WHAT WENT WRONG - Heat

Episode Date: November 10, 2025

What if you got a do-over on the score of a lifetime? Would you take your shot, or walk away? Join Chris & Lizzie as they infiltrate the incredible crew behind 'Heat' and learn how Michael Mann was finally able to pull off his sprawling LA crime drama yet still ended up getting robbed… Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast, Full Stop, that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone a nearly three-hour long, sprawling criminal masterpiece in which everyone in Los Angeles is murdered by Robert De Niro. I am one of your hosts, Lizzie Bassett, here as always, with Chris Winnerbauer. And, Chris, what do you have for us today? We got a good crew. This crew is good. We'll conclude with my terrible Al Pacino impression.

We are talking about Michael Mann's Heat. Lizzie, had you ever seen Heat before? And what were your thoughts upon watching or re-watching it for the podcast? This is another one where I had seen bits and pieces of this, whether it was because my dad had rented it on DVD and I was allowed to see like two scenes before I had to go to bed or it was airing heavily edited, I would have to imagine, on, you know, TNT or something. And I had never sat down and watched the whole thing in full.

I saw the runtime. I was not excited about that. But I absolutely loved it. I can't believe it took me this long to watch heat in full. I can't wait to watch it again. Similar to something you said last week about Last of the Mohicans, this is a very complicated plot. And they really don't dumb it down, which I appreciated. Now, was I confused? Yes. Did I have to roll it back a couple times? Yes. And I'm okay with that. I like that. I miss that about movies. But to me, the most impressive thing about this movie is that I genuinely cared about every character. And there are so many of them that the fact that there was so much emotional impact when someone died, even if you'd only seen them in like three scenes prior to that,

It's really impressive. I love the dynamic between De Niro and Pacino. I cannot imagine what this cost. I don't understand how they shut down the entirety of Los Angeles to film this movie, but I really loved it. It did make me homesick for L.A. And the last thing I'll say is that I feel like this is the zenith of Pacino. This is right at the tipping point before he just goes into the weird place where he's kind of just screaming all of his lines. He's only screaming some of his lines. He's only screaming some of his lines. in this, and they're just right. It's just the level of weirdness that I want. He's great in this. He's also never looked better. I feel like this is the most attractive Al Pacino ever has been or will be, and somehow he keeps having kids. Good for him. Oh, one last thing is that Val Kilmer, I remembered him having such a bigger presence in this movie than he has, really. I thought his performance was sort of strange, kind of like unaffected until that last scene where he's standing on the looking up at Charlene, played by Ashley Judd. And that was so beautiful. I can't get over that scene and their performance in that. It was really simple. And it just made me cry. And I love Val Kilmer and I miss

Val Kilmer. So I loved it. Man. Michael Mann. Man, man, Chris, what about you? I agree with a lot of what you just said. I think it is one of Hollywood's most flawed masterpieces. And I mean that as a compliment. It's, as you mentioned, incredibly long. This movie is 171 minutes. Pacino's performance does really just tiptoe up to the border of camp. Yes, in a great way. I agree. And there's some, you know, memeable moments.

The great-ass moment is one we will talk about. She's got a great-ass! A great-ass! What's the other one that he just yells for no reason? Give me all you got! Give me all you got! Yills a lot of them. The dialogue can verge on absurd.

I do think a lot of the dialogue written in particular for the female characters, Justine is the one that comes to mind for me, is tough. It verges kind of like absurd, poetic, too introspective. She just, unfortunately, this is Natalie Portman's mom in the movie, she just comes across as really annoying, which is not fair to her and her situation. But I agree, the way that she's written is not great. I would also call out Edy by Amy Brennaman, which is a bit of a strange character, not very much there. No real explanation as to why she would be with Robert De Niro all the way up to the end, and also absolutely devoid of chemistry with Robert De Niro in that relationship. Yeah, that one's stuff.

The Natalie Portman storyline, I also think, is like borderline irresponsible in how it is given basically no attention. And then she has attempted suicide in Al Pacino's hotel bathtub. Graphically. And yet, I think this is one of the most visually stunning movies of the last 35 years. I do think it may be the pinnacle of night cinematography on 35 millimeter film. I don't know if anyone has made Los Angeles at night look this good on film. It makes exceptional use, as you mentioned, of Los Angeles as both a backdrop and a character in this story. And even though Pacino's performance is big, I think

paired with De Niro, they are exceptional. And it's a fun contrast between the hot dog cop and the circumspects criminal, which is a bit of a reversal of what you might expect the flamboyant criminal and the buttoned up cop, and this is the flip side of that. And I think it's a really interesting, you know, I watched basically all of Michael Mann's movies

for this episode, and he seems very, very fascinated by the exploration of, independence in particular, I think, a male desire for independence, but then the need for interdependence or codependence, you know, as this movie kind of ends with, these men can't quit each other in a really interesting, tragic way. And I agree, Lizzie, you know, some of the stuff makes me cry. I think the final shot of this movie's amazing. I think it's one of the best final shots that I can think of, of them at the end of the runway at LAX. And it's really interesting how, again, someone like Val Kilmer comes in to play a pretty small role.

And as we'll discuss, he was kind of at the peak of his powers when he decided to do this movie and took on this part. And it was certainly, I think, a bold decision to do so. There's also just the actors in the ensemble in this. The cast is insane. Yeah, I mean, you have like Ted Levine who gets, I don't know, 11 lines, just a few years removed from Buffalo Bill, West Studi. 10 lines. One year after Magua and last of the Mohicans. I mean, I...

This is like Danny Trejo's breaking out. You know what I mean with this movie? He's wonderful in this. Also, I have to shout out Michael T. Williamson. Michael T. Williamson, yeah, as Drucker, the other detective that works with Pacino. He's wonderful. If anybody doesn't know who that is, he probably most famously played Bubba in Forrest Gump, but he's been in a ton of stuff. He's fantastic and justified. And I wish he had had, I wish he has had a bigger career than he's had, and I really loved him in this. It's got an incredible cast, and we will get to how they pulled it together. But first, Lizzie, the details. Heat is a 1995 heist movie, written and directed by Michael Mann, with music by

composer, Elliot Golden Thal. I liked the music a lot. Well, some of its score and a lot of its needle drops, too, and we'll discuss, because my favorite track is actually a Mobe track, and Moby was pretty involved in this movie. Okay. Now, yeah, oddly enough. Elliot Goldenthal, you guys may recognize he was the composer for Interview with the Vampire. Yes. It was produced by Art Linson and Michael Mann, and it stars.

Hoo! Al Pacino as Vincent Hanna. Robert De Niro is Neil McCauley, Val Kilmer as Chris Scheherlis. Tom Seismore as Michael Sherito. John Voight as Nate, just Nate. Ashley Judd as Charlene Shahirlis. Diane Vinora as Justine. Amy Brennaman as Edy.

Natalie Portman is Lauren. And then we have West Studie, Ted Levine, William Fickner in one of his early roles. Yes. Michael T. Williamson, Tom Noonan, Kevin Gage, Hank Azaria, Danny Trejo, Henry Rollins, Henry Rollins, Zander Berkeley, Jeremy Piven. Yes. Many, many, many more. It was released by Warner Brothers on December 15th, 1995, so almost exactly 30 years ago. And as always, the IMDB logline reads.

A group of high-end professional thieves start to feel the heat from the LAPD when they unknowingly leave a verbal clue at their latest heist. Slick. I added the slick at the end. But it's an important plot point. Sources for today's episode include, but are not limited to, the making of heat, the 2005 documentary, which is included in the DVD or the Blu-ray. Michael Mann discusses Heat, his 2015 interview at TIF. Heat at 20. Michael Mann on Making a Crime Drama Classic from Rolling Stone. Heat at 25, The Making of a Modern Classic by Esquire, and many, many more articles, retrospectives and interviews involved in the film, including a really fun book called The Home Invaders by Frank Hoheimer, which is the book that is the basis of Michael Mann's first feature film, theatrical feature film, Thief. All right, as we get started, Lizzie, we're going to do this one a little different. And David, I need you to queue up some heist music for me. Making a movie is like taken down a score.

Most people focus on the take, and for some, the action is the juice. Looking at you, Michael Bay. But the best know, it's 99% planning, preparation, and discipline. You're only as good as your crew. And most importantly, you only get one shot. In crime and in movies, Lizzie, as we've learned, there are no second chances. Maybe it's a hit. Maybe you go to director's jail.

But what if that wasn't true? What if Lizzie, you got one more shot? What if you could get a do-over on the score of a lifetime? Would you hesitate? Or would you be like Al Pacino at the conclusion of heat? Would you take the shot? I think you go like Robert De Niro and decide to kill that serial killer that's randomly in the middle of the...

You die for Wain Grove. All right. Let's talk about heat. So back in the 1950s in Chicago, cops were looking for ways to keep kids off the street. And in 1955, the Chicago Tribune runs one of those scared straight stories. You know those stories. Misguided youth pledges to heed sordid tale of prison.

That was the headline. Bill, a teen boy, was arrested for robbery, and he sits down with a 41-year-old ex-convict. His name? Neil McCauley. Now, McCauley ran with a crew called the Friday Morning Gang. They staged holdups on Fridays, hence the name, and they robbed loan associations that had large sums of money on hand to cash paychecks.

So the armored truck would show up, deliver the cash so they could do payday loans, and then the Friday morning gang would show up and stick them up. So McCauley asks this officer, hey, what's this kid in here for? And the officer says, that kid thinks a bum like you is a hero. And Neil McCauley is no hero. And he knows it. So he sits this kid down. And he says, kid, I started out at 18.

I spent 20 of the next 23 years in prison. I got no family. My advice is when you get on the street again, meet a nice girl like I never had the chance to get married and be a big shot in athletics like you can be. Basically, a regular type life, barbecues and ball games, as Michael Mann would later write and heat. And maybe this worked on this kid. Maybe it didn't.

But some guys just don't know how to do anything else. Now, Lizzie, we talked about this in Last of the Mast of the Mast. Mohicans, what city was Michael Mann born and raised in? Chicago, Illinois. That's right. And he was 12 years old when that story ran. He was raised on the lore of cops and robbers, and he grew up in a neighborhood where he saw people do what they needed to do to make it. But Michael Mann didn't want to be a cop, and he didn't want to be a criminal. He wanted to tell stories. He studied English literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and he fell in love with the movies when he saw, did we talk about it?

about this, which movie he saw Lizzie? Well, I know he saw Last of the Mohicans very young. Yes, but specifically at college, he saw a movie that we covered. Dr. Strangelove. That's right. It was in black and white, but it was far

from a story that was black and white. It was an art house satire. It exposed the warts on everybody involved with nuclear proliferation. There were really no good guys and no bad guys. And yet, it's a huge commercial hit. And so for man, Strange Love is this revelation.

He's not going to be a hack for some mob outfit, aka the studios, taking high-paying jobs that they dictate, but he also doesn't want to just do low-level scores on the sly. He wants to be the most unusual thing possible, Lizzie, a mainstream autore. So in 1965, he leaves for the London Film School and he's got a code. His films are going to be highly individual statements of high integrity, and they're going to be seen by a mass audience. It's a pretty bold declaration, I'd say. Mm-hmm. Some people are born filmmakers, some people are born criminals, but everybody has to learn their trade.

Let's talk about a thief named John Seabold. John Seabold learned how to rob while he was in prison for a $40 robbery he claims he didn't commit, and his mentor was a man named Oklahoma Smith. Seems a little bit like John Voight's character in a heat. Mm-hmm. Little father figure. He was never caught for robbery, Oklahoma Smith,

but he was doing love. for killing his wife. Well. So he had a lot of time. Great thief. Terrible murderer. He taught young John Seabold everything he knew. They'd pay the guards to smuggle in locks.

John would learn how to pick that lock type, and then they'd pay them to bring in another lock type. And again and again and again for 11 years. All John did was picked locks. He's released in his early 30s, and within 24 hours, he's got seven grand in his pocket because he's done three home invasions. It was his first time committing a crime.

but he was an old pro. Now, Michael Mann never went to prison, but he knew that stories were like locks. If you wanted to crack him, you had to know how they worked. Now, he'd won a can jury prize for his short film, Juan Puri in 1970. He got divorced in 1971, and then he directed the road trip documentary 17 days down the line in 72,

but he was a long way from mastering the stories that Hollywood tended to Greenlight. And that's when he met his very own Oklahoma Smith, Hawaii 5-0 veteran Robert Lewin. Now, Lewin was a story editor, and he taught Michael Mann everything he knew about telling them, how to build them, how to take them apart, and how to make them work for television. And from 1975 to 1978, Michael Mann picked locks, and he wrote for TV. Lizzie, what was perhaps the most famous first show that he started on?

Starsky and Hutch. That's right. Starsky and Hutch. There was also Brank, Gibbsville, Police Story. And then he started rubbing shoulders with some old pros. Cop turned novelist Joseph Womba. Have you ever read The Onion Field? No.

It's this really terribly sad crime drama based on a true story. Or it's a nonfiction book, and they made it into a movie. And I believe it's about two cops. They pull over two criminals. The two criminals end up kidnapping the police officers. And I think one of them misinterprets a particular law that basically they, assume that the kidnapping of these police officers is a capital crime. And so one of these criminals effectively assassinations, just executes, execution style kills one of

these police officers. And then it's about the aftermath and the life of the surviving police officer, as well as the criminal who didn't pull the trigger on that cop. And it's a really amazing book. Dustin Hoffman hired Michael Mann to do a rewrite on 1978 straight time. And that's when Mann decided to take a couple of jobs for one. one of the outfits in Hollywood, ABC. It was his first television feature as a director that broke him out.

Lizzie? The Jericho Mile. The Jericho Mile. Shot on location at the Folsom State Penitentiary. It follows an inmate who starts training to run the Mile in the upcoming Olympics, and it was a hit. Michael Mann walked away with all the jewels, three Emmys, including for writing,

and the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement and Specials for Television. And he had a lot of opportunities after this. We talked about this in Mohicans, something like two dozen offers to direct whatever next feature film. Within a couple days. Yeah. But man knows it's time for his own score, and he already has a job in mind. Now back in Chicago, Neil McCauley decided to mix things up. He was released from prison in 1962, and he transitioned from robbing banks to robbing department stores. He was nearly 50 years old. He didn't know how to do anything else. and he was dealing with some new and unexpected heat, a sergeant detective Chuck Adamson of the Chicago PD.

He'd infiltrated McCauley's crew, staked out a store that McCauley was planning to rob, five or six hours in, one of Adamson's men gets up and goes to the bathroom, and the noise tips off McCauley. He gets up, walks away immediately, and they'd be face-to-face soon enough, because one day, Adamson was dropping off his dry cleaning,

and he sees McColley get out of his car to go for a cup of coffee across the store, Street. McCauley knows Adamson's been surveilling him. Adamson knows McCauley knows. Both are armed. But instead of a shootout, Adamson calls out, come on, I'll buy you a cup of coffee. They go into the deli for a chat, and they realize we kind of like each other. And Adamson says, why don't you go somewhere else and cause trouble? And McCauley says, I like Chicago. And Adamson then says, you realize that one day you're going to be taken down a score, and I'm going to be there. And McCauley says, we'll look at the other side of the coin.

I might have to eliminate you. And Adamson says, I'm sure we'll meet again. Now, Adamson and Michael Mann crossed paths in the late 1970s. Adamson wanted out and Michael Mann wanted in. Adamson wanted to be a writer and Michael Mann wanted to write about cops. So Adamson told Mann this story about how he met Neil McCauley face-to-face in that deli. And Michael Mann said, holy shit, that is an incredible scene. I want to put that in a movie.

So he decides to write a spec script for a very specific type of job. He wants this movie to be nuanced. He was inspired by the novel The Good Soldier, which has... Have you read the Game of Thrones novels, Lizzie? I think I read the first one, and I've not read very many.

I'll use this as an example. The Good Soldier did this well before Game of Thrones, but it's just a more recent example. Game of Thrones, I think, was very interesting to many people because every chapter is told from the point of view of a different character. Right. And so you're rotating characters.

that's what man wants to do with what will become heat. So it's not going to be a black and white cops and criminal story. It's going to be gray all the way down. It's going to be intricate, complex, the most sophisticated lock that Michael Mann has ever tried to pick, and he's not ready for it. He can't make the story work. And even if he could, Lizzie, you mentioned this. This movie is going to be crazy expensive.

Absolutely banana grams. Just the number of guns in this, where there are, 800 armorers on set? It's insane. Oh, no, no, no, no. There probably were, I believe, at least three or four. It better be more than three or four. They fired so many blanks. We will get to that. Okay, he'd never find the backing for it. If he did, he'd need the best crew in Hollywood. And he's a first timer, so nobody's going to give him these things. So he goes and sets up his first theatrical feature at United Artists. Lizzie, which film was this? Thief. Starring James Kahn produced by Jerry Bruckheimer.

Yes. It's based on John Sebold, that gentleman we discussed, who learned from Oklahoma Smith, his book, The Home Invaders. Now, Kahn plays Seabold, who wrote under the pseudonym Frank Hoheimer, so Khan's character's name is Frank, and Willie Nelson played Oklahoma Smith. He's really good. Michael Mann announces his arrival in March of 1981 with the release of Thief. Have you ever seen Thief, Lizzie? I have not, but this did pretty well, right?

At least critically it did. Yeah, it's an incredible theatrical debut. This movie is so assured. It is so visually striking. James Kahn, I mean, he's a great actor, but he's never been better. Like, he is so suited for this role. You can see the influence that it has had on everything, obviously, heat. You know, Michael Mann's very much building on it, but then Drive, Nicholas Wending Refn and John Wick.

the entire third act shootout scene. We were discussing John Wick and the handling of weapons and how it kind of changed from the 80s and 90s into the more realistic handling of weapons in the 2010s. And somebody wrote in saying, What about heat? And they're right, but to which I say, what about thief?

The way that James Kahn operates a pistol is actually the way you're supposed to operate a pistol and is definitely the precursor to how weapons are handled in heat. Nice. I have to watch it. Also, you mentioned Drive and something I saw recently on I think maybe Instagram, but that's one of the last movies that was shot in L.A. before all of the street lights were changed to LED. And that's something I noticed big time in heat is that just the color of the lights, like L.A. just looks totally different.

Yeah. Especially when they're looking down over the city. Yeah, they got rid of those old sodium vapor lights and they replaced them. Those sort of like glowy orange ones. I'm sure it's much better for the environment. But I miss my crime stories. It's not as pretty. Now, Lizzie, you're right.

Critics agreed. Thief was the job of a master. They were stunned. How did a first-time theatrical director make something so assured? And it is remarkable. Well, to be fair, yes, he's a first-time theatrical director, but he'd been working forever. He'd been writing. He'd been directing crap tons of TV. He'd directed TV features, one of which was like a massive undertaking, the Jericho Mile, which we just talked about. But I mean, that was shot on location in Folsom Prison. using real prisoners. Like, this is not, he's not exactly, you know, coming out of film school and making his first movie. That's right. For a decade, he'd been, as we said, picking locks. He'd been practicing. Unfortunately, audiences didn't really show up for Thief. It made $4.3 million

against a $5.5 million budget. Well, where is this in relation to the Godfather? Because James Conn, is this after? Is this after? So this is after. So he was a decent star. but still maybe not big enough to pull in audiences. And he's by far the biggest name, although there are some interesting first-timers in this film, including Dennis Farina, and we're going to come back to him. Nice. Now, some sources say that man pumped the brakes on continuing to develop heat

because he didn't want to make another crime movie. I couldn't find a firsthand confirmation of that. But we do know he went on to make what I would argue is the most unusual film in his filmography, which is 1983's The Keep. Lizzie, have you seen The Keep? I have not seen The Keep. The Keep is...

It is wildly incomprehensible. So it's based on a novel. It is about a group of Nazi soldiers in the mountains of Romania in 1941 who are tasked with holding a mountain pass and they take up refuge or, you know, hole up in this inexplicably, very wonderfully designed monolithic,

dark, black rock-constructed keep. Honestly, I was trying to think about why this movie, might get greenlit. And the best way that I could describe it from the perspective of a studio is Indiana Jones from the perspective of the Nazis. That's the best I could come up with. Scott Glenn plays a completely unexplained character who comes in to kind of save the day. Ian McKellen plays a corrupted Jewish scholar. Gabriel Byrne plays the sadistic Nazi leader. It's got an incredible cast. It does not make much sense. And it doesn't really feel like a Michael Mann film,

outside of, again, some really wonderful imagery and great music by Tangerine Dream, who had scored Thief. And that's because Michael Mann learned the hard way, Lizzie, that the studio always gets their cut. After poor test screenings, Paramount Execs demanded a shorter running time. The final film is around 96 minutes. I read that that is somewhere around 100 minutes shorter than his director's cut.

To be fair, they never would have released a three-hour version of this movie. My guess is though, man probably wanted or needed two hours, 20 minutes. Yeah. It's the same on last to the Mohicans. He just needs a little bit more time. There's so much just connective tissue missing from this movie. It's actually a little hard to just understand what's going on in this movie. And further, man lost a member of his crew in post-production.

VFX supervisor, Wally Veevers died before the film was finished. And the movie does require a lot of visual effects. It was a botched job. It flopped critically. It flopped commercially. Michael Mann has said publicly, this is the one movie that he wishes he could get to do again. But that's the thing with movies. You only get one shot. The studio owns the script. They're not going to pay to make it again. And while promoting the keep, he talks a little bit about the script that will become heat. And he specifically says, I don't want to direct it. I just want to produce.

In fact, he offered the movie to director Walter Hill. Walter Hill turned it down. So, man goes back to his roots, television. He executive produces Miami Vice. He produces crime story, which was co-created by former Chicago police detective Chuck Adamson. Oh. And he brought Hannibal Lecter to the screen for the first time with 1986's Manhunter. Yeah, which is great.

Which is really fun to watch, especially to compare Brian Cox's performance as Hannibal Lecter to Anthony Hopkins. And William Peterson to Edward Norton, if you're interested. because Manhunter was based on Thomas Harris's Red Dragon. It's great. It's very worth watching. Around this time, Michael Mann realizes, maybe I've been looking at this score, this big, sprawling score the wrong way. Maybe it's not a movie. Maybe. It's a television show.

Well, I got to tell you, I wouldn't have minded a mini-series of heat. There's so much to unravel. Let's talk about what we almost got. He takes about 40% of the heat script and he turns it into a pilot. To be clear, this means he took about 100 pages out of the script that he had at that point in time. It was originally called Hannah Takedown, named after Vincent Hanna, who, by the way, is very much based on Chuck Adamson, right? The Chuck Adamson to Neil McCauley.

But even with the trims, man didn't have the resources to pull the job off. This was a television pilot. He had 10 days of pre-production and 19 days of filming. Wow. And he also had television actors. No disrespect. But if you would like to see just how much Al Pacino and Robert De Niro are bringing to the table, compare the diner scene in L.A. Take-down, which is what this would be called,

to the version in Heat. And it is a masterclass in acting. Oh, okay. Do you want to see it really quick? Yeah. Who's the actor playing the L.A. Pacino part. Scott Plank.

I actually think he's doing a pretty great job and feels very kind of like natural and comfortable. The other gentleman is no Robert De Niro. There's definitely a pretty big golf there. Just in terms of the timing, it feels very like staged, rehearsed in a way that De Niro and Pacino don't. Neither are reacting very much to each other. I feel there's a lot of saying the lines past each other with Gravitos.

I think a big problem. And no disrespect to Scott Plank, and that's Alex MacArthur, who plays... It's Patrick McLaren, by the way, in L.A. Takedown, not Neil McCauley. It's the same character, just different name. They're too young. Yeah. Both are in their early 30s. It's particularly noticeable with Alex MacArthur, that he just doesn't look right.

He looks like American Psycho-E. Yeah, he doesn't feel world-weary. He doesn't... I think this scene, the whole film works a lot better when you have two men where you can tell, wow, they have sacrificed a lot in pursuing these, you know, unhealthy goals of theirs, respectively. And there's a weight to it that's just missing when you have actors that are young. This was a compromise. It was a job on ABC's terms.

And Lizzie, the critics, sniffed it out a mile away. The New York Times called L.A. Takedown the usual Michael Mann trademark of style over substance. The L.A. Times said it generally feels like an upscale men's fashion magazine. Tossed into a pop blender with a videotape lopped loop of a lesser latter-day peck and paq and pa Bloodbath and a brooding new age synthesizer cassette. Wow. Yeah, viewers were not much kinder. We found a fun quote.

Lynn from Westchester wrote into the LA Times. I found it not only an insult to the entertainment industry, but to myself as a viewer as well. To which Jane from Mission Viejo asked, why didn't you turn it off? Good point, Jane. We see you, Jane. Now, Michael Mann, to be fair, totally agree. He later said that comparing L.A. Takedown to Heat is like comparing freeze-dried coffee to Jamaican Blue Mountain.

Now, I would like to defend L.A. Take-Down for one second. I think for the time and for a production made in a total of 29 days, including prep. Yeah, that's crazy. It's actually impressive. And you can tell there are things he obviously liked from it, because there are shots that are recreated identically in heat. It's also just not a story you can condense that much. Like, you're just going to miss way too much of it trying to do that.

And you do. I mean, there's no Natalie Portman character. The love stories are incredibly, I know. I was like, maybe we could have done without that. The love stories are very condensed. There are, you know, Charlene's character does not exist. There's really no exploration of... She feels really kind of, like, pivotal to heat.

Yeah. And I agree. And there's no exploration outside of Hannah and McLaren in this version. It's really just these two guys. That's the whole thing, 90 minutes. So there was one oddly prophetic review. It said there was one good scene in the movie. Oddly enough, Lizzie, between Edie and McLaren. I do think that relationship almost works better because they are more age appropriate in this version. It's a little, the age difference is a little weird and not in like a creepy way at all. No. That's not what I'm saying. I just don't see them sparking. I don't see them being attracted to each other. I don't see any real connection or chemistry, especially because like he looks and feels so buttoned up and stiff.

Like it's not just that he's older. It's that he's like lived an entirely different life than her. Yeah. That's maybe the only thing in heat that for me doesn't. quite work. Well, this review said that this scene belongs in a different better picture. This theoretical different better picture might also make more profound use of its trumpeted LA locations. And LA Takedown doesn't make a lot of use of L.A. One review said it looks like it could have just been shot in Miami, where he was doing Miami Vice. I kind of agree. So L.A. Takedown lives and dies

as a TV movie. It was shot as a pilot, but it never went to series. Because Michael Mann felt the heat around the corner. He was the one that actually walked away. Oh. Now, Neil McCauley never did. Let's jump back to 1964. McCauley and his crew are doing a stick-up job at a department store. Some sources say a cash truck had just made a delivery. There are six employees inside. McCauley and his two other compatriots go inside while the fourth runs the car. They force Elizabeth Veronis and Helen Ballauer to open a safe containing the money. The fourth man backs the up to the door, the stickup takes less than 30 seconds. It goes off without a hitch. But as McCauley and his crew are stepping outside, Chuck Adamson and his colleagues are waiting. They'd been

trailing McCauley for nine weeks, and now they had him. Just like Adamson had said, one day you're going to be doing a job, and when you walk out, I'll be there. Two taxi cabs full of cops rip into the parking lot. Adamson orders them to halt, but McColley and his crew opened fire. There's a gun fight, they run for the car, but they're trapped. The cops have sealed off all the roads. They ditch the car. They take off on foot. One of the crew gets killed in the alley. One escapes. Two, make it a few blocks. And Neil McCauley is shot dead by Chuck Adamson. Oh, wow. He'd stolen somewhere between $6,000 and $13,000. Now, Michael Mann didn't escape to New Zealand after L.A. Takedown, like Neil McCauley. Neither did Neil McCauley. But he also didn't

die on the tarmac because he was on the other side of the country shooting The Last of the Mohicans. Yeah. He was getting about as far as you could from an L.A. crime story to go back in time over 200 years and make a really incredible period piece. But once again, Lizzie, the studio took its cut. Yep. What happened in post on The Last of the Mohicans? Fricking Joe Roth stuck his little Joe Roth fingers in there and forced Michael Mann to cut it down from around three hours to just under two hours. And if you've not listened to our

episode last week, this is something that Chris and I both agree was editorially a mistake. There are just whole storylines that are excised from the last Mohicans that really should be there. It feels short. And not in a way that's like, ooh, that was good and short and tight. It could have used at least another half hour. And honestly, I would have probably sat there for three hours. I agree. Man was forced. to cut a lot. Yep. But failure had taught him well.

L.A. Takedown didn't go down the way he wanted it to, but Lizzie, Michael Mann, still owned the blueprints. He made sure he'd never handed over ownership of the script and story to the studio. And after nearly a decade, he finally picked the lock. Now, one of the biggest differences between L.A. Takedown and Heat is the finale. In L.A. Takedown, the movie ends in the hotel at the airport. where Waingro is staying. And Vincent Hanna does not kill Patrick McLaren, Neil Macaulay.

Wayne Groh does. Oh, no. And then McLaren dies in Vincent Hanna's arms. And then at the end, Vincent Hanna, like, roundhouse kicks Waingrove out the window of the hotel. And it's a little corny. Also, Zander Berkeley, who plays Ralph, the lover of Justine, who just is in one scene. And he plays Waingrove in L.A. Take-down. I got to say, the guy who plays Wangro in Kevin Gage, he's terrifying. He is so scary, so, so scary.

It was funny. I felt bad. I like Xander Berkeley a lot as an actor, but Kevin Gage looks like the devil in heat. That scene where he's with the young sex worker and she's trying to leave and just... It's horrifying. Also, the way it's shot, it just, you know, they very subtly reveal that he has a swastika tattoo and it's just like, oh, it makes my skin crawl. And by subtly, we mean they do a wide shot and he's got a giant plastic on his chest. Yes, there's that. No, but it goes from being like, this guy's an idiot to this guy's a white supremacist, to this guy's a sociopathic murderer. He's a serial killer. Because they literally say, this is like fifth one this week or whatever it is, like, same M.O.

Yeah, there is a serial killer in the middle of heat that I feel like doesn't get enough attention. It doesn't. It's an oddly underserved storyline in some senses, I think. Now, Michael Mann, I think, knew that the ending of L.A. Takedown didn't have, the emotional resonance that he wanted it to. And I think part of that is he's trying to set up a series that's going to follow Vincent Hanna. Right. So he probably doesn't want the, or the studio maybe didn't want Vincent Hanna to kill the other

character that people liked at the end of the pilot because they might not want to keep watching. But a movie's very different. And Michael Mann says, that's when I figured it out. I had to take the emotional quotient to that exact moment when McCauley is dying. And he's fortunate enough to die with somebody that he's close to, the only person on the planet that has the same kind of mindset that he has. but at the same time he's the person that shot him. And that duality is not a contradiction.

They're both true. Once I had that moment, I could reverse engineer everything else. As soon as I hit on that, it all kind of fell into shape. So once he figured out, Hannah has to kill McCauley, and then he has to die hand in hand with Hannah. The whole rest of the movie, he worked backwards from there. Within a month, the script was ready. He takes it to his friend and producer Art Linson.

If you guys are unfamiliar, producer on Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Untouchables, Dick Tracy, many, many, many more films. And they sit down for breakfast at the very deli where Edie and McCauley will meet in heat. What deli, Chris? You can't just tell me that and not say which L.A. Deli. It's the Broadway deli in Santa Monica. So Michael Mann gives him the script and says, I want to co-produce this with you. But we got to find somebody else to direct it.

It's a great job, but it's not going to be mine. job. So Linson takes it home and reads it and he says, it was like winning the lottery. I couldn't believe this was in his desk drawer for 12 years. He calls up Michael Mann and tells him, you're out of your fucking mind. You've got to direct this. That is a direct quote. And Michael Mann, deep down, knew he was right. But he also knew if he was going to pull it off, he needed a hell of a crew, the best crew. And the only problem, Lizzie, they'd never done a job together. Now, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro had pulled a lot of jobs, and they had the hardware to back it up. By 94, Pacino had been nominated for how many Oscars, if you were to guess?

Two. Eight. Eight. Nominated eight. What? One-one. See, one percent of a woman. That's too many.

Okay, continue. De Niro had been nominated six times and won twice. They were two of the greatest living actors. They were arguably the two greatest living Italian-American actors, and yet they'd overlapped only once. What movie, Lizzie, had they technically been in together, although they had never shared a scene? Godfather Part 2.

That's right. They were ships in the night, but they were now both in their 50s. They were entering a new phase of their careers. My God, they were in their 50s in the 90s? Yes. They're in their 80s now. How sweet Jesus.

Yeah. Yeah, those three sperm left doing humans' work down there. Good Lord. All right. They were elder statesmen, and they knew a good job when they saw it, and Art Linson had the connection. Now, Mann went and talked to Pacino. He'd worked with Art Linson on Dick Tracy, and Linson talked to De Niro, because they'd worked together on the Untouchables and This Boy's Life with Leonardo DiCaprio, too.

Of course, it didn't take much convincing. The script was strong. The characters were great, and Michael Mann had just proven that he could. could handle a big job with the last of the Mohicans. Yep. So at the end of these conversations, Pacino and De Niro are in. And this gave Michael Mann the muscle to squeeze the studio. So he takes the package to Warner Brothers.

He says, here's the script, here's the crew, the take, $60 million. No cutting corners, no L.A. take down. Are you in or are you out? Right now. Arnon Milchin comes on to finance it through Regency, And Warner Brothers says we're in, we'll distribute it. The score is on. Now, he's got two of the biggest actors in Hollywood.

But Lizzie, he would need 7 trillion more actors for this movie. Literally everyone else in Los Angeles, come on in. Yeah, I was like, if there's Oceans 11, this is Michael Mann's 742. Yes. Yes, it's crazy. So he teams up with casting director Bonnie Timmerman of... The Last of the Mohicans, and many more. She's amazing.

Including L.A. Takedown. Hmm. And they had their hands full because everybody wanted to be in heat. And they were casting all the way into production. And there were some really interesting what-ifs. Lizzie, any guesses as to who the role of Chris Scheherlis was first offered to? And I will give you a couple hints. Tom Cruise.

That's a good guess. I don't think he would have done it because he was only doing leading man things. Okay. It's an actor who had just broken out in an action movie. Kiano Reeves. Very good. He had just co-starred with Sandra Bullock and Speed. He had, of course, done point break a couple years earlier.

But he turned down the roll. Because he was waiting for the devil's advocate. When Al Pacino is fully reached his screaming. Yeah, yeah. He's like, he's not loud enough. I can't hear him. 94 was his busiest year. He was going back to back, speed, Johnny Neumonic, and a walk in the clouds,

and he didn't want to do another movie. He wanted to do Shakespeare. He turned down heat and four other movies to do Hamlet for $2,000 a week. Oh. So Michael Mann turned to Val Kilmer. Now, I am guessing that he was surprised that Kilmer would do this role. This was a couple of years after Tombstone, and this is during the production of Batman Forever. Oh.

Kilmer is a leading man. He is taking on the cape of Batman, but he specifically jumped at the opportunity to work with De Niro and Pacino and to get away from Batman. Years later, he would say, the best time I had on Batman was preparing for heat. He had taken the role of Bruce Wayne without reading the script, and it was an isolating experience.

He was, quote, crushed by the reality of the bat suit. When you're in it, you can barely move, and people have to help you stand up and sit down. You also can't hear anything, and after a while, people stop talking to you. Oh, no. It's very isolating. It was a struggle for me to get a performance past the suit,

and it was frustrating until I realized that my role in the film was just to show up and stand where I was told to, end quote. Oh, buddy. There is a very funny story that George Clooney tells who would replace Kilmer, how he was directed by Joel Schumacher in the bath suit, and it's very similar to the way that Kelmer describes it here. And Kilmer only did one, right? He did, never returned.

He wanted to be part of a proper crew again, even if he wasn't the lead. Now, not everybody was so eager to join the production. John Voigt hesitated because he thought, there were actually better fits for the role. But then Mechamann said, yeah, but John, then we wouldn't get to work together. And Voight was so flattered, he took the part. John Voight is such an interesting. He's such a good actor.

He's so good. And he's really good in this. He's so understated. He's also such a weirdo. He's so weird. That's what I was going to say. He's so strange. As a man, he's very strange.

But, boy, he's a good actor. He is. And, man, he knows how to play this role. He never gives it too much. You know what I'm saying? Like, he just, everything's understated, everything's simple, but the weight of the world, you know what I mean, is carried on every phrase. Yeah. It's a really effective performance.

Yeah. I feel like maybe he's so strange that it's a bit difficult, but he, as an actor, maybe doesn't get enough credit for being probably one of the finest actors of the 20th century from, you know, Midnight Cowboy to Deliverance to even this. It's runaway train. I don't know if you've seen that. It's really good. Yeah. He's really good in it. Odd duck to say the least.

All right. Yeah. Someone else didn't want to be in heat, and that was Amy Brennaman, who plays Edie. Oh. Now, she didn't want to be in it because she hated the script. She told her agent... Her character sucks. Yeah, she said, this script sucks, and her agent said to Michael Mann, hey, I'm sorry, but, you know, Amy doesn't like the script.

And Michael Mann says, great, I want to meet her. So they sit down, and I think man knew every job needs a skeptic. So Amy goes in and meets him, and she says, you know, he told her, I hear you don't like my script. And she said, yeah, I don't like it. And he said, why don't you like it? And she said, because the people are despicable. There's too much blood. There's no morality.

And I don't want to be a part of it. And you said, okay, yeah, yeah, you're in. You got to be in it. You got to be in it. That is literally her character. That is her character. Exactly. And he said, you're perfect.

And she's like, but I'm still saying no. And he's like, here's your contract. I'm finding for you. He's like, I'll see on Tuesday. Yeah, exactly. Michael Mann is very specific. And when he knows what he wants, he knows what he wants. But sometimes your crew knows better.

And Bonnie Timmerman knew that Ashley Judd was right for Charlene. Now, Michael Mann passed on her. But Timmerman said, not so fast. Judd was mostly known for obviously her family relationships and her TV work at the time. She played Reed Haisley in a show called Sisters in the early 90s. She broke into film with a starring role in Ruby in Paradise, which was a Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning film in 1993. And she'd just come back to the U.S. from Italy, and she tanked basically all of her auditions.

She just came into these auditions and just blew them. Congo blew her audition. Screen test for Sabrina sucked it up. Comes to heat, does not bring the heat. And she has said, like, I was terrible in all of these auditions. And Bonnie Timmermanic says, get your shit together. Get it together. Put it in a backpack.

Come on back. Change your look. I wonder if they did the blonde thing at that point. I couldn't figure it out. Change your energy. She comes back in and she books it. And that's how we get Ashley Judd. She's really, really great in this.

And I just, I love Ashley. Judd. And it's nice to get to see her do something. She so often plays like these very tough characters and she does that here, but with so much vulnerability and nuance to it. And also, she looks so much like Charlie's therein with the short blonde hair. Also, she looks so much like Val Kilmer. Like, they have the same hair cut. That's totally. Can't tell you how happy I was when Val Kilmer's hair gets cut by the end of this movie, because that ponytail is bad. Yeah. I think of all the female characters, she has given the most interesting character. Like, she actually seems to have some a little tiny bit of agency and inner life as opposed to some of the other characters.

Agency, inner life, and also the most sympathetic out of all of them, I would argue. Justine is unfortunately left as just kind of annoying, which I don't think is fair to her. I know. And that haircut's not doing her favors either. All right. Her baby bangs? Her little free baby bang. Her Courtney Cox and Scream 3. Now, we can do a whole episode on casting. one last what if. Secondary sources claim that Don Johnson was considered for the Michael Sherido part, which of course went to Tom Seismore. I love Don Johnson.

I am so glad it went to Tom Seismore. Yeah. Because Seismore plays that kind of dumb adrenaline junkie so well in this movie. He's really good. He's always really good. R.I.P. But there was an innocence and a sweetness to Tom Seismore, which is sort of strange, considering who he was as a person and the kind of roles he played. But I just think he did that

so well. I agree. Now, Michael Mann wasn't just going to go for the best that Hollywood had to offer Lizzie. He needed the guys who had seen real action. That included Eddie Bunker, convicted felon, author, and actor. He has a tiny part in Reservoir Dogs, Dustin Hoffman's straight time, and he came on as a consultant. He is the basis officially for John Void's character, Nate. And on the other side of the law, Dennis Farina. Now, you know him as an actor.

Yeah. He might run, get shorty, snatch. He's a former Chicago police detective who had worked with Chuck Adamson. I had no idea. I didn't either. He looks like such an actor to me because he's like very handsome and he's very funny. I was like, this guy has to be. No, he was a cop turned actor.

And then he broke out with crime story. Oh, wow. Yeah, so he was in Thief. He plays one of the henchmen in Thief. He was in Manhunter. But then Crime Story. I love Dennis Farina. He's great.

Crime Story was the big breakout. That TV. show. Now Michael Mann sent some of the actors to Folsom Prison, where he'd been inspired to write The Jericho Mile. Others met with cops or specifically women who had been romantically involved with men serving time. And Michael T. Williamson said, there's a restaurant I will not name, but on a certain night of the week, the police detectives would meet in the wine room at this restaurant. On a separate night of the week, the mob families would meet in the very same wine room. And Michael would stick the bad guys in there on the night that the mob families were in there,

and they would have dinner together. And then we would have dinner with the cops and detectives. in the very same wine room. Wow. This may have satisfied your everyday director, but not Michael Mann. I want you to actually kill someone. No, he said, I want you to actually case a bank.

Okay. He armed the actors. The weapons were not loaded, but they were armed. They were backed by the LAPD, and the security guards in the bank knew it was going on, but none of the bank customers were informed.

They went in, Tom Seismore asked for a loan application. They scoped it out. When they were done, they loaded up in the getaway car, And they drove off, and they actually cased the bank and then reviewed the security footage. And when they were done, they put some rounds in their guns, because Michael Mann sent them to work with live ammunition on the shooting range with L.A. County Sheriff's Rangemasters. That wasn't good enough. He brought in members of the British SAS to beef up their skills even further, and they spent three months learning how to shoot.

It is impressive. Also, Tom Cruise gets a lot of, you know, everybody talks about, oh, Tom Cruise running, he's so great at running. You know who's great at running? Al Pacino. Al Pacino. He is the runner before Tom Cruise. He's amazing at it.

De Niro's too upright when he runs in those scenes compared to Pacino. Pacino, I'm like, damn, he could catch you. He's cruising. He's going so fast. Holding a giant gun. And you believe that he's able to wield that and everything. And also he, like, I don't know, why this matters, but I wonder if he could have been a dancer, for example.

He looks like he's so light on his feet. When he goes down the stairs from the hospital, it's like he's floating. What I love about it is it also actually ties into their character so well. So, like, De Niro's buttoned up, and when his character is still, he's very imposing. When he's moving, not as much. When he's moving, though, he looks a little panicked. Yeah. Whereas Pacino, when he's on the move, he's like in the groove.

He's a shock. He's a shark. And, like, that's why that last scene is so effective is the tables totally turn. And the hunter becomes the hunted. And it's so interesting. I really, yeah, I couldn't agree more. I'm glad you pointed out the running. He's so effortless the way he moves.

It's really impressive. The other person that moves really well in this movie is, of course, Val Kilmer, who is incredibly proficient with the weapons. And we'll talk about that a little more in a bit. Val Kilmer was just beautiful. He was. Now, Michael Mann and his team, they actually built out a map of that street where the shootout takes place on the gun range.

So they built it all out on the gun range so they would be able to transpose it directly to the street when they execute the scene. And on top of all of this, every Friday and Saturday night, Michael Mann was going out on ride-alongs from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. with an LAPD officer.

Oh, my God. No, no, thank you. And that's when he realized the critics had been right. He may have called that 1992 film L.A. Take-down, but he hadn't done L.A. justice. He saw parts of the city he never knew existed. He saw people. He never knew existed, and he just threw them in the movie. That is what he does so well.

The guy with that console television, the witness of me, it's a real unhoused person that he found and he put in the movie. Quote, I would just pop these people into the movie, and you discover things. That mountain of sulfur, the chop shop, the pit bull fighting arena, are all real places we discovered in this unincorporated part of Terminal Island. Ah, the pit bull fighting arena is so scary and weird, and there's just like random sheep and goats around,

and there's horses. I mean, that is something that so few movies are actually show of L.A. You know, we're so used to seeing Hollywood. We're used to seeing maybe downtown L.A. if you're lucky. But L.A. is very wild, and it's weird. And there's a lot of wildlife and horses. And, like, it combined with, you know, the metal corrugated shipping containers. It's bizarre. Unincorporated sections, yeah, where people are raising animals and poultry and things like that. I mean, I lived in Altadina, which had a little bit of that because it was unincorporated. It's very interesting. And obviously, Michael Mann wasn't alone. He had an extensive location scouting team that I would just like to give all the credit in the world to because they were desperately trying to please him. So Michael Mann had seen a painting called Pacific by Canadian artist Alex Colville. It depicts a man leaning against a doorframe looking out at the ocean and behind him is a gun on the table. Lizzie, I want to show you this painting. Okay. Okay. Now, do you see the heat reference to that image? Yes, I do. I believe I do see it.

So Michael Mann said this painting gave him this sense of maintained, sustained alienation. And so he and his team found this house in Malibu that looked very similar to the painting. And when they go and scout it, he sees there's a seagull poop on the deck. And he says, nobody touch. No, nobody touch the seagull poop. I love it. Leave it. It conveys that this place has been abandoned. We're putting it in the movie. And of course, when it comes time to shoot, somebody had cleaned it up. to which the props department was probably like, Michael, we could make you a fake seagull poop. And he says, it's not real. It doesn't work.

And it's De Niro, right? In the shot. It's De Niro's house. Yeah, exactly. It's DeNro in the shot. Yeah. They basically recreate the shot at night, almost exactly. Yeah, they do, just the way his arm is positioned and everything. It's really cool. The gun on the table is interesting, though, because they show that also with Al Pacino, is that he always puts the gun down in front of the windows. So that's kind of mirrored there as well. In a household with a 14-year-old, he just keeps his weapon unlocked on the table. Anyway, continue. With suicidal ideation. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Now, Michael Mann's team scoured Los Angeles. They were told to rediscover the city. This was before GPS.

We discussed this a little bit with Blair Witch. One of the location managers, Lori Bolton, said, you get in your car and you drive. You get to a location and you talk to somebody and you talk to somebody else. It was never ending the way you could find things back then, but you had to do the work. And man took it to the next level, literally. He rented a helicopter and took the team on a three-hour helicopter ride through. the city, and that's how they found Edie's house up on the hill. Justine's house is a duplex in Santa Monica. They didn't allow nighttime shooting, but Michael Mann said, you're not allowed to say no. And so the location manager, Lori Bolton, had to go to city meetings and get a bunch of signatures and eventually be granted a permit. They shot in a real hospital, St. Mary Medical Center. They convinced them. We can do this responsibly in a working ER because if there's an emergency, we'll just get out of

your way. We'll just film it. Is that okay? You're good? The most challenging location was the restaurant where Pacino and De Niro meet for coffee midway through the film. According to location manager Janice Polly, they were still searching for a restaurant a couple of days before that scene was scheduled to shoot. Man just kept asking for more options. He'd go through the folders. No, no, no. He'd find one he kind of likes and he'd say, this one's good. Find me something better. At one point, the team suggested, hey, why don't we do it at a taco cart in South Central near the freeway with fires burning and metal trash cans in the background? A Michael Man thought that was actually a pretty cool idea, but didn't go for it. And according to Janice Polly,

Michael Mann was switching back and forth between the Taco Cart and the Beverly Hills restaurant he eventually chose, which is Kate Mantellini on Wilshire Boulevard. And that's what he went with. Okay. He decided to go with Kate's on a Friday, and she was able to pull the permit to shoot it on the following Monday, which if you know how hard it is to get a permit on the weekend from film L.A., like that is an incredible accomplishment. Damn. All right, let's talk about production briefly. Now, when a score goes down, Lizzie, I think you're hoping for three things.

You prepped it right, nobody gets hurt, and the cops don't show up. Now, when you're making a movie, you're pretty much open for the same three things, except instead of the cops, I think you're hoping that the studio executives don't show up. Sure. So principal photography begins in February of 1995, and they're going to shoot for a lot more than 19 days. They shoot for over 100, but they had to move fast because the shoot spanned roughly 100. locations. Oh my God. How many do you think were built on a soundstage? None. None. That's right. All real. All Los Angeles. Michael Mann was a perfectionist and they were shooting nights. Most of this movie takes place at nights. At night in Los Angeles, it's not necessarily a time you really want to be

out in about in L.A. It's not like New York. Nope. But the crew was getting energy from an unexpected source. Or maybe it was expected. And I was watching the greats do what they do best. Now, most of the cast has spoken publicly about how much they enjoyed watching Pacino and De Niro work. Natalie Portman said that she and Diane Vinora, who plays Justine, would actually rehearse at Pacino's house, which she described as, quote, an extraordinary experience. There's a very funny story that William Fickner told. I can't remember which interviewer this was with where it was one of his first jobs. And they're filming if you remember, there's a phone call where De Niro calls Van Zant and says there's a dead man on the other end of this phone.

When Fickner's like, who? Where? They're filming the De Niro portion first. But, you know, a lot of directors would say we'll have a stand-in on set who reads the lines for De Niro to reactant. No. Man says, William or Bill, give me your home phone number. Bob's going to call you.

It's going to be 2 a.m. And you're going to do the scene with him. Like, we're doing it for real. And then we'll film your portion later. Wow. So William Fickner gets a call. It makes it sounds like he had friends in the apartment because he gets the call. And De Niro's like, there's a dead man.

And he's like, it's Robert De Niro. He was so excited that he was acting with Robert De Niro in this scene. But again, it just shows Michael Mann's attention to detail. And I do think that probably yielded a better performance in having Fickner on the other end of the line. Now, Mann demanded a lot of takes, very much, you know, Fincher Kubrick style. And this was particularly hard on Hank Azaria. Lizzie, do you know what movie he was shooting at the same time as Heat? The birdcage.

That's right. He was shooting the birdcage. The first day he has on Heat, it's his 30th birthday. He's only 30. Wow. That's crazy. He comes straight from the birdcage to shoot that scene where Pacino bursts into his office to confront him in Las Vegas.

Now, here's what Azaria said. Pacino delivered his lines normally like a hundred times. And then I guess he had been maybe gotten driven crazy by how many takes he had to do it and decided to yell it into my face from a foot away, to which I reacted, I go, Jesus, like that. Not acting, just terrified, which ended up in the movie. It's the only ad lib of all mine that ended in the movie. Now, what really happened was man had given Pacino the go-ahead on the last take

to just do whatever he wanted. Do a wild take, yeah. Do you know what famous delivery that resulted in? No. Because she's got a great ass. Of course. That line was Pacino's decision. Yeah, it had to be.

They did agree that Pacino would play the character like he was on cocaine or as if he was performing for the convicts and, you know, the criminals that he was on cocaine. And in the original script, there was an actual reference to Vincent Hanna having a Coke habit, but that got cut from the final film. You don't need it. You know, it comes through. I agree.

Now, what's interesting is, even though Pacino can be so big, the best scenes in the movie are when he is small. It's the stillness. in this movie and really in all of Michael Mann's work that's like the most powerful, I think, because there's so much action and he shoots it so well. But then you get those moments like where De Niro is outside of the, what is it, like a metal refinery or something? And Pacino and all the cops are in the truck. And they're looking at each other through the heat vision. Incredible. They're technically looking at each other from an eyeline perspective, even though they're

not in those amazing down-the-lens singles. Yeah, that's an amazing scene. It's just so, so quiet and so still, and he does such a great job of, like, keeping the tension because you can't tell, like, did De Niro hear it? Did he not? Al Pacino can't tell. And I, yeah, it's really, it's amazing. Well, Heats Midpoint culminates famously in a very quiet scene, as you mentioned. The big shootout comes after this, and there's action before it. But the face-off of this movie is De Niro and Pacino, McCauley, and Hannah, coming face to face for the first time, not only in Heat, but in cinema history. And for this scene, Michael Mann knew he would have to take a different approach. And the way that I like to think about this is like,

Michael Mann knows picking a lock, telling a story is a science, but sometimes you have to go by feel and treat it like an art. And he knew that this scene would only be performed at its apex one time. The next time you do it, it may be 99% as good, but it will not be 100% as good. So you want the energy of spontaneity when you're shooting. And for spontaneity to be there, there has to be some discovery going on.

So unlike a lot of the rest of the film, they didn't rehearse this scene. They never rehearsed the lines. They just discussed it. Why are you here? Why did you agree to have coffee with this guy? Why is Hannah stopping you and saying, let's have a cup of coffee?

They sit down and they shoot the scene. It's well past midnight. But according to Michael Mann, it's take 11 that made it into the final cut in the movie. Wow. So not 100. One of Oklahoma Smith's rules for burglary, which are laid out in the home invaders,

which is a very entertaining book. I highly recommend you guys read it, a little bit self-serving, but very fun, very interesting, time capsule, is never work on a Friday or Saturday. Somebody coming home late from a party might hear you, and you're working so you won't hear them. But the film's biggest scene

that downtown shootout Lizzie could only be done on the weekend. It's the only time that the city would let them shut down that much of downtown L.A. Yeah, it makes sense because downtown L.A. is particularly at that time, not that many people lived down there. So the time when people would be down there is during the work week. And everybody was going to hear them.

So first, they had to break the scene into pieces because they couldn't get it all done in two days. They'd shoot Saturday and Sunday, remove all the destroyed police cars, take Monday and Tuesday off, work Wednesday through Friday on other scenes, and then go back to the action on Saturday and Sunday. They had a handwritten shooting plan that was called World War III, and Lizzie, the actors fired full, low,

blanks. We talked about full load, half load, quarter load. Oh. Full load, full load of gunpowder, largest possible muzzle flash, loudest possible sound. Good Lord. And full load blanks are more dangerous. Should anything get lodged in the muzzle of the weapon, you have much higher exit velocity with a full load blank. Yeah, you also can't be close to the guns. It's still, blanks are still extremely dangerous even if you're on the other end of the weapon. Oh, and you could deafened someone if it's fired too close to their head. For each take, Lizzie, the actors used 800 to a thousand rounds. Oh my God. Could you imagine just cleaning those casings off the ground, you know what I mean, between takes? That's insane. That makes me so nervous to have that many rounds.

One of the sound mixers, Chris Jenkins said, the gunfire downtown was truly horrifying sounding. And because of the skyscrapers everywhere, it was just deafening and it would hang in the sky for maybe like eight or ten seconds. Oh, man. Tourists from around the world were gathering around watching the gunfire, probably thinking, holy shit, America is crazy. I know they told me not to come downtown, but I didn't understand why. Well, they fell behind schedule and they ended up shooting over Mother's Day. And at a nearby restaurant, Cafe Pano, they had pre-reserved the whole space for a Mother's Day buffet, which is how a whole gaggle of moms ended up watching a gunfight between Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and Val Kilmer on Mother's Day for breakfast.

Honestly, pretty great Mother's Day. I'd be stoked. Apparently, that was very entertaining. I think they actually really liked it. Yes. I think they were all getting, like, just downing mimoses and being like, yeah, this is great. Best Mother's Day brunch of my life. I agree.

Now, there are conflicting reports about how many weekends it took to shoot this sequence. Kilmer once said the plan was 11 days, but it took 15, so that would be seven or eight weekends. Yeah. He said, we were all happy as hell, but Michael Mann never wanted it to end. So he kept filming inserts while we sweat through our suits in the LA heat. Yeah. That's also another thing. They're wearing a lot of heavy clothing, including body armor vests and whatnot in that scene.

Yeah. Now, I actually think the scene that's hardest to imagine filming today is the climax at LAX that ends the film. Yes, because they're just running. across the tarmac with weapons in hand, and the pilots are like, beep, be it butee, just go around this guy. That's right. That's a real active runway. It had taken the team months to arrange that shoot at the airport. Then it took them three weeks to set up the area where that confrontation takes place. So, Associate producer, Guzmano Cisorette said that Michael Mann sent him and the art department out to that field, Lizzie. So there's a field right next to all of those landing lights that the planes are coming down over to take measurements.

would take measurement after measurement and map out exactly where those big boxes were going to be and where the cameras would be relative to the boxes. Every day they would rehearse the scene and then the plan would change slightly. Move at an inch here, move at an inch there until they have it all set up perfectly for that last scene. It comes time to shoot. Just so happens. It's the same week that the Unabomber threatened to blow up LAX. Oh no. But they still let them shoot. Those are real planes flying a few hundred feet over their heads as they film, and they're doing it for real. And you mentioned Al Pacino's running. On the third take, he blew out his hamstring. Oh, no. And so he had to fight through it. But they got the scene. It was in the can, it was time for

post-production. Now, toward the end of Thief, spoiler alerts, James Kahn's Frank makes out with millions in diamonds in a job that seemingly goes too smooth to be true. He thinks he's in the clear, when the outfit changes the terms. Now, Michael Mann wrapped production, and according to Mann, Warner Brothers decided to pull in the release date for heat. So post-production was accelerated. Oh, no.

Now, Michael Mann has described the editing process as a 24-7 operation. People were coming in on various different shifts. It was wild. I would say take this with a grain of salt. I think what may have happened is that the original release date was set for December of 95.

They then pulled it into November, but then they ended up pushing it back into December. Yeah. That's the best I was able to recreate because I don't understand why Warner Brothers would originally plan to release this in January, February, March. It makes no sense for awards season. No.

This is an enormous prestige film. It's De Niro and Pacino for the first time together on screen. It just makes no sense. So I think maybe a month is what we're talking about. And in the end, it sounds like they landed back in December anyway. Now, this was when Michael Mann and editor Dan Havig made a cut that would spawn rumors for years. They removed the wide shot that showed Pacino and De Niro at the table together in the diner. So, Lizzie, if you watch that scene carefully, the whole scene

is just singles. There's no two shot. Yeah, you never actually see them together. We'll get back to that. This is a big post-production team. There's not just Man and Havik, and he'd worked with Havik since the beginning. He edited The Keep. I can't remember if he edited Theep. But there was also Pasqual Buba, William Goldenberg, Tom Rolf. These guys all have impressed. credits. And there was Moby. According to Mann, Moby was integral to the editing. He was fascinated with the film. Often I'd get in in the morning and Moby would be sleeping there under one of the avids or something because he was hanging around for quite a bit. Now Moby was there to work on the music. What happened was Michael Mann had reached out to Moby's manager to license two songs for the

movie, New Dawn Fades and God moving over the face of the waters. And they said, hey, can we re-record God with an orchestra in Eastern Europe? and use it for the film. And Moby said, yeah, it's Michael Mann. He can do whatever he wants with my music. Now, the score was composed by Elliot Goldenthal. We discussed him on interview with a vampire. He had just been an Oscar nominated.

But for the final credits, Michael Mann decided not to go with Goldenthal's score. And instead, Moby's God moving over the face of the waters. And that's the track that you hear. Okay, I think that's the one I really liked. It's beautiful. It's one of my favorite pieces of music, maybe my favorite from the whole film. And it's not the version they recorded with that, orchestra in Eastern Europe.

No, it's electronic. That's the album version that was recorded in Moby's tiny little studio with a couple MIDI keyboards. And it wasn't the only prestige element that Michael Mann would replace with something that was technically inferior from a sonic perspective. They were in a sound mix for the shootout scene, and Michael Mann says, those aren't the right gunshots. And they're like, what do you mean?

Like, there's nothing wrong with these gunshots. Like, we lay it in every gunshot. Like, literally the editors had cut in gunshots for every single. gunshot. Everyone's confused, except the people who had been on location for the shoot. They knew how loud those gunshots sounded. Yeah, that sequence is so loud. So that's, I read that's all production sound. Those are all the actual gunshots of the full load blanks from that scene. Good Lord. It's possible some of them were replaced, but largely I would believe original sound. Now, directors cut in place. It's time to take it to the studio. Michael Mann shows the film to Warner Brothers,

waiting for what he knows is going to come. That they wanted to cut it down? It's time for the studio to take their cut. And Heat, like most of Michael Mann's films, was long. Nearly three hours. And the executives had warned him, cuts are coming. They screen the film, and they say, you don't have to cut anything. Yes, finally.

They picture-locked at 171 minutes with credits. It was a clean getaway. Heat premiered on December 6, 1995. in Burbank. It was released about a week later on December 15th, wide. And reviews were generally positive, but somewhat mixed. Siskel and Ebert praised it. The LA Times said it wouldn't be harmed by a trim, but they also celebrated man and the whole cast for taking a classic heist movie, rife with familiar genre elements and turning it into a sleek, accomplished piece of work meticulously controlled and completely involving. But the New York Times did not give it a good

review. They said that it was too long, and as it progressed, its sensational looks pale besides storytelling weaknesses that expose the more soulless aspects of this cat and mouse crime tale. Extraordinary actors, clever settings, a maze of a plot, and a screenplay with nearly 70 speaking roles don't change the fact that Heat is a fundamentally hollow film and its characters haven't much to say. I don't agree. Audiences were also a little bit puzzled. The movie is long, it is oddly structured, The highs are really high, but people were confused. Robert De Niro and Al Pacino actually only share two scenes.

I think a lot of people thought this movie was going to be them face to face. And then a lot of people became convinced they were never actually in that diner together. Because there was no two shot, a conspiracy theory ran rampant for 10 years that they had shot that scene separate from one another. Which is just impossible. Like, you cannot. That acting is so good like they need each other. to respond. Heat pulled in $67 million domestically during its initial release. I read that it pulled in an additional $120 million internationally, so maybe $180 million worldwide. Definitely, I think, likely

break-even depending on marketing spend against its $60 million budget. But like the last of the Mohicans, Heat was completely overlooked at the Oscars. That's wild. What else was this year? Let me tell you, no acting nominations, nothing for sound, nothing for cinematography. Nothing for sound and cinematography is crazy. Nothing for editing. I think this movie is exceptionally edited. Yeah. Guess what movie sucked the air out of the bagpipes that year? Braveheart.

Yep. Braveheart. Yep, Mel Gibson stole all the glory that year, and Heat got none. That's crazy. I mean, look, we talked about it in the episode. Braveheart's a very fun movie. to enjoy about it. It's not this. This is something completely different.

Let's remove it from Best Picture for just a second because you say, okay, maybe it's too long or whatever your beef is. I still think you got to, like nothing for De Niro, really in this movie? Nothing for Pacino? I mean, Pacino had just one for Sen of a Woman, so maybe there was a little fatigue there. Nothing for the technical departments, though. This is some of the best cinematography. Again, like night cinematography you will ever see. see. This movie looks amazing. Also, the 4K Blu-ray is incredible.

Nothing for editing. Nothing for sound. The decision, when you first meet De Niro's character, and he walks through the hospital, you meet Neil McCauley, and he's stealing the ambulance, and you walk through the hospital, and every little sound is amplified, and they're telling you, this

is somebody with an incredible attention to detail. He hears everything. He sees everything. And then, when you get to the final shootout on the tarmac, or just at the end of the tarmac, there is almost no Foley. And it's he doesn't hear anything anymore. He is panicked and it's such an incredible contrast in how they

open his character and how they conclude his character. They were robbed. That doesn't make sense. No. It was supposed to be the score of a lifetime, Lizzie, but it took a while to pay off. Now, man went on to prestige films. I love The Insider. Yes.

One of my favorites of his. Me too. Ali, he returned to crime with collateral. Which is also very fun. Another great L.A. crime film. Public enemies, not as big a fan of, but again, enjoyed it. Pacino, I think, for him especially, and you mentioned this, Lizzie, I'd argue heat was kind of the last truly great job he had. I agree.

I think kind of the same for De Niro, although he's done other interesting things, of course. De Niro got to do a little bit more in comedy, and I feel like that's kind of where he got to bloom. I don't really think we've seen that from Al Pacino. No, I mean, Pacino moved into his yelling acting stage, I think, where he, in a sense was playing a bit of a parody of himself. For De Niro, I would say he started working with some dipshit crews, perhaps, to still align.

We obviously lost Tom Seismore. Chuck Adamson passed away in 2008. Lung cancer, 71 years old. Heat was his final credit as a technical advisor. Val Kilmer passed away earlier this year. Yeah. But he always had only the best things to say about Heat. I'd like to read his quote.

Imagine being able to say, Alan Bob, for the rest of your life. Not many people can do that. I have seen Bob giggling like a schoolgirl in a van in the middle of the night because we have to be quiet because they're filming outside. I've been hugged by Al Pacino in the middle of downtown L.A. like he was my older brother. I've shot live rounds from a high-powered assault weapons over Bob's head while rehearsing lines from our film. I got to kiss Ashley Judd.

I sometimes lived at Michael Mann's house. I'm in one of the greatest cops and robbers films in history. Has to be in the top 20. I'm on the poster for goodness sake. What an honor. Priceless experience, watching all the actors do their thing. We all work hard. when you are with the icons, you get really squared away, loved every minute of it.

Val. And we should mention, allegedly, some of the footage of Kilmer in that shootout scene downtown has been used to train special forces. Whoa. That's allegedly. There's a lot of, like, Reddit threads about that. Okay. And if somebody out there knows for sure, by all means, reach out and let us know.

Natalie Portman has a much more complicated relationship with the movie. I'm guessing she has a complicated relationship with a lot of the movies that started her career. This was shortly after the professional. Yeah, because she was so young. She's very young. She said that a year after the release, she got into a fight with her mother and cut herself. She'd never done it before and never did it after that,

but she did say, I think having my wrists bloody in a movie definitely affected my psyche. And the movie may have inspired other forms of violence. In 1997, there was a real shootout in L.A., known today as the North Hollywood shootout. You can basically watch it online. It looked a lot like the movie. Mann said that the LAPD told him

that shooters had just about worn out their video cassette of Heat. I, for one, I'm not a big believer in the idea that movies cause violence, but that quote is from Michael Mann. Now, just a couple of years ago, Michael Mann thought, maybe there's one more score here. And he published a sequel in the form of a novel. It's like a sequel and a prequel called Heat 2. And then Heat 2 entered Active Development. And all of a sudden, it got some heat. Because when the sequel was announced in 2023, viewership of Heat on Netflix went from one million hours to 17 million hours, basically overnight. And as of today, it is set up at United Artists,

where he first made Thief with Jerry Bruckheimer as a producer, and Leonardo DiCaprio is circling the film for the lead role. That's right. There's a couple other interesting names that are being tossed around as well. We'll have to see where they land. Michael Mann can't walk away. Can't walk away. This will be interesting to see what they do, because my understanding about Heat 2, the novel,

was that most of it, well, not most of it, the portions that were in, you know, the future or the present, that were essentially a sequel are following Hannah as he's tracking down Scheherlis. And of course, obviously, we've lost Val Kilmer, so they can't do that. Well, I think they're recasting the whole thing. Okay. Yeah, that's my understanding. But recasting, or they're going to do different characters? I don't know.

I don't know the details. I don't know if anyone knows the details in terms of what the film will be. I'll certainly watch it. Well, Lizzie, what went right with the score known as heat? Oh, so much. I think what went right this time is they finally didn't edit him. Michael Mann is not somebody who benefits from being told you have to cut this down to a tight 90 minutes. You know, shorter is not always better. I understand sometimes it is. But with his films, I think pretty much we can say categorically it's not.

So that's my what went right is he was finally allowed to actually expand the story to as as long as it needed to be. And like, yeah, it's a little messy. There's some parts of it that you could maybe trim, but I don't care. I was, you know, wrapped the whole time. So that's my what went right. I'm glad they let him do it his way.

I will give mine to, man, it's so hard. There are a lot of things in this one that went right. Yeah, it's amazing. You know what? I'm going to give mine to cinematographer Dante Spanani. And we talked about him on, Last of the Mohicans, and we mentioned on Last of the Mohicans that the transfer, the version you can watch on Apple TV or wherever you're going to rent it, does not look very good. And by that, I mean,

it's obviously a beautiful film, and we are seeing a low resolution, probably not very faithful scan of this film. Heat, I got it, the 4K Blu-ray. I finally replaced my Blu-ray player, and it was worth every dollar. This movie looks exquisite. And again, I'm not trying to pit digital against film or anything like that, but the way that they light the darkness, the night scenes in this movie, so they do not feel overlit, and yet you can see everything and understand everything that's happening, and it feels stylized, but not over-styledized. I just think this is one of the best-looking movies of the last 40 years, period,

and yet it feels very natural. It's both stylized and very natural, and I absolutely love it. And I like, I love collateral as a movie, but I find the digital cinematography in that movie a little distracting. because it's so early in the digital transition. And I just think he looks amazing. And so I will give it to the cinematography. And just the way the camera moves,

the way they shoot that last shootout, they do that little punch in on Pacino as he whips his gun out and then close-ups. Like, Lizzie, that scene when Pacino's in the van and they're scoping out McCauley and he and De Niro look at each other, it is one of the most brilliantly shot sequences when they both just look at the camera

as they're looking at each other, even though they can't technically see each other. It's so good. So I will give it to the cinematography. Just incredible work. I think this movie is a visual masterpiece. He continued to do incredible work, too. I mean, he did LA Confidential.

Yes, which also looks great. Yes. And has an incredible shootout in its finale as well. Yeah. But kudos to everybody involved. Yes, it is the work of somebody that has a very specific sensibility and knows what they want. But it is everybody is delivering at such a high level. And I just love how it shows that this is such a team effort.

Movies are such a team effort. You're only as good as your crew, and that's so true. That's right. All right, guys, thank you for tuning in for our coverage of heat. We look forward to covering more heist films in the future. More scores, more jobs like these. Lizzie, can you tell the folks at home what we have coming for them next week? We have a natural follow-up to this very violent L.A. crime story, which is Toy Story.

That's right. Yeah. Trying to break back into the house that you were kicked out of. That's right. So excited to cover that. It's going to be, I think, the first animated film that I've covered, and it's very complicated and technical, and we're going to do our best. One of my favorite, favorite, favorite films. It's so good. It's incredible. So excited to talk Toy Story with you next week. All right, guys. If you're enjoying this podcast, there are a few easy ways to support us.

Number one, tell a family member or friend. Number two, turn the heat up on those ratings and reviews on whatever podcasts are you listened to this show. on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon. You can also subscribe in a couple of ways to get bonus content. We now offer a subscription tier on Apple Podcasts for $4.99 a month. You can get bonus episodes. We do reviews of recently released films that do not have enough information out yet for a full episode, but we still want to discuss them. We'll be covering Guillermo del Toros Frankenstein this Friday. If you're interested, tune in for that. And of course, you can also join our Patreon Patreon is a platform that connects podcasters like ourselves with dear listeners like you. You can join for free.

For $5, you not only get access to all of our bonus episodes, you also get an ad-free RSS feed, and you can watch our first live show, which we just hosted in New York at the Caviot Theater in Manhattan, and we discussed both Deep Impact and Armageddon. So if you would like to see our first live show, you can only get that on our Patreon at the $5 tier or above. And for $50, you can get a Vincent Hannah Shabbat. Just like one of these. Oh, wow. Now this is a crew.

They're paying for this whole operation, huh? Adam Moffat, Adrian Pang, Korea, Angeline Renee Cook, Ben Shindleman, Blaise Ambrose, Brian Donoghue. When I think of a woman's ass, I think respectful thoughts. Brittany Morris, Brooke, Cameron Smith,

C, Grace B, Chris Leon, Chris Zaka David Friskillante D. B. Smith, Darren and Dale Conklin, Don Schibel, Amzodia, Evan Downey, Felicia G., film it yourself. We're going to take this crew down ourselves. Frankenstein, Galen and Miguel, the Broken Glass Kids,

Grace Potter, Half Greyhound, James McAvoy, Jason Frankel, Jen Mastra Marino, J.J. Rapido, Jory Hillpiper, and Jose Salter, My life's a disaster zone. I should probably pay more attention to my wife and her daughter, but those are subplots and I don't care about them that much. Because I'm too busy chasing down this crew. Kay Kanaaba, Kate Elrington, Kathleen Olson,

Amy Ogish-Logger-McCoy, I don't want to hear that you tipped off your husband. Laundre Lawner, Lana, or LJ, Lady of Howes, Matthew Jacobson, Michael McGrath, Nate the Knife, I don't want to find one on you. Nathan Centeno, Rosemary Southwood, rural juror, Sadie, just Sadie,

Scott Oshita, Soman Shainani, Steve Winterbauer, Suzanne Johnson and the Provost family where the O's sound like O's. Now that we've been face to face, if I'm there and I got to put you away, I won't like it.

But I 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. Thank you again to the greatest crew ever assembled, our supporters. Thank you everybody for listening to this show and

supporting this podcast. It is an honor to make it for you. All right, guys, thanks so much for tuning in. We will see you next week for Toy Story, the movie that asks, what in God's name do we do with kids like Sid? You got a friend and me.

Go to patreon.com slash What Went Wrong podcast to support What Went Wrong. And check out our website at what went wrongpod.com. What Went Wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Editing and music by David Bowman. Research for this episode provided by Jesse Winterbauer with additional editing from Karen Krebsaw.