Michael Mann on why American critics dismissedThief, and whats going on withHeat 2.
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But there is more toThiefs achievement.
Frank, who has spent much of his life in prison, initially resists these mob bosses overtures.
Which means that now, all of a sudden, Frank needs more money.
So, he agrees to work with the Outfit to get to get bigger scores.
Mann has always said thatThiefs central dynamic of labor and exploitation could easily be transposed to other workplaces.
This is also why the contemporaneous criticisms of the picture as style over substance ring so hollow today.
But there are emotional, political, and narrative undercurrents at work here.
Youre making big profits from my work, my risk, my sweat, Frank tells Leo.
And, of course, we feel his frustration when the yield of that labor is taken from him.
But wed never really gone deep onThiefspecifically.
The occasion of this 4K release seemed like the right time to do so.
(And yes, I did ask him aboutHeat 2.)
Thiefwassuch a visually arresting film for its era.
I wanted you to see and feel that city from within his perspective.
For Frank, Chicago is not this flat city built on the Great Plains.
Its a three-dimensional matrix.
Its a maze that he has to operate in and also decode and pursue.
So, I took advantage of what Chicago looks like when it rains.
He views life very much as an outsider, and hes aware of it.
I thought of him as a certain kind of conventional character in literature, which is the wild child.
Somebody who, because of his circumstances, has grown up outside of society.
He didnt have TV.
How does he prepare himself?Who will I be?
How should I conduct myself?
What kind of car should I have?
Im going to have a house.
What kind of house should I have?
Should I have a wife?
Should I not have a wife?
He also, like a lot of convicts that I met, used the time in prison to read.
That goes back to experiences I had with some convicts in Folsom when I was castingThe Jericho Mile.
I had guys quoting Immanuel Kant to me.
One guy was quoting the labor theory of value.
This was a guy with a sixth-grade education.
Theyd go into libraries and say, Im doing time.
Give me a book on time.
I cast 28 convicts in roles inThe Jericho Mile.
I asked him why.
And he wasnt being cute.
The heavy equipment, the long hours, the patience required to stand there and drill a hole forever.
How efficiently you prepare, research, plan what youre going to do.
Whats the composition of the safe?
Because safe manufacturers are very clever in what they do.
You cant just drill a hole through a piece of metal.
You have to know where the lockbox is.
Therell be others that are very hard.
And among guys who are proficient like that, itislabor.
It doesnt affect their drive and their motivation to intercept them one iota.
Charlie Adamson is in the movie as a detective.
Hes the guy who says to Frank, Why you got to come on like such a stiff prick?
We got ways here to round off the corners.
John Santucci, who was a professional thief, was a source for me inThief.
All the burglary tools that we had werent props.
They were Johns burglary tools.
Later, he becamea continuing character onCrime Story.
Hes got domestic concerns.
Hes got two kids, hes got some marital issues with his wife.
I had to liberate myself from the inherited stereotype and archetype of who thieves are.
Who is he as a person?
Whats his outlook on the world?
All of that led to the construction of the screenplay.
What was that like, having all those people on a film set together?It was hilarious!
This is some of the dialogue that was happening in bars over drinks.
It was very Chicago, if you like.
I dont think they ever got him.
He worked with Santucci when we were doing the pilot and then theCrime Storyseries.
You didnt have to be Standard Oil of New Jersey to round off the corners, in other words.
Well, some of the systems worked.
There was institutionalized racism.
And Chicago was also extremely Balkanized.
The only city with more Poles in it than Chicago was Warsaw.
So, you had Polish bakeries and everything else.
Same thing with the Ukrainians, the Irish, the southwest side and everything.
The coffee-shop conversation with Tuesday Weld is one of the greatest dialogue scenes ever.
Obviously, these kinds of conversations show up in other films of yours.
And so right in the middle of this feature film, I stop and tell this entire origin story.
There was some risk inherent in it to me.
I was concerned about whether it would work.
It was key to understanding who Frank is, his desperation, and these two untethered lives coming together.
That particular booth is a booth I sat in with the woman who became my wife.
And something about the way the cars were constantly moving, that became visually analogous to a bloodstream.
People are going places.
Theres motion all the time.
And hes telling her in the most urgent way about this yearning that he has.
Theres another thing about this scene that really strikes me now.
Caan is showing Weld his vulnerability, hes opening up in this really sincere way.
And conversely, shes showing him how tough she really is.
Theres that great moment where she says, Where were you in prison?
Pass the cream, just.
The back-and-forth, the collision of these two characters, develops in a fascinating way throughout.
Was that all scripted?Its totally scripted, absolutely.
You have this recounting of ones life.
But the two of us can have something.
It cant decay into speechifying.
I used to sit in a booth.
Sometimes, I would wind up sitting there for 24 hours drinking a lot of coffee.
I became very friendly with all the waitresses.
When she says, Whats wrong with it?
And he says, Whats wrong with it?
This scene helps develop these two characters, but it also serves a specific narrative purpose.
That comes from my research.
I talked to professional thieves about their relationship.
And youll be asked to do things you may not want to do.
You dont want to be working for the man.
You dont want to be an employee.
It wasnt the case in Europe.
In Europe, the film was perceived as, Oh, this is about the labor theory of value.
And in Europe, people understand the politics latent in the drama.Yeah.
I lived in Europe.
I went through graduate film school for two years in London in the late 60s.
Im very much a product of the 60s, so the film has an overtly left perspective.
What are your memories of James Caan?
He was down for the cause.
He wanted to master all the skill sets that his character should have.
Because he knew that it would affect his speech.
He knew it would affect how he picked up a glass.
It would affect everything.
The wariness of it.
That other human being, James Caan in this case, heisFrank.
It means all the training that Jimmy did, where he was drilling safes.
Jimmy could really handle himself.
Hed been a college football player and everything, he was very athletic.
He was a very tough guy to begin with.
Your work is on the Criterion Channel right now, to coincide with the 4K release ofThiefon Criterion.
For myself, that was very challenging.
Its a tense psychological drama that takes place in two hours and 45 minutes.
In Lowell Bergmans case, your lifes work may be trashed, and you may be excluded.
So, its a psychological assault by your adversaries, and its a mortal threat.
Naturally, it was a wonderful place to push myself into.
I think it may have to do with whats in the work.
Im not a journeyman director; Id like to be, because I love shooting.
But I put a lot into a film, and so I think sometimes they have layers of relating.
I probably shouldnt even be answering this question to tell you the truth.
Any more than that, I cant talk about.
But its an exciting project.
