*NOTE* This is actually a fairly old DVD but I was just looking for an excuse to post something about Diane Lane. From her screenplay for The Truth About Cats and Dogs (1996) to her directorial debut with Guinevere (1999), Audrey Wells has created films with strong female protagonists. She continued this trend with Under the Tuscan Sun (2003) with a main character that goes on a journey of self-discovery in Italy.
Frances (Diane Lane) is a professor of literature living in San Francisco with her husband. Her bad reviews of other people’s books comes back to haunt her when a writer harboring a grudge hints that her husband has been having an affair. During the messy divorce, and understandably upset over his betrayal, she sells her half of their house rather than pay up via alimony.
Frances moves into a noisy apartment building and tries to figure out what to do with her life. She suffers from writer’s block — not just with her book but with her life. Patty (Sandra Oh), her best friend and support group, is unable to go on a ten-day trip to Tuscany because of her upcoming pregnancy. So, she gets Frances to go in the hopes that a change of pace and scenery will provide her with a fresh start.
Before she knows it, Frances is on a bus full of tourists in Italy with the tour guide telling everyone her life story. She spots a charming little villa on the tour and decides to get off the bus. Frances becomes enchanted with the place. She meets the owner and decides to buy it. To say that the house is fix-it-upper opportunity is a mild understatement but she plugs away, renovating the house and, in the process, her life.
Under the Tuscan Sun was a nice change of pace for Diane Lane, fresh from her role in the dark, erotic thriller, Unfaithful (2002). She is quite good as a newly independent woman trying to start her life over. The gorgeous Lane looks absolutely radiant and brings a lot of charm to the role. She shows a real knack for light comedy as well.
It also doesn’t hurt that director Audrey Wells surrounds the stunning Lane with a picturesque, postcard perfect Italian countryside. Every frame is filled with resplendent scenery and everyone eats delicious looking food. It is a shameless love letter to Italy. A more cynical person might say that this film is just one long ad for the tourism board of the country. It works. Under the Tuscan Sun really makes you want to go there, discover your very own villa and escape from it all. In some respects, this film is reminiscent of Enchanted April (1992) in that it also features women getting away from dreary past lives and moving to Italy to gain their independence and start their lives anew. In terms of plotting and dialogue, Tuscan Sun is pretty standard fare but it is quite entertaining, features a winning performance by Diane Lane and is handsomely photographed.
Special Features:
“Tuscany 101” is a ten-minute Making Of featurette that is your standard press kit fluff. Writer/director Audrey Wells talks about how her film subverts the traditional romantic comedy structure. Diane Lane comments that the “location is the star of the film.” The cast gush about working on location in Italy with an Italian crew.
There are three deleted scenes that are quite good and it’s a mystery why they were cut (for time?). No explanation is given but at least they are included on this DVD.
Finally, Wells contributes an audio commentary. She read the book by Frances Mayes but didn’t feel that it could be adapted into a film. She was working on her own idea about a woman overcoming heartbreak and realized that the two stories could be combined. Wells admits that her film is a loose adaptation but feels that the essence of the novel was conveyed. This is a strong track and Wells imparts a lot of good factoids and observations about her film.
Anybody who grew up in Canada during the 1980s should be familiar with the McKenzie brothers – Bob (Rick Moranis) and Doug (Dave Thomas) – the missing link that bridges the gap between Cheech and Chong and Bill and Ted. The McKenzie brothers had cultivated a sizable cult following with their memorable and largely improvised skits on SCTV. Eventually, Hollywood beckoned, only Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas decided to the make the film on their own terms, directing it themselves on location in Toronto. The result is Strange Brew (1983), a quest for beer money with allusions to Hamlet.
The film begins much like their skits on SCTV with the boys on the set of their Great White North show with the topic, not surprisingly, being movies. Bob and Doug show off the film that they made together and it turns out to be a crudely shot science fiction tale called The Mutants of 2051 AD that pokes fun at post-apocalyptic films that were all the rage at the time. When their film fails to satisfy a theater full of people (what were they expecting?), Bob and Doug give their dad’s beer money to a man and his pitiful two children begging for a refund. To mollify their irate dad (his voice provided by none other than Mel Blanc), the boys unsuccessfully try to get free beer with the ol’ mouse-in-the-beer-bottle gag which, of course, doesn’t work.
So, they decide to go to the source: Elsinore Brewery, an ominous-looking castle-like complex located right next to the Royal Canadian Institute for the Mentally Insane. Bob and Dog end up saving a woman whose car is stuck in the electrified gate of the complex. Her name is Pamela (Lynne Griffin) and her father, who used to run Elsinore, has been killed by his brother (Paul Dooley) who proceeded to marry Pamela’s mother. Sound familiar? However, it is the malevolent Brewmeister Smith (Max von Sydow) who is the puppetmaster, manipulating the brother so that he can take control of Elsinore and perfect his mind control formula through an electronic music device that he experiments on the neighboring mental patients.
In a nice touch, the patients don plastic armor and play hockey while this creepy synthesizer music plays reminiscent of Rollerball (1975) with a bit of the Stormtroopers from Star Wars (1977). Doug even pretends he’s Darth Vader to which Bob proudly says, “He saw Jedi 17 times.” As thanks for saving Pamela, Bob and Doug are given jobs in the brewery counting bottles of beer on the assembly line. It’s a dream come true and they end up bringing cases of free beer home to their ecstatic father. However, the McKenzie brothers also become unwittingly involved in the power struggle between Pamela and Brewmeister Smith.
Strange Brew displays its Canadiana with pride. During the opening credits, TTC streetcars can be plainly seen and, at one point, Bob and Doug’s van launches into Lake Ontario and the distinctive CN Tower can be plainly seen in the background, gracing the Toronto skyline. That’s kinda the point with Bob and Doug as they were Canada’s cultural ambassadors during the ‘80s, preserving and also poking fun at the Canadian stereotype: the beer-drinking, doughnut-eating, hockey-playing Canuck. Bob and Doug speak with words like “hoser”, “knob”, “take off, eh”, and “beauty” that were meant to poke fun at the way Canadian accents are perceived by those outside of the country but they ended up being absorbed into our popular culture lexicon anyway.
The McKenzie brothers were created in 1980 when the Canadian version of SCTV had to be two minutes longer than the syndicated version on American television. However, the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission dictated that the two extra minutes be Canadian in content. Thus, Bob and Doug were born as a flip response to that decree. A typical skit would involve the brothers announcing a topic of discussion, like back bacon or snowshoes, and end up getting into an argument about beer or other petty sibling disagreements. The skit became quite popular and in 1981, they recorded a comedy album which sold a million copies. Because the record did so well, Moranis and Thomas thought about parlaying that success into a film.
After fellow SCTV cast member John Candy got an offer from Universal Pictures to do a film called Going Berserk(1983), Moranis and Thomas started talking about writing a screenplay for a Bob and Doug film. Andrew Alexander, executive producer for SCTV, reminded them that he had exclusive contracts and if they wrote a script he would sue them. So, they hired Steve De Jarnatt (the cult film genius behind Cherry 2000 and Miracle Mile) to write the first draft. Initially, Thomas told De Jarnatt that he wanted to base the film’s story around Hamlet but the writer stuck to it too faithfully and Thomas told him to have fun with it by making Bob and Doug like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and Pamela like Hamlet. Their agents sent the script to various studios in Hollywood and a few days later they had a deal with MGM based not on the script but on record sales, “the breakout potential, and the fact that it was being advertised on a television show,” Thomas remembers. He and Moranis were unhappy with the script because Bob and Doug were improvised characters done in their “comic voices” and they felt that nobody but them could write these characters.
Moranis and Thomas faced the challenge of expanding their improvisations from “two guys talking about how hard it was to get parking spaces in donut shops to a full-length story,” said Thomas at the time of the film’s release. He began re-writing the script without Moranis who began to get cold feet about doing the film. After working on the first 50 pages, Moranis took a look at what he’d done and they worked together rewriting it. However, they weren’t sure just how much they could legally change and did most of the major alterations in the first third with Bob and Doug’s cheesy lo-fi SF film and the McKenzies watching it in a movie theater and causing a riot. Thomas remembers that the script was “far more bizarre and conceptual in the beginning ... If we had been able to rewrite the whole thing, we would have made the whole thing like that.”
Originally, Moranis and Thomas were not going to direct or write Strange Brew but ended up doing both with the guidance of executive producer Jack Grossberg, who had produced films by Mel Brooks and Woody Allen. They were given a modest budget of $5 million. Before filming, all of the major breweries wanted the McKenzie brothers to appear in beer ads. Molson’s Brewery was even featured prominently in their SCTV segments. They had the promise of Molson’s but once the company found out that there was a joke in the film about putting a mouse in a beer bottle so that a complaint can be made in order to get a free case of beer, the company distanced themselves from the film. The filmmakers were also banned from filming in a Brewers’ Retail store so they built a replica of an outlet at a cost of more than $15,000 and used the Old Fort Brewing Co. in Prince George, British Columbia to double for Elsinore Brewery.
Moranis and Thomas had already been playing these characters for some time by the time they did Strange Brew – in fact, the characters were at the height of their popularity at the time of the film – and so they effortlessly slipped into these roles. They really capture the sibling dynamic so well. Bob and Doug may bicker and pick on each other but when it counts they get it together and save the day. The casting of Max von Sydow as Brewmeister Smith was an inspired choice as he brings a certain amount of gravitas to the role and is actually a threatening presence, not some cartoon buffoon, which is in sharp contrast to Paul Dooley’s easily bullied character.
Strange Brew received generally positive reviews from critics. The New York Times’ Janet Maslin wrote, “Anyone who's partial to the McKenzies' humor doubtless has a fondness for beer. The price of a ticket could buy enough beer for an experience at least as memorable as this one.” In his review for the Washington Post, Gary Arnold called the film, “neither triumph nor fiasco, Strange Brew leaves plenty of room for improvement, but I hope Thomas and Moranis get the chance to demonstrate that they've learned a lot from the mixed assortment of nuttiness in their first movie comedy.” The Globe and Mail’s Jay Scott wrote, “What's terrific about the McKenzie Brothers is their offhand depiction of two English-Canadian working-class dimwits ... and what's terrific about the movie is its equally offhand surrealism.”
For a film about two goofball brothers, Strange Brew is surprisingly clever with a fairly elaborate plot that riffs on Hamlet quite a bit with Bob and Doug essentially playing the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern parts. By today’s gross-out comedy standards Strange Brew is kinda tame but that is certainly part of its appeal because it reflects the Canadian identity at the time. There is almost a sweetness to the goofy humor that is endearing. A film like this one probably couldn’t be made today, which may explain how a few years ago a proposed sequel fell through at the last minute when financing didn’t come through. Moranis’ self-imposed exile after the death of his wife didn’t help matters but Thomas was able to coax him out of retirement for a television special that took a irreverent look back at Bob and Doug’s legacy. At least we will always have Strange Brew.
Here are two great fan sites dedicated to all things Bob and Doug:
There has been a blog award making the rounds entitled You Are A Great Read. Jeremy over at The Moon in the Gutter blog was nice enough to present Radiator Heaven with this kudos. I have to say that if it weren't for Jeremy's blog, I probably wouldn't have gotten off my lazy ass and started cranking out posts on a weekly basis. His blog definitely pointed the way and continues to be a source of inspiration. I'm not sure who else has received this blog award so I will pass this on to five other blogs that I always enjoy reading:
Well, by most accounts it looks like Michael Mann Week here was a rousing success! I want to give a sincere and heartfelt thanks to everyone who contributed. I can say in all honesty that I read and thoroughly enjoyed everyone's submissions. It is great to see so many people who enjoy Mann's films. I would also like to thank everyone who stopped by and left comments... and to those who stopped by and didn't leave comments. Your patronage is appreciated.
I'm going to take a break this week as, quite frankly, I'm burnt out from last week. But, rest assured, I will have another post ready for next Monday. Thanks again, everybody!
It is Michael Mann Week here at Radiator Heaven. This week is all about Mann and his films, T.V. show, etc. in honor the theatrical release of his brand new film Public Enemies. Throughout the week I am planning several posts on his films, including a review of his new film. I encourage you to join in on the fun either through the comments section of posting an appreciation of your own either on your own blog or hosting it here. See the banner to the right for all the details and contact info.
I've decided to organize all of the posts that I have found, either over time or that were submitted, by film. That way, you can go to a specific film and see what others thought of it. As links are submitted I will put a date in brackets next to them to connote when they have been recently added. I also plan to accept links and articles all through this week so if you are still working on something or you go see Public Enemies opening day and want send me your review, by all means go right ahead.
After the commercial and critical success of The Last of the Mohicans (1992), filmmaker Michael Mann made his most ambitious film up to that point in his career with Heat (1996). He cast legendary actors Robert De Niro and Al Pacino as the leads in what would be their first the on-screen appearance together in a film (they were in The Godfather: Part II but never appeared in the same scene). Mann returned to a 1986 draft of a screenplay that originated before he made The Jericho Mile (1979). He now had a much clearer idea of how he wanted Heat to be structured and decided to expand its scope.
At the core of Heat is the relationship between career criminal Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) and dedicated cop, Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino). Mann takes the career criminal from Thief (1981) and the intensely dedicated cop from Manhunter (1986) and places them in the same film together with the sprawling metropolis that is Los Angeles as its backdrop. It is a deadly cat and mouse game realized on an epic level. Imagine Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing (1956) but on the scale of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
The opening of Heat introduces the two main protagonists without any dialogue. Mann relies entirely on their actions to illustrate defining characteristics. From the beginning, he shows a sharp contrast between McCauley and Hanna’s professional and personal lives. McCauley is all business. His life is devoted to preparing for his next score. Hanna is married — albeit in a relationship rife with problems but with some semblance of a personal life.
Hanna’s element is not in a domestic setting and this becomes obvious when he appears at the crime scene of an armored car heist perpetrated by McCauley and his crew at the beginning of the movie. As soon as Hanna walks on the scene he immediately takes control. It is a real treat to see Pacino act out this scene. He takes control both physically — in the way he gestures and moves around — and verbally, in the authoritative tone that he uses with the people around him. Pacino displays the confidence of an actor totally committed to his role, which is appropriate as his character is someone who is completely committed to his profession.
If Hanna is all about the verbal side of the professional Mann protagonist, McCauley is the flip side of the same coin. He is the quiet individual who lets his actions speak for him. Mann defines McCauley’s character visually. This is achieved not only in the exciting armored truck heist sequence — the essence of ruthless efficiency — but, more significantly, when he returns to his home. Like most Mann protagonists he lives in a Spartan, empty residence. The establishing shot utilizes a blue filter that saturates the frame, with the ocean infinitely stretching out in the background. This is reminiscent of the scene in Manhunter where Graham and Molly make love in their bedroom. McCauley is a man dominated by his profession — it defines who he is as a person.
In the relationships between men and women it is the men who always find a way to screw things up in Mann’s films. They are always focused on their job and do not spend enough time on their personal relationships until it is too late. Justine (Diane Venora) articulates this best when she tells Hanna, “But you have got to be present like a normal guy some of the time. That’s sharing. This is not sharing. This is leftovers.” Hanna responds, finally articulating to her how he works, “And in sharing it we’ll somehow cathartically dispel all that heinous shit, right? Wrong. You know why? ‘Cause I got to hold onto my angst. I preserve it because I need it. It keeps me sharp, on the edge, where I gotta be.”
Mann wants to have a balance between the cops and the criminals but ultimately the film sides with McCauley and his crew. Aside from McCauley’s relationship with Eady (Amy Brenneman), Mann also devotes time to the turbulent relationship between Chris (Val Kilmer) and Charline (Ashley Judd). On the cops’ side, only Hanna and Justine are given any kind of decent amount of screen time. The rest of his crew are given very little and are peripheral to the main story of McCauley versus Hanna.
The film’s centerpiece is undeniably the classic meeting between Pacino and De Niro. Ironically, Mann cuts the scene so that each man is shown in over-the-shoulder shots. We do not actually see them face-to-face at any time during this scene. This is the moment when both men size each other up and reveal their personal philosophies. The dialogue between them says a lot about who they are. It makes sense, then, that they understand each other better than their wives or girlfriends. McCauley and Hanna are more open with each other than with their loved ones because there is a mutual respect and bond between them that others would not understand.
Heat’s most exciting action sequence is the now famous bank heist scene. Right from the beginning, Mann establishes a quick pace as McCauley enters the bank accompanied by pulsating electronic music that anticipates what is going to happen. The music is underplayed but still effective in creating tension during this sequence. Once McCauley and his crew emerge from the bank and Chris fires the first shot, the music stops and the rest of this exciting sequence plays out with no music — only the deafening roar of the guns firing as McCauley and his men try to escape and turn the streets of Los Angeles into a war zone. Mann alternates between shaky, hand-held cameras and fluid tracking shots with kinetic editing that brilliantly conveys the exciting action that is taking place.
A few years ago Warner Brothers released a bare bones DVD of Heat. To celebrate the 10th anniversary, Mann personally revisited his film and assembled an excellent collection of extras. The director contributes a characteristically solid audio commentary. He points out that many of the characters are based on actual people. For example, Nate (Jon Voight) is homage to real-life criminal Eddie Bunker (who had a brief role as a crook in Reservoir Dogs) who acted as a consultant on the film. Mann provides a lot of details into the backgrounds and motivations of the characters. Surprisingly, there is very little overlap from the featurettes as Mann’s comments start off strong but become more infrequent after the 90 minute mark.
The strongest extra is The Making of Heat, an excellent 54-minute retrospective documentary that can be viewed in three separate featurettes or altogether. Many of the major and minor cast members are back for brand new interviews and offer insightful comments, including Al Pacino, Jon Voight, Ashley Judd, Val Kilmer and Tom Sizemore amongst others. Mann talks about one of the inspirations for Hanna, his long-time friend and veteran cop, Chuck Adamson (who is also interviewed) and the real-life Neil McCauley. Pacino explains his character’s sudden, outrageous outbursts that part of Hanna’s backstory is that he did cocaine and was always a little high. Mann and his cast did extensive research, including the actors who played criminals meeting real ones in prison. One quickly gets the impression that Mann is incredibly well-prepared and knows exactly what he is doing and his confidence inspires the cast and crew. This is in-depth look at how Heat was put together and provides the whole story for casual fans and fascinating insight for devotees.
Pacino and De Niro: The Conversation explores the famous on-screen meeting between these two actors. Their characters may be on the opposite sides of the law but there is a mutual respect one another. Mann subverts our expectations by delaying their eventual meeting and then, when it does happen, it is at a diner over coffee and not what one expects with this kind of a movie, like in a shoot-out.
Return to the Scene of the Crime features location manager Janice Polley revisiting many of the locations used in the movie. Mann wanted to find locations in Los Angeles that had never been put on film before in order to create a distinctive look. Not an easy task for one of the most photographed cities in the United States (second only to New York City). In a fun bit, Polley even sits at the table where Pacino and De Niro have their conversation over coffee.
Finally, there are 11 deleted scenes that give a brief glimpse into Michael’s (Tom Sizemore) home life and a little more footage of Hanna and his guys socializing together with their wives. Perhaps the most revealing excised bit of footage is a scene where McCauley and his crew get ready just before they enter the bank while one of his gang (Danny Trejo) is interrogated by rogue psycho, Waingro (Kevin Gage) that should have been kept in. There is nothing terribly earth-shattering about this excised footage but there are a couple of good moments.
The scale and star power of Heat was unlike anything Mann had ever tried before and firmly announced him as force to be reckoned within Hollywood. This two-DVD set is a fitting tribute for this important film. The transfer and sound are very well done with extras that are substantial and plentiful, providing a really good look at how this epic film was put together.
After the commercial failure and mixed critical reaction to the vastly underrated Ali (2001), Michael Mann returned to familiar territory — the urban crime thriller — with Collateral(2004). Coming off three grandiose epics in a row, the veteran filmmaker shifted gears with this lean, no-nonsense film that harkens back to early films in his career like Thief (1981). One has to wonder if the pressure was on Mann to make a more audience-friendly film after his last two failed to produce at the box office. Like the late Stanley Kubrick (of whom he is sometimes compared to), Mann has tried repeatedly to breakthrough to a mainstream audience. It would make sense then that he would cast Hollywood megastar Tom Cruise as one of the main protagonists. If there were any actor on the planet that could guarantee a sure-fire hit at the box office it would be Cruise (although, it didn’t work out for Kubrick when he cast the actor in Eyes Wide Shut). However, Mann throws a potential spanner in the works by casting the actor as an amoral hit man. Would this scare off a mainstream audience?
Collateral is about three lonely professionals who are brought together over the course of one night. Max (Jamie Foxx) has been a cab driver in Los Angeles for twelve years. He is anal-retentive about his cab as evident by the way he meticulously cleans the inside and out of it. Mann shows the fragmented details of the noisy garage full of hustle and bustle where Max is working on his cab: people fixing car engines and cabbies arguing. The director also includes close-ups of engines, license plates, a steering wheel, a front bumper and a tail light. As soon as Max closes the door of the cab all the cacophony of the garage is gone. He is alone with his thoughts just like Jeffrey Wigand at the beginning of The Insider(1999). They are both in their own soundless bubbles, however, for Wigand it is a prison while for Max it is his own private oasis as signified by the postcard of a tropical island that he affixes to the visor in his car. Like Frank in Thief, this postcard represents his dreams. Max looks at his postcard while a couple argues in the back of his cab. It is his escape from the pressures of the day.
His first fare is a beautiful assistant District Attorney by the name of Annie Farrell (Jada Pinkett Smith). She gives him directions but he has a better route and they make a bet: if her way is shorter then the fare is free. She is bemused by his wager and as they drive through the city, Mann includes shots of the freeway at night bathed in warm light with classic soul music playing on the soundtrack, creating a warm and inviting mood as they get to know each other. The dialogue between these two people flows naturally as they talk about their respective jobs. Max charms her by figuring out what she does and talking about his dream of opening his own limousine service: “Island Limos. It’s gonna be like an island on wheels. A cool groove like a club experience. When you get to the airport you’re not gonna wanna get out of my limo.” Max guesses that Annie is a lawyer by what she is wearing. She opens up and tells him about her insecurities with her high-pressure profession.
We find out that Max is a good judge of character and that Annie likes what she does but has her reservations, fears, doubts and feels comfortable enough to tell him. He says that she needs a vacation and gives her his postcard so that she has somewhere to escape to when things get too hectic. She gives him her business card opening up the possibility and the hint of romance. They have made a connection. Despite a premise that is steeped in the crime genre, Mann manages to keep things fresh and interesting by starting things off with an intimate conversation between two lonely souls who have met by chance.
After dropping off Annie, Max picks up his next customer and the tone of the film changes. Vincent (Tom Cruise) is all business and tells the cabby that he is a salesman in town to visit with five clients. When Max tells him it will only take seven minutes to get to his destination, Vincent is willing to time him but the cabby is not going to offer him a free ride like he did with Annie. Vincent talks about how he hates L.A. and how it is “sprawled out, disconnected.” He recounts a story about how a man died on the subway and his body rode on it for six hours with nobody noticing. Their small talk is reminiscent of the conversation Max had with Annie and they even talk about some of the same things, like Max’s proposed limo service but he does not go into the same kind of detail with Vincent because he does not feel as comfortable with him.
When they arrive at Vincent’s stop, he offers Max $600 to drive him to five other destinations around the city. It seems too good to be true and this scene plays out in the cab bathed in eerie green light, forewarning danger as Max will regret his decision to accept Vincent’s proposal in a few minutes. During the first stop a man crashes onto the roof of Max’s cab. The charade is over and Vincent is forced to play his hand. He is actually a hit man hired to kill five key witnesses in an indictment against a Latin American drug cartel. He proceeds to intimidate and force the shocked cabby at gunpoint into helping him.
One of the hits later on in Collateral is also the film’s most impressive action set piece – a memorably choreographed shoot-out at a night club. Vincent demonstrates just how efficient a killing machine he really is, shooting, knifing and breaking bones of anyone who gets in the way of his intended target. This sequence was shot in a Korean nightclub called Fever with 700 extras over nine days. Mann amplifies every deafening gunshot and every snap of bone for jarring, realistic effect. It is a fantastically orchestrated chaos on par with Mann’s other great action sequence, the famous bank heist in Heat (1995) as everyone converges on the club: the FBI investigating Felix, representatives from the cartel, the L.A. police department, the target’s bodyguards, and, of course, Max and Vincent.
Tom Cruise expertly transforms himself into one of Mann’s quintessential protagonists. Like Frank in Thief and Neil McCauley in Heat, Vincent is a consummate professional with an economical use of words. Cruise portrays Vincent as a cold-hearted killer who has no problem justifying what he does — after all it is part of the job — nothing more, nothing less. As the actor remarked in an interview, “He is an iconic killer, and he knows for himself that what he’s doing is correct, and wants to approach this in a professional manner—but then there’s things that he doesn’t even realize are happening to him, subtly.” Cruise treads a fine line between calculated menace and slick charm. Every so often he hints at something else going on behind Vincent’s eyes — a whole inner life that we only catch glimpses of. This is something he has done to a limited degree in Interview with a Vampire (1994) and Magnolia (1999) but not quite with the same intensity or in such detail as with this role.
The risk in casting someone like Cruise is that he carries a lot of baggage with him. His face and voice are so recognizable that it is hard for him to disappear into a role. Mann was conscious of this when he cast Cruise: “Tom is one of the most recognizable people on the planet. And so you have to make him Vincent. I use everything—the bones, the colors, the patterns, the rhythms of the character to end up with what you see. Everything goes into the performance. And then the clothes just fit. It all becomes seamless.” It does not take Cruise long to shed his megastar persona and become Vincent. By the time he kills two thugs trying to rob Max with ruthless efficiency, there is no question that Cruise has become this character. The choice of the non-descript grey suit was an important aspect of Vincent’s character. Mann said in an interview: “It’s not really a disguise, but it’s anonymous. If somebody actually witnesses him and the police ask for a description, what are people going to say? A middle-aged, middle-height guy wearing a middle grey suit and white shirt. It describes anybody and nobody in terms of Vincent’s trade craft.”
Yet, there is emptiness to the lives of Annie, Max and Vincent. Mann constantly captures them in the vast empty spaces of deserted streets, back alleys and subway cars with his expansive widescreen aspect ratio. As Vincent constantly reminds Max, “Nobody notices.” These characters are alienated by a cold and uncaring city. With the exception of Max’s mother, none of these characters have any significant friends or family. What they do for a living is what defines them.
The idea for Collateral came to screenwriter Stuart Beattie during a cab ride from Kingsford Smith Airport to his home in suburban Sydney, Australia. During the ride he remembers thinking, “I could be a homicidal maniac. You never get in a car with a stranger, never pick up a hitcher, but a cab driver defies those rules. Taxis are mini-islands floating around the city with two people in a confined space. It was rife for drama.” Beattie studied at Oregon State University and wrote the first draft of The Last Domino. It “sat in a drawer” for years while he went on to write Pirates of the Caribbean (2003). His script made the rounds in Hollywood before he gave it to producer Julie Richardson. She liked the screenplay and tried to develop it at HBO with Frank Darabont in 1999. They eventually passed on it and later that year, DreamWorks executive Marc Haimes renamed the script Collateral and brought the project to Walter Parkes, co-head of the studio with Russell Crowe interested in playing the role of Vincent. Beattie remembers that Crowe “really got the heat on it. After three years of the script going around Hollywood, once Russell got involved, it was alive again.” Other directors, like Mimi Leder and Janusz Kaminski, expressed an interest in making the movie.
After Ali, Mann spent two years developing The Aviator (2004) but ultimately decided not to direct instead taking on the role of producer because he wanted to do a “story that took place in L.A., at night.” He soon agreed to direct Collateral but Crowe had to drop out due to a scheduling conflict. The director was attracted to the compressed time frame in the script, much like the structure of Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, the film that made him want to be a filmmaker in the first place. “I was making an entire motion picture out of only the third act. This is the denouement: the finale is at the beginning of the movie and that’s it. Dr. Strangelove’s the same, in that it begins with the ending. Sterling Hayden launches, that’s it, they’re gone. Two acts probably built it up to that.”
When Mann came aboard he contributed an uncredited rewrite changing the offscreen bad guys to a narco cartel based in Latin America who is trying to avoid indictment by a federal grand jury. He also changed the setting from New York City to Los Angeles. Mann said that he “changed the culture, the locale, the characters’ back stories and what they talk about, but I didn’t change the narrative structure or the engineering under the surface.” Parkes remembers, “Michael talked about wanting to shoot in Los Angeles in ways that it’s never been shot before—a multilingual, multiethnic city at night, a very particular evocation.”
Actor Tom Cruise had wanted to work with Mann ever since he first saw Thief. Cruise said, “I have seen all of Mann’s movies. It’s something you want to look at and study, because he designs his pictures from the ground up and really has tremendous command of the medium and the story telling.” When Mann sent Cruise the script, the actor remembers, “he sent different stills, almost an art motif of things he was thinking about, and what he wanted to explore.” When they first met, the director offered the role of Max to the actor but it was Cruise who suggested that he play Vincent. He was attracted to the role of Vincent because it was so different from anything else he had done. He was drawn to the character as “how someone becomes an antisocial person.” However, Cruise was not entirely convinced that he could play a villain but Mann remembers telling him “that Al Pacino, De Niro, McQueen had all done it and it was his turn now. He’s 42, so if he didn’t do it now, when would he?” Mann was interested in working Cruise because he wanted to see the actor try a role he had not played before. He elaborated in an interview: “There’s dimensions to Tom that I hadn’t seen on the screen. It became an exploration to bring some of that out, some of the steel that’s in there. Some of the toughness, the certainty and the very good kind of avid, proactive vibe towards a goal, and darker resonances within that.”
Collateral gave Mann another chance to shoot in Los Angeles. He was attracted to its “industrial landscape. I like the feelings of ennui and alienation the vacant landscape suggests.” The director has lived in L.A. since 1971. He once remarked in an interview, “There’s a certain romance of the city at night that I confess I’m completely vulnerable to.” Right away, Mann establishes a multi-ethnic Los Angeles that is rarely seen in Hollywood movies, even his own Heat. In the first ten minutes alone, several different languages are spoken. Mann takes us on a tour of many different neighborhoods, from the high-rise corporate culture of the downtown core to the exotic culture clash of trendy Koreatown. He discovered the multi-ethnic, multi-class aspect of the city while riding around with a detective in an unmarked police car researching for Heat. In many respects, the city itself is a character and Mann constantly reminds us of this with several establishing overhead shots that show off the topography of L.A. Mann takes every opportunity to immerse us completely in the sights and sounds of the city that he knows all too well. Not since Blade Runner (1982) has such an ethnically and economically diverse vision of this city been depicted on film.
Over 80% of Collateral was shot utilizing the state-of-the-art Viper FilmStream digital camera. Mann was the first director to road-test the Viper, the first cinema camera to store images as data directly to a hard drive. In an interview, Mann said that, “with digital, we were able to do seventeen to eighteen 20-minute takes—three-to-four page scenes done en masse.” It allowed Mann to film longer takes because his camera could store 55 minutes on a tape. The entire shoot only took 65 days. A sharp contrast to Heat’s epic 107 day shoot. The look of Mann’s film should be familiar to anyone who saw his short-lived (and little seen) television series, Robbery Homicide Division, which was also shot on digital video. As L.A. Takedown was a dry run, stylistically, for Heat, so too was RHD for Collateral. With this new camera, Mann is able to bring out all kinds of depth and color during night-time scenes that wasn’t possible before. Mann has said in an interview: “It enabled me to be very painterly with building the scene. It’s counterintuitive to photography in every conceivable way. Throw a light meter away, I don’t need it. It’s right there on a high def monitor. But it required knowing exactly what you want because what’s available is a much broader spectrum than a motion picture film.” However, there were certain scenes, like the disco shoot-out that were shot on film because “we were on a big interior set that had to be lit and we could move around more freely with the camera on our shoulder shooting 35mm than we could using digital.”
Collateral was Mann’s most critically well-received film since The Insider and the most commercially profitable since Heat. Jonathan Rosenbaum in the Chicago Reader praised Mann’s storytelling abilities. “Mann’s success with well-worn genre tropes goes hand in hand with his actor – and character-driven approach to storytelling, which provides a solid grounding for the picaresque detours and digressions of Collateral’s plot.” Manohla Dargis in The New York Times described the movie as “very much the product of a distinct vision, one as eager to push technological limits ... as to upend the usual studio white-hero/black-villain formula.” Mark Olsen in Sight and Sound lauded Mann’s use of DV and compared him to Kubrick. “If Kubrick could prefigure the colours and framing of the still-emerging digital aesthetic, Mann is perhaps the perfect filmmaker to take the technology forward.” In his review for Time magazine, Richard Schickel wrote, “But at his best, Mann wears his hipness easily. It works particularly well in Collateral, which has a nice minimalist quality about it – just these two increasingly edgy guys, their car and the people they encounter.”
Michael Atkinson provided one of the rare, dissenting voices with his review for The Village Voice: “Several yowling soundtrack singles are more obtrusive than emphatic, and he is susceptible to the Industry’s de rigueur editing hyperactivity ... Collateral is a slim drink of thin beer, remarkable only as evidence that Mann might have a modern masterpiece in him if he were cut loose and allowed to roam around in his own obsessions.”
Collateral is a fitting addition to Michael Mann’s distinctive filmography. It continues his thematic pre-occupations of isolated protagonists who have little time for personal relationships. It is also deals with another Mann obsession: transformation. In order to have any chance of surviving the night with Vincent, Max must change from being a passive character to one that takes an active role in determining his own fate. It is the exploration of such weighty themes, coupled with Mann’s distinctive style that elevates Collateral from its generic conventions.
Public Enemies marks Michael Mann’s third foray into American history with The Last of the Mohicans (1992), The Insider (1999) and Ali (2001) being his previous efforts. The director got his start making documentaries and always been interested in achieving absolute authenticity in the depiction of the professions that his protagonists practice, be it safecracking in Thief (1981) or serial killer profiling in Manhunter (1986). Born and raised in Chicago, it is easy to see what drew Mann to the story of John Dillinger, a famous bank robber during the 1930s. He and his crew were the best of the best at the time and so, he certainly fits the kind of protagonist Mann is drawn to.
Public Enemies begins in 1933 during the golden age of bank robbery and Mann wastes no time getting into it as he opens the film with an exciting escape from an Ohio prison orchestrated by Dillinger (Johnny Depp) and his crew. Soon after, we meet FBI agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) in action as he takes down Pretty Boy Floyd (Channing Tatum) with a hunting rifle from an impressive distance. In no time at all, Mann has established the film’s protagonist and antagonist. They are smart, super efficient men of action that are single-minded in their respective goals.
Unable to get funding and criticized by his superiors, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) needs high-profile busts and enlists Purvis to find and stop the country’s Public Enemy No. 1 – John Dillinger. The more notorious he becomes the more this angers not just the FBI but also the Chicago mob because his actions put extra heat on them. There is a nice scene where he meets with a mob representative who basically tells him that he is a dying breed. The money he makes knocking over one bank, they make in one day through illegal gambling.
Mann demonstrates that he is a master at orchestrating action sequences. They are cleanly photographed and edited so that there is no confusion. You can always tell what is going on and who everyone is instead of the kamikaze, headache-inducing editing and slapdash camerawork in films by the likes of Michael Bay and McG. The shoot-out at Dillinger’s hide-out in Little Bohemia is the film’s show-stopping action sequence much like the bank heist in Heat (1995) and the nightclub shoot-out in Collateral (2004). It is powerfully executed and full of tension and excitement as well as an impressive display of firepower with the deafening blasts of tommy guns and shotguns.
Public Enemies reunites Mann with key collaborators, chief among them cinematographer Dante Spinotti who has shot his most memorable films (including Manhunter, The Last of the Mohicans, Heat, and The Insider). Mann has come under considerable criticism for deciding to shoot his last two films with digital cameras and even more so with Public Enemies because it is a period film and audiences are used to seeing them done on traditional film stock. However, this new film looks great with crisp, clear images, especially at night where there is an impressive depth of field. Certain scenes have a graininess to them inherent with digital cameras but, in this case, it gives a tangible, gritty texture that works. There are some truly beautiful shots in this film, like one in which a car carrying Dillinger and his crew hurtle down a road surrounded by a vast forest of trees that tower over them.
Mann is also reunited with composer Elliot Goldenthal who worked on Heat. Since The Last of the Mohicans (1992), Mann has relied on soundtracks comprised mostly of disparate tracks from various sources. Being a period piece, obviously Public Enemies really doesn’t lend itself to that kind of a soundtrack and Goldenthal expertly augments the drama that unfolds in various scenes, creating one of the best scores in a Mann film to date.
The attention to period detail is fantastic with classic trains, cars, and classic gangster iconography like tommy guns, fedoras and trenchcoats permeating the film. Mann really immerses us in the time period but not in a way that calls undo attention to itself. It’s just there in the background of every scene with vintage period architecture. Ever the perfectionist, Mann shot on location, often at the actual locations that Dillinger and his gang frequented. Whether you are consciously aware of this or not, the film just oozes authenticity.
Dillinger certainly enjoys the fruits of his labor but is always planning his next job. He follows his own personal code: he doesn’t kill unless absolutely necessary and doesn’t think about the future, living only in the present because he could easily end up in jail or dead. He is also very conscious of how he’s perceived by the public, enjoying the notoriety his exploits create. Depp portrays him as a very confident guy who is always in control. There is often this mischievous glint in his eye like he’s in on a private joke. Depp plays Dillinger with a lot of charm, like when he addresses the media while being booked in an Indiana jail. He knows how to work the crowd and the charismatic actor is excellent in this scene. However, Public Enemies is not afraid to point out that Dillinger is no hero. The man has no problem with killing someone if they get in his way but the film goes to great lengths to point out that he did so only when there was no other option. Dillinger was clearly a man who didn’t believe in wasting time, much like Frank, the safecracker in Thief. Depp inhabits the role with his customary dedication, adopting a specific voice, accent and effortless delivery of period lingo that sounds natural and genuine.
Christian Bale is quite good as the very determined Purvis. While Mann doesn’t create the balance of cop vs. robber as he did in Heat, Bale is in the film more that I had anticipated. Like other law enforcement figures in Mann’s films, Purvis uses state-of-the-art technology, for the time, to track Dillinger and his crew. As determined as Purvis is, Mann allows some humanity to seep in, like when he stops the brutal interrogation of Dillinger’s girlfriend Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard) and personally helps her get cleaned up. It is this small moment that adds a welcome layer to his character.
There are all kinds of parallels between Public Enemies and Heat. In both films we are meant to sympathize with the bank robber. Also, the two leads only meet face-to-face in one scene. There is a climactic gun-battle where both sides take on significant casualties that alter the conclusion of the story. And, like McCauley in Heat, there is an inevitability to Dillinger’s life; that he will run out of time and luck; that Purvis and the FBI will close the net around him. That being said, Public Enemies not a carbon copy of Heat. Personality-wise, Dillinger and McCauley are very different people with the former being a risk-taker and the latter being overtly cautious. The same goes for the lawmen. Purvis is not the larger-than-life extrovert that Hanna is, but rather a no-nonsense man who gets the job done and that’s it. There’s even a loose cannon in the form of Baby Face Nelson (Stephen Graham) who is to Public Enemies like Waingro was to Heat. A psychopath that the bank robbers initially ally themselves with but end up cutting loose when he proves to be too unstable. Structurally, both films couldn’t be different as Mann continues to experiment with narrative structure in a fascinating way. This isn’t your typical, cookie-cutter A to B to C plotting, which may frustrate some (see Ali or Miami Vice) but if you the patience and can get into it, watching Public Enemies is a very rewarding experience.
Public Enemies certainly held my attention for its entire, lengthy running time and is an incredible achievement – easily the best period gangster film since Miller’s Crossing (1990). I’m not sure where I would rank it among Mann’s films as I’ve only seen it once and really need to give it some time to sink in but it is a very welcome antidote to the glut of mindless action films that are being released this summer.
To celebrate Public Enemies' wide release today I am posting a selection of interviews and profiles on the principle cast and crew of the film that have appeared in the press over the past few weeks. So, without further adieu...
"'Public Enemies' No. 1 (in historical accuracy, writer says)" by Bryan Burrough at the Los Angeles Times. (a primer on the history and facts by the man who wrote the book the film is based on) - NOTE: the L.A. Times doesn't leave their articles online for long so if you're interested in checking this article out, do it ASAP!
Hollywood’s depiction of the American West being domesticated during the Classic period is rife with stereotypes. Native Americans in John Ford films, for example, were often portrayed in two ways: as noble savages or ferocious red devils. Until recently, they were often played by white actors with their language reduced to garbled, simple, child-like speak. Not until the 1990s has their authentic languages been used in films. Most films portrayed them as vicious instead of also victims (which is what they really were in many cases) to justify the narrative that usually involved their extermination.
Coming off a cinematic hiatus of six years since Manhunter (1986) was released, Michael Mann returned with a vengeance with his robust, muscular take on The Last of the Mohicans (1992). On the surface, it seemed like a radical departure for a filmmaker known for urban crime dramas like Thief (1981), Miami Vice, and Crime Story but thematically it fits right in with his no-nonsense protagonists who are the best at what they do and are faced with a decision between their profession and the ones they love.
The Last of the Mohicans is set in 1757 during the third year of the war between England and France. Dialogueless footage of three men running through a lush, green forest plays during the opening credits. Hawkeye (Daniel Day-Lewis), Uncas (Eric Schweig) and Chingachook (Russell Means) are hunting a large elk which Hawkeye subsequently shoots and kills with deadly accuracy. This brief sequence establishes him as a man of action and an efficient hunter. Like other Mann protagonists Hawkeye is his own man, preferring to do things on his own terms and is fiercely loyal to his family and friends.
The three men stop by a settler’s cabin that night and learn that the French army with Native Indian support is encroaching on their land. Like his settler friends, Hawkeye does not seem interested in the conflict. It is not his fight. He reinforces this belief two scenes later when a British officer (Jared Harris) tries to recruit him. Hawkeye replies, “You do what you want with your own scalp and I’ll be tellin’ us what we ought to do with ours.” This scene is significant in that we see the dynamic between Hawkeye, Uncas and Chingachook. The latter is the father of the other two men and they are clearly close to each other by the way they act towards one another. This is evident in the opening scene when they worked as a team to hunt the elk and now in this social setting. This scene is also one of domestic bliss, something that is always treasured in a Mann film and one that is also fleeting. Mohicans is no different. Hawkeye and his friends laugh and talk over dinner with a warm, inviting fire in the background. It is an intimate setting, one of safety and familiarity. It will also be the last time they will all enjoy this kind of atmosphere.
Mann’s trademark color palette is muted in Mohicans with green being the only one with any prominence. He uses the green of the forest, that Cora (Madeleine Stowe) and Alice Munro (Jodhi May) travel through on the way to be reunited with their father, Colonel Munro (Maurice Roeves) at Fort William Henry, to foreshadow the impending danger of the Indian sneak attack that will decimate the complement of soldiers protecting them and bring them in contact with Hawkeye for the first time.
The ambush shows the foolishness of the British military tactics. They take their time to form a line giving the attacking Indians ample time to take cover and then counter-attack. In a matter of moments almost all of the British troops have been killed until Hawkeye and his crew arrives and swiftly deals with these marauders with same kind of deadly efficiency. Hawkeye and Magua (Wes Studi) meet face to face for the first time in this scene as Magua narrowly misses Hawkeye with his rifle and then disappears into the forest before he can get a good shot at him. This almost unnatural exit sets up Magua as an unstoppable force of nature, like Hawkeye but only on the opposite end of the moral spectrum. The ambush establishes the quick, brutal nature of combat in the film as Mann moves away from the overtly stylish action in Thief and Manhunter towards a more realistic depiction with truly harrowing scenes of men getting scalped, stabbed and slashed. Every subsequent film Mann would make after Mohicans would depict violence in a jarring, realistic nature.
The character of Magua is fleshed out and given a chance to explain the motivation for his ruthless hatred of the English: his village was burned down, his children killed, he was taken as a slave and his wife thought he was dead and remarried. He delivers a powerful monologue to his French co-conspirator, “In time, Magua became blood brother to the Mohawk, to become free but always in his heart he’s Huron. His heart will be whole again when the day the Gray Hair and all his seed are dead.” Wes Studi delivers this speech with scary intensity that is indicative of his incredible performance throughout the film. He portrays Magua as a ferociously driven man who believes in what he is doing as much as Hawkeye does. Like Daniel Day-Lewis, Studi’s performance is very physical and he commands the screen with his intense presence due in large to his piercing eyes.
Mann is clearly sympathetic to the settlers’ plight and their decision to protect their homes instead of helping defend Fort Henry against the French, which falls to them anyway. However, it is the love story between Cora and Hawkeye that lies at the heart of this film. Aside from a few meaningful, longing looks at each other, their sudden consummation is not believable because no foundation for it has been properly established. Cora is another, strong female Mann character, like Jesse in Thief. She stands up for Hawkeye to her father when he is caught for helping some militia men desert so that they can go defend their homes. She argues Hawkeye’s case and even speaks seditious ideas in front of him. Yet, she spends a lot of the film as a damsel in distress having to be rescued by Hawkeye on at least two occasions.
Mann only betrays the realistic battle scenes once with a stylistic indulgence. When Munro and his men are ambushed by Magua’s war party. Cora is attacked and about to have her throat slashed. Hawkeye spots her and runs towards her, killing several men along the way in slow motion for what seems to take forever and reaches her long after she surely would have been actually killed. However, he gets to her just in time and dispatches her attacker. Studi remembers that during the filming of this scene there being a lot of racial tension between the actors playing the British troops and the Indian actors which also added to the intensity of the scene.
One of the most striking aspects of Mohicans is Dante Spinotti’s stunning cinematography. Mann constantly punctuates scenes with picturesque shots of the countryside: early morning fog gently rolling off a mountain range, a raging waterfall and fields of tall grass. Browns and mostly greens dominate the color scheme of this film. For the look of Mohicans, the director started with 19th century landscape painters like Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt, chiaroscuro lighting, and 18th century portraits. It was Bierstadt's paintings that influenced the look of the film "in terms both of compositions and of what the place looked like," Mann has said. As he progressed, however, he realized that "objective reality outstripped me, and I brought it back to a more conservative palette. If you were an American Indian and grew up in the forest, so all you saw were brown and green."
Even more so than The Keep (1983), Mohicans feels the most un-Mann-like of any of his films. His usual iconography is subdued or non-existent. Mohicans tries to counter many of the Native American stereotypes in Hollywood films. Hawkeye is completely aligned with the Native Americans while falling in love with Cora, a white woman. Initially, the racial distinction is blurred as Hawkeye is not given priority at the beginning of the film. They are all equal for a little while. Of course, being the star, Hawkeye does become the central focus of the story. This is where Mann’s film stops being progressive and reverts back to the old stereotypes with good and bad Native Americans. While he does up the ante in terms of realistic battle scenes, his story is very middle of the road and one that typifies a big-budget Hollywood film.
Mann had long been fascinated by the period of history that Mohicans is set in but his interest in the project can be traced all the way back to his childhood. He saw the 1936 version starring Randolph Scott as Hawkeye when he was four or five-years-old at a church in his neighborhood that would show 16mm films in their basement. Mann remembered “the corollary tragedy of Uncas and Alice at the end, plus I remember the fearsomeness of Magua, and the uniqueness of the period.”
Mann first acquired the rights to Philip Dunne's 1936 screenplay of The Last of the Mohicans and wrote a story outline based on it, the Smithsonian’s 30-volume North American Indian Handbook, a diary by Bouganville, Montcalm’s aide, and Simon Schama’s essay The Many Deaths of General Wolfe in 1988. He walked into the offices of Joe Roth, then Chairman of 20th Century Fox, and Roger Birnbaum, then President of Worldwide Production, and pitched a realistic take on Mohicans. They liked the idea and green-lit the project. Marketing surveys for 20th Century Fox revealed that few moviegoers had read Cooper’s novel but were familiar with the title.
As always, Mann did a lot of research on this period of history. He realized how “revisionist James Fenimore Cooper was in 1826 when he was revising [the perception of American Indians] into noble savages [who had] their life, their culture, their territory, their commerce, who [did not] need more sophisticated folks (like Cooper and his family), to look after their interests and their land. So, it was eye-opening to do the research on the Mohicans and get to the true dimensionality of that society.” From there, Mann constructed the outer frame of the film and established “the scale of a geopolitical conflict – the ethnic and religious conflicts, the struggle of white imperialism on a grassroots level, the condition of the struggle for survival of the colonial population, and the struggle between the Euramerican and European powers and the American Indian population.” Mann studied the history of the American frontier, read diaries from the time period and consulted with historians. For the director, “the details make this movie ring true. Audiences today are more visually sophisticated. They know the real deal, and they know when they’ve been shortchanged.”
Mann was interested in developing the epic scale of the story and proceeded to juxtapose these elements with an intimate love story between Hawkeye and Cora Munro. It is this coupling that illustrates where Mann deviates from Cooper's book in specific areas. Cora was originally a mulatto and Colonel Munro wanted Heyward to marry Cora but he preferred Alice. Mann switched it so that Hawkeye and Cora fall in love and had sex. Originally, Hawkeye’s name was Natty Bumppo but Mann felt that it was “kind of a silly name” and changed it to Nathaniel Poe. He also based Major Heyward on Cooper himself.
Mann wanted acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis to play Hawkeye, which the studio was less than thrilled about. Mann remembers, “The choice I got the weirdest reaction to was when I said Daniel Day-Lewis was going to be Hawkeye in Last of the Mohicans. Because American studios didn’t know him. They said, ‘You mean that skinny guy? That short, skinny guy in a wheelchair?’ Because all he had done was My Left Foot.” His co-star Madeleine Stowe remembers that prior to doing the film Day-Lewis had just played Hamlet at the National Theatre in London and ran from the stage crying, convinced that he was talking to the ghost of his own dead father. She felt a lot of uncertainty from him until he got into the physicality of his character, then he appeared to be very confident. According to Mann, physicality is one of the important ways Day-Lewis arrived at his character’s emotional state. Day-Lewis is good as a no-nonsense Mann protagonist but, at times, his alpha male bravado veers dangerously close to John Wayne territory. He certainly looks the part with his impressive lean, muscular physique – a radical change from his role in My Left Foot (1989) – and is more than up to the task for film’s demanding action sequences.
Stowe’s agent got her to read the script for Mohicans but the actress thought that, “it was a nice action picture, I didn’t feel any particular affinity for either Cora nor the story.” Her initial reluctance to the material was based on her dissatisfaction with action films. “I was fed up with them and I initially thought that the script was just another action film dressed up as a period piece.” Stowe’s agent kept after her and she read it two more times before meeting with Mann. They talked about the film and he told her his vision of it. A week later, Stowe met with Mann again and read with Day-Lewis and Steven Waddington. That day she found out that it was Day-Lewis who had suggested to Mann that she play Cora.
Casting director Bonnie Timmerman called Russell Means and asked him if he would be interested in trying out for a major role in a major film. However, the day they wanted him to audition, he was going to a political convention in Monterrey. They worked it out so that Means could do both. However, on the day he ended up missing the audition. He got another call from Mann who asked Means to audition for a role in the film. Means remembers that Mann “had been a documentary filmmaker during the 60's and 70's and he remembered the American Indian Movement, and Dennis Banks and myself as leaders.” After four auditions, Means was cast as Chingachook.
Mann brought in Colonel David Webster, who was in charge of the Many Hawks Special Operations Camp out of Fort Bragg in Columbus, Ohio, to train the cast for a month. In addition, Day-Lewis did an extraordinary amount of research and preparation for his role. Mann sent him on a six-month course of body building and weapons training at an anti-terrorist camp followed by several weeks in the wild learning how to survive with very little. He learned to track and skin animals, build canoes, fight with tomahawks, and fire and reload twelve pound flintlocks on the run. He spent five times a week for six months training to build up his stamina and upper body. Mann and Day-Lewis actually lived in the forests of North Carolina – Mann for a week, Day-Lewis for a month. The actor spent most of his time with experts on the lives and skills of American Indians.
Mohicans started with a budget of $24 million and a 250-member crew. Other articles reported that the budget was around $33 or $40 million. The principal photography was set for two-and-half months in the forests of North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains during the Spring of 1991. Mohicans would continue Mann's uncompromising approach to controlling every aspect of the production. He leveled hills, cleared 38 acres of trees and hired 130 carpenters to build Fort Henry. To achieve the authenticity of the period everything had to be built from scratch, including designing and manufacturing the breechcloths of six different Indian peoples and building French and English ordinance.
The grueling grind of the production took its toll. The Unit Production Manager and the Transportation Director were fired. All the original department heads, with the exception of the head of sound, quit. In perhaps the most startling move, cinematographer Douglas Milsome was fired and Mann brought in his favorite director of photography, Dante Spinotti. According to Means, this angered people in the film industry and Mohicans paid for it at the Academy Awards. The non-Union crew wanted to be a Union one and went on strike a day before principal photography was supposed to start. The studio ultimately gave into their demands.
While filming at Lake James, all the American Indian extras organized themselves and went on strike because their living conditions were awful and, according to Stowe, were not being well fed. There was one bathroom for 400 extras. Actors Eric Schweig, Means, and Day-Lewis joined the extras on the picket line. Military advisor Dale Dye organized the men playing the Red Coats in the film with the intention of breaking through the strike line. As they approached Means punched the first Red Coat and knocked him down. The rest of them scattered. Dye was able to get them reorganized and then the producers stepped in and asked Means to mediate between the two sides. In Means' opinion, the awful living conditions for the American Indian extras were the fault of the assistant directors. "Michael Mann was so focused on his art that he didn't realize what his A.D.s were doing ... and what his A.D.s did was effectively demoralize everyone."
When asked about the film’s production problems Mann said, “What I will tell you, however, is that this was a really difficult picture. You warn people ahead of time that this is going to be a tough picture to do, and people say, "That's fine, I can handle that," and sometimes they can't.” The filmmaker made no apologies for his exacting attention to detail. "Everything impacts on an audience. Everything. And you can either pay attention to it or let it go and let technicians do it. To me that's wasteful." Mohicans was originally slotted for a July release but was pushed back to September to avoid stiff competition and for a better position for Academy Award nominations.
The studio marketing department promoted Mohicans as a love story in a war zone, but Mann felt that it was about human struggle, “where life is short and passion is where you can find it; you are part of a people who are disappearing and the world is changing around you.” Means was not happy with how 20th Century Fox handled the film. He had two problems with the studio. Firstly, he claims that the studio forced Mann to cut down his original version that ran two hours down to 108 minutes removing “some very pertinent scenes in there, and dialogue, that would have shown the Indians in an even better light then it already does.” Secondly, Means said that the studio targeted the over 35 crowd, selling it as a love story. “As you know, it was kind of gory and there was a lot of action. So, if they'd have pitched it to 20/35 crowd, as their primary audience, it not only would have made another 50 million off of that ... 20th Century Fox shot themselves in the foot over that film ... A classic like that and they messed around with it. It just goes to point up in Hollywood they don't know anything about Indians nor the audience that they purport to know everything about.”
According to Stowe, the studio “had huge doubts” about the film during the editing and audience test screenings who were put off by the film’s violence. She felt that Mann was under a lot of pressure from the studio to change the film. The actress saw a cut in July of 1992 and felt that the studio was wearing Mann down so she called Joe Roth and “told him how beautiful the film was, and that I was fully ready to support it, that Michael’s work was wonderful and I imagined that Daniel would feel the same. he listened quietly and read between the lines.” Mann met with the studio again and successfully fought for his cut of Mohicans.
The Last of the Mohicans was released on September 25, 1992 in 1,491 theaters grossing $10.9 million on its opening weekend. It went on to make $75 million in North America, well over its $40 million budget. In his review for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert felt that Mann’s film was “not as authentic and uncompromised as it claims to be – more of a matinee fantasy than it wants to admit -- but it is probably more entertaining as a result.” Peter Travers, in his review for Rolling Stone, praised Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance: “The lithe Day-Lewis, more puckish than primitive despite the shoulder-length locks, is riveting. Luckily, he and the radiant Stowe can make the cornball credible – even a farewell scene at a waterfall where he vows to find her again, ‘no matter how long it takes, no matter how far.’” David Ansen also praised Day-Lewis’ performance in his review for Newsweek magazine: “This amazingly graceful actor builds his character out of body language ... He turns this 18th century action hero into a freshly imagined romantic icon ... Day-Lewis makes the most wildly heroic gesture seem natural.”
In his review for the Washington Post, Desson Howe wrote, “Whether there's a full-scale massacre of innocents, or a lover's kiss behind a raging waterfall, the movie is all expertly controlled sensation ... The battles are pyrotechnical displays of cannon fire and gleaming redcoats. Even the awesome landscape looks designed. Mann wasn't thinking story, he was thinking scheme. Keep the eyes and ears dazzled, he reasons, and the substance will follow.” Richard Schickel, in his review for Time magazine, wrote, “Above all Mann has seen to it that something spooky, suspenseful or just plain action packed happens every five minutes. In the process, he has eliminated the last traces of Cooper’s high-viscosity prose and sentiments.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “B+” rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “And Mann has created a great villain in Magua, the vengeful Huron. Wes Studi, who was in Dances With Wolves, has a glowering face, all scars and furrows, that seems to be imploding with rage. At the same time, he reveals that the furious Magua is actually a thoughtful, complex man; he sees what the Europeans are doing to his people, and he despises them for it.”
The success of Mohicans not only established Mann with box office clout in the eyes of Hollywood, it also proved to be a hit with audiences and critics. More importantly, it paved the way for his next and even greater film, Heat (1995), a pet project that had been gestating for years.
Here is a clip from one of the film's exciting battle scenes:
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[image: Beineix]
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Hanging Out With Hef & Some Playboy Bunnies
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Using Movies As A Guide For Reality
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OPERA aka TERROR AT THE OPERA may have been the first Dario Argento movie I
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Rocket Science (2007) Written by Jeffrey Blitz Directed by Jeffrey Blitz
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16 Days into July (One Year and Counting)
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place some bids of fury on eBay!
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The Dark Knight: Fun With History and Math
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"James Cameron, you're Public Enemy #1 when I'm through with the Joker..."
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Twin Peaks - The Top Ten Scenes
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#6
Brilliant and mysterious, another powerful scene from perhaps the most
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Laura (1944)
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Dying Breaths: Some Thoughts on Public Enemies.
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I ain't gonna marry, I ain't gonna settle down,
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Jimmie Rodgers...
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EPISODE 12
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Act 1: 6:42AM - In Cooper’s room at the Great Northern, Cooper dictates to
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BLOG ON HOLD FOR A WHILE
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THE NEW SITE
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Hi everyone! I'm putting up the new (simplified) site. I've cut it down to
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6 months ago
About Me
J.D.
I am currently researching and writing a book about the films of Michael Mann.
*NOTE* This is actually a fairly old DVD but I was just looking for an excuse to post something about Diane Lane.
Under the Tuscan Sun was a nice change of pace for Diane Lane, fresh from her role in the dark, erotic thriller, Unfaithful (2002). She is quite good as a newly independent woman trying to start her life over. The gorgeous Lane looks absolutely radiant and brings a lot of charm to the role. She shows a real knack for light comedy as well.
Finally, Wells contributes an audio commentary. She read the book by Frances Mayes but didn’t feel that it could be adapted into a film. She was working on her own idea about a woman overcoming heartbreak and realized that the two stories could be combined. Wells admits that her film is a loose adaptation but feels that the essence of the novel was conveyed. This is a strong track and Wells imparts a lot of good factoids and observations about her film.
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