On this night in late April, there would be death, four or five times over, on the 6200 block of Hiawatha Avenue.
Not much appears to have changed along the quiet, middle-class street in the last 20 years. Yellow aluminum awnings slope over the windows. Iron gratings, resembling some simple form of plant life, adorn the front doors. Cars, old cars, line the block: a black-and-white 1961 Thunderbird
convertible; a turquoise `59 Ford Fairlane with two furry dice dangling in its window and a V-8 engine under its hood. On this night, the 6200 block of Hiawatha belongs to Hollywood.
Two broad-shouldered undercover cops chase the perpetrator–a tall American Indian with a shotgun–into a driveway, where he is clubbed over the head with a vacuum cleaner, then terminated with the thunderous finality of a .45 magnum.
The set–the cars, the firepower, the manpower (about 150 people in all)–are part of Michael Mann`s upcoming prime-time television entry. His new show, ”Crime Story,” now being filmed here, is based on the life of a Chicago detective who worked the streets of this city from the early `60s until the early `70s.
In those days, Mann would have you believe, undercover cops wore long overcoats, felt hats and pointy, two-tone shoes. They had beautiful women and scandal at home. They careered off the Edens Expressway, mowing through innocent back yards to make their catch. They were, the cameras will suggest, at least as sexy and as legendary as Miami`s envied, made-for-TV vice squad. Only in this case, almost all the stories will be based on real events.
Mann, a director, producer and screenwriter is best known for his work on ”Miami Vice.” As executive producer of the series, he is responsible for its look, its sound, its general style. And while the show has been criticized for its dialogue–or lack thereof–it is arguably the most stylish series on television. He is obsessed with the detail in his scenes–from cars to ashtrays–not so much for a sense of historical accuracy as for effect. Details, Mann claims, are what gives his work its power.
For ”Crime Story,” Mann has come home, and so the details come a bit easier. This night`s shootout is filmed just a short distance from where he grew up on Chicago`s North Side.
The serial is, in many ways, a Chicago project. The scriptwriter, Chuck Adamson, is a former Chicago detective. So is leading man Dennis Farina, a towering figure drawn from the Burt Reyonlds/Rock Hudson mold of machismo. Adamson and Farina used to ride in a patrol car together, playing out scenes from their favorite movies to help pass the time. The 12 episodes of ”Crime Story” (NBC has already committed to a full season), are drawn primarily from Adamson`s experiences on the force.
In between scenes, Mann sits in his trailer making decisions throughout the night. Color schemes. Camera angles. Casting. No nonsense. There are sour stomachs all around. He mumbles, smokes his cigarettes intently, then in sudden bursts, lets go with instructions.
While there is no shortage of people willing to call him a genius and an artist, the genius would be hard to pick out in a line-up. He is a stocky 5 feet 9 inches. On the set, he usually dresses in sweat pants and white racquetball shoes. He has a long forehead with thinning black hair and walks as though he is approaching a schoolyard basketball court–all concentration and swagger.
”He looks a little like Napoleon,” says Chicago actor William L. Petersen, who is featured in the upcoming film ”Red Dragon,” which Mann directed. ”He talks like Napoleon. In fact, he acts a little like Napoleon.” Mann`s rise in television and film isn`t exactly a rags-to-riches story, but sort of.
He was born in Humboldt Park 43 years ago. When he was 10, his family moved to Budlong Woods, a predominantly Jewish neighborhood on the North Side. His father, a Russian Jewish immigrant, his mother, a Chicago native, and his older brother formed a tight and supportive family even after he announced his desire to direct films.
”To be a gas station attendant, that made more sense to my father,”
Mann recalls.
He graduated from Amundsen High School in 1960, enrolled at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and studied English literature, moved to London in 1964 and started making art films and documentaries as a student at the London Film School.
”In those days I believed film suffered from a tyranny of words,” he recalls. ”They should be all images and music. I don`t believe that anymore. But I don`t want to dicuss my visual development. It`s boring and I don`t have time for it.”
When Mann returned to the U.S. in 1971, he was ready for Hollywood. Hollywood, it turned out, wasn`t quite ready for him.
”I went out to Los Angeles thinking I would lock up a gig in three months. It took me three years to get going,” he says.
When he finally landed a job of some importance in the mid-`70s, it was as a scriptwriter for the television series ”Starsky and Hutch.”
”After the first episode of `Starsky` there was no going back,” he says. ”It was incredibly tough. But once you get through it all, it reverses and goes the other way. All of a sudden you`re in high demand. In 1975 I got $120,000 for a script. Three days earlier I was on an unemployment line trying to qualify for aid to the totally disabled.”
Today he drives a black Ferrari 308 and lives in the Hollywood hills. His home, according to one of his assistants, is reminiscent of an interior from the set of ”Miami Vice.”
”Furniture at odd angles and all that,” the assistant explains.
Following ”Starsky,” Mann`s television career soared. He wrote approximately six episodes of the hit series ”Police Story” and in 1979 he directed ”Jericho Mile,” about a runner in Folsom Prison. The film won the Directors Guild of America directorial award for best television special of the year.
”The nihilistic bravado, the convicts in violet running shorts, the Latin bravado–all that appealed to me,” Mann recalls. ”The morning after it aired, I got 14 to 15 offers to do feature films.”
Mann made the transition to feature films in 1981 with the release of
”Thief.” He wrote and directed the thriller, in which James Caan portrays a used car salesman who moonlights as a safecracker.
In ”Thief” the elements that would reassert themselves in Mann`s subsequent work are very much in view. The streets are shiny and wet reflections of Chicago neon, and the camera work is at once off center and piercing. We see close-ups of drills burrowing through a door lock, spinning hubcaps, death in slow motion and lots of explosions. (In fact, one house on Catalpa Avenue shown blowing up during the movie accidentally burned down after the scene was shot). The soundtrack by Tangerine Dream is eerily suspenseful, and there are few moments in the film when the music is not pushing the scenes toward climax.
To prepare the script for ”Thief,” Mann consulted technical advisers who had some experience breaking through walls after normal working hours. He also consulted with the law. Chuck Adamson contributed his expertise as a detective, setting the stage for his future collaboration with Mann on ”Crime Story,” and Dennis Farina made his acting debut as a thug.
”I always liked working with reality,” Mann explains. ”In `Police Story,` every episode was based on a real event. We`d have technical advisers for every show. You`d grill the cops for six to eight hours. It was all very dry. But after all that time they`re practically giving you the dialogue.
”When I`m talking to professional criminals,” he continues, ”unlike an investigative journalist, I don`t need names and places. I need soft information. What were they thinking? When were the moments of maximum risk?
Bypassing the alarms? Or when you get stopped by a traffic cop because your tail light is out. . . . That doesn`t mean the product is Naturalism. There`s no virtue for me in reality itself. . . . We change everything and combine. None of the criminals in ”Crime Story” is based on any one person, although there`s probably half-a-dozen out there who will think it`s about them.”
For ”Crime Story,” Mann will try to keep the episodes rooted in the experiences of Chicago`s plainclothes detectives. It is a lesson Mann may have learned from the evolution of ”Miami Vice,” which he admits, has been
”moving sideways” for some time. Next season, he says, the series will once again be more closely based on ”reality.”
”Crime Story” will also deal more extensively with Torello`s personal life. Mann`s soft-spoken, associate producer, Guzmano Cesaretti, describes the lead character in this way: ”He won`t just be boom, boom, boom like Don Johnson.”
If ”Crime Story,” which commences circa 1963, scores, the unmistakable symbols of an earlier era–beehive hairdos, chinos, sawed-off shotguns and all –may soon snap back on us with the same speed that pastels and T-shirts scaled the heights of couture.
”It`s the power of television,” Mann observes. ”You can change the way people dress. When Starsky wore running shoes everybody started wearing running shoes. But in terms of what great social impact it has, I don`t know. You`ll have to read (Marshall) McLuhan for that. I just do what turns me on.” There is a distinct method to Mann`s visual tapestry. Working first with Polaroid snapshots, Mann and Cesaretti, who has been with Mann since the two worked on ”Jericho Mile,” assemble a book that outlines their stylistic and design requirements–from furniture to wardrobes. New directors consult the book to better understand the show`s feel and visual parameters.
For ”Crime Story,” Cesaretti says, ”We will use everything that`s cool from 1957-63. Every shot will remind you of the time.” The music for the series, Mann says, ”will probably be neo-`60s.” As for the cost–Mann says each show is budgeted for ”slightly less” than what an episode of ”Vice”
costs, reportedly $1 million.
Mann`s next project is editing ”Red Dragon,” a film about an FBI agent`s search for a serial killer, scheduled for release this summer. Mann hopes to continue working in both television and film and says that his plans include ”something about race cars, and after that, an outrageous comedy.”
At this point, he shuttles between locations, working on ”Red Dragon”
in Los Angeles, supervising ”Vice” in Miami and filming ”Crime Story” in Chicago. He is known to write and re-write scripts overnight and until ”Crime Story” gathers its own momentum, every decision about the new show must pass through his hands.
In front of Mann`s trailer, three young women, their hair puffed-up in soaring beehives, stand in early 1960s quilted housecoats. They look like some of the people you might see late at night in diners. One of the women faces Mann and gently opens her coat as though she is curtsying. Mann smiles.
In a few hours one of the women will be taken hostage, shot at, and saved by the Chicago police. Four cameras, from four angles, will capture the chase on film as the cars barrel through a picket fence and across a back yard, until one is stopped by a shack.
On Hiawatha Avenue tonight that`s how the drama of television will go down. By the time it is filmed, most of the residents will have gone to bed, most of the real policemen gone off to other beats. Next fall, when they watch it on TV, chances are the characters and the streets will have somehow been transformed into something cool, distant, even fashionable.
”The real magic happens when you have a certain moment when psychologically, physically, it becomes transcendent,” Mann says. ”On rare occasions it happens. That`s what you live and work for. That`s the kick.”
