“One of my great weaknesses”: Michael Mann names his greatest career regret
The 1980s may not be known for its cinematic quality in the critical sense, but there’s no doubt that the decade produced some of the greatest commercial successes of all time, from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial to Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones series. While Spielberg was an exemplary success throughout the decade, he wasn’t the only filmmaker to perfectly toe the line between artistry and commercialism, with the likes of John Carpenter, James Cameron and Michael Mann being similar creatives.
Having created a number of minor low-budget shorts and TV movies before the decade began, the world of cinema wouldn’t wake up to the emergence of Mann till 1981 and the release of Thief, a slick and stylish crime thriller about a safecracker who accepts ‘one last job’. Arriving as if the work of a veteran filmmaker who had long occupied the pinnacle of Hollywood, Thief was a masterful film with a fully-formed performance from James Caan at the forefront.
“When Michael Mann came out with Thief, with James Caan, he blew out minds,” director Quentin Tarantino once concurred, “It was a new guy out there on the crime film scene who wrote great gritty dialogue, and he had a wonderful visual sense”. The slick, glossy charm of Thief certainly wasn’t lost on Tarantino either, with the essence of the crime tale reappearing in his own 1992 film Reservoir Dogs and 1997’s Jackie Brown.
Despite Mann going on to helm such celebrated works as 1992’s period adventure flick The Last of the Mohicans, the crime classic Heat and Tom Cruises’ smooth thriller Collateral, many consider his debut feature film to be his best work. It’s unlikely that the director himself would agree, however, admitting that there is one “great weakness” about the movie when in discussion with the DGA.
Asked by the interviewer why he favoured the electronic score by Tangerine Dream in the film over the blues soundtrack that he wanted to use previously, Mann responded: “One of my great weaknesses is that I’m still hung up on the choice I made over that score”. Continuing, he added: “Thirty years later I’m still debating this. By string theory, in some alternate reality, there’s a version of Thief with wall-to-wall blues”.
The second soundtrack album by the German electronic music band Tangerine Dream, who had previously performed the score for William Friedkin’s classic thriller Sorcerer from 1977, the sound of Thief quickly became one of its major selling points despite it earning a Razzie nomination at the time for ‘Worst Musical Score’. Adding to the allure of Caan’s central character, Frank, the electronic music also fitted snugly beside similar soundtracks from the time.
Speaking in more detail about his approach to music, Mann added: “As research, music enters early for me. If you can find that piece of music which evokes the central emotion of one of your characters, some pivotal crisis where he or she must rouse themselves from despair and manifest something very aggressive within his or her own mind – this becomes the piece of music for that moment”.
Take a look at the trailer for Mann’s iconic thriller movie, Thief below.
