- What does it feel like to be back here?
- Not that much has changed.
This is also the week
that the Unabomber threatened to blow up LAX.
- A lot going on.
- We should have crossed movies.
We had a plan.
- By the way, I wanna say that the plan
says World War III on it,
which is very appropriate.
(upbeat music)
It's a quiet day in downtown LA,
but 25 years ago, behind me,
one of the greatest shootouts in movie history was filmed.
I'm talking, of course, about "Heat",
Michael Mann's epic 1995 drama
that at last pitted two of our greatest actors,
Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, against each other
in a violent hypnotic game of cat and mouse.
Vincent Hanna and Neil McCauley
are flip sides of the same coin.
Obsessive and brilliant cops and crooks
who live and die by a code,
they get the job done and take care of their crew
at any and all costs.
"Heat" may be the ultimate crime film
and it was all set here
in the sprawling backdrop of Los Angeles.
Let's see where it happened and go to the map.
"Heat" shows virtually every side of LA
in its dozens of practical locations
from chop shops to beautiful homes in the Hollywood Hills,
but its first big action set piece
takes place on Venice Boulevard,
right underneath the Santa Monica freeway.
Over at the loading docks of the Los Angeles harbor,
the cops think they're watching the crooks
until we realize it's the other way around.
If you want to see where Neil McCauley's crew
recruits Dennis Haysbert's Breedan to be their driver,
just take a trip to Burbank
and visit the oldest existing Bob's Big Boy restaurant.
Unfortunately, Kate Mantilini in Beverly Hills,
the site of one of the most iconic scenes in film history,
the tense sit down between Pacino and De Niro,
is no more.
You can, however, still see where "Heat"'s showstopping
bank heist turn shootout was filmed.
Most of the action spanned 5th Street in downtown LA
where I'm meeting up
with "Heat"'s writer and director, Michael Mann.
So this is the scene of the crime as it were, Michael.
This is where one of the most epic
bank heist turn shootouts was ever staged.
What does it feel like to be back here?
- Not that much has changed.
Fancy bank that they're coming out of,
it wasn't really.
The interior bank was different at that time.
But the fancy bank they're coming out of,
there were these geometric shaped statues
very orderly well with palm trees
and it had the sense of deliverance,
deliverance from all the threats,
and you felt that all they have to do
is walk those 30, 40 feet
to get into this car parked right here.
- This is where Breedan's car is.
- This is where Breedan's car is
and the camera works very intimate
behind Tom Sizemore's head.
- [Josh] He thinks he's home free.
- He thinks he's home free, he's got it made,
he's still agitated, he jumps in the back seat.
Unbeknownst to them,
Hanna's racing in with his detectives
and he's gonna park up the street.
At the same time, in the other direction,
Hanna's ordered up all these black and whites
and I wanted the T-junction up there
so they could block it,
and I wanted Neil McCauley,
at first they have to go uphill to it
so they're all one block away
and there's already an array of police cars up there,
so basically McCauley is getting assaulted
from Hanna's group from one side
and you got a road block on the other.
So Shiherlis has his smile on his face,
he's getting in the car, he looks across the street
and spots Wes Studi playing Casals
and Mykelti Williamson playing Drucker
and what's interesting about it
is it happens the way it would happen
if they were really trained with Shiherlis.
There's no hesitation.
- No, he goes right into attack mode.
- They go right into fight.
Shootout, everybody just fires right away.
(gunfire bursting)
Faced with an ambush,
they attack, they assault the police
and they assault in a classical fashion
where De Niro gets out and Val gets out.
One takes cover, lays down rounds,
the other advances,
then he stops and he takes cover, lays down rounds
and then the other guy advances.
- There's nothing haphazard.
They know what the plan's gonna be.
- They know exactly what they're doing.
Their tactics are very advanced.
In fact, Val Kilmer when he does that reload,
that's still using Fort Bragg,
for special forces training.
They say if you can't really reload.
There's no cuts as good as Val Kilmer does.
You're in the wrong army.
- So talk to me a little about the preparation
for something like this.
As I understand it,
you couldn't rehearse here for days on end.
How did you prepare
for a sequence like this with the actors?
- What we did is we had a plan for this.
- By the way, I wanna say that the plan
says World War III on it,
which is very appropriate,
because that's what it feels like, basically.
- There's various pieces of street furniture,
various boxes, poles, obstacles,
some we put there, some that were there,
and what we did is we duplicated those
on the LA County Sheriff's shooting ranges.
- Right, because you couldn't necessarily
have access to this for days on end,
so that's where you re-staged.
- Well, you also couldn't fire live rounds
in downtown Los Angeles.
- [Josh] Never a good idea.
- Which is not a good idea.
- Does this stack up among
the most complex sequences you've shot in your career?
- No.
- This isn't even a hard one, what?
- This was very, very precise.
These things aren't hard.
- [Josh] It looks hard on paper to me.
- They're challenging and that's what make them great.
They're very exciting to do.
- Any other director if I asked that question
they'd be like, yes,
this was the ultimate scene in my career.
You're like, yeah, maybe top 10 most difficult scenes.
- We shot in some interesting locations.
- Well, in a classic film, this is a classic sequence,
but there's a lot more to talk about.
Let's go inside and chat, shall we?
- All right, yes.
(upbeat music)
- For any "Heat" fan,
this is the Holy Grail that's sitting right in front of me.
- It's not the Holy Grail.
It's one fifth of the Holy Grail.
There's five more like this.
- For anybody that knows your work
and how much research you do,
I know this is the tip of the iceberg for "Heat",
but talk to me about where this began for you.
Where did "Heat" begin?
- It began with a guy named Charlie Adamson
who was a close friend who was figuring
in a crime intelligence unit, Chicago PD,
which is like Robbery-Homicide Division in the LAPD.
It's a major crime special unit.
Charlie told me this story about Neil McCauley.
He killed the real Neil McCauley in 1963 in Chicago
and there was this wonderful duality
about how he related to Neil McCauley
and one at the same time, he really admired him,
he respected him,
he though this guy is a great thief,
he was terrific.
I mean he had planning, he had discipline.
One thing was out of place that shouldn't be there,
you know, he would walk away.
At the same time,
Chuck's attitude was that he'd blow him out of his socks
at the drop of a hat.
- I mean, it's part of why
one of the many things that makes "Heat" so special
is you have essentially two protagonists
that the audience is fully invested in.
You can look at it from both perspectives
and you're in love with both of these characters
and rooting in some ways for both of these characters.
- We're rooting specifically for both of the characters
but that was the major challenge,
hence the attraction for me,
was can I immerse the audience
100% into an empathetic relationship with Neil McCauley
where you're rooting for him
and one at the same time
with Vincent Hanna, Al Pacino
where you're rooting for him,
which puts you into kind of a fugue state if it worked
a counterpoint heading towards the end
which becomes a real dialectic.
So once I knew that ending,
I worked backwards.
- We have to talk about the casting of this film
because the ensemble is remarkable
and that, of course, at the core of it
you have these two behemoths of actors
that have never shared the screen.
They've been in a film together
but never shared the screen.
Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.
Was it De Niro and Pacino were bust?
Were there backups?
Could you only have done it with those two?
How did it happen?
- Never got that far.
Art Linson, who's the producer, and I
went after Al, went after Bob, both said yes.
Really in depth conversation with both of them
and that was that.
- Talk to me a little bit about directing De Niro and Pacino
because from what I understand,
they come at it from different ways.
And what strikes me in the film,
De Niro is this zen master in a way,
very calm and cool,
and Pacino, Vincent, is subject to these explosive outbursts
whether it's to draw out an informant
or intimidate somebody.
Were those on the page
or did Al surprise you in scenes?
- It's all on the page, it's all in the design.
The design of the character is to have counterpoint
and real oppositional counterpoint
very much like a dialectic,
so there's a thesis and an antithesis
which means that the parts
that they have in common are identical.
That's their awareness.
Both of these men are the only two people
in the fictional universe of the film
who often are afflict,
they determine, they are aware,
they are not just walking through life.
And then what's different about them is oppositional
it's exactly 180 degrees.
So the temperament of Pacino,
his methodology as a detective on a quest
to capture people for information is intuitive.
It's psychological.
He manipulates his own subconscious
the way an actor would.
De Niro is absolutely rigid.
He's somewhat sociopathic,
and he's disciplined, and he's zen,
and he has a formula that he invented
about how to succeed in professional crime
and then get outta here
and go live a real life in Fiji
as he imagines it from postcards.
- A few scenes we have to talk about in particular.
So the iconic coffee shop scene.
This meeting that is decades in the making.
We've never seen Pacino and De Niro share a scene.
What was your approach to shooting the scene
that you know was gonna be so anticipated?
- Well two things.
A lot of complaints
that that was the only scene between them,
but that's the strength.
- That's what makes it so powerful.
- That's the only one
and it's right at the next axis
is when De Niro has discovered who's on him,
Hanna, Al Pacino,
and then Pacino also realizes that he's been made
in that scene by the docks
when he'd been lured some place
and then he just feels it in the back of his neck
that we're being observed.
We just got made.
So right at that point in the middle,
the two of them meet
and what I wanted was the most,
I wanted to expand and enlarge
character, face, movement, performance
by reducing and restricting everything else
all the way around them,
so I particularly picked the black and white restaurant.
This is monochromatic as I can get.
Shot is simply and purely as I could conceive
how to shoot it with two cameras,
each over each shoulders being shot simultaneously.
We had a third camera that was doing a profile,
but I never used it.
- You never used it.
- Never used it
because every time a tried to use it,
or experimented with using it,
you dropped you out of the scene,
there was such a tense, emotional connection
being face to face with these guys.
- Do you have a favorite moment in that scene?
Because it's the dialogue, it's also the pauses,
they're sizing each other up.
What's your favorite moment?
- When it gets so personal
that they start talking about their dreams.
That just kills me.
- I have one where I'm drowning
and I gotta wake myself up and start breathing
or I'll die in my sleep.
- The authenticity of everything that they do
as thieves and detectives
it's mined from real people in real life
and it's some, a lot of research,
so it has an authenticity to it
that I think makes these characters really believable.
We believe them and there's no doubt about it.
- I don't know if you could shoot the finale
the way you did back in '95 today at LAX.
You shot at LAX, actual airplanes going over.
How complex was it to shoot that final sequence?
- It not only was not that complex,
it was also the week
that the Unabomber threatened to blow up LAX.
- A lot going on.
- We should have crossed movies,
and we were still able to shoot out there on the apron.
We were very nice to the people.
You just had access in '95.
You could do that.
- Was it always scripted that essentially it ends
one of the final shots
is them obviously clasping hands together.
Was that always?
- Oh always.
It makes the ultimate point of the whole dialectic
that Neil McCauley has the luxury of dying
in connection with and commuting with the other person
he's the closest with.
- Right.
- Who also one at the same time
happens to be the person who shot him.
- They understand each other.
- That conjunction was the whole idea.
- You're also, going back to these characters now,
you've co-written a novel, correct?
- I have so much knowledge
of the lives of these characters.
What Chris Shiherlis was doing when he was 11
or what orphanage Neil McCauley might have been in.
It's kind of standard
where you build up a really deep biography
of your characters before the film begins,
and so consequently, the anticipated novel
is both a sequel and a prequel.
- So could you imagine turning these back stories
into another film or TV series,
or is it gonna stay on page?
- That's the idea.
It's best as a novel first,
but then absolutely,
the ambition is to turn that into a movie.
A movie, or something.
- I pity the actor that has to play
Neil McCauley and Vincent Hanna after--
- I've got some ideas,
but I'm not gonna tell you who they are.
- Oh wow, there's a tease.
When "Heat" came out 25 years ago,
it was acclaimed,
but if anything, the reverence for it
I feel like has grown over the years.
How does that make you feel
that the legacy if anything expands year by year
as new audiences find it?
- I find it interesting.
I really do.
I know the movie I made.
I know how ambitious it was.
It was not like anything I ever had done before.
I couldn't find anything else quite like that.
- And you must also hear from like cops
and their adversaries.
Have you heard from like
what they get out of the film,
the authenticity of the film?
- Pretty similar, yeah.
Thieves.
That it was imitated.
There was a bank robbery in North Hollywood,
North Hollywood bank robbery.
They held up a bank and they were heavily armed
with automatic weapons and a lot of body armor,
and then they stood
and they shot it out with the police
until they were killed.
They said it was poorly imitated
because the whole point of attacking the police
is you assault an ambush to get out
because every 10 seconds,
the police are capable of bringing in more and more assets
and that'll eventually overwhelm you.
And then some detectives I know
in Robbery-Homicide Division
told me that they found a half inch
of "Heat" that's worn out.
They had been
looking at it,
they didn't have to look at "Heat".
What I was using
was classical Special Forces responses to ambushes
so anybody who wanted to do any kind of research
would find the same.
- If anybody's watching this--
- Tactics.
- Don't use it as a template.
- It's not the idea.
Well this film is a stone cold classic.
You created something exceptional.
- Thank you very much.
- Thank you for dissecting the film
a little bit with me today, sir.
- My pleasure.
(upbeat music)