Mann admits to being obsessive about his work: He likens himself to people who climb mountains for sport. “The next one is exciting when it’s a little bit more difficult,” he says with a grin. There is a moment from one of his films, I tell him, that I think perfectly embodies that sentiment. It is the opening scene of The Insider, in which Lowell Bergman is driven through the streets of Baalbek, Lebanon, en route to a private audience with the Hezbollah leader Sheikh Fadlallah, whom he is attempting to land for a 60 Minutes interview. The scene, which was actually filmed in Israel, might have been shot anywhere — for most of his trip, Bergman is blindfolded, and no other scene in the movie takes place in the Middle East. But then there is a shot, inside Fadlallah’s darkened compound, where Bergman throws open a window and suddenly the sights and sounds of the bustling city below stream through. That is the moment, I say, when we know we are watching a Michael Mann movie.
“You know it’s not Fontana,” Mann jokes.
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He wouldn’t have it any other way. He is an iconoclast, and he prides himself on it. “That’s the thrill of doing this, to be able to go deep,” he says. “First of all, why would you not? I mean, why would anybody want to slack off, take it easy, do it at half speed? I can’t imagine why anybody would want to, when you have the opportunity, for example, to do what Will Smith did in Ali. People think, Okay, you learn to box for two or three months and then you go shoot it. Right! The accomplishment of Will Smith in that movie is extraordinary: It’s not just the movement and the boxing — that’s difficult enough; it’s having your head in 1964, which came from sitting where you’re sitting and talking to Geronimo Pratt. That’s the challenge, because that’s what’s really, sincerely exciting — to get things to the point where they become emotionalized and real, so hopefully they have an impact upon audiences.”
It sounds, I say, like the way a cop prepares to go undercover.
“That’s what knocked me out, which I’d never really realized before. I met these guys who were doing undercover work where they’re inside for six, seven, eight months — really heavy-duty stuff with very dangerous people. I’d say to them: ‘What’s the high? What are you doing this for? You’re making $100,000 a year, so it’s not about the money. It’s not to serve and protect really. I mean, of course you’re a moral person and these vicious crimes against these innocent people offend you deeply — but that’s not whyyou’re doing it. And this one guy says, ‘Well, when I’m there and I’m talking to some guy about how I’m going to sling this dope here and this dope there, and then we’re going to move the money from A to B and B to C and C to D and it’s going to all wind up with him owning a shopping center in Berlin, and his eyes are wide and I’m putting it down and he’s buying it and I’m scoring — man, there’s nothing like that!’ Guess what? That’s Al Pacino on a stage! That’s performance! That’s theater for real.
“These guys are projecting themselves, and they’re talking about what they do in dramaturgical terms. It’s like An Actor Prepares, only there’s no take two. If you’re a filmmaker and you’re hearing these tales . . . well, that answers your first question about why I wanted to make Miami Vice.”
In Heat’s most iconic scene, Hanna and McCauley meet for coffee at Kate Mantilini and lay out their lives for each other in the tersely lyrical dialogue that has become Mann’s signature. It includes the following exchange:
Hanna: I don’t know how to do anything else.
McCauley: Neither do I.
Hanna: I don’t much want to either.
McCauley: Neither do I.
That could just as soon be Mann talking. “When you say that I can go and make a movie, I feel like I’m one of the most fortunate men,” he says. “I feel myself to be a fortunate man that I found something to do that I really love,” The proof is in the pudding: Mann’s films are works of deep passion at a time when it is ever more fashionable to seem cool and detached. He makes big demands of audiences, but bigger ones of himself, and if that partly explains why Mann — whose movies have performed strongly, but unspectacularly at the box office — has never had a major hit, it is our good fortune that he has never given in to compromise.
As I’m leaving, he asks me how I think Miami Vicewill do and I tell him that I wish it the best, but that it may be too smart of a summer movie to really take off. All that matters is that it do well enough to insure that Michael Mann can go on climbing mountains.
