Stuart Beattie talks about writing Collateral ScreenPlay

Writers are incredibly the last on the list in receiving public appreciation, especially screenplay writers. J.K. Rowling reversed that trend slightly, but think about it: The one indispensable person on a movie/TV set is the writer. Without the writer there is no story. Everything hangs on the story. Collateral is one of those movies lauded for its original screenplay. Here is an interview with Stuart Beattie who penned Collateral and talks about its creation:

The Keep now available at NetFlix

The Keep still isn't available on DVD but the good news is that as of early this December I discovered you can now get it on NetFlix, the streaming service for niche movies.

Read the write up, which concludes with:

Fans of Michael Mann, Ian McKellan or 1980’s genre movies need to see The Keep. As a long-unavailable piece of modern movie history it’s one of the most joyous discoveries on Netflix Instant Streaming. It’s not very good, but at least it’s utterly fascinating.

Here is the link to the article, with the streaming link here.

The Keep's Biggest Fan

Everyone has their favourite Michael Mann movie, each for a particular reason uniquely known to each one of us. The Keep is one of those movies that steps outside Mann's usual genre and has attracted criticism, but also praise. As the saying goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I doubt there is a greater appreciator of The Keep than the gentleman who set up the fansite I am linking to here. The man behind it is Stéphane Piter, who introduces himself by saying:

I have a particular weak spot for a certain enigmatic and entrancing film from 1983 called ‘The Keep’. Ever since I first saw this film I have been collecting articles and interviews with the cast and crew involved, in order to find the film’s weaknesses, successes and failures to reveal the true story behind it.

Michael Mann has fired my imagination since the beginning. His technique of filming, editing and stylising his characters gives an impression of greatness, depth and suspense.

Take a look at the site, where there is just about everything you probably need to know about The Keep. You have to forgive his imperfect English translations of some interviews, but a small price to pay for this guy's passion for the movie. A big fan, he managed to meet Mann very briefly at one of Mann's collateral promotional events in France and collected an autograph. Anyone else out there met Mann and have his autograph? Would love to hear your story and experience.

Since the site is like the big fansite over at John Mounsey's Manhunter site, there is little point repeating it all here. Give the guy a visit and appreciate all his work collecting everything to do with The Keep! Visit his site by clicking here.

Michael Mann Keep Interview

Here is good interview regarding the process behind Michael Mann directing The Keep. Who would have known that the Romanian village was filmed in Wales! I was also surprised when at the end of the interview he answered these questions in the following way:

What other films or filmmakers have impressed you or influenced you?
You're influenced by who you like. I like Kubrick, I like Resnais immensely. I like Tarkovsky, although there's very little in Tarkovsky I'd want to do myself. In fact I fell asleep through half of So­laris, but I still love it. And Stalker. He has a Russian, suffering nerve of pace that it's hard to relate to, but you can't help being impressed and moved by what you see.


Do you want to produce films?
Yes, because there are more pictures I would like to see made than I can make or want to make. A case in point is a screenplay I wrote called Heat, which I love. As a writer, I really want to see this picture made. But as a director I don't want to touch it.

Mann then goes on to answer other detailed questions about the film, and rather interestingly about the notion of evil - something that is a vein throughout his movies - this constant counteraction of both good and bad in life:

But in this fairy tale we find the Nazi Wehrmacht – men dressed in totemic black uniforms with swastikas – things we can recognize and which set up a response.


Actually only about one-fifth of the film is involved with the Wehrmacht and the character of the Captain played by Jurgen Prochnow. The film revolves around a character called Glaeken Tris­megistus, who wakes up after a deep sleep in a transient, merchant-marine setting some place in Greece in 1941. The movie revolves around him and his conflict, which seems to be fated, with a character called Roderick Molasar. The end of the conflict seems to fate him toward destruction. He may destroy Molasar or Molasar may destroy him, but in either case Glaeken Trismegistus must go to the keep.


And in the course of coming to the keep to confront Molasar, he has a ro mance with Eva, whose father is a Medi aeval historian named Dr. Cuza, very quick, very smart. At a moment in his tory when he is powerless – a Socialist Jew in Fascist Romania – Cuza is of fered the potential to ally himself with immense power. For him it's a deliver ance. And as a bonus he also gets rejuve nated. So he's seduced into attaching himself to this power in the keep.


And Molasar comes to life by taking the power, the souls, of the Wehrmacht Nazis.


What happens is that after the second time you've seen him, Molasar changes. And he seems to change after people are killed. After he kills things. It's almost as if he accrues to himself their matter. Not their souls; he doesn't suck their blood. It's a thing unexplained, his transforma­tion is seen visually. He evolves through three different stages in the movie. He gets more and more complete. He starts as a cloud of imploding particles, then he evolves a nervous system, then he evolves a skeleton and musculature, and at the third state he's complete. And then it's a bit ironic when he's complete, because there's a great resemblance to Glaeken Trismegistus.


Is he evil personified?


No. Well, yes he is. Yes, Evil Personi fied. But what is evil?


Try Satan? Or Lucifer?


Yes, but think about that. Satan in Paradise Lost is the most exciting charac­ter in the book. He's rebellious, he's independent, he doesn't like authority. If you think about it, Satan could almost be played by John Wayne. I mean the Reaganire, independent, individualist spirit. It's all bullshit, but that's the cul­tural myth that the appeal taps into.


Is Glaeken Trismegistus the alter ego of Molasar? Is he the good side?


No, he's not. I tried to find a more surreal logic to the characters; so that there's nothing Satanic about Molasar. He's just sheer power, and the appeal of power, and the worship of power, a be lief in power, a seduction of power. And Molasar is very, very deceptive. When we first meet him, we too believe that he is absolute salvation. And it's all a con. Now when Glaeken shows up, the first thing he does is seduce Eva Cuza. So my intent in designing those characters was to make then not black-and-white. I put in things that are not normally consid ered to be good into Glaeken and qualities that are not evil into Molasar.


Read full interview by clicking here.

Big Tuna is Michael Mann's next movie

It has been announced that Michael Mann's next movie will be "Big Tuna", according to Variety magazine.

It is a biopic of Chicago mob boss Tony Accardo and Sam Giancana.  Looks as though this may be a more deeply refined version of Public Enemies. The police photo of Accardo is reminsicent of the ones we became familiar with in the form of dillinger. Yet Accardo's face looks more thoughtful and reflective, than the empty, though flamboyant arrogance of Dillinger.

The screenplay will be written by Sheldon Turner and financed by Mann himself. Sheldon alone is reported to be charging him a seven figure sum, so it has to work for Mann. It would appear that Michael Mann could not find a studio to get behind the project so is going alone. Hardly a surprise, since a Chicago mob movie is going to have to be very special to attract the audiences required to satisfy nervous studios.

So the speculation seems to be over. "Big Tuna" it is... slightly disappointed at this choice as I think he is good at studying modern relationships, but I will take it as it comes - whichever way it swings, it is afterall a Michael Mann movie, and that is something to look forward too.  We also have "Luck" to come as a bonus.

Michael Mann and the Cinematic Close Up

A recent post over at wrightonfilm.com explains well why Mann films are something to savour, and never rush. The author examines Mann's use of extreme close ups of the characters he creates in his films. It is purist film making, making the actor create the moment intimately with the camera, there to bring us into the character's inner world.

Enjoy the article, which includes an insightful quote from Michael Mann:

I look for where or how to bring the audience into the moment, to reveal what somebody’s thinking and what they’re feeling, and where it feels like you’re inside the experience. Not looking at it, with an actor performing it, but have an actor live it, and you as audience, if I could bring the audience inside to experience. It became critical in THE INSIDER, because the ambition was to make a film that was as suspenseful as I knew, and dramatic as I knew those lives really were. And, it’s all talking heads, but the devastation, the potential devastation to [Jeffrey] Wigand and Lowell Bergman was total annihilation, personal annihilation, suicide–all that was in the cards for these guys. And, yet, it’s all just people talking. So, that kind of began an exploration into how I could bring you into experience in as internal a way as I could.

Read the full post here.

Mugabe and the White African

As I write this post I am watching Mugabe and the White African. It is a profoundly moving and bravely made feature length documentary about the violent displacement of white African farmers by the Zanu-PF Zimbabwean government under the leadership of Robert Mugabe.

This post has on this rare occasion nothing to do with Michael Mann. I post it here because I want to voice their cry for justice and what it means in a world that is losing its sense of justice. I also post it here as one of the most outstanding documentaries I have ever seen. Directed by Lucy Bailey and Andrew Thompson, it is breathtakingly well shot and reminds me very much of the styles of Michael Mann, especially in the film The Insider. I really hope Michael Mann sees this. I hope everyone sees this.

See their website here.