what the story was. He said, yeah, you can't choreograph anything. It's the words from the sky. You can't choreograph anything unless there's a story.

What's the story? That means that choreography, dance, action is as story-driven and should be, I believe, a subject to scene analysis, classical scene as a dialogue scene. You know, what is the action of your characters? Well, they're trying to get out. Why are they trying to get out? Because they're experienced. And when you're experienced and you're ambushed, you shoot your way out of an ambush.

And if you have the kind of training that Neil and Val have, you know that the police are no match for the Army. The police used to have an overwhelming force over civilians. Our guys are not citizens. They are not civilians. And so they assault the ambush. Now, if you're going to assault an ambush, then I have to have them coming out of a bank, and I have to have various pieces of, call it, furniture, whether it's cars or mailboxes or lamp posts that are there for them to, for them to, one guy advances, lays down rounds, suppresses the fire of the ambush. Then the other guy advances. He does the same thing. And they leapfrog to do one thing to get themselves out. So that's a drove. that location. But going back before that, I had two guys from the SAS,

Mick Gould and Steve Mitchell, who worked with me doing all the training. And we did a lot of training at the LA County Sheriff's Ranges. And once I had that location, we actually built on those ranges with exact measurements where the, okay, there's going to be one black car that's parked in front of you. And then another 75 feet over on the right-hand side, there's this mailbox.

And we built all those, call them stations, we built all those features on the shooting range. And our guys, and the actors, they ran through this with live ammo, the hallway, just as if they were police in training or for that matter, special forces of training. And they got incredibly good. Actors, when you work with them, you realize that he has spectacular eye-hand coordination. And I mean, there's some, in the last Blu-ray DVD, there are some extras. One of them is some images of some sequences of video of Bob on the range.

And I think, yeah, there's maybe something with bail on the range as well. And, you know, Bob and that, they could out shoot 95% of the LAPD. And it's all all the live rounds. And it's 200% safe. safety is maniacal on this kind of thing. So the first day at the range is breaking the gun down and fire around. It's just about safety, gun control, taking the weapon apart, putting it back together. I mean, it's like really, really severe safety, you know, precaution, shooting.

But that's, anyway, that, so they had the skill sets. And now they're used to doing it. And now we have, you know, full, full. full of blanks and the weapons. And, you know. We should mention that the realism thing, that's one of your hallmarks. I mean, you literally had James Kahn learn how to how to break. What did he in thief?

We did thief a few months ago. He had to learn how to break into, what was it, a safe or? I can't remember. What did he break into? You actually made him learn how to do it. Well, yes. And we didn't have any props on that film. because all of the burglary tools

were real and they all belonged to this guy, John Santucci, who I made a series rapids on crime history. But John was the thief that a lot of thief was based on. So the burning bar and the Milwaukee Tool Company color court drill and the opening scene

is all. No, Jimmy could really do that stuff. That's why we love your movies. You go all in. You actually really do this stuff. Like the bank shootout, it really seems like they're breaking out of an ambush. Right. You know, that's, to me, why would anyone want to do it any other, any other way? So that even a scene like the, I don't know, let's say the trial with the Huron-Sachian

and the Lash the Mohicans is based on, is based on Native American judicial processes. And there's three different judicial systems operating in Lash the Mohicans. And among the Huron particularly, but also say the Iroquois, that notion of equivalence that you're not trying to find that who's right or wrong. You're trying to get everybody to leave because you've made some justice happen. Yeah. And so that's why Magua gets the younger sister. And that's why the older sister is going to be put to death because the death of Magua's children. And, you know, it's all worked out.

And so that's researched as well. So it's all, I just find more richness in trying to discover how things really happen than in my powers to just make it up. Let's go to the last scene or the last extended scene. So it ends with them holding hands or Pacino's saying on De Niro's hand as De Niro's dying. Was that always in your head as how this was going to end? Did you decide that on location? Did you know that was going to be the ending? No, I decided that if the, don't put it another way, I didn't.

I had many different endings. And when I came upon that ending, that's when I decided, the other reason I decided I want to go, that's it, to go and make it, make the film. And that end image on that outcome was the impetus towards everything else, meaning once I had that ending, I reverse engineered that. into this notion of this big dialectic of five or six different characters, a kind of a fugue idea of I could put an audience into a kind of a fugue state where they're feeling multiple things simultaneously, and connected to these characters and drive it all to the ending. So the ending is really the beginning, which I believe in,

because we remember most what we saw last. What we saw last is the end of the movie. The end of the movie is critical. And once I had the end of the movie, I was able to move back through all of this other material, which was very exciting for different reasons, but there wasn't really a yardstick to say, this scene belongs, this scene doesn't,

take this scene, change it that way or change it this way. It's working from the end to the back that then dictated everything all, you know, all the way, moving all the way backwards to the front. When did you have, when did you have the Moby song in your head? We were editing around the clock. in a factory, a 25,000 square foot factory in an industrial corridor in Santa Monica. And because Warner Brothers had, if I've seen the dailies and everything, he asked me if I could get it ready for Christmas, which is very short for a two-hour and 45-minute movie.

And I said, I don't know, let me work for about six weeks. If the story's in good shape, then we'll commit. But if I do, it's going to be really full-out. to them. And after six weeks, I said, yeah, I could make it for Christmas. So then we began a routine where we were literally, we had four editors, we were editing almost around the clock. Different teams would come in because of something technical, with the kind of electronic system we were editing on.

And Moby was hanging out, and I'd come in in a morning or something, he'd be sleeping under his desk. Wait, what's Moby doing there? I already planned to use one of this piece of music. He's a lovely, lovely man, and he's quite terrific. And it was later on that I decided to use, use that cue. It was, it was perfect. Elliot Goldenthal, who did the rest of the score,

did a brilliant, brilliant job. And then Lisa Gerard, I discovered her music during post and used about four or five of her cue of needle drops of her music. And then I hired her as a composer on the picture. You know, I did, you know, it did right after that, insider. All right, we're going to skip a couple of categories because we're, we, I want to stay on time. We're going to skip what stage the best and what stage the worst.

Which is it. Well, we had a bunch of, we had a bunch of things, but I'm not going to make you answer. I want to go to casting what ifs because one of the things that we love about the rewatchables when we do the research of it, but you also don't totally know what's true. So you're researching and it's like, this guy was supposed to be in the movie or they, And then this person backed out. I'm just going to go quick. So you already answered the Walter Hill thing.

Kiannu Reeves was originally signed to play Chris, but then Val Kilmer was able to do it. Is that true or not true? No. It was always Val? Yeah. Okay. Michael Madsen was originally Michael,

but then was replaced by Seismore. True or untrue? Untrue. I mean, you, you, when you cast, I haven't trust in a dozen, you know, 15, 20 different actors that you're considering. And Michael Manson was one of the ones I was considering, but there was no original casting and then changing.

This is great. See, this is so much better than Google, Chris. Ted Levine, Ted Levine was originally offered Waingrove, but he didn't want to be typecast because he'd been Buffalo Bill, so he wanted to be Bosco instead, true or untrue? I don't recall, but I don't think so. I don't think that's true. Wow, we're 0 for four.

James Kahn, this is true because this happened on the DVD commentary. He lamented to you when you were doing thief that you didn't put him in heat. This was true. Did you ever think about putting James Kahn in heat? Was that ever an option? No, that really. I love Jimmy. You know, I'm disappointed.

We never worked together again. He's just a great guy. We've stayed friendly over the years. but you're making a film, making a motion picture, you're making a motion picture. You have to make these, you know, there's no question. You learn early on, let me put this way, you learn early on that you have to make artistically responsible choices.

Your choices have to be authentic. They can't be. Right. One of our other categories, we call it the best that guy, aka the Joey Pants Award after Joe Pantiliano, because he was one of the original that guys, then it became Joe Pantiliano. One of the things we love about your movie is,

is you have a bunch of guys, and they eventually become, you know, their names after a while, but, you know, Chris loves Treo. For a while, Treo was like, I know that guy, I recognize his face, I don't know his name, and then he became Danny Treo. I think Wayne Groh, Kevin Gage, I think people see him and they're just like,

that's Wayne Grove, but you had Tom Noonan, you have Brian Libby, you have Ted Levine, obviously, West Studi, who became the guy from Last Mohicans, but eventually became West Studi. How do you find these guys that, haven't become names yet, but you see something. What are you looking for? We're looking for, first of all, you're looking for art, authenticity, a resonance where you feel that Noon and is Kelso, and Tom and I had worked together in Manhunter. He was Francis

Dollar Hut. Oh, yeah. I know what he was capable, capable of. And now I put him in a wheelchair, you know, in City Terrace, just east of downtown, which was at the time when we shot there was like Beirut. And, you know, it's just a casting process. I work with Bonnie Chairman, who was brilliant. And, you know, I mean, the very difficult choice, for example, was Natalie Portman for Lauren, you know, because Kate Winslet also tried out for that role. What? Wow.

Real tough choice. Jesus. And then, which was very young, obviously. Ashley Judd was, I don't remember Dennis Haysberg. I mean, it was a great, you know, the great cast, Diane Van Laura, who was also Jeffrey Wigan's wife and insider. So the next category is a category that we named after Vincent Hanna. It's the Vincent Hanna Overacting Award. Now, I don't necessarily think, I don't think Pacino's overacting in this movie.

It's just that when, you know, if you see Pacino out of context from this film, if you see it on the internet, like, you could say that that is like an overacting award. Now, I could run through- It's dialing it up. It's where they, he's doing it for a reason. But when you dial it up, we call it the Vincent Hanna. Now, I could run through any number of Vincent Hanna moments in this movie. But the thing that's actually incredible is that even the lower key moments, like when he's with Justine and he's like, I told you when we hooked up, baby. like Pacino's performance in this movie

did you ever ever think to yourself is this a little too much mustard on this one? Never. Never. Never. I mean, Al's one of the most greatest actors ever work with. I mean, he's on a high wire without a net all the time. He is fearless, fearless. And, you know, he's just,

you use the phrase all in, he's all in. Yeah. And, yeah. Well, there was a cocaine, backstory that you took it wasn't that in earlier visions where this guy's definitely doing some bumps and that's why he's got the extra energy but then that's kind of taken out by the time we see the movie right but there's uh there's not a lot of difference between um Hannah and and uh shredo and and and and and macaulay in a way in terms of where they came from why they are the way they are.

I have a complete biography of Vincent Hanna from when he grew up in, in, in, uh, in, uh, her in Illinois, who his father was, uh, you know, uh, driving trucks for some, you know, rural Illinois bootleggers in, in little Egypt with that southern tip of Illinois down there. And how he, you know, he wanted to, he wanted to flee for some. something else. And it was either go to some lousy, you know, local college, and instead he joins the Marines, and he winds up during a tent offensive in Vietnam. And what he sees there. And then that desire to go to law school, it lasts for two months. They joined the Chicago Police

Department. This is Vincent Hanna. And, you know, and he would take his car, drive out into the middle of the night, south of Chicago, just nowhere, aimlessly, you know, getting through Kankakee across these iron bridges in the middle of the night out of his fields and then he turned the lights off on a two-lane blacktop in the middle of that farmland and just dare himself about how long can he continue driving before he freaks out and turns the lights back on or he'll end up in a ditch. Wow. And what's wrong with me? Why am I driven this way? And then he comes to a certain realization that what he's really after, what he really wants in his life is discovering pursuit is he embraces fleeing.

He embraces going after something. And you cut from that moment, if you visualize it, all the way to in a hospital when he says to Justine, I'm not who you want, Justine. All I am is who I'm going after. Yeah. And that's the, that's where he comes from. And the same thing with Vail growing up in Paramount, California, with a father who gets drafted,

sent to Germany, gets killed on the Autostrata after three weeks, a mother who becomes a vulgo dancer with the mellow yellow. And he's got so much emotion, and he doesn't know what to do with any of it, okay, except for when he's scoring. Some of the stuff is, it was also vivid and worked out and thorough

that that's what impelled us. We've written a novel not on heat but on everything preceding heat and everything following heat. Wow. And it's because these characters

are so vivid. It'll be coming out next summer. Amazing. That's amazing. Did you give Pacino Kilmer all these guys you gave them the biographies?

Did they work from those? Oh, yeah, absolutely. As a matter of course, you know, I mean, who the character was. Not only do I give them who the character is, here's why he is the way he is, here's this fabricated, it's a fabrication, but we want to believe it. Here's his whole identity. Here's his origins. It affects, it informs his reactions and it was seen now in 1995, but this is what was happening over 1968. Right. Right. And then, but then actors internalize that and, and usually are capable of having a complete autobiography. I mean, really good serious actors who are down, who are really down for the cost, have a, you know, have a complete autobiography of who, of who, who, who I am, you know, and they are that character. And that's, that's when you get the kind of work that the actors and, you know, this film did. So we have a category. I'm just going to explain this to you, Kick.

It's called the Deanne Waiters Award. It is named after this basketball player named Deanne Waiters, who didn't start. He would come into the game for like six minutes. He would sometimes get really hot and make a bunch of threes. He would score like 14 points in five minutes. So we named this after the character actor in the movie or character actress. Somebody's in the movie for a few scenes, not one of the stars,

who came in and hit a bunch of threes and kind of. stole a couple scenes. Who did we pick? Did we pick Waingrove, Chris, and the reheat? I think so. I think it was Kevin Gage last time. All right. So you, we're making you pick.

I know it's tough. It's tough to pick between all your babies in this movie, but you have to pick. What character actor for you stole the scene the most or stole a scene or these scenes? Who would you go with? There's not one. There's a number of them. One is definitely Wayne Grove. and you talked about Jericho Mile.

There was a guy named Steve White, who was a convict who used in Jericho Mile, who had the big swastika tattooed on his chest. I said, White Power, who wound up getting killed about 60 days after we left Folsom. And I took his tattoos, and those are the tattoos that I put on Wingrow. I put on Kevin Gage to play Wingrow.

Wow. So he's won. I mean, Tom, and is brunian. This guy sitting there in it, I mean, he's so, you know, talking about just grabbing these things out of the air. Plus, he invents the internet in that scene. He invents the internet in that scene. It's all out there.

Well, and in the fictional biography, in his fictional biography, he was a guy who was working on DARPA, was one of the people who was working on DARPA in the early days. And for whatever reason, he split off. off on his own. And he's a character, an important character in this novel I was talking about. Ted Levine, West is not a, you know, small. No, now you're naming everybody.

No, no, no, no. You name two. Those are your choices. You're first team. I got a third one. Dennis, Dennis Hayesbert. And, but the one that really, one of the ones who really stands out. And if you talk about it, like, for small role, but.

just power is Kim Staunton, who played, you know, who played, you know, Breedon's wife. Yeah. All right. So we have a category called Apex Mountain where we try to figure out different people, locations, things in this movie, was just at the peak of their all-time power. So I'm just going to ask you about yourself. what movie did you feel like I am at the absolute complete command of every part of this process

this is it this is as good as I'm ever going to be right now was it this movie or was it another one well no there isn't there's various moments in you know in heat once all you know everything is harmony of the spheres

it's that feeling you have when you're the director and all the planning and all the work and all the analysis and all the training everything comes together and man it's just working and it's magic and everybody 200 people are feeling the same magic everybody gets it because we've all you know everybody and the crew the cast everyone we're all part of the same thing that's had that's happened you know it happens a couple times a number of times for me on on on heat it certainly happened on you know oh insider ali when we did a rumble in the jungle. You know,

every scene that Michael T. Williamson was in playing Don King, you know, he's a better, he's a better, Don King

and Don King is Don King. You know, it's so, you know, when it happens, you're extremely grateful. And, that's how I feel

about podcasting with Chris. Sometimes it just happens for us. Chris has, we're going to a category called picking nits, where we pick some nits with the movie. all innocent stuff. Chris,

do you want to do your thing about the locations in L.A.? Go ahead. Well, no, I just think it's, this is probably more of a collateral question, but I think it applies to heat as well, which is that you're obviously deeply researched like all these films.

You're talking about the legal system and last the Mohicans. But do you sometimes cheat L.A. traffic when it comes to whether or not a guy can get across town and an X amount of time or where a location is? Sure. When Neil is, no, I want Neil driving past those refineries when he's, when he's bent on, you know, when he's going after, you know, Van Zant.

And Nate says, you know, here's where Van Zant lives. You have the time. I'll make the time. He says, and he's driving past those refineries with the steam coming out. that's down in Terminal Island. You wouldn't be there if you're heading. Hollywood up in the hills of Susset. Yeah, when we lived on the East Coast, we didn't notice these things. All right, another pick and knit. So they pull off a big heist

and then Neil and the crew, they go for a fancy dinner right after with all the families. What happened to leave with the heats coming around the corner and now they're ordering Italian food and drinking wine? Like, would it Neil not want to be seen with the crew for months after they do this? What am I missing with this part? Say that again. I wouldn't understand that.

So they do a big heist, right? And then they go have a big dinner with their families right after. Would Neil, with the discipline that he has, would he even want to be seen with all these people in public for months? Like what did your research say about these crews, how they hang out after and before heist? Well, they hang out. I mean, he had no idea that he was being surveilled. Let me cut to something else. in when we were doing public enemies I was working with a guy named Jerry Scolice who was a

who had an infamous bank robber and had a Mazza technical advisor and I asked one of the key things I asked them what's important for debt was what is the high what moment in the whole of the process of setting up a score, taking a score and afterwards what's the high point

when you're in and it was and he said no there were two points. One is when you're laying, when you're with your guys and you're figuring out and you're scoping it out way ahead of time. And there's a bond there as you're waiting to see what time the bank guards go for a coffee break. And we just go to the same six. And the other thing is well after the score. And so kind of that's the come down. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. All right. You go, Chris. Um, was, so this is probably one of the ones that we've been, asked about the most that I always wanted to ask you, which is when Chris goes to see Charlene

at the end of the movie and she gives the little hand gesture to tell him he should get out of there. He goes up to a bunch of guys on the basketball court. I know that this is, I've seen the transcription says, Chris says, do you guys know anywhere around here to rent? But Bill and I have always heard it as Chris asking those guys on the basketball court, do you know anywhere to go buy some bread. Can you definitively answer which one it is? Oh, it went. But let me tell you something. Let me tell you something about that wave that she did. Again, in the hypothetical backstory, he met her in 1988 in Las Vegas. And she was like an escort or a high-end call girl. And he was an detective gambler.

Okay, and that's kind of a black check thing. And that's kind of this weird. I love that. That makes sense. I kind of feel like the cops drop the ball there, not really researching this guy who just randomly comes out and then stares at Ashley Jeter to the balcony for 10 seconds and then drives off. Here's one more nitpick.

Why did Edy like Neil? What was it about Neil? to me like when he's rude in the diner I'm out but that might I might just be you know I'm an only child I might be oversensitive the moment he's rude to her I just think she's like oh this guy's a weirdo like what what was it about her was there some damage in her past like when you did that backstory what was it about neil that attracted her I don't know that she was attracted to him I think she just wanted to be she asked this question she's like she's lonely and she wants to strike up a conversation with somebody she recognized as a frequent customer in the store.

It certainly wasn't, the direction to her was not that this guy's appealing to you or there's something like a manic about him. He's just a straight guy who bought a rather esoteric book. And in your store, you saw him there. You walked right past him, you know, and it's just kind of an interesting looking guy who's a customer just five minutes ago. And it's all quite excellent. Chris, what would you have told Edie if you guys were buddies?

She's like, hey, I met this guy. She's like, I met this guy. Well, I think the cool thing about Edie is like, Los Angeles is a really lonely place. And like, I don't know that many people. But I don't know what advice I would have given her. He's like, yeah, this guy's into medals. He's a little mysterious, but I think I'm going to go out with him. He hasn't have any furniture.

All right. It always is a lonely place for women. I mean, if you listen to the lyrics, if you listen to the lyrics of L.A. Woman by the Doors, you know, so alone is that refrain? Yeah. Never saw a woman so alone. Another character. I can't wait to ask you this. I mean, another category.

Could this be remade in 2021 as a 10-episode Netflix series? So we started asking this with different movies, especially from the past, because, as you know, in the last 10 years, some of the best, artists that we have who normally would have grown up wanting to make movies now they have the ability to make like these 10-hour series or it could be three seasons, whatever like that. The age you were at when you made heat,

if you had all the powers that we have now and Netflix is like, here's a ton of money, make this a season one. I feel like you would have made it as a movie, but could you see the appeal possibly as this just could have been this awesome dramatic series? I wouldn't know

it would be it'd be the idea is depressing great answer you won the podcast yeah but that's that's where it would have gone

a lot of these times though right like somebody would have been like all right I'll stretch it out to 10 episodes and I'll do everyone have a backstory and each character will get an episode

and then I'll get a whole season I don't think so it's it's transient You know, even some of the, there's some really good stuff. I mean, it really is the golden age of TV writing. I mean, some work on it is fantastic. But for some reason, it just doesn't, it doesn't last. Dino DeLorentis one time said to me when I talked about something about television,

it says, Michael, there's a small screen and then there's the big screen. Did you have to cut a lot from heat? Did you have an original thing that was three and a half, that was 3.45? How did you get it down to 240? 45? It was probably, I think, an early cut was maybe, you know, three hours and 10 minutes and five minutes. There were some scenes that, you know, I mean, I didn't aim for 245. It was, it was responsible storytelling and engagement and the rhythms of it. I mean, for me, it lives like a large piece of music. And I don't want you to sit. I don't want you. I do it for audience

an impact. I don't want you disengaged. Right. So it becomes the rhythms and the tones and colors and emotional connections that's there in the storytelling. So the storytelling is kind of like a program for engagement in these characters and having these characters likes be vivid. And if you, obviously, if you're too long, you know, then, you know, there's a, there's a sag. And so this was the length that should have been length. You know, it wasn't, it wasn't locked. Oh, I have to. I love everything at two hours and 52 minutes, but somehow I got to take seven minutes out.

That was never an issue. Yeah, you had the juice at that point, too. There's an interesting story about Hollywood. The, when I turned a movie in and Warner Brothers were seeing it for the first time, and that showed to the Warner's executives. And two of them told me afterwards, we said to each other before we screened it because they knew it was two hours in 45 minutes.

Which one of us is going to tell Michael he has to take 25 years? No. I didn't have a contractual obligation to be 220. Yeah. And they flipped a coin. And then at the end of the screening, they said, well, I guess we got a two-hour and 45-minute movie. You know, it didn't even come up. Our last, our second-in-answered question.

I'm going to skip all these. Let's just talk about heat two. I know you didn't really fully think about it. But did you ever think about it? Did you ever think about what could have been next? Could I have gone back with some of these characters? Is there some sort of epilogue type thing, at least like you went to coffee and jotted some notes down for yourself for two hours and played it out?

Did it happen? Well, there is. That's why we wrote this novel. This novel is, it starts in 1988 and it ends in 1998. So it's a prequel end. it goes after. Interesting. Okay. Because we thought he too, Chris, we were thinking Val Kilmer's son, Dominic. Maybe he gets out of prison. He's

like age 23 and he gets out of the Gradually Academy. Yeah. He's mad at Neil's son that we didn't know Neil had and it's a revenge movie. It's Dominic versus Neil's son going at it. So the last category was who won the movie when we did the reheat. We both voted for Michael Mann because we thought. this was an artist movie from beginning to end, the culmination of a 15-year journey for you. But before we let you go,

you know, Chris and I love Miami Vice, the movie. It's had this whole renaissance, and I saw you retweeted, somebody wrote a piece about it. Chris and I, we planted our flag on Miami Vice the Movie Island. What was that? Three and a half years ago, Chris? That's right, yeah. Yeah, we just make sure you remember us when,

as this whole renaissance with this movie comes, right, Chris? We were there first. We took it even further. Bill and I just did a podcast about Calderon's Return. Yeah, we did. We did the TV. It was the only TV show we've ever done on the rewatchables. Really?

That's how Deeply on. Yeah, Caldera's Return, the greatest two-part TV movie of all time. It's hard to tell you, the first season of Miami Vice, you're involved in every aspect of it, right? Because, like, you're not necessarily direct in the episodes, but you're still there all over the place, correct? Yes, seasons one and season two. Yeah. And then par the way into the beginning of season three. That's Miguel Pinheiro.

Now, Miguel Pinheiro, who wrote, what a Tony Award for winning Short Eyes. There was also an ex-convict. He had been in Attica during the rebellion. He was in Rikers Island. And when I was shooting Jericho, Miles, inside Folsom, somehow convicts, the public population knew everything. We had some actors like Peter Strauss who were very well known at the time, and they counted for nothing.

The celebrity, when he walked in, was Miguel Pinero. Every man on it, he started. Jesus. Somebody came off to him and gave him a cup of water, a plastic glass of water with a napkin wrapped around it in a special way. And I had Neil, I had Bob. when he makes love with with edie before he leaves he has a plastic cup of water and i guess got that the napkin from that moment he does the same thing that's amazing wow um what did we not ask you

that we should ask you about heat before we go do we miss anything i thought i thought like we covered it nicely you guys are amazing first of all i'm shocked and surprised and please by all this but but you guys are amazingly thorough all right good chris any last thoughts Michael Mann? No, just to thank you. Just to thank you. You've made some of my favorite movies. So it's really quite an honor to talk to you today. I think we've done seven of, seven every movies, but this is our favorite. We know you're a busy guy. We really appreciate that you came out and talked about it. All right, good to see you. Thank you for everything. Thank you so much. Thank you.

All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks so much to Michael Mann. You can follow him on Twitter, by the way. It's at Michael Mann. And we will be back next week with a brand new rewatch of us. Thanks to producer Craig Horlebeck. I don't know what it would take through the foreheat. I think we probably peaked. But who knows?

The four heat might happen down the road. Maybe for episode 250. Maybe for episode 300. Maybe episode 500. Will we ever say goodbye to heat? I don't know. This podcast was worth the risk. See you next week.