Mann discusses restoration of Heat
Director reflects on his gloriously restored action opus, 22 years later
“This crew is good,” declares Al Pacino’s Los Angeles detective Vincent Hanna in Michael Mann’s sprawling noir saga Heat. Hanna is speaking of Neil McCauley’s (Robert De Niro) criminal gang but the same could also be said of Mann and his production team.
The sheer filmmaking rigour is one of the things on display in the Heat Blu-ray, out Tuesday, that includes a number of insights into Mann’s 1995 opus of driven men and the women who suffer their obsessions.
It features a glorious restoration of the film, the most pristine presentation yet of Mann’s heavily researched investigation into the night — a recurring fascination for the intrepid director of Collateral and Miami Vice.
It was and remains the quintessential Mann film. Preceded by The Last of the Mohicans and followed by The Insider, Heat found the director and his legendary leads at the very top of their game.
Mann spoke recently about Heat, 22 years later.
Q What did you want to accomplish with this restoration?
A What I wanted to do was take it away from the way the world would have seemed, seen 22 years ago, and into the way the world is now. Everything evolves, including what we think is real, how we see light and shadow on a human face, what constitutes a dramatic aspect. I think we probably went into every shot of the film.
Q You’re co-writing a novel prequel to Heat. Is that something that could turn into a film?
A It may be. It’s a ways away. There’s a lot of work that’s going to have to go into that.
Q One striking aspect of Heat is how you linger on the deaths of various characters, as if taking a moment to contemplate the choices that brought them to their fate.
A I’m a big believer in causality. I think if there was an instrument to measure all the micro-casual tracks between what causes a thing to happen and the effect, it would all be knowable. We don’t have that instrument.
Q This film and others of yours, such as The Insider, are about men consumed by their work. Are you drawn to these stories because the same is true of you?
A I don’t know. Do I have to be lying down to answer this question? Listen, drama to me is conflict. Conflict is usually some kind of collision. Collision between two slackers isn’t really that interesting. “Do you want to watch TV at my house or your house?” It tends to take you into people who are pretty proficient at what they do, or want to be good at what they do, or ambitious.
Listen, drama to me is conflict. Conflict is usually some kind of collision. Collision between two slackers isn’t really that interesting.
MICHAEL MANN
Q The coffee shop scene famously, for the first time, united Pacino and De Niro on screen. Yet you avoided a wide shot of them both fully in the frame and stuck to over-theshoulder shots. Why?
A I hadn’t intended on excluding a wide shot until the editing. Every time we (Mann and editor Dov Hoenig) put that shot in, it let the air out of the balloon. It deflated the intensity. ... When you stopped being empathetically projected over Al’s shoulder of Bob or vice versa, but then became an observer looking at the two of them, it stopped being quite as intensely immersive.
Q Has Heat, in particular, remained with you? The characters seem to still rattle around your head.
A Well, they all do. The Insider and Heat are two films I’ve never really changed. They didn’t need any modification. There’s a line I’d take out of Heat if I was ever motivated to. I’m not going to tell you what it is, though.
Q Pacino has a few famously big, theatrical moments in the film. He’s claimed his character has an unseen cocaine habit that explains some of the behaviour.
A That kind of provocation and verbal, psychological assault is absolutely what guys who are good at doing this will do. That’s kind of where it comes from. And the scene with Hank Azaria, as well. By this point, Al and I were almost three-quarters of the way through shooting the film and it was Azaria’s first day on the set. Al and I had a kind of shorthand communication about “I’m going to try something” or “I’m going to do a free one,” which meant that we had got the scene and “Let me just rip and see what’s going to happen spontaneously.” He and I would always do these. I said, “Great, go ahead.” We had forgotten to clue in Azaria. So all of a sudden Al explodes all over the place. The look on Azaria’s face …