Deadline: As His First Novel ‘Heat 2’ Hits Shelves, Michael Mann Shares Great Crime Stories

I’m reading Michael Mann and Meg Gardiner’s Heat 2, which is both a prequel and sequel to Mann’s crime film Heat. I plan to cover the novel in my On Crime column in the Washington Times.

Mike Fleming at Deadline.com offers an interesting piece and interview with Mann (seen in the above photo).

The publication of Heat 2 this week marks writer-director Michael Mann’s debut as a novelist, expands the mythology of perhaps his most beloved film, and becomes the first major release of the publishing imprint he set at William Morrow six years ago.

From the TV series Miami Vice and Crime Story to his feature debut Thief, to the Tom Cruise-Jamie Foxx thriller Collateral and the 1995 Al Pacino-Robert De Niro drama classic Heat, Mann’s crime procedurals are informed by an intimate knowledge of cops and robbers that breathes life and multi-dimensional characters with empathy to go with the violence in lawbreaking.

That is the same thing that Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo did with The Godfather films, David Chase for his The Sopranos series, and Martin Scorsese for Goodfellas and Casino, the other crime high-water marks of the last half century. What is interesting here is the difference in how Mann got there as opposed to those other filmmakers. Coppola and Chase have both told me that while the prospect had its attractions, they avoided getting to know or even directly interact with criminals. Scorsese relied on journalist-screenwriter Nick Pileggi, who once told me that Goodfellas was made possible by his good fortune to be included in Henry Hill confessions given with federal law enforcement officers standing over him, promising prison if he lied.

Mann’s crime canon has instead relied on direct interaction that began when he first met Charles Adamson, the Chicago cop who in 1963 hunted down and killed the real Neil McCauley, after once inviting him out for coffee. Coppola and Chase told me flat out they didn’t want to be indebted to criminals. Mann’s way brought its own challenges, and he quickly learned how to be mindful of the manipulative nature of current and former lawbreakers when he made his first film, the Emmy-winning telepic The Jericho Mile, which shot in Folsom Prison.

“There is a truth I can get by asking direct questions, but I’m not naïve,” he said. “At this point, I’m fairly street smart and world wise and I’m not naïve to the fact nobody could manipulate you faster than the guy doing a couple life sentences in Folsom. These guys could read you in, like, two minutes flat.”

They will lie when it suits them, he said, even someone in the inner circle like the late John Santucci. He is the round-faced guy who played a dirty cop in Thief, and later co-starred in Crime Story.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

‘Heat 2’ Hits Shelves: Michael Mann Shares Great Crime Tales – Deadline

Meg Gardiner: What It Was Like To Write A Prequel/Sequel To The Classic Film 'Heat' With Michael Mann

I'm reading Heat 2, a fine thriller from Michael Mann and Meg Gardiner. The novel is based on Mann's characters from his outstanding film, Heat.

I plan on covering the novel in my On Crime column in the Washington Times.

CrimeReads offers a piece by thriller writer Meg Gardiner on her working with Michael Mann (seen in the below photo) on the crime novel.  

You can read her piece via the below link:

Meg Gardiner: What It Was Like to Write a Prequel/Sequel to the Classic Film ‘Heat’ with Michael Mann ‹ CrimeReads 

Tokyo Vice: HBO Max's Series About An American Reporter On The Police Beat In Japan

It’s a long way from Miami to Tokyo, but Michael Mann, the creator of Miami Vice, has directed the first of eight episodes of Tokyo Vice, which is airing on HBO Max. 

Tokyo Vice, based on Jake Adlestein’s true crime book, Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan, is an interesting journalistic thriller about an American working on Japan’s largest newspaper in Japan. The young reporter covers crime for the newspaper and encounters Japanese yakuza gangsters and Japanese cops.   

Tokyo Vice is laboriously slow at times, but rich in exotic atmosphere and introduces the viewer to some unique characters, such as Jake Adelstein (Ansel Elgort), a nice Jewish boy from Missouri who travels to Japan at 19 to attend college and later becomes the only American to work on a major Japanese newspaper. Other interesting characters in the series are a Japanese cop (the great actor Ken Watanabe) who mentors Adelstein, and a young yakuza gangster (Sho Kasamatsu). 

Whether you’ve visited Japan, as I have, or not, most viewers will be fascinated with Tokyo Vice, Japanese culture and Japanese crime. 

I also recommend that viewers of the series go on to read Jake Adelstein's book.

I covered the book in my Crime Beat column in 2010. 

You can read my column below: 

Jake Adlestein, an American reporter working the police beat for a Japanese newspaper, begins his true crime story with a meeting he took with two members of the yakuza, Japan’s organized crime group.

“Either erase the story, or we will erase you. And maybe your family. But we’ll do them first, so you learn your lesson before you die,” one of the yakuza members said to Adelstein.

Adelstein writes that this seemed like a straightforward proposition.

“Walk away from the story and walk away from your job, and it’ll be like it never happened. Write the article, and there is nowhere in this country that we will not hunt you down. Understand?”

Adelstein understood. In Tokyo Vice, Adelstein notes that it is never a smart idea to get on the wrong side of the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan’s largest organized crime group. With about forty thousand members, Adelstein writes that it’s a lot of people to piss off.

The yakuza, Adelstein explains, are the Japanese mafia and one can call themselves yakuza, but many of them like to call themselves gokudo, meaning literally “the ultimate path.”

“The Yamaguchi-gumi is the top of the gokudo-heap,” Adelstein tells us. “And among the many subgroups that make up the Yamaguchi-gumi, the Goto-gumi, with more than nine hundred members, is the nastiest. They slash the faces of film directors, they throw people from hotel balconies, they drive bulldozers into people’s houses. Stuff like that.”

Although the history of the yakuza is murky, Adelstein explains that there are two major types:

“There are the tekiya, who are essentially street merchants and small-time con artists, and bukuto, originally gamblers but now including loan sharks, protection money collectors, pimps, and corporate raiders. Another large faction is made up of dowa, the former untouchable caste of Japan that handled butchering animals, making leather goods, and doing other “unclean” jobs.”

Adelstein writes that the Japanese National Police Agency estimates that there are 86,000 gangsters in the country’s crime syndicates, making the yakuza much larger than the Cosa Nostra or any other crime group in America.

Adelstein writes that the yakuza are organized as a neo-family, with each organization having a pyramid structure. The modern-day yakuza have moved into securities trading, and they have infected hundreds of Japan’s listed companies.

“Goldman Sachs with guns,” is how Adelstein describes them.

Although the Japanese were my father’s brutal enemy in World War II, he was forgiving, and he maintained a lifelong interest in all things Japanese. Like my father, I’ve long been interested in Japan.

I visited Sasebo and Nagasaki many years ago when I was in the Navy, and I have fond memories of my time in Japan. Although I am hardly an expert on all things Japanese, I’ve long been interested in Japanese history, literature, films and music and my personal library has many books on Japan. And over the years, I’ve talked to a good number of Japanese men and women who have visited here. 

And as a student of crime and a crime reporter and columnist, I’ve long been interested in the yakuza. Tokyo Vice is a good addition to my library.

Tokyo Vice reads like a crime thriller, with Adelstein narrating the tale in a noir-style voice. The book also contains a good bit of self-deprecating humor. He is very open about his personal life, although parts of which I could have done without knowing about.

Adelstein tells an interesting story about a nice Jewish boy from Missouri who travels to Japan to study Buddhism and the martial arts and becomes the only American to write for the Yomiuri Shimbun, a major Japanese newspaper.

Adelstein’s father was a county coroner, so he was always interested in crime and what he calls the dark side of the human condition. This interest led to his becoming a reporter covering Japan’s world of crime.

Adelstein covered many stories about murder, prostitution, the sex slave trade, drugs, and assorted crimes. He befriended a Japanese police officer who guided him through Japan’s complicated culture and the ways of the yakuza.

I found his stories about the Japanese cops, who lack the authority American cops have in fighting organized crime, to be the most interesting part of the book. His mentoring cop friend accompanied him to his meeting with the yakuza who threatened his life.

The story that led to his being threatened was a case concerning a yakuza boss named Tadamasa Goto. In Tokyo Vice we learn that this boss informed on his own organization to the FBI in order to receive a liver transplant in America, jumping ahead of American citizens on the waiting list.

(So much for Japan’s universal health care. Look at the lengths a powerful crime boss went to come to America for our health care system).

Adelstein wisely did not publish the story in the Japanese press, but he left Japan and published Tokyo Vice in America.

Tokyo Vice is a fascinating book and I recommend it if you’re interested in Japan, Japanese organized crime, and a very good crime story.

A Little Night Music: 'The Gael - Last Of The Mohicans' Theme

I read and enjoyed James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans, his 826 novel about the French and Indian war, when I was a kid.

I also loved Michael Mann's 1992 film version, Last of the Mohicans, which starred Daniel Day-Lewis. I've watched the film several times.

I especially loved the theme music, which played very well during the final mountain pass fight.

You can listen to the music via the below link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvYuNfCLRio

You can watch the final scene via the below link:

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=last+of+the+mohicans+final+fight&&view=detail&mid=7DECF3A0D4C1F3A4C7CA7DECF3A0D4C1F3A4C7CA&&FORM=VRDGAR&ru=%2Fvideos%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dlast%2Bof%2Bthe%2Bmohicans%2Bfinal%2Bfight%26FORM%3DHDRSC3

My Crime Beat Column: A Look Back At The Depression-Era Public Enemies Vs. The FBI

I happened to come across photos on the Internet of Johnny Depp portraying bank robber John Dillinger and Christian Bale as Melvin Purvis, the FBI special agent who pursued Dillinger and the other bank robbers during the 1930s. The two fine actors lead the cast in an upcoming film called Public Enemies.

The film, directed by veteran crime film director Michael Mann, is based on Bryan Burrrough's excellent book, Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-1934. I read the book with some relish a few years ago, as I've long been interested in the Depression-era criminals and the early history of the FBI.

Like Truman Capote, who once said that if he had studied medicine with the same intensity that he had studied crime, he could have been a brain surgeon, I've long been a student of crime. I grew up watching cops and robbers on TV and in the movies, and I became an avid reader of crime fiction as well as crime history. As a writer, I've covered crime for newspapers, magazines and Internet publications for a good number of years.

The names of criminals like John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd and Bonnie & Clyde are better known than most presidents. Unfortunately, what most people know about these criminals they've learned primarily from the movies. While movies can be entertaining, most of them are historically inaccurate. The movies have also glamorized the criminals.

The movies also gave us a somewhat whitewashed version of the early FBI's role in capturing and killing the Depression-era gangsters. In films such as Jimmy Cagney's G-Men and James Stewart's The FBI Story we see a sanitized FBI and the stories that the late J. Edgar Hoover, the first and longest serving director of the FBI, wanted the public to see. (I love the two films anyway, as they are good dramas).

Burrough's book gives us the true story of the early FBI and the sordid tale of the rural bank robbers and kidnappers that captured the public's imagination in the 1930s, and to some extent, still does today.

After four years of research and access to FBI records made available only in the 1980s, Burrough was able to give readers a thorough, unsanitized account of the FBI's "war on crime" against the famous, or rather, infamous criminals

As Burrough explains in the book, bank robbers were known as "Yeggmen," or "Yeggs." One influential Yegg, although not as well known as Dillinger, was Herman K. Lamm, A former German army officer known as "The Baron." Burrough offers a brief history of Lamm, who devised the bank robbery system later used by the Dillinger gang.

Lamm pioneered the "casing" of banks by observing bank guards, alarms and tellers. He also gave specific roles to gang members, such as the lookout, the getaway driver, the lobby man and the vault man. Lamm also devised the first "gits," or getaway maps and plans.

Lamm was killed in a shoot-out in 1930, but two of his men taught John Dillinger his system in an Indiana prison.

Burrough states that three innovations of the age aided the bank robbers in the 1930s. One was the Thompson sub machine gun, introduced after WWI, which outgunned the local lawmen. Two was the new automobile models with reliable, powerful V-8 engines, which allowed the outlaws to outrun the local lawmen. And the third innovation was the interstate highway, which lawmen could not use beyond their local jurisdiction. Bank robbery was not yet a federal crime.

Burrough makes the point that after the crime surge in the 1920s, symbolized by Chicago gangster Al Capone, there began a public debate over the need for a federal police force. The rise of kidnappings and bank robberies fueled the debate, as did the "Kansas City Massacre," where, in an attempt to free a criminal cohort in federal custody in front of the Union Railway Station, gang members opened up on FBI agents and local lawmen.

An FBI agent was killed, along with two Kansas City detectives and an Oklahoma police chief, as well as the prisoner they were trying to rescue. The hunt for the Kansas City killers, the Dillinger manhunt, Machine Gun Kelly's kidnapping of Charles Urschel and the Barker-Karpis gang's kidnapping of Edward Bremer and William Hamm, are all well-covered in Burrough's book.

Burrough also recounts the many failings of Melvin Purvis, whom the press of the day loved, and he writes about FBI Inspector Samuel P. Cowley, who although not as well known as Purvis, was placed over Purvis by J. Edgar Hoover. Cowley, a desk man who failed to qualify on the pistol range, would go on to shoot it out with Baby Face Nelson, both of whom later dying from the gunfire exchange.

The hunt for the public enemies of the 1930s made a star out of Hoover, and although he later greatly abused his authority, I believe he should be credited for creating one of the world's most efficient law enforcement agencies. He also helped to diminish the "Robin Hood" image of vicious, murdering criminals.

But having said that, I'm thankful that Bryan Burrough has written a fact-based book that shatters the many myths about this fascinating period in history. I hope the upcoming film will be equally as good as the book.

Note: The above column originally appeared at GreatHistory.com in 2009.                                                  

"Heat' At 20: Michael Mann On Making A Crime Drama Classic

Jennifer Woods at Rolling Stone offers a piece on film director Michael Mann's crime film Heat.

Michael Mann has been a driving creative force behind plenty of groundbreaking cops-and-robbers tales over the past 40 years, from TV’s "MTV cops" show Miami Vice to this year's bleeding-edge cybercrime thriller Blackhat. And while the 72-year-old writer/producer/director has done his share of tense true-story recreations and tough-guy classics, it's a certain steely crime drama starring two Seventies-cinema icons for which he might be best known.

Released 20 years ago today, Heat originated from the story of an obsessive detective's quest to take down a disciplined career criminal in the early 1980s, based on a real-life encounter that Mann's friend, Chicago detective Charlie Adamson, had with an ex-Alcatraz inmate he was trailing (and eventually killed). The filmmaker started writing a script about these two men on the opposite sides of the law in the early 1980s, but claims that something was not working with the structure, and eventually put it aside. "When something's not ready, it's like not ready," he says.

... By the way, this elite major crime unit that Charlie was in — one of the sergeants in that crew was Dennis Farina. I recruited him to be in Thief (1981), and because of that he decided he wanted a career as an actor because, as he said, he'd be known as "Dennis, the Dream to Work With." That's why people would hire him, he thought. Which was probably true … .

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/heat-at-20-michael-mann-on-making-a-crime-drama-classic-20151215

On Murder And Malware: Michael Mann, The Crime Drama Kingpin

I've not yet seen Michael Mann's Blackhat, but it sounds interesting as I have serious concerns about cyber crime, cyber espionage and cyber warfare.

Mann is a serious crime writer, director and producer. I've enjoyed Mann's previous crime films, such as Thief and Manhunter. I especially liked Mann's TV crime series Crime Story.

The late Dennis Farina, a former Chicago cop, was very good as the detective squad lieutenant. Anthony Denison was also very good as a gangster, as was Andrew Dice Clay. The supporting cast was also first rate.

The late John Santucci (his real name was John Schiavone), who was a real Chicago burglar, was outstanding as a crook in Crime Story. Mann's film Thief was based on Santucci, and he is shown on the right in the bottom photo.

I was enjoying Mann's HBO series Luck until it was sadly canceled over the death of a horse at a racetrack.

So I was interested in reading Jonathan Bernstein's interview with Mann at the British newspaper the Guardian.

Shimmering neon reflected on the spotless bonnets of expensive sports cars. Sleek speedboats piloted across ice-blue water by Armani-clad criminals with strict moral codes. Bone-weary cops who view their underworld adversaries with professional respect. That’s far from the totality of Michael Mann’s career, but it sums up the stylish world with which his name is synonymous.

For over three decades, the director has painted both small and large screens with beautifully lit pictures that dwell on the violent lives of terse, tough men. Men the calibre of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in Heat, James Caan in Thief, Tom Cruise in Collateral, and even Don Johnson, who may have sported pastels in Miami Vice, but was a man with a guarded exterior who weighed his words.
Chris Hemsworth, who plays the hacker at the centre of Mann’s latest film, Blackhat, may use codes and viruses rather than glass-cutters and sub-machine guns, but he fits perfectly into the director’s archetype of a male lead: stoic, unsentimental and dispassionate.

Yet real-life events suggest that maybe this archetype isn’t as reliable as it used to be. In the US, Blackhat debuted a week after North Korea temporarily crippled Sony Pictures, an action of massive consequence without a steel-jawed hero anywhere near it. I ask Mann whether he watched what happened to The Interview and experienced a degree of trepidation for his own release. The 71-year-old director waves away the question like a mosquito buzzing around his face.

“On a scale of one to 10 of intrusion, what happened at Sony was about a four,” he says, his Chicago accent still broad. “You have one country’s fighter jets that are being stolen from another country’s defence contractors. There’s malware called Shamoon that overwrites on the actual disc so there’s no way to recover data.” Mann, who showed up to our meeting bearing a stack of official-looking folders, reaches into the pile and pulls out some photocopied documents that delve even deeper into the intricacies of Shamoon. He directs my attention to the document with a steely gaze that implies: “Don’t bother me with Seth Rogen, when Shamoon’s out there”.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/feb/16/michael-mann-blackhat-chris-hemsworth

To learn more about Michael Mann you can also read an earlier interview with him at ew.com via the below links:

http://www.ew.com/article/2012/01/21/michael-mann-interview-luck-hbo

http://www.ew.com/article/2012/01/28/michael-mann-crime-story-robbery-homicide-division-luck