April 20, 2010 (XX:14) Michael Mann, COLLATERAL (2004, 120 min)

Directed by Michael Mann Written by Stuart Beattie Original Music by James Newton Howard Cinematography by Dion Beebe and Paul Cameron Tom Cruise...Vincent Jamie Foxx...Max Jada Pinkett Smith...Annie Mark Ruffalo...Fanning Peter Berg...Richard Weidner Bruce McGill...Pedrosa Barry Shabaka Henley...Daniel Javier Bardem...Felix MICHAEL MANN (5 February 1943, Chicago, Illinois) has produced and directed a total of 42 films and tv series, some of which are Public Enemies (2009) (producer), The Kingdom (2007) (producer), Miami Vice (2006) (producer), The Aviator (2004) (producer), Collateral (2004) (producer), How to Get the Man's Foot Outta Your Ass (2003) (executive producer), "Robbery Homicide Division" (executive producer) # Ali (2001) (producer), The Insider (1999) (producer), Heat (1995) (producer), The Last of the Mohicans (1992) (producer), "Miami Vice" (executive producer) (111 episodes, 1984-1990), "Crime Story" (executive producer) (43 episodes, 1986-1988), Public Enemies (2009), Miami Vice (2006), Collateral (2004), Ali (2001), The Insider (1999), Heat (1995), The Last of the Mohicans (1992), Manhunter (1986), The Keep (1983), Thief (1981), The Jericho Mile (1979) (TV), "Police Woman" (1 episode, 1977), 17 Days Down the Line (1972), Jaunpuri (1971), and Insurrection (1968). JAMES NEWTON HOWARD (9 June 1951, Los Angeles, California) has composed music for 118 films and tv series, some of which include Gnomeo and Juliet (2011) (post-production), Salt (2010) (post-production), The Last Airbender (2010) (post-production), Inhale (2010) (post-production), Wings Over the Rockies (2009), Duplicity (2009), Defiance (2008/I), Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love (2008), The Dark Knight (2008), The Happening (2008), Charlie Wilson's War (2007), I Am Legend (2007), Michael Clayton (2007), Blood Diamond (2006), King Kong (2005), Batman Begins (2005), Collateral (2004), Peter Pan (2003), Dreamcatcher (2003), Unconditional Love (2002), Signs (2002), Unbreakable (2000), Dinosaur (2000), Snow Falling on Cedars (1999), Mumford (1999), The Sixth Sense (1999), The Postman (1997), The Devil's Advocate

(1997), One Fine Day (1996), Primal Fear (1996), The Juror (1996), Waterworld (1995), Outbreak (1995), Wyatt Earp (1994), Intersection (1994), The Fugitive (1993), Dave (1993), Falling Down (1993), Alive (1993), Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), Diggstown (1992), The Prince of Tides (1991), Grand Canyon (1991), The Man in the Moon (1991), Somebody Has to Shoot the Picture (1990) (TV), Flatliners (1990), Pretty Woman (1990), The Package (1989), Nobody's Fool (1986), and 8 Million Ways to Die (1986). DION BEEBE (1968, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia) did the cinematography for 28 films and tv series, some of which include Nine (2009), Land of the Lost (2009), Rendition (2007), Miami Vice (2006), Memoirs of a Geisha (2005), Collateral (2004), In the Cut (2003), Chicago (2002), Equilibrium (2002), Charlotte Gray (2001), The Goddess of 1967 (2000), Forever Lulu (2000), Holy Smoke (1999), Memory & Desire (1997), What I Have Written (1996), Floating Life (1996), Vacant Possession (1996), Down Rusty Down (1996), Eternity (1994), The Journey (1993), Crush (1992), and Black Sorrow (1989). PAUL CAMERON (30 May 1958, Montréal, Québec, Canada) did the cinematography for 15 films, some of which include Henry's Crime (2010), In the Land of Women (2007), Deja Vu (2006), American Combatant (2006), Collateral (2004), Man on Fire (2004), Beat the Devil (2002), Swordfish (2001), Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000), The

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Last Supper (1995), Distribution of Lead (1988), and The Seer: Live in New York (1986). TOM CRUISE (3 July 1962, Syracuse, New York) has appeared in 36 films, some of which include Knight and Day (2010), Valkyrie (2008), Tropic Thunder (2008), Lions for Lambs (2007), Mission: Impossible III (2006), War of the Worlds (2005), Collateral (2004), The Last Samurai (2003), Minority Report (2002), Vanilla Sky (2001), Mission: Impossible II (2000), Magnolia (1999), Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Jerry Maguire (1996), Mission: Impossible (1996), Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994), The Firm (1993), A Few Good Men (1992), Far and Away (1992), Days of Thunder (1990), Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Rain Man (1988), Cocktail (1988), The Color of Money (1986), Top Gun (1986), Legend (1985), All the Right Moves (1983), Risky Business (1983), Losin' It (1983), The Outsiders (1983), Taps (1981), and Endless Love (1981). JAMIE FOXX (13 December 1967, Terrell, Texas) has appeared in 33 films and tv series, some of which include Malice N Wonderland (2010) (V), Valentine's Day (2010), Law Abiding Citizen (2009), The Soloist (2009), The Kingdom (2007), Dreamgirls (2006), Miami Vice (2006), Jarhead (2005), Stealth (2005), Ray (2004/I), Collateral (2004), Breakin' All the Rules (2004), Shade (2003/I), Ali (2001), Date from Hell (2001), "The Jamie Foxx Show" (100 episodes, 1996-2001), Bait (2000), Any Given Sunday (1999), Held Up (1999), The Players Club (1998), Booty Call (1997), The Great White Hype (1996), The Truth About Cats & Dogs (1996), "In Living Color" 42 episodes, 1991-1994), and Toys (1992). JADA PINKETT SMITH (18 September 1971, Baltimore, Maryland,) has appeared in 33 films and tv series, some of which include "Hawthorne" (15 episodes, 2009-2010), The Human Contract (2008), The Women (2008/I), Reign Over Me (2007), Madagascar (2005) (voice), Collateral (2004), The Matrix Revolutions (2003), Enter the Matrix (2003) (VG), The Matrix Reloaded (2003), Maniac Magee (2003) (TV), Ali (2001), Kingdom Come (2001/I), Bamboozled (2000), Blossoms and Veils (1998), Return to Paradise (1998), Woo (1998), Scream 2 (1997), Set It Off (1996), If These Walls Could Talk (1996) (TV), The Nutty Professor (1996), A Low Down Dirty Shame (1994, Jason's Lyric (1994), The Inkwell (1994), "A Different World" (36 episodes, 1991-1993), and "True Colors" (1 episode, 1990). MARK RUFFALO (22 November 1967, Kenosha, Wisconsin) has appeared in 49 films and tv series, some of which include Margaret (2010) (completed), Date Night (2010), Shutter Island (2010), The Kids Are All Right (2010), Sympathy for Delicious (2010), Where the Wild Things Are (2009), What Doesn't Kill You (2008), The Brothers Bloom (2008), Blindness (2008), Reservation Road (2007), Zodiac (2007/I), All the King's Men (2006), Rumor Has It...

(2005), Just Like Heaven (2005), Collateral (2004), 13 Going on 30 (2004), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), We Don't Live Here Anymore (2004), In the Cut (2003), View from the Top (2003), My Life Without Me (2003), Windtalkers (2002), "The Beat" (8 episodes, 2000), Ride with the Devil (1999/I), Safe Men (1998), Blood Money (1996), and Rough Trade (1992). BRUCE MCGILL (11 July 1950, San Antonio, Texas) appeared in 134 films and tv series, some of which include Mr. Sophistication (2010), Apart (2010), Fair Game (2010), "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" (1 episode, 2009), Law Abiding Citizen (2009), Columbia Ave. (2009), From Mexico with Love (2009), W.(2008/I), Kings of the Evening (2008), The Lookout (2007), "Numb3rs" (1

episode, 2007), Elizabethtown (2005), Cinderella Man (2005), Collateral (2004), Ali (2001), The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000), A Dog of Flanders (1999), Black Sheep (1996), A Perfect World (1993), "Walker, Texas Ranger" (1 episode, 1993), "MacGyver" (19 episodes, 1986-1992), My Cousin Vinny (1992), "Miami Vice" (1 episode, 1985), Into the Night (1985/I), Silkwood (1983), "Semi-Tough" (4 episodes, 1980), "Delta House" (13 episodes, 1979), Animal House (1978), and Handle with Care (1977).

BARRY SHABAKA HENLEY (15 September 1954, New Orleans, Louisiana) has appeared in 57 films and tv series, some of which include "FlashForward" (7 episodes, 2009-2010), The Dry Land (2010), Streets of Blood (2009), State of Play (2009), Horsemen (2009), "Heroes" (4 episodes, 2007), "Numb3rs" (1 episode, 2006), Miami Vice (2006), "Close to Home" (9 episodes, 2005-2006), Four Brothers (2005), Shackles (2005), "Grey's Anatomy" (1 episode, 2005), Lackawanna Blues (2005) (TV), "Barbershop" (2005) (unknown episodes), "NYPD Blue" (3 episodes, 1995-2004), Collateral (2004), The Terminal (2004), "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" (1 episode, 2004), "Robbery Homicide Division" (13 episodes, 2002-2003), Ali (2001), "Oz" (1 episode, 2001), Life (1999/I), How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998), Bulworth (1998), Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), and "ER" (1 episode, 1994). JAVIER BARDEM (1 March 1969, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, Spain) has appeared in 44 films and tv series, some of which include Biutiful (2010), Eat Pray Love (2010), Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), Love in the Time of Cholera (2007), No Country for Old Men (2007), Goya's Ghosts (2006), Mar adentro (2004/I), Collateral (2004), Los lunes al sol (2002), The Dancer Upstairs (2002), Before Night Falls (2000), Los lobos de Washington/ Washington Wolves (1999), Entre las piernas/ Between Your Legs (1999), Perdita Durango/ Dance with the Devil (1997), Carne trémula/ Live Flesh/ Trembling FlAesh (1997), Más que amor, frenesí (1996), Éxtasis (1996), La madre (1995), El detective y la muerte (1994), El amante bilingüe (1993), "Crónicas del mal" (1 episode, 1992), Jamón, jamón/ A Tale of Ham and Passion(1992), and Tacones lejanos/High Heels (1991).

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(from Wikipedia) Michael Kenneth Mann is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. For his work, he has received nominations from international organizations and juries, including those at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, Cannes and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He has produced the Academy Awards ceremony twice, first in 1999 with the 72nd annual Academy Awards and second in 2004 with the 77th annual ceremony. Total Film ranked Mann #28 on their 100 The Greatest Directors Ever and Sight and Sound ranked him #5 on their list of the 10 Best Directors of the Last 25 Years, Entertainment Weekly ranked Mann #8 on their 25 Greatest Active Film Directors list. Mann was born in Chicago of Jewish heritage, the son of grocers Esther and Jack Mann. His father was a Ukrainian immigrant and World War II combat veteran and his mother came from a family native to Chicago. Mann was close to his father and his paternal grandfather. He grew up in the Humboldt Park neighborhood and immersed himself in the burgeoning Chicago blues-music scene as a teenager. He studied English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and developed interests in history, philosophy and architecture. It was at this time that he first saw Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove and fell in love with movies. In a recent L.A. Weekly interview, he describes the film's impact on him: "It said to my whole generation of filmmakers that you could make an individual statement of high integrity and have that film be successfully seen by a mass audience all at the same time. In other words, you didn’t have to be making Seven Brides for Seven Brothers if you wanted to work in the main stream film industry, or be reduced to niche filmmaking if you wanted to be serious about cinema. So that’s what Kubrick meant, aside from the fact that Strangelove was a revelation." Mann later moved to London in the mid 1960s to go to graduate school in cinema. He went on to receive a graduate degree at the London Film School. He spent seven years in the United Kingdom going to film school and then working on commercials along with contemporaries Alan Parker, Ridley Scott and Adrian Lyne. In 1968, footage he shot of the Paris student revolt for a documentary, Insurrection, aired on NBC's First Tuesday news program and he developed his '68 experiences into the short film "Juanpuri," which won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 1970. Mann returned to United States after divorcing his first wife in 1971. He went on to direct a road trip documentary, 17 Days Down the Line. Three years later, “Hawaii Five-0” veteran Robert Lewin gave Mann a shot and a crash course on television writing and story structure. Mann wrote the first four episodes of “Starsky and Hutch” and the pilot episode for “Vega$.” Around this time, he worked on a show called “Police Story” with cop-turned-novelist Joseph Wambaugh. “Police Story” concentrated on the detailed realism of a real cop's life and taught Mann that first-hand research was essential to bring authenticity to his work.

His first feature movie was a made-for-TV special called The Jericho Mile, which was released theatrically in Europe. It won the Emmy for best MOW in 1979 and the DGA Best Director award. His television work also includes being the executive producer on “Miami Vice” and “Crime Story.” Contrary to popular belief, he is not the creator of these shows but the executive producer and the showrunner. They were produced by his production company. However, his cinematic influence is felt throughout each show in terms of casting and style. Mann is now known primarily as a feature film director

and he is considered to be one of America's top filmmakers. He has a very distinctive style that is reflected in his works: his trademarks include unusual scores, such as Tangerine Dream in Thief or the New Age score to Manhunter. Dante Spinotti is a frequent cinematographer of Mann's pictures. Mann has an affinity for stark urban landscapes and a visual style which often places an emphasis on soft blues and harsh, sterile whites. Mann's first cinema feature as director was Thief (1981) starring James Caan.

His next film The Keep (1983) was in retrospect an uncharacteristic choice, being that it is a supernatural thriller set in Nazi occupied Romania. Though it was a commercial flop, the film has since attained cult status amongst fans. In 1986, Mann was the first to bring Thomas Harris's character of Hannibal Lecter to the screen with Manhunter, his adaptation of novel Red Dragon, which starred Brian Cox as a more down-to-earth Hannibal. The story was remade less than 20 years after it came out by Brett Ratner presumably because Anthony Hopkins reprisal of the role in Ridley Scott's Hannibal had made the character a highly lucrative property. In an interview on the Manhunter DVD, star William Petersen comments that because Mann is so focused on his creations, it takes several years for Mann to complete a film; Petersen believes that this is why Mann doesn't make films very often. He gained widespread recognition in 1992 for his film adaptation of James Fenimore Cooper's book Last of the Mohicans. His biggest critical successes in the 1990s began with the release of Heat in 1995 and The Insider in 1999. The films, both of which featured Al Pacino along with Robert DeNiro in Heat and Russell Crowe in The Insider, showcased Mann's cinematic style and adeptness at creating rich, complex storylines as well as directing actors. The Insider was nominated for seven Academy Awards as a result, including a nomination for Mann's direction. With his next film Ali starring Will Smith in 2001, he started experimenting with digital cameras. The film helped catapult Will Smith to greater fame, and he was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance. On Collateral, he shot all of the exterior scenes digitally so that he could achieve more depth and detail during the night scenes while shooting most of the interiors on film stock. In 2004, Mann produced The Aviator, based on the life of Howard Hughes, which he had developed with Leonardo DiCaprio. However, Mann demurred doing a second biopic after Ali, directed

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Collateral starring Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx and offered the The Aviator director's chair to now-frequent DiCaprio collaborator Martin Scorsese. The Aviator was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture but lost to Million Dollar Baby. After Collateral, Mann directed the film adaptation of Miami Vice which he also executive produced. It stars a completely new cast with Jamie Foxx filling Philip Michael Thomas' shoes. Mann served as a producer and Peter Berg as director for the movies Kingdom and Hancock. Hancock stars Will Smith as a hard-drinking superhero who has fallen out of favor with the public and who begins to have a relationship with the wife (Charlize Theron) of a public relations expert (Jason Bateman) who is helping him to repair his image. Mann also makes a cameo appearance in the film as an executive. In the fall of 2007, Mann directed two commercials for Nike. The ad campaign "Leave Nothing" features football action scenes with current NFL players Shawn Merriman and Steven Jackson. In 2009, Mann wrote and directed Public Enemies for Universal Pictures, about the Depression-era crime wave, based on Brian Burrough's nonfiction book, Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34. It starred Johnny Depp and Christian Bale. Depp played John Dillinger in the film and Bale played Melvin Purvis, the FBI agent in charge of capturing Dillinger. On May 2, 2007, Variety magazine revealed that Mann's next project would be a 1930s film noir starring Leonardo DiCaprio. In October 2007, Mann was attached to film a project, titled “Frankie Machine” about an ex mob hit man (Robert De Niro) who is lured back into his dangerous profession. It has since been announced that Martin Scorsese will direct the film. On October 10, 2007, Variety reported that Mann would be re-teaming with Will Smith on a film entitled, “Empire” for Columbia Pictures, written by John Logan. Smith will "play a contemporary global media mogul." There are also reports that Mann will write and direct a now untitled biopic of Robert Capa, the famed war photographer.

Andrew Sarris, “Michael Mann’s Collateral Cruises L.A.’s Dark Side,” New York Observer, 15 August 2004: It's a strange coincidence that Michael Mann's Collateral, the current thriller par excellence, arrives on our screens at almost the same time as Thom Andersen's muckraking documentary, Los Angeles Plays Itself, a critical analysis of Hollywood's distorted view of L.A. I recommend both films very strongly, though I have many more reservations about Mr. Andersen's enterprise than Mr. Mann's. Of course, Mr. Andersen hadn't seen Mr. Mann's film when Los Angeles Plays Itself was being made.

Still, I wonder what Mr. Andersen would have made of Collateral in terms of its portrayal of the city's history, sociology and politics-subjects he's so deeply concerned about in Los Angeles Plays Itself. I suspect that he would not be entirely pleased with the image of Los Angeles that Mr. Mann presents—a war zone between a Colombian drug cartel and the feds, serving as a backdrop for the tense relationship between a hit man, Vincent (Tom Cruise), and his cabdriver, Max (Jaime Foxx). Where are the city's poor and disenfranchised, its African-American and Hispanic minorities, Mr. Andersen might complain? I must confess at this point that I write about L.A. with the authority of almost complete ignorance, having visited its horizontal vastness on just a few brief occasions. But I know a little about movies, and it's never occurred to me that the products of a capitalist, profit-seeking industry would dwell on the ills and injustices of society-except, perhaps, through subtextual metaphors, and even then only occasionally. I am therefore perplexed that Mr. Andersen takes great film noirs like Double Indemnity and Chinatown to task for being too cynical about life in L.A. For all his knowledge of film-and it is considerable-Mr. Andersen fails to acknowledge how refreshing the "cynicism" of film noir has been as an alternative to the overbearing and overwhelming sentimentality of most Hollywood movies. Mr. Mann's Collateral is a case in point: It doesn't illuminate important social issues. Rather, it represents the latest in a long line of contributions to the cause of multiracial harmony and hegemony in American cinema after more than a half-century of shameful racism. At the very least, Mr. Mann and Mr. Cruise are to be congratulated for holding the New York premier of Collateral in a Harlem theater with Mr. Cruise's two talented African-American co-stars, Mr. Foxx and Jada Pinkett Smith, who plays Annie, a government attorney and the film's lone love interest (though she only figures at the very beginning and end of the story-a modern damsel in distress who finds her chivalric rescuer in the miraculously inspired social inferior). But the bulk of the adventure is devoted to the interplay of two male psyches, one casually and stylishly evil, the other dreamily unfulfilled but morally impregnable. Mr. Mann and screenwriter Stuart Beattie concentrate so much on these two characters that the full dimensions of the intrigue they're involved in are tossed off in hurried scenes and offhand exposition. For long stretches, the two leads are confined within the private chamber of a taxi, the drama unfolding for what seems like an eternity. Mr. Mann's mania for detail has been much commented on throughout his directing and producing career in both television (“Miami Vice,” “Vega$,” “Crime Story” ) and such noirish movies as Thief (1981), Manhunter (1986) and Heat (1995). In all of these enterprises, the "where" and the "how" are at least as important as the "what." Mr. Mann makes this point explicitly in an interview with Lynn Hirschberg in The New York Times Magazine (Aug. 5): "Making movies is a license to project yourself into all kinds of different cultures, lifestyles, value systems. I did Collateral because I was intent about seeing into the dark, and I wanted it to be set in L.A." In the production notes for Collateral, Mr. Mann is quoted in a fashion that seems to echo Mr. Andersen's local-boy knowingness in Los Angeles Plays Itself : "For people who don't live here or for some who do, it's not the Los Angeles of palm trees and Malibu, but the city of Los Angeles—Commerce, Wilmington, South Central, East L.A., downtown … and there is a unique mood to the skies above L.A., at two or three a.m. Streetlights reflect off the bottom of clouds. Even in darkness, you can see into the

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distance; silhouetted palms against the sky … I had to figure out how we were going to evoke that three-dimensional night-how to see into the L.A. night." To further his painterly vision of his setting, Mr. Mann reportedly became one of the first directors to shoot a major motion picture almost entirely digitally, and the first to use a modified Thomson Grass Valley Viper FilmStream camera (whatever that is) to capture the city in the hours between dusk and dawn with Walpurgisnacht frenzy. In the process of piercing the darkness, Collateral periodically explodes with flashes of nocturnal activity, of throbbing multitudes indifferent to the human drama unfolding in their midst. It's not always clear what is happening or why, but the story never loses its inexorably forward momentum toward the final settling of accounts between Vincent and Max. I can't actually say that I discovered Mr. Mann as an auteur, but the fact remains that I fell under his stylistic spell 20 years ago-long before I even knew his name-while I was surviving a life-threatening viral infection in a bed in New York Hospital. “Miami Vice” was the only television program that I regularly watched, simply for its ravishing mise-en-scène. Ever since then, I've been hooked on Mr. Mann's baroque mannerisms. But there is a critical tendency to downgrade the work of action-genre directors as so much style over substance. Even today, critics are inclined to overpraise thematically meatier Mann enterprises like The Insider (1999) and Ali (2001) at the expense of his shoot-'em-ups. This distinction reminds me of Jean-Luc Godard's early arguments with fellow cineastes over his simultaneous (though paradoxical) admiration for both Alfred Hitchcock and Roberto Rossellini. The official line at the time on these two filmmakers was that Hitchcock had nothing to say and said it beautifully, whereas Rossellini had a great deal to say but said it clumsily. Mr. Godard insisted—perverse as it seemed at the time—that beneath Hitchcock's stylistic virtuosity there had to be significant content, and that Rossellini's weighty content had to be served by a significant personal visual style. Godard was right, of course, and it would be foolish to make the same mistake with Mr. Mann. Throughout the gruesome cat-and-mouse game being played by Vincent and Max in Collateral, there's something psychologically, dramatically and even sociologically interesting going on. Mr. Cruise, with his neatly cut gray hair and stylishly fitted grayish suit, exudes the cool chic of a completely amoral hit man disguised as a fastidious business executive just passing through L.A. He is not a tempter, but a true terminator with a whimsical, leisurely modus operandi, coupled with a compulsive professional pride in his murderous work. Indeed, in two crowded encounters with persons on both sides of the law out to kill him, he displays almost superhuman capabilities in destroying his enemies. This makes the hitherto self-deceiving drifting-through-life Max an unlikely but mythologically heroic challenger to the flame-belching dragon that is Vincent. There have been many cinematic meditations on the existential vulnerability and claustrophobia of the taxi-driving profession. But Collateral is truly unusual in transforming every cabdriver's worst nightmare into the means of Max's salvation-from a life not fully lived to one in which he realizes that nothing is

gained without risk. Sound familiar? We are back in James' Beast in the Jungle—only this time, as in Intimate Strangers, the beast is vanquished as Max and Annie head off together into the L.A. dawn. As for Mr. Cruise, he's taken something of a career risk here—almost but not quite the same risk that Tom Hanks took with his roles as the gay lawyer in Philadelphia (1993) and the mobster in Road to Perdition (2002). For one thing, Mr. Hanks has been overrated as a supposedly subtle character actor just as much as Mr. Cruise has been underrated. For another, Mr. Hanks has never played a role as unabashedly monstrous and menacing as Mr. Cruise's Vincent. As for Mr. Foxx's Max, he displays a sufficiently observant gift of the gab to earn the interest and business card of a comparatively upscale government attorney, Ms. Pinkett Smith's Annie, who also happens to be the last target that Vincent undertakes to eliminate for the Colombian drug cartel. Fortunately,

Max and Annie have established enough verbal chemistry in their earlier brief encounter to sustain them through their final ordeal with Vincent. Even Mr. Andersen might approve of the fitting irony of staging the climactic chase scenes aboard the "ghetto" mass-transit line. The confusion surrounding the too-little-and-too-late shenanigans of the narcotics agents played by Mark Ruffalo, Peter Berg and Bruce McCall suggests Mr. Mann's understandable skepticism about the unending war on drugs, but

that's no reason to denigrate the conviction that Mr. Ruffalo, in particular, brings to this and every other role he plays. Meanwhile, Mr. Andersen's nearly three-hour-long cinema essay, Los Angeles Plays Itself (which recently concluded a two-week run at Film Forum), is required DVD viewing for anyone interested in the cinema of L.A.—its "look," its politics, its lies (both artistic and inartistic)—as well as for the director's pervasively judgmental tone. In dealing with Los Angeles as a sacred subject, Mr. Andersen finds a betrayal on just about every movie set. As a self-described "accidental auteurist," I still firmly believe that I have stumbled on vast treasures of Hollywood's subtextual glories—glories that most serious political writers would never imagine. It seems that every week in the Sunday entertainment section of every newspaper in the land, some academic expert will be on hand to expose the errors of fact in just about any movie on any subject, past or present. There is no point in arguing with these solemn, truth-seeking naysayers. If I am still reviewing movies at all, it's because I've found something else in the cinema that's made it such an important art form for the past century and beyond. And this is not in line with any presumed fidelity to a political program, however enlightened or just it may be. You may disagree with me, and if you do, please be kind to my escapist delusions: They've kept me going thus far. Bryant Frazer: How DP Dion Beebe adapted to HD for Michael Mann’s Collateral (International Cinematographers Guild): "Frantically, between takes, we were trying to figure out what was wrong," Beebe recalls. Condensation? No. Did someone smudge the lens? Nope. It turns out that the Collateral crew fell victim to HD camera design. "We pulled the lens off [and checked it]. We changed the lens. We finally went through the checklist on the

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actual camera and found that a dial had been knocked to the next setting, introducing a low-contrast filter. I’m not used to having filter dials on cameras. It’s a small, silly thing, but it can completely ruin a sequence." Dion Beebe is not just a talented director of photography; he’s a chameleon. He manipulates the filmed image with great creative dexterity, mastering everything from the unhappy slice-of-life aesthetic of director John Curran’s Praise to the very theatrical lighting schemes and razzle-dazzle demanded by Chicago, which earned him an Oscar nomination. Last year, he brought an unnerving impressionistic style to director Jane Campion’s In the Cut, taking full advantage of shift-and-tilt lens effects and draping the film’s urban imagery in unusual colors — all in pursuit of revealing more details about the mindset of the Meg Ryan character, Frannie. ("He has a narrative brain," mused Campion in a magazine article at the time.) What’s more, Beebe has achieved these many looks without the advantage of digital intermediates, which remained uncharted territory for him. Despite his obviously high comfort level with celluloid, the idea of digitally lensing the new Michael Mann film— an urban thriller with Tom Cruise playing an assassin who forces cabbie Jamie Foxx to shuttle him around a darkened city over the course of one long Los Angeles night — didn’t actually intimidate him. It just kept him on his toes. On an HD shoot, Beebe quickly learned, the devil’s in the details — like the sudden appearance of filter dials on your camera. "With a film camera, you load the film and you go, and you know that if you’re running six cameras, you’ve got a standardized system in place so you’re getting the same results," he explains. "But if you’re running four HD cameras, you’d better step through each, making sure that the gain setting is the same, that the matrix settings are all the same— that there aren’t color shifts within them. You need to switch between them on the HD monitors and make sure they’re all matching up. There’s none of this just-pick-it-up-and-roll unless you’ve pre-set everything beforehand. It’s all very doable, but there’s a whole new set of things you’ve got to factor in." Beebe acknowledges that Collateral has spurred "a lot of discussion" about the continued viability and relevance of the film medium, concerns that he dismisses as largely irrelevant to the job at hand, which is storytelling. In the end, he says, both film and HD formats are just tools used in service of a narrative. The trick is to get out of the way of technology, rather than stay in thrall to it. "There can be information overload when you step into the digital domain and the HD world, in terms of compression and bits and storage— these elements that, in the end, have nothing to do with what you’re trying to do in telling the story," he says. "My feeling is that technology will take care of itself. You will have the expertise around you to solve the technical challenges you’re going to meet. I’ve always felt happy to just step over the technology and find a way of creating the image."

Working In Camera "A lot of the adjustments on color and saturation were done in camera. You’ve got to be careful about not sitting at the decks and adjusting color and saturation too wildly. You can be seduced by having that at your fingertips. You look at an image and start to adjust the green or the red and you think, "Well, that looks good."

But in the light of the overall film, you can’t be adjusting the image with every scene that you shoot." Ready, Set, Shoot! Any DP making a first move into digital cinematography might expect to have time to study the new format, running tests and experimenting with different approaches, before actually lighting a scene and rolling tape. But Beebe landed on Collateral with no ramp-up time. Two weeks of production had already been completed with cinematographer Paul Cameron (Swordfish,

Man on Fire), whom Beebe was hired to replace. So he hit the ground running, calmly assessing how Mann’s decision to shoot digital would complement the story he was trying to tell. "Certainly when you look at it on screen, the format is different from film," Beebe notes. "It’s a different result. Because you’re seeing a night world that is richly illuminated, with an enormous amount of depth, it’s slightly unsettling. It feels almost otherworldly, and it’s somehow a little bit alienating. I think that works so well with the storyline and with the journey of these two characters in this cab, because it becomes this alien landscape. You’re left with a different impression, certainly, than if it were

shot on film." The decision to switch between the Grass Valley Viper camera, Sony’s HDW-F900 camcorder and 35mm film throughout the shoot had more to do with practical issues than with aesthetics. For example, Beebe says the production favored the F900s, with their onboard recording, when the camera needed to be very portable— scenes shot inside the cab, for instance— and film cameras were used when action scenes needed to be overcranked, one area where digital cinematography still

lags far behind the curve. The Viper’s main disadvantage was its umbilical-cord connection to the hefty HDCAM-SR decks that were used to record the data. (Sony has since introduced the portable SRW-1, a streamlined approach to image capture that would have been welcome on Collateral.) But that inconvenience was outweighed by the Viper’s ability to capture a widescreen image across the camera’s full vertical resolution, rather than simply masking the top and bottom of the frame to the desired aspect ratio. In the end, Beebe says, the Vipers "did the bulk of the work." Film Outs " Michael had a digital projector set up at his production office where test prints were done. When we had to, we would do film-outs. But the projector had been set up to closely resemble the look of the film-out. I remember looking at my first set of digital projections, and then the same footage being projected on film. I was really surprised how closely aligned the two of them were. That

Dassin—NIGHT AND THE CITY—7

transition to film was so good— you expect a certain amount of image alteration or loss with any transfer from one medium to another, but I was very impressed with how it filmed out." If Mann’s decision to shoot HD had a direct bearing on the narrative, so did his choice of L.A.-area locations, which he documented thoroughly in a portfolio of digital stills that he handed over to Beebe. "One of the great things about Michael is he’s very well prepared," Beebe says. "He had compiled a visual storyboard of the film with digital stills and stand-ins, walking through the actual locations and photographing them with a digital still camera. He had previsualized the film on location. I was able to use a lot of that information, plus a lot of weekends, to catch up and stay a week ahead of the game." Beebe did advance scouting work before the production actually showed up at a given location, counting on Mann’s photography to give him insight into exactly why a particular place was selected. Dimming the Digital Glare When it came time to actually light and shoot a location, Beebe relied on his understanding of the latitude of different film stocks to give him ideas of how to cope with the different responses of the digital cameras. "You’re working in a new realm of sensitivity," he says. "These cameras have an enormous range at the very low end of the sensitivity curve. At the bottom end of the curve, where film drops off or picks up a lot of grain, these cameras sort of kick in." So Beebe found that he couldn’t light the film in a conventional way. About 80 percent of Collateral was shot on location after dark, which meant he was usually dealing with a certain degree of existing lighting. The aesthetic strategy became to push the digital cameras as far as they would go in terms of revealing details that would be hidden back in the darkness shrouding any film-based shoot. "Lighting in that environment required a lot of subtlety," he recalls. "It was about supplementing existing lighting and being as transparent with it as possible." HD Advantages "You can walk into a situation with a lot less impact than you would have shooting film. Right now, you’re still carrying a lot of weight with you, but it’s going to become more streamlined. You will have this lightweight HD camera with an on-board recorder and a small HD monitor as a reference, and you’ll be a little lighter on your feet. Maybe it will become like film, where you no longer have to run it through the big HD screens but reference it on smaller monitors and build up the same confidence we have in negative. Right now it’s not a quick fix. But HD is an incredible format, and it’s here to stay— and I feel the same way about film." In practical terms, what that meant was that Beebe ended up ditching a lot of the film’s existing lighting package after he came on board. Helium balloons, for instance, became troublesome because the cameras no longer read their ubiquitous glow as diffuse, non-directional lighting. "On HD, every time we sent a balloon up, I could really feel the direction of it," Beebe says, recounting his decision to eventually stop using them altogether. Similarly, the crew stopped pulling heavy lighting gear like 18Ks or 12K Pars off

the truck. "They were too strong. You pull them up, and by the time you wire them back and add layers of diffusion, you may as well have used a 4K Par instead of an 18." Instead, a key lighting tool became the Kino Flo Image 80, a bank of eight four-foot tube lights that’s typically used for soft lighting on film sets. For HD, Beebe scaled them way back, using a neutral density gel to drop the light two stops, then adding several layers of bleached muslin and finally a layer of bobbinette. On location, four of these rigged Image 80s, heavily diffused and knocked back, could be placed around the camera as low-level fill lights to supplement the existing lighting at a given location. Some scenes, including those that required 360-degree visibility, had to be lit with bigger and higher lighting units, but mostly the shoot relied on copious fill lights as well as authentic sodium vapor and mercury vapor lighting units— the stuff you’d actually find lighting a city street at night. Those false streetlights could be placed close to the action or used to fill in dark areas. Finally, the Vipers required a little more TLC to keep the brightest parts of the image from blasting out. "They just couldn’t hold the highlights as well as the F900s, which was a little bit of a problem," he says. "Your on-set scenic artist, the on-set painter, becomes another key player. If there was a light fitting in the shot, we’d have to paint the tubes in order to bring it down to an acceptable range. Obviously, streetlights were just streetlights, but a lot of other highlights we’d be dulling down, making those adjustments so that we wouldn’t get those distracting burn-outs.

Help Wanted: Call Him the HD Data Wrangler There were some new job titles on the set of Collateral — a small crew of HD gurus was on hand to shepherd all the data around. Digital imaging technician Dave Canning, an Emmy Award-winning broadcast engineer who first helped Mann mix film with video footage in Ali, was the HD point man. "I was amazed at how robust all the gear was— amazed it held up through the long hours being rattled around on the insert car at night," Canning recalls.

"The vibration would be so bad sometimes that you couldn’t even focus. It was like being in turbulence, flying on instruments in a cargo plane. They would stay in record [mode], just driving 65 to 70 mph on rough roads in downtown L.A. " How many ways can your HD camera be knocked out of commission? Canning knows them all. Bumps on the road would trip circuit breakers, batteries would go dead, and power cords would come loose. "They all looked the same to the director," laments Canning, who says the only solution is to quickly figure out an approach that works in a given situation and then adhere to it through the rest of the shoot. "We spent 20-some days on this insert car, and finally came up with a system that worked. You don’t have time to be‘figuring it out’ when you have Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx pulled over on the side of the road." "It was quite a different package than one would traditionally use on a night exterior. You’d have the Muscos out, maybe you’d line a street with 18Ks, and it would be a very big set-up. But we were doing night streets with nothing but supplemental lighting and getting some amazing, exciting results out of it."

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Living On Video Working in HD introduces a few new wrinkles to the production environment, too. For one thing, the video screens on an HD shoot display crisp, pristine and accurate images that trump the cameras’ tiny viewfinders. "You stop looking through the camera," Beebe says. "You’ll stand back and look at the scene, at the lighting, but you’re stepping to the monitor to assess the final result— even to the point that the focus pullers stand behind the monitors because of the sharpness of the image. It becomes a more accurate way of ensuring focus." That’s not to say the system was trouble-free. "The viewing system was not great," Beebe admits, explaining that removing distortion from the widescreen image, which was unacceptable to the director, introduced a lag in live playback, which was an issue for the people actually running the camera….With Vipers, all the weight is up front because there’s no recording deck. They’re difficult to operate handheld," Beebe says. "So they were busy building counterweights off the back and finding things to hold onto on the front of the camera. They were holding onto the matte box, and more than once that came tumbling off during a shoot. There were a lot of things that, normally, you wouldn’t tolerate. But this was a technology that was giving us something we were not going to get anywhere else. "I think in the end it was well worth it. In some ways, it was just the right application of this technology— using this unique feature, this incredible sensitivity, in a film that is set completely at night on the streets of L.A. "

You Da Mann! So what was it like working for a notorious perfectionist? "You do take on a whole new appreciation of the intricacy of constructing shots and sequences in Michael’s work," Beebe says. "I was always a huge fan, but he is completely uncompromising. And if he wants a particular background at a particular moment as we drive by a mural somewhere downtown for a line of dialogue, that’s what we’re going to get. It’s not happenstance; it’s by design. It’s an interesting struggle between creating a feeling constantly of spontaneity and all these ‘found’ moments. The reality is these are designed and worked out beforehand." Beebe’s next project will require immersion in an entirely different milieu. He just returned from a two-week location scout/cultural exchange in Kyoto, Japan, researching the world of Memoirs of a Geisha, the project that reunites him with Rob Marshall, the director of Chicago. "It will be shot on film," he declares. "There’s nothing that convinces me that it’s not something best achieved on a film format. That’s how I approach any project— the needs and requirements of that project. If there is an advantage in one medium over another, that should be how you reach the decision. I certainly would have no hesitation shooting again in HD if the project called for it." For more on camerawork in Collateral, see Jay Holben’s excellent article in American Cinematographer, “Hell on Wheels,” online at : http://www.theasc.com/magazine/aug04/collateral/page1.html

COMING UP IN THE FALL 2010 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XXI:

August 31 1923 Buster Keaton Our Hospitality (accompanied by the legendary Philip Carli on electronic piano)

September 7 1932 Jean Renoir Boudu Saved from Drowning September 14 1941 John Huston The Maltese Falcon

September 21 1959 Alfred Hitchcock North by Northwest September 28 1961 Kent Mackenzie The Exiles

October 5 1963 Federico Fellini 8½ October 12 1966 Mike Nichols Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

October 19 1971 Eric Rohmer Claire’s Knee (awaiting confirmation) October 26 1973 Hal Ashby The Last Detail

November 2 1980 John Mackenzie The Long Good Friday November 9 1987 Wim Wenders Wings of Desire

November 16 1988 Charles Crichton A Fish Called Wanda November 23 1994 Wong Kar Wei Chunking Express (awaiting confirmation)

November 30 2003 Chan-wook Park Oldboy December 7 2005 Deepa Mehta Water

CONTACTS:

...email Diane Christian: engdc@buffalo.edu …email Bruce Jackson bjackson@buffalo.edu

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....for cast and crew info on any film: http://imdb.com/

The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the Market Arcade Film & Arts Center and State University of New York at Buffalo

with support from the Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News