Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, pull up a chair.
Speaker 2: It's that time of the week. We're having lunch on
Speaker 2: Table for two with Bruce Bosi and guess what. We
Speaker 2: are here at the Tower Hotel in Los Angeles on
Speaker 2: a gray, sort of chilly day. I mean, I think
Speaker 2: I usually do like the chop salad, but I'll do
Speaker 2: it some avocado today.
Speaker 3: You'll have a chop sale as well.
Speaker 2: We're having lunch with the director of Public Enemies, Manhunter,
Speaker 2: the last of the Mohicans, Heat The Insider Collateral. He's
Speaker 2: worked with triple A plus actors. He directs them brilliantly,
Speaker 2: and he's all about the human psychology of his characters.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you, you're like the man. Mister Man is
Speaker 1: the man open.
Speaker 3: In the morning and look at the mirror and say,
Speaker 3: oh hello.
Speaker 2: You know, so, pull up a chair and you're really
Speaker 2: going to enjoy this. We're having lunch with the director
Speaker 2: of Ferrari, starring Penelope Cruz and Adam Driver. Mister Michael Mann.
Speaker 2: I'm Bruce Bossi and this is my podcast Table for two.
Speaker 4: Welcome, Thank you very much.
Speaker 2: I mean, let me tell you, your movies blow me away,
Speaker 2: and I really can just jump into Ferrari because we
Speaker 2: can start there, because Michael, I watched this movie and
Speaker 2: it blew me away on so many levels.
Speaker 1: The blew me away on.
Speaker 2: The performances that Adam Driver Gay, that Penelope Cruise.
Speaker 1: She blew me away.
Speaker 2: And I want to talk about your process in getting
Speaker 2: these actors to give them these A plus actors, your
Speaker 2: ability to capture the Italian culture being an Italian American
Speaker 2: really resonated with me. And then of course the story
Speaker 2: of Enzo Ferrari and also race car driving and can
Speaker 2: you just jump in and tell me about this.
Speaker 1: It's an incredible movie.
Speaker 2: Do you go into the process saying, Okay, I know
Speaker 2: who I want to play these characters.
Speaker 4: I know who Enzo should be. That's a great question.
Speaker 5: I actually have to have a real sense of the
Speaker 5: character first, and then I start talking to actresses or
Speaker 5: actors and then kind of a mental you know, kind
Speaker 5: of a mental projection. If this actress is inhabiting this character,
Speaker 5: this is the this is the yield, and then that's
Speaker 5: just that's your imagination working, you know, it's a kind
Speaker 5: of creative imagination, kind of projecting what would it be like?
Speaker 5: And you're talking to them and sometimes there'll be a
Speaker 5: simple turn of the phrase, or although somebody will reach for,
Speaker 5: you know, a fork that's not there, she'll say something
Speaker 5: to a wai or in in that moment you'll see, yes,
Speaker 5: you'll see this is the person, this is it, She's it,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 3: And with Peneloping, it was about four minutes into a
Speaker 3: zoom really and yeah, and I did.
Speaker 1: She do something in that four minutes.
Speaker 3: It was her kind of express her kind of.
Speaker 5: What I call it, a kind of a Mediterranean self confidence,
Speaker 5: if you like, you know, kind of the way she
Speaker 5: talks to her son and wanted to say hello to me.
Speaker 4: She kept pushing it aside.
Speaker 5: Was there something about the certainty that she has the
Speaker 5: absolutely uh, no self doubt. There's a certainty when she
Speaker 5: thinks something, her values that in self confidence that gives
Speaker 5: a certainty to her feelings. So when she feels a thing,
Speaker 5: that's it, you know, And that's absolutely Lara.
Speaker 3: And then question her face and how she expresses all right, but.
Speaker 2: The cadence of her law, like her hope, I've never
Speaker 2: seen her sort of the shift in her body and
Speaker 2: in her face in your movie with really exemplified Lara's
Speaker 2: you know, the twist in her not only the pain
Speaker 2: of them losing a child, but now where the marriage went,
Speaker 2: the whole and the complication, the financial crisis that Ferrari
Speaker 2: finds himself in that she's now as part of what
Speaker 2: do you do on set to sort of say, okay,
Speaker 2: you know you make films Michael, that you work with
Speaker 2: actors that are like triple A plus actors, and then
Speaker 2: you proceed to be able to get a performance that
Speaker 2: is next level that not only they get accolades and
Speaker 2: achievements and awards, but like make films that last the
Speaker 2: test of time, which will which is really being a storyteller.
Speaker 2: I assume I would think, you want, how did you
Speaker 2: if we stay just in the Ferrari world right now,
Speaker 2: when you sit with your Penelope and share your on set,
Speaker 2: you're like, okay.
Speaker 5: It starts with my you know what an actor looks
Speaker 5: in the same doesn't seem a nalosis? And it said
Speaker 5: what's my action? Meaning here's a three page dialogue seeing
Speaker 5: what do I want? I have to be as an actor?
Speaker 5: One has to be able to express that in some covenant.
Speaker 5: You know, uh, I want to seduce, to escape, to
Speaker 5: leave the room, to go into the room, whatever but
Speaker 5: that's what it is, and that's not the activity.
Speaker 3: It's what you what you really want.
Speaker 5: Sometimes it's sub in the subtext that's not but that's
Speaker 5: what you's driving the whole sin. So for me, it's
Speaker 5: it's very it's very much it's very much a similar
Speaker 5: similar process.
Speaker 3: And what I want is.
Speaker 5: For the character of Lara to be so alive that
Speaker 5: you are in the room with a strong personality, okay,
Speaker 5: and and and she's occupying the totality of herself and
Speaker 5: the space in the room meaning meaning. And then I
Speaker 5: secondly is that I think people are way complex and
Speaker 5: so you'll never quite reach it. But the aspiration is
Speaker 5: that is to imbue the character, meaning imbue the actor
Speaker 5: with the same complexity that you have in your life.
Speaker 5: As complex as your life is, that's how complex this
Speaker 5: character is supposed to be. And that's what you try
Speaker 5: to get to. You never quite will get there, right,
Speaker 5: but that's what you drive for. And so then that
Speaker 5: means working with with like Penelope or with Adam or
Speaker 5: Daniel Dan Lewis or anybody. It's how do you build
Speaker 5: that character? And that begins way before rehearsals. It's not
Speaker 5: on the set with Enzo. Enzo's passion the engine that
Speaker 5: makes him go. If you said you will only allow
Speaker 5: to identify one component, you can't identify half a dozen one.
Speaker 3: It's said he's a race car driver.
Speaker 5: He has that romantic drive, and so that's an Enzo
Speaker 5: in nineteen twenty two started racing, and he had had
Speaker 5: the ambition to be a race car driver as somebody
Speaker 5: who was totally bereft. His father and brother had died,
Speaker 5: he had no money, he had a spotty education. He
Speaker 5: just got turned down for a job at Fiat and
Speaker 5: decided on on a bench at a park in a
Speaker 5: cold rain, in a moment of despair, he asked himself,
Speaker 5: who shall I be in this world? Which is completely
Speaker 5: crazy because the answer is depressed. Understand he at that moment,
Speaker 5: you know, he believed that transcendence and the kind of
Speaker 5: static class hierarchies of Italy and that period was actually possible.
Speaker 5: And he picked the most romantic that you could possibly
Speaker 5: be at the moment in time, his car driver. And
Speaker 5: that's that that impulses that drive. So then it becomes
Speaker 5: that now acquiring along the way, there's a whole host
Speaker 5: of cultural characteristics. What's his attitude towards women? What's his
Speaker 5: attitude towards courtship? What is where is he he's irreverent?
Speaker 5: A reverent against what? Because if you don't acknowledge that
Speaker 5: there is an authority structure, be it the Catholic Church
Speaker 5: or in Italy in the nineteen fifties to continue Communist party,
Speaker 5: then the characteristics of how you're irreverent so enough to
Speaker 5: make the pope weep said, okay, you know he built,
Speaker 5: he did build, the Pope will built right, pulp drug
Speaker 5: rid So I mean it's it's but there's always with
Speaker 5: with that, you know, there's a tongue in sha.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Then of course there's all the physical stuff, which which
Speaker 5: is aim six craft, you know at being an actor,
Speaker 5: the walk, the posture, the weight, what he breathes, the
Speaker 5: way he you know, people people walk into a strange room,
Speaker 5: they do they look at different things. Right, if you're
Speaker 5: a thief, when you walk in a room, the first
Speaker 5: thing you look at is worth the excerpt.
Speaker 2: You know, let's talking about the race car seats. I mean,
Speaker 2: you love cars, and I can't believe you.
Speaker 1: Did that race?
Speaker 4: Like what was that?
Speaker 1: When did you do that?
Speaker 4: When you the uh?
Speaker 5: Starting probably in the middle nineties to about two thousand
Speaker 5: and four, two thousand and five.
Speaker 1: Are you the coolest guy on the planet?
Speaker 5: And off of the course kind of planet started when
Speaker 5: that's about six or seven years old.
Speaker 3: That's what it takes.
Speaker 2: How was that?
Speaker 1: How was your experience doing that race?
Speaker 3: I mean racing or when I or I made or
Speaker 3: shooting the.
Speaker 2: Both, because you know you have like what an interesting
Speaker 2: sort of you actually have you know you experienced it,
Speaker 2: so you can actually bring that to well.
Speaker 5: You know, as a director, like an actor, you if
Speaker 5: you experience a if I one practice session, we're racing
Speaker 5: at Rhode Atlanta, and I think on a Saturday, I
Speaker 5: did like seventy five layups and once there's there's there's
Speaker 5: three chicaanes in a row as you approached the back
Speaker 5: stretch of Rote Atlanta, and once I absolutely nailed it
Speaker 5: as it filmed. As as a filmmaker, if I do something,
Speaker 5: if I experience it once, I can project to what
Speaker 5: it's like.
Speaker 3: Okay, this is what it's supposed to feel like.
Speaker 5: I get it, you know, myself in the car unified,
Speaker 5: it's a hard it's a kind of a harmonic.
Speaker 3: Organism. Wall one. I'm just thinking a thing and it's
Speaker 3: half the name. Yeah, it doesn't feel fast, but.
Speaker 5: My laptime is way down or so much faster, but
Speaker 5: the whole lamp was smooth. So you do one you
Speaker 5: do if you don't want to kind of get what
Speaker 5: it's supposed to be. Like I never got really good
Speaker 5: enough because I'd kind I'd be doing two three races
Speaker 5: and then there'd be a film. So I go to
Speaker 5: a film and then the year goes by they come
Speaker 5: back to it, which is not how you do it.
Speaker 2: I feel like you know, you're making me think of
Speaker 2: like when new like Paul Newman and Steve McQueen, like
Speaker 2: one you kind of get once you get the taste
Speaker 2: of it, it gets in your blood.
Speaker 6: Yeah, welcome back to table for two.
Speaker 2: If you pulled up a chair, we're having lunch with
Speaker 2: Michael Mann, one of Hollywood's biggest, biggest directors and a
Speaker 2: director who's worked with some of the biggest stars in Hollywood.
Speaker 2: Man's movies feature psychological depth and realism, and the characters
Speaker 2: have truly intricate backstories. How does he manage to pull
Speaker 2: the best performances out of so many amazing actors? The
Speaker 2: litany of actors that you have in your film. I
Speaker 2: mean you're you know, this is the master this is
Speaker 2: the masterclass. I mean we have I'm just gonna name
Speaker 2: for you know again, people listening, Michael's director, Jamie Fox,
Speaker 2: Leo DiCaprio, char Lee's, Jason, Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Dustin Hoffman,
Speaker 2: James Comm Daniel d Lewis de Niro, Kilmer, Russell Crowe,
Speaker 2: Christopher Plumer, Will Smith, Tom Crisse.
Speaker 1: You're like, these are.
Speaker 2: The most iconic actors out there, So, like, one, do
Speaker 2: you when you're going into a project and you're like, Okay,
Speaker 2: this is Tom Cruise, do.
Speaker 1: You pivot in a way just like you have a
Speaker 1: very clearly a.
Speaker 2: Very special talent in working with actors and any things
Speaker 2: from them.
Speaker 1: Do you pivot based on their personalities, who they are,
Speaker 1: what you know of their previous work?
Speaker 4: Like, how do you do it? How do you approach? Yeah?
Speaker 1: How do you?
Speaker 5: First of all, it's the deep dive into doing something
Speaker 5: that hasn't been done before, you know, I think people
Speaker 5: are always best when they're somewhat of a frontier and
Speaker 5: the deep dive is is an adventure and and.
Speaker 3: Why not? I wouldn't I couldn't imagine wanting to do
Speaker 3: it any other way.
Speaker 5: So first of all, someone's wanting to want to come
Speaker 5: along on that, and then and then we really do
Speaker 5: do that. So then it's it's so we're talking about
Speaker 5: Tom and you know he was you know, three months
Speaker 5: of training. I mean, uh, the of having a kind
Speaker 5: of where's the socioposity of that character come from? You know,
Speaker 5: who are these guys?
Speaker 3: For real? What are this? What are the real skill sets?
Speaker 5: And the first thing for me is it's always really
Speaker 5: important is that I want the actor to be able
Speaker 5: to do what his character does so thoroughly of such
Speaker 5: expertise that when he's doing it in the film, he's
Speaker 5: not thinking about it.
Speaker 3: It's a reflex. He just is that good.
Speaker 5: So that means a lot of time out of the
Speaker 5: Melle County Sheriffs ranges with you know a lot of
Speaker 5: safety and supervision and another thing of course, but but you know,
Speaker 5: actually getting that good and then a lot of I
Speaker 5: don't know, the second a d maybe he have the
Speaker 5: second ad who in pre production went to the gym Monday,
Speaker 5: Wednesday and Friday. On one Wednesday, at seven am, he's
Speaker 5: leaving the gym. He's going his car he pops the trunk,
Speaker 5: it feels a hand on his shoulder. There's a post
Speaker 5: that just got stuck on his back. He turns around.
Speaker 5: It's Tom who says you're dead. Because unbeknowned this guy
Speaker 5: Tom had been tailing for an entire week.
Speaker 3: We got his behavioral patterns. We know where we parked
Speaker 3: this car.
Speaker 5: This is where to do it because there's one way
Speaker 5: and there's three exits out right, this is this is
Speaker 5: the place, and you know, and then so so and
Speaker 5: then it induces a certain kind of attitude and how
Speaker 5: the sollisism of that character. So you know, there's a
Speaker 5: lot of training that you know that goes on a lot.
Speaker 3: Of content with with people.
Speaker 5: In this case, a lot of it had to do
Speaker 5: with a friend of mine who used to be in
Speaker 5: charge of close quarter combat training for the British essay. Yes,
Speaker 5: and there's been involved in so many different things.
Speaker 1: It's fascinating to me.
Speaker 2: You know, I think, you know, like you know the
Speaker 2: so you know, if we go to heap and know
Speaker 2: it's now and I rewatched it an anticipation of our lunch.
Speaker 2: It's such a great movie. It's nineteen ninety five. It
Speaker 2: stands attests of time. But like I thought to myself,
Speaker 2: here's de Niro and Baccino, like two actors, next level actors.
Speaker 2: It's this incredible action film. It's it's detective, it's bad guy.
Speaker 2: It's all these complet complex things. And you don't choose,
Speaker 2: you know, action heroes. You choose two guys actors that
Speaker 2: are like okay, you know, you don't choose as Stallone
Speaker 2: or Schwarzenegger, who are going to be a cop. What
Speaker 2: spoke to you about these two guys saying okay, because
Speaker 2: because these are smart?
Speaker 3: Well, two things. One one is one is you know
Speaker 3: we're talking.
Speaker 5: About physical training and of things that you do. That's
Speaker 5: just the surface of of acquiring character. I direct from
Speaker 5: the inside out, so I think of it from the
Speaker 5: inside out. So most of the directions, particularly on the set,
Speaker 5: wants to who the who you are as an actor
Speaker 5: and being grounded than that and having the skills that
Speaker 5: you have. That's just the activity, that's not really the essences.
Speaker 5: The essence is these circumstances are making you feel a
Speaker 5: certain way. On said is because of who you are,
Speaker 5: because we.
Speaker 3: Got the but who you who you are?
Speaker 5: We acquired that weeks of weeks and weeks ago, right,
Speaker 5: they make you feel a certain way. So here's the circumstances,
Speaker 5: and then a stimulum, Uh, the stimulus is coming out,
Speaker 5: and which could be a line of dialogue or somebody
Speaker 5: entering a room. And then the reaction I'm always looking
Speaker 5: for is spontaneous. And so it's about programming and choreographing
Speaker 5: to create a situation in which the actor of being
Speaker 5: a certain character has a spontaneous reaction. And then with
Speaker 5: the spontaneous reaction isn't working for the actor or me,
Speaker 5: we change the circumstances.
Speaker 3: You're always trying to get to.
Speaker 5: The new and the cosmic opposite of be happy to
Speaker 5: be said, the direct exactly the opposite, the polar opposite
Speaker 5: of that from the inside out.
Speaker 3: So to me, he is a drama. It's not.
Speaker 5: It's not a genre. In genre means I maybe genre
Speaker 5: is something I used to make dramas.
Speaker 3: I don't know. But to me, it's a drama. And
Speaker 3: and I know what what de Niro's character.
Speaker 5: Was doing when he was enforced to care of the
Speaker 5: fourth teenth foster family and hand me down clothes, being
Speaker 5: ostracized by other eleven year olds, but making him angry
Speaker 5: and anger makes you violence, and he was starting down
Speaker 5: the road to juvie and gradiator academies and then hits
Speaker 5: the streets working street crime is a very valuable component
Speaker 5: because he's probably he has a very he has a
Speaker 5: very strong aggressive ego, and he has in his self
Speaker 5: esteem as rock bottom, which means he doesn't care.
Speaker 3: About his body what happens to him.
Speaker 5: And he's just aggressive, right, and that makes him dangerous
Speaker 5: and violent, and that's where that's who he is when
Speaker 5: he's seventeen eighteen nineteen, and now he starts to get educated,
Speaker 5: you know, when he starts hitting a library to try
Speaker 5: to figure it out. I killed myself or not because
Speaker 5: I'm doing a lot of time at a time when
Speaker 5: there are programs, And now he starts reading. And so
Speaker 5: my experience when I was in fulsome prison, shooting cracle
Speaker 5: a mile.
Speaker 3: But the way back when how.
Speaker 5: How how smart and how educated and well read a
Speaker 5: lot of these guys were, and they were requiring knowledge
Speaker 5: out of necessity. I want to understand my circumstances. I
Speaker 5: want to understand my life. I'm doing, uh, you know
Speaker 5: a lot of time, how do I How should I
Speaker 5: view this?
Speaker 3: Should I do this time?
Speaker 5: Should I just be engaged in fantasy escapes, prison gangs
Speaker 5: or should I you know?
Speaker 3: Or the and so you know.
Speaker 5: So that's the autodidactic uh evolution of Neil McCauley, who's
Speaker 5: arrived at a state of place with no attachments and
Speaker 5: a very precise program about how to succeed in what
Speaker 5: he's doing.
Speaker 3: When he deviates for that.
Speaker 5: Program because of Edie and he's successful being spontaneous, he loses.
Speaker 3: All his navigational ability. He's like with out a rudder.
Speaker 5: And then he goes for Wingrow, which is something he'd
Speaker 5: never allow himself to be seduced.
Speaker 3: And at the beginning of the film, right right, and
Speaker 3: so then it becomes a story, you know.
Speaker 5: And then there was a big challenge in that film
Speaker 5: to me, was so exciting about it is to have
Speaker 5: everybody has everybody's three dimensional, Every character has a life.
Speaker 5: Everybody character has things going on in their life and
Speaker 5: rotating amongst all of them as it drives. And it
Speaker 5: is dialectic to just the two guys Alan Bob, who
Speaker 5: are unique in the sense that both of them are
Speaker 5: totally self aware. There's no self deception, right, They're the
Speaker 5: only two people like that.
Speaker 7: Within they made up universe of key.
Speaker 2: So when you're then looking at a character, you're looking
Speaker 2: you know, you get the script or you write the
Speaker 2: script or you see you're now doing the work.
Speaker 1: You Michael Mann, you're going back. It's what makes your.
Speaker 4: Movies so incredibly riveting.
Speaker 2: I now understand that all the sub that we don't
Speaker 2: know the fact that okay, you know, he was fourteen
Speaker 2: years old and this is what was happening in his
Speaker 2: life that and this is what happened when he was
Speaker 2: in prison, and like, we don't know that, but that's
Speaker 2: vital to you.
Speaker 3: Bet it's vital.
Speaker 2: I mean, has it been challenging sometimes to sit with
Speaker 2: I mean you you are working with, you know, incredible
Speaker 2: people when they're not quite understanding if there's a difference
Speaker 2: of saying like oh okay, like or it sounds like
Speaker 2: there's also a spontaneity effect where you you allow the
Speaker 2: room for like okay, well let's you know, how much
Speaker 2: do you give them when you say, okay, this is
Speaker 2: the backstory.
Speaker 5: Of oh all the backstories we go through reverendent, but
Speaker 5: we do for little stuff. I mean, Bob and I
Speaker 5: went to Falsome and we're walking on we're in the
Speaker 5: yard you know, because this is where he spent like
Speaker 5: this formative years of his life. Or some guy comes
Speaker 5: up to us kind of a straw straw hat and
Speaker 5: he said, hey, Mike, how you doing? And I said, okay,
Speaker 5: how are you? And it took me a minute to
Speaker 5: recognize this guy was a convict. So how are you
Speaker 5: always it good? So my kids are okay, wasn't sheena?
Speaker 5: Like one of my kids is at usc or something?
Speaker 5: Wasn't cheto?
Speaker 3: Was something else?
Speaker 5: I don't And he's talking to me like we had
Speaker 5: seen each other two months ago. So this is nineteen
Speaker 5: ninety four. I saw this guy and knew this guy
Speaker 5: in nineteen seventy nine. He was in prison, he was
Speaker 5: in folsome like did a juacho mile?
Speaker 4: Okay? And and what's so you haven't seen him since
Speaker 4: I have seen since?
Speaker 5: And what's so bizarre about it is how is this
Speaker 5: guy processing time?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Okay, fascinating man.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And because you fifteen years of going by?
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I realized that, and I talked about that's
Speaker 5: I realized that so much is uneventful. So all the
Speaker 5: uneventful days into your collapse, and the only thing that
Speaker 5: you recall the days in which there was an event.
Speaker 5: So it's not three hundred and sixty five days a year.
Speaker 5: It maybe seven, eight, nineteen, whatever it is, And so
Speaker 5: time is processed in a different way.
Speaker 1: They just disappear.
Speaker 2: He's picking up where he left off. Yeah, they disappeared
Speaker 2: and say, hey, Michael, how you doing. Like it's like
Speaker 2: like you said so yesterday.
Speaker 4: This is wild.
Speaker 1: And I think the complexities of what you bring to
Speaker 1: the characters.
Speaker 4: In your movies just you see it. You see it
Speaker 4: in the actors.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a big bit.
Speaker 3: That's the actionable part of it. That's what it's there
Speaker 3: to be. It informs so many things.
Speaker 5: The it's not good for a podcast that you're listening to,
Speaker 5: but you see somebody picks up a glass of water
Speaker 5: like this, Yeah, and folsom.
Speaker 3: You pick it up like this when he's clear something
Speaker 3: about exactly when neural takes the the when.
Speaker 5: He has sucks at night the first time and he leaves,
Speaker 5: he's wrapped the napkin around the glass. They that's because
Speaker 5: it's absolutely habitual that you express yourself in the microcosm
Speaker 5: of living in a small cell with few material objects,
Speaker 5: and so you do things like use paper to wrap
Speaker 5: around flash the glass to pick up the condensation. I
Speaker 5: mean it was a kind of precision. Thing is absolutely
Speaker 5: pushing habits. So you're picking up all these things, I mean,
Speaker 5: all this.
Speaker 2: Stuff, and it's all in those details that you bring
Speaker 2: that you know are so fascinating because I remember seeing
Speaker 2: him put the glass down and not quite understanding what.
Speaker 1: But there was also a compassion to it.
Speaker 5: I felt there's both a compassions of generosity, compassion, and
Speaker 5: something rangely precise about you know, the way he's folded
Speaker 5: a spiece of paper.
Speaker 3: Right. And these anomalies are okay because of their current life.
Speaker 5: So if your audience and you're seeing anomalies that have
Speaker 5: to have to be authentic.
Speaker 3: They can't be gratuitious. We're seeing these anomalies show up.
Speaker 5: I mean, why is there a burning car when Jeffrey Whygan,
Speaker 5: an insider is coming off the freeway and may be arrested?
Speaker 3: The answers I don't know.
Speaker 4: But it felt like a really great thing to do.
Speaker 8: So it made some kind of subconscious sense, you know,
Speaker 8: of all, you've done so many movies and you've done
Speaker 8: incredible television.
Speaker 1: Was that a game changer? Was that like, oh this
Speaker 1: is okay, this is.
Speaker 5: This is not not any I mean each one, not really,
Speaker 5: I mean it was. I mean last Ohican's Hawkeye and
Speaker 5: and his step follower and step brother.
Speaker 3: Are our face with the imminent annihilation.
Speaker 5: Of who they are, of who these people are, and
Speaker 5: and they're also looking at what the progress, which is
Speaker 5: the frontier, you know, as as that zone between where
Speaker 5: we are and where we're gonna be, and how that
Speaker 5: inform uh those issues informed that character. You know, he
Speaker 5: was this large, quantitative you know uh fuglac things, which
Speaker 5: best I loved about it. What you're really asking is,
Speaker 5: you know, why do I do it? Well, that's os
Speaker 5: They're all kinds of different and by the time I
Speaker 5: got done doing that and I LEI, which had a
Speaker 5: whole different but they're all there, all very large scale
Speaker 5: narratives and physically they're they're big pictures too, but the.
Speaker 3: Narratives are all very large scale.
Speaker 5: So then that's why Collateral was so appealing to me,
Speaker 5: because it took place in one night, and it's also
Speaker 5: you know, totally refractive. Each character becomes the agent of
Speaker 5: the other characters realizations.
Speaker 2: So he too, we're talking about he too here or
Speaker 2: maybe and you know, you know, when you look at
Speaker 2: something like He Too, and you look about the casting
Speaker 2: of He Too.
Speaker 4: Like, are you in development of sort of like I'm
Speaker 4: writing the screenplayer right now?
Speaker 1: Wow?
Speaker 4: So is it like?
Speaker 5: And it comes from having so much background and then
Speaker 5: projecting where some of these lives go. I had to
Speaker 5: figure out is a device a story that can keep
Speaker 5: the end of it and the beginning of it. There's
Speaker 5: a prequel and a sequel starts eighty eight. It jumps
Speaker 5: over the movie. It actually starts on the first day
Speaker 5: after the end of the movie with val Calm. We're
Speaker 5: trying to get out of Laka and he's half delirious
Speaker 5: and wounded and half delirious. And then but then it
Speaker 5: goes back to nineteen eighty eight and they're very different
Speaker 5: people because they are They're not the people they are
Speaker 5: in the movie. It's the events of eighty eight that
Speaker 5: made them into the people that they are in the movie. Wait,
Speaker 5: so de Nuro de Niro character Neil McCauley is deep
Speaker 5: into a relationship with a woman. He has her stepdaughter,
Speaker 5: he has all these attachments. Wow, and you know, and
Speaker 5: then what happens with you know in two thousand and
Speaker 5: tex Us into a whole different worlds of right, transnational
Speaker 5: organized crime and shared a less stay was a pre
Speaker 5: trade zone in South America and Southeast Asia, and it moves.
Speaker 1: I love it, do you. I didn't.
Speaker 2: I didn't realize A He Too was going to be
Speaker 2: a prequel sort of bring you into sort of that
Speaker 2: where they all came from, which is so fascinating, and
Speaker 2: it's like, so such an opportunity. Do you, dude, once
Speaker 2: you kind of make an announcement like that, but do
Speaker 2: you just have litany of the crane by the crops
Speaker 2: saying think of me, think of me, think of me.
Speaker 1: Do you actually write with anyone in mind to say, okay,
Speaker 1: you know what this is?
Speaker 4: This actor?
Speaker 2: You know, because now you're also there with He Too.
Speaker 2: It sounds like there's a since it's de Niro and
Speaker 2: Pacino early that's forming potentially a casting or a thought process.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I can't. I can't.
Speaker 5: I mean, there's here's a couple of conversations with some people,
Speaker 5: but I can't really completely chaost until the screenplay is right.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: So, but the benefit here is that the book did
Speaker 3: extremely well.
Speaker 5: When the book came out, you know, and the number
Speaker 5: one New York times best solo, which is totally bizarre
Speaker 5: for Epithets that I'd been.
Speaker 3: Writing a book period. That's secondly that it would actually
Speaker 3: do well.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us on table for two. So many
Speaker 2: of the characters in Michael Mann's films feel like they
Speaker 2: could exist in the real world, and I'm interested to
Speaker 2: know if he draws inspiration from the people he meets
Speaker 2: in his day to day life. Is having dinner with
Speaker 2: you maybe one of the most interesting things for people.
Speaker 2: I mean, like, because you know, you seem like you're
Speaker 2: just so interested in human behavior and human stories and
Speaker 2: people's stories. Do you often find yourself just connecting with people?
Speaker 2: And I think having dinner with you would be like
Speaker 2: the most amazing thing because you would just be like,
Speaker 2: if there's eight people at the table, you, I think,
Speaker 2: in your mind even be like kind of trying to
Speaker 2: understand where they came from.
Speaker 5: It's actually worse than that, because I actually when I
Speaker 5: see somebody who's you know, is dressed or presenting themselves
Speaker 5: extreme manner, I'm immediately thinking, if I have to have
Speaker 5: a character like that, how do I get them to
Speaker 5: be extreme? Oh, that's a good example. I'm constantly looking
Speaker 5: at people like you never, you know, I mean that
Speaker 5: is my wife is usually we've been married for four
Speaker 5: to nine years, so she's used to this by now.
Speaker 5: You know, our history is related to let's see that
Speaker 5: was between this movie and that movie. Right the bas
Speaker 5: are all like, oh yeah, that's when we're last the Mohicans,
Speaker 5: you know, And so constantly I think, if I had
Speaker 5: to career create a scene in a noisy restaurant with
Speaker 5: strange looking people, you know.
Speaker 1: This is this isn't that person.
Speaker 2: One of the things that you do brilliantly and you've
Speaker 2: made such like an effect, is you know, the music
Speaker 2: you bring into your films, the cultural phenomenon of your films.
Speaker 1: You know, I know Miami Vice. You know, you made
Speaker 1: film and Miami Vice.
Speaker 2: You also the television series that you know that you
Speaker 2: set a tone of a whole decade. You know, that's
Speaker 2: very interesting. And you also made TTV more like feature
Speaker 2: which I mean the car races that you were doing
Speaker 2: on the show, all that stuff way before, because you
Speaker 2: know that's something that happens now, but you did it
Speaker 2: way before. Like what did you look at TV as
Speaker 2: a medium? And you know, going back to the listener,
Speaker 2: you know Vegas, which I grew up. I could tell
Speaker 2: you the Wednesday night lineup. It was Charlie eight is Enough,
Speaker 2: Charlie's Angels Vegas, Like I remember that. I was watching those,
Speaker 2: you know, that was my favorite night of television until
Speaker 2: I was sent like, get your ass in bed, you know,
Speaker 2: your school the next day after Vegas at eleven o'clock.
Speaker 1: Then were you surprised by that?
Speaker 2: But it's sort of like what happened that sort of
Speaker 2: explosion with Donaldson.
Speaker 3: I wasn't surprised at all.
Speaker 5: In fact, there was a dinner that we had the
Speaker 5: chast but back before the piloteer, and there with the
Speaker 5: whole cast, picked.
Speaker 3: Dinner like twenty people.
Speaker 5: And I said to him and said, you don't understand
Speaker 5: that after tomorrow night, your life's gonna be different.
Speaker 3: Nobody believed me.
Speaker 4: And the reason is.
Speaker 5: Because where as Tony Yorko wrote such a great script,
Speaker 5: a two hour pilot for it was called Gold Coaster.
Speaker 5: Originally I changed it to Miami Vice, but Tony created
Speaker 5: the show. He wrote, he wrote it. It was such
Speaker 5: a great idea, and you know, and then everything kind
Speaker 5: of flows from that. You know, the world was amount
Speaker 5: of Miami those days was beige the higher South Beach beige.
Speaker 5: It's like there's some kind of World War ship plus
Speaker 5: glut of tan paint it splighting into ul city bage.
Speaker 4: So really horrible.
Speaker 3: So and people and walkers and.
Speaker 5: And so you know, I did some research as to
Speaker 5: what it looks like in the in the twenties and thirties,
Speaker 5: you know, and then that's what all these viper pastels.
Speaker 2: So we changed it all back to the you created
Speaker 2: South Beach. I mean, you created the whole thing that
Speaker 2: continued on to Yeah, and some of the.
Speaker 5: Hotels that were now well no one had like you know,
Speaker 5: bar doors and renting rooms by the hour and all
Speaker 5: that stuff.
Speaker 2: That did you when you were casting Don Johnson, did
Speaker 2: you say this is this is the guy. I mean,
Speaker 2: you said this is the guy that like what was
Speaker 2: it about don?
Speaker 5: You know that you said he had a certain whiskey
Speaker 5: voice and a certain mentalents re pepperment that that was
Speaker 5: just there was it was perfect for that for that character.
Speaker 5: And he had he hadn't really landed on that a
Speaker 5: thing that really walked and this this was and he
Speaker 5: was just perfect for the guy. I mean, the same
Speaker 5: time thing with Philip Michael Thomas, two of that and
Speaker 5: then almost midway through the first season. It's because I
Speaker 5: wanted I wanted the shows jesuit with a lowercase of jay.
Speaker 5: I wanted a character who was represented the analogy. To me,
Speaker 5: what I liked about the show was that it was
Speaker 5: anti disco, right, Okay, this was I hated.
Speaker 3: This you did?
Speaker 4: Yes, I mean the music wasn't bad.
Speaker 1: It is very sexy.
Speaker 3: It was good music, but I hated so to me
Speaker 3: it was you know, it was like you know, rock
Speaker 3: and roll, you know, right, just like it was.
Speaker 1: Weaving those cards was all rock, no adult.
Speaker 5: I wanted somebody who had a sense of existential, sense
Speaker 5: of authenticity, responsibility for your actions, and that.
Speaker 3: Became the almost yeah, almost his character.
Speaker 1: I mean skinny black though, yeah, the skin please.
Speaker 2: You created the whole look of my pastel suits with
Speaker 2: T shirts underneath it, you know, like the whole color scheme.
Speaker 1: You changed what the colors men wore.
Speaker 2: How much time do you spend thinking about like the
Speaker 2: I mean even the music, the sounds, you know, all
Speaker 2: of that coming in big time?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 5: To me, I I wanted, I like to have the
Speaker 5: music and pre production, yeah, because sometimes if you could
Speaker 5: find the right fish of music, it becomes a kind
Speaker 5: of a poetic modul or of oh yeah, here's how
Speaker 5: it's supposed to feel, so that when you find yourself
Speaker 5: on a Tuesday lost, like wait in.
Speaker 3: A minute, what am I doing here? Why is this
Speaker 3: the way that should go?
Speaker 4: This way?
Speaker 3: That direction?
Speaker 5: I could's piece of music and say, oh yeah, this
Speaker 5: is how I'm supposed to This is how this scene's
Speaker 5: supposed to make me fail. You know.
Speaker 2: So the music is really important, even you know, heat
Speaker 2: the music was like it's just gripping of all this,
Speaker 2: Like this posse of human beings that you've worked with,
Speaker 2: that you have directed that you have to make really
Speaker 2: brought out these incredible performances. Was there anyone that you
Speaker 2: know walking in that you were like, Okay, I'm either
Speaker 2: super nervous about it, or I'm a little hesitant about it.
Speaker 1: Or like, guy, I'm like, wow, this is I don't
Speaker 1: know what's going to happen here.
Speaker 5: You know, usually before I'm going to work with de
Speaker 5: Niro or or Petrino, I'm you know, obviously, I know
Speaker 5: that I have to there there, I know where they are.
Speaker 5: I know I have my game has got to be
Speaker 5: to be at the top of my game. Yeah, I
Speaker 5: have to know absolutely everything. And I think that when
Speaker 5: you're totally prepared and you know what everything, that liberates
Speaker 5: you to also be improvisational, to be spontaneous. You could
Speaker 5: do it off the confidence of having a really solid,
Speaker 5: really solid platform. And then it's it's, uh, you know,
Speaker 5: it's my responsibility. I view it to be able to
Speaker 5: talk to that actor in the language work that's that
Speaker 5: he uses about exacting process, so there is no school
Speaker 5: in the Fox. I would be directing Bail in a
Speaker 5: different way that I'd be directing Alibab or yeah, or
Speaker 5: or or or animal. You know, Penelope the one actor
Speaker 5: who I can say I was absolute sweetheart, but I
Speaker 5: was was very distant, not that just distant in a
Speaker 5: good way because he was so self contained, which was
Speaker 5: John Voight.
Speaker 3: And I'm talking about John Voyd, you know, prior to
Speaker 3: ninety five.
Speaker 5: I'm talking about in the late eighties, early nineties, and
Speaker 5: of absolutely the same stature as Ala, Bob or John.
Speaker 5: And one of the one about one of the one
Speaker 5: of the real thrills of working on Heat is that
Speaker 5: we became like an ensemble company. So Valve would show
Speaker 5: up for a scene he wasn't in to see how
Speaker 5: Bob was going to do something or Al's isn't so?
Speaker 5: And I'd known John and he would. We used to
Speaker 5: We've met a couple of times for coffee at Duke's
Speaker 5: when Dukes was out of Santa Michael Boulevard, and you know,
Speaker 5: and there was always something I'll steer about him. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and you know, and then the absolutely dreamed to work
Speaker 5: with and then we worked again as as he hilarious.
Speaker 5: Was the most difficult times I had was on the
Speaker 5: set of Ali with with with John as Howard Cassell,
Speaker 5: because after four hours of makeup, he was Howard Coselle NonStop.
Speaker 3: And then he had you know, Jamie Fox and Will Smith. Ye.
Speaker 5: Once we're setting up lighting, these guys are talking to
Speaker 5: twenty five hundred extras and it becomes, you know, all kind.
Speaker 4: Of cabaret and it stups.
Speaker 3: And I never had a character, and so it was hilarious.
Speaker 3: So everybody's standing around, I'm trying twenty minutes.
Speaker 4: Come on, I've got to like you.
Speaker 1: Is great.
Speaker 2: I've really enjoyed my lunch with Michael Mann today, and
Speaker 2: I hope you have to. In addition to being an
Speaker 2: amazing director, he has a ton of fascinating tales. And
Speaker 2: I wonder, given his lengthy and illustrious career, what lessons
Speaker 2: has he learned along the way.
Speaker 1: Do you have any advice that.
Speaker 2: Was given to you in your life that changed your
Speaker 2: life when it came to movies and filmmaking, or you know,
Speaker 2: early on, or advice that you would give because he's
Speaker 2: changed so much, the business changed so much.
Speaker 3: I had a man who was a the Tripper guy
Speaker 3: named bab Luwan, and he was.
Speaker 5: He was running the writing on a on the show
Speaker 5: I was about to go forward, and he read a
Speaker 5: script I wrote, and he said, his dialogue is really great,
Speaker 5: and you would not know what the story was if
Speaker 5: it ran you over.
Speaker 4: So I'm gonna teach you you know the story is,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 5: And he kind of became a mentor for me in
Speaker 5: writing about story structure. The show was Starskin Hutch and
Speaker 5: that I wrote, Uh. Bill Blynn wrote the pilot, But
Speaker 5: then the pilot aired and in a year later the
Speaker 5: episodes came on.
Speaker 3: So I wound up writing the first four or five
Speaker 3: of the of the of the opening season as it
Speaker 3: turned out.
Speaker 5: But but he really absolutely mentored me and a very
Speaker 5: formalist approach the story the story and the and again
Speaker 5: the rigid kind of authenticity that's really required to write
Speaker 5: the story structure, and you can't indulge yourself in all
Speaker 5: the disciplines.
Speaker 2: Stark another fan favorite of mine growing up. I mean,
Speaker 2: those were those were all and they all were mixed
Speaker 2: with you know, the crime, solving it humor, Huggy Bear.
Speaker 2: You know, you had all these characters that were very
Speaker 2: kind of complex too, like you know, and as you know.
Speaker 5: There's also a cigarette I discovered I wrote in the
Speaker 5: line of dialogue they drive a truck through the front
Speaker 5: window of a store. And then I was watching the
Speaker 5: episode and they drove a truck to the front window.
Speaker 3: Of a store. Because I wrote it, I realized I
Speaker 3: could write this stuff and people are.
Speaker 5: Going to go do it.
Speaker 3: There's cool. So a young writer, you know, in the
Speaker 3: early Stemmaries, this was like a real revelation.
Speaker 2: You were an amazing filmmaker and having lunch with you
Speaker 2: on Table for two is an honor, sir, Thank you
Speaker 2: for joining me today.
Speaker 4: Pleasure.
Speaker 1: Everyone who's pulled up at go Sie Ferrari and mister Man,
Speaker 1: thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Thank you really pleasure.
Speaker 2: Table for two with Bruce Bosi is produced by iHeartRadio
Speaker 2: seven three seven Park and Airmail. Our executive producers are
Speaker 2: Bruce Bosi and Nathan King. Our supervising producer and editor
Speaker 2: is Dylan Fagan. Table for two is researched and written
Speaker 2: by Jack Sullivan. Our sound engineers are Jess Crainich, Evan
Speaker 2: Taylor and Jesse Funk. Our music supervisor is Randall Poster.
Speaker 2: Our talent booking is done by Jane Sark. Table for
Speaker 2: two Social media manager is Gracie Wiener. Special thanks to
Speaker 2: Amy Sugarman, Uni Sharer, Kevin y Vane, Bobby Bauer, Alison Kanter, Graber,
Speaker 2: Barbara Jen, Jeff Klein, and the staff at The Tower
Speaker 2: Bar in a world famous Sunset Tower hotel in Hollywood.
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