Public Enemies

[MacGuffin]

Trailer here.

Release Date: July 1st, 2009 (wide)

Starring: Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard, Channing Tatum, David Wenham 

Directed by: Michael Mann 

Premise: Set during the Depression-era's great crime wave, the story of the government's attempt to stop legendary criminals John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson and Pretty Boy Floyd. This operation transformed the FBI into the first federal police force from the powerless agency it once was.

[Gold Trumpet]

The question will be, does digital have a good enough look for a historical drama? Some of the shots in the trailer bugged me, but the verdict is still out until I see the film.

Part of the film was shot an hour away from my hometown. In the trailer those scenes are all in the woods (Yea, woods and rural towns are my existence). They did a casting call for extras so my friends and I considered road tripping it, but you know how good ideas on the whim go?

[SiliasRuby]

Do we, GT? hehe. Yeah, we will have to wait till we see it. It looks like a film that could be plenty of fun, even if it doesn't completely work. The trailer makes me want to rewatch 'Heat'

[picolas]

The question will be, does digital have a good enough look for a historical drama? Some of the shots in the trailer bugged me, but the verdict is still out until I see the film.

yeah. was that even 24 fps? the.. motion of it looked really home video-y. like if you made a movie in high school that happened to star johnny depp.

[©brad]

The question will be, does digital have a good enough look for a historical drama? Some of the shots in the trailer bugged me, but the verdict is still out until I see the film.

yeah. was that even 24 fps? the.. motion of it looked really home video-y. like if you made a movie in high school that happened to star johnny depp.

There are parts of Collateral and Miami Vice that have that same feel, like it was shot on a handycam. It's weird...

[Gold Trumpet]

The question will be, does digital have a good enough look for a historical drama? Some of the shots in the trailer bugged me, but the verdict is still out until I see the film.

yeah. was that even 24 fps? the.. motion of it looked really home video-y. like if you made a movie in high school that happened to star johnny depp.

There are parts of Collateral and Miami Vice that have that same feel, like it was shot on a handycam. It's weird...

That I accept a little bit more. They are both modern films and the stories deal with urban grunge in their own ways. The digital filmmaking was tied to the themes, but I don't see how it will work with a historical epic like Public Enemires. It's even more ironic because Michael Mann set our generation's gold standard with cinematography in historical films when he made The Last of the Mohicans. All artists should change and evolve, but I see his new favorite cameras making less sense for this film.

But I could be being stupid because Francois Truffaut once said that a historical film set at the time of Christ would have to be black and white because all films back then would have been black and white. That made no sense and it may make no sense for me to hope for regular film just because my history in movie watching says that historical epics are done in film. Let's just say I haven't warmed up to Mann's experiments with digital (Fincher is far more impressive) so I don't know if this is right.

[pete]

ballsy move with the look.  michael mann is using a different cinematographer and camera though.  the harsh look seems to be a choice, since it was the same camera they use on benjamin button, the cinealta f23, which is a fairly new camera.  from what I'd read about the miami vice and collateral shoot - the workflow with the viper HD cams were extremely complicated and something that looked like a casual handheld shot took a lot of effort, since the modified camera was extremely bulky, heavy, and tethered to a van.  the cinealta is much lighter but I'm assuming it was also tethered and modified.  weird how much work could be put into shots looking like that.

[Stefen]

I like the look. It gives it a more realistic look. Not gritty (although it has grit) but just a more realistic look. It's more believable.

I trust Mike Mann.

[Bethie]

such pretty faces.

[MacGuffin]

Johnny Depp's 'Public Enemies' Will Leave Out FBI Chief's Cross-Dressing
Source: MTV

As anyone who has seen "Stage Beauty" will remember, Billy Crudup is not above slipping into women's clothing when his art demands it. So now, with the new trailer for his upcoming flick "Public Enemies" burning up the Internet, we just had to ask: How comprehensive is his portrayal of FBI founder (and supposed cross-dresser) J. Edgar Hoover?

"I won't be [cross-dressing] – well, not on film," Crudup said of the flick, which casts him alongside Johnny Depp and Christian Bale.

With a grin he insisted that between takes in his trailer, however, all bets were off: "I like to do my due-diligence and really get into the character."

Directed by Michael "The Man" Mann, the flick dramatizes the government's efforts to take down notorious gangsters in the 1930's. The movie brings us Depp as bank robber John Dillinger, Channing Tatum as Pretty Boy Floyd, and "Inkheart" star Stephen Graham as Baby Face Nelson. Bale is Melvin Purvis, a lawman appointed by Hoover to take down the badboys.

But, although Crudup is seen multiple times throughout the trailer, the "Watchmen" star revealed to us that his role didn't give him a lot of screen time in the July 1st flick.

"It's a supporting part," he said of the J. Edgar Hoover role. "It's kind of a cameo."

The film's poster – which apparently features a 20-foot-tall Johnny Depp – would seem to agree. But with or without Billy Crudup in a dress, "Public Enemies" has become one of the most anticipated films of the upcoming summer, and we can only hope that "Heat" director Michael Mann can once again re-invent the genre of crime flicks.

"It's a movie that's really about Purvis and Dillinger," Crudup said of the film's central showdown. "I'm there to get Christian Bale motivated to go and get Johnny Depp."

[MacGuffin]

Tips on how to make 'Enemies'
By Susan King; Los Angeles Times

Billy Crudup gets asked the same two questions whenever he tells friends he's playing infamous FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover in Michael Mann's gangster thriller "Public Enemies."

The first question is always an excited "Really?" says the 40-year-old Tony Award-winning actor. "The second question is, 'Did you put on a dress?'

"There you have it," says Crudup, who was last seen as the towering blue Dr. Manhattan in "Watchmen." Crudup promises he keeps this Hoover strictly in the closet.

Set in 1933, the action-thriller, which opens July 1, revolves around the legendary Depression-era bank robber John Dillinger (Johnny Depp), whose crime spree in Chicago made him Public Enemy No. 1 to Hoover and the recently formed FBI and its top agent, Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale).

Crudup spent just two weeks working on the role last year in Chicago and Wisconsin, and said his time playing opposite Bale was great. But he's still looking forward to working with Depp -- the two had no scenes together.

Crudup says that the "Public Enemies" script, by Ronan Bennett and Mann and Ann Biderman, was rich with character development -- "filled with this mixture, which seemed always to be Hoover's problem, of ego and patriotism. That was more than enough for me to tackle him."

Mann, says Crudup, always sort of characterized Hoover as a visionary to the actor. " 'Visionary' to me speaks of somebody who is attempting to change society or culture for the good," Crudup says. "It was interesting to think of him in a somewhat positive light."

Crudup was in awe of Mann's skills as a filmmaker ("The Insider," "Heat").

"He's incredibly ambitious and has a fierce intellect and is driven to create spectacular work," he says. "He is fastidious about everything and really likes to be the singular voice behind, not just the spirit of, but the minutiae of the story he's telling. It's impressive . . . I barely have the mind to juggle my lines!"

[Stefen]

This will be the best movie of the year. And this year will be awesome.

[MacGuffin]

Michael Mann: The inside scoop on 'Public Enemies'
Source: Los Angeles Times

Hollywood is full of filmmakers who are uncompromising perfectionists, but only Michael Mann could boast that he not only has a favorite room to screen his films -- the Zanuck theater on the Fox lot -- but also a favorite row in the theater where you should park your fanny.

"If you sit in row J at the Zanuck, you'll find yourself in the perfect mean, the center of the bell curve for every theater in America," he told me the other day, camped out in his Santa Monica offices, surrounded by memorabilia from decades of his work, which includes a host of wildly compelling films and TV shows, including "Crime Story," "Heat," "The Insider," "Ali" and "Collateral."

"If your film can play in row J, you're in the heart of the zone," he says. "I know some people that want to sit farther back, but that's the worst place to sit. If you're too far back, the surrounds are too large."

Even though we got together to talk about "Public Enemies," his new film that stars Johnny Depp as John Dillinger, our conversation ranged far afield, since Mann often sounds more like a Marxist history professor than a filmmaker, waxing just as eloquent about the broad historical forces that shaped Depression-era gangsters like Dillinger as how the notorious criminal managed to bust out of a high-security prison armed with a wooden pistol.

At 66, Mann still has the swagger and stamina of men half his age. Our interview was pushed back a couple of hours because the filmmaker had pulled an all-nighter, staying up until 9 a.m. overseeing digital transfer work on "Public Enemies," which has its first public showing June 23 at the Los Angeles Film Festival. (It opens nationwide July 1.) Even though he was going on scant hours of sleep, Mann looked fresh, as if staying up all night were a tonic.

"Actually it's exhilarating at this stage, when it all comes together," he explains in a voice that still had the echo of his upbringing in Chicago's working-class Humboldt Park neighborhood. "The film feels like it's containable, in your hands, almost like it was when it just an idea on three paragraphs on a piece of paper."

Mann is part of an elite Hollywood club of veteran directors -- notably Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood, Ridley Scott and David Fincher -- who are both held in high critical esteem and act as magnets for A-list movie star talent, allowing them a freedom to pursue the kind of dark, difficult material largely out of favor with today's franchise-obsessed movie studios. Mann has never enjoyed a mega hit -- of his nine features, only one, "Collateral," made more than $72 million domestically. His last film, "Miami Vice," was a box-office dud. But he has earned the right to make a wide range of absorbing films, largely thanks to the presence of such stars as Will Smith, Tom Cruise, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Jaime Foxx and now Depp in the leading roles.

It's easy to see what attracts such star power. Mann has a great ear for dialogue, a brilliant eye for action and the beguiling charm of a guy who's comfortable hanging out with all sorts of ex-cops and hoods. His technical advisor on "Public Enemies" was a convicted armed robber who once, as Mann explains with a twinkle in his eye, "stole a diamond as big as a grapefruit."

But what happens when studio bosses try to control a filmmaker who is uncontrollable? Keep reading:

Being in the Michael Mann business isn't for the faint of heart. After butting heads with Mann, any number of studio heads have sworn to never work with him again, exhausted by what they view as his budget-busting intransigence. ("Public Enemies" cost roughly $100 million and came in on time, in part because the production had to be finished before last summer's presumptive SAG strike date.)

But after a few years pass, the stance often softens, since the artistry of the film remains long after memories of the clashes with Mann fade. When Mann made "Ali," he battled with Sony Pictures chief Amy Pascal, who was especially infuriated by the director's insistence on retaining a couple of obscenities in the picture, which prevented the film from earning a PG-13 rating that would have helped it reach a far broader audience.

But now all is forgiven. "No matter what I said at the time, I think Michael is one of our most gifted filmmakers -- we're always trying to develop new directing projects for him," says Pascal. "You put all the disagreements behind you because you remember the great work, not the pain of the moment." She laughs. "You forget about the pain of childbirth too. I mean, whatever you go through, you still want another baby. It's like that with Michael too." 

It's not so hard to see parallels between Mann, who has the fierce independence of an earlier generation of Hollywood filmmakers, and Dillinger, who is portrayed in "Public Enemies" as something of an anachronism, a lone wolf being squeezed out of the bank-robbing trade by the growing corporatization of crime. A key element in Mann's conception of the film -- which he wrote with Ronan Bennett and Ann Biderman -- is that it wasn't just J. Edgar Hoover's FBI who was gunning for Dillinger, but the newly organized crime syndicates who saw freelance outlaws like Dillinger as threats to their nationwide business aspirations.

"Dillinger was actually obsolete, but he was so damn good at what he did that he managed to survive, despite all the horrible attrition around him," explains Mann, who makes a point in the film of showing that virtually all of Dillinger's cohorts were gunned down before he famously meets his end outside Chicago's Biograph Theater. "There are two big evolutionary forces at work. There's what Hoover is doing with the FBI, with information gathering and data management. And there's organized crime, being cash rich, moving into corporate capitalism, and they don't want these Depression outlaws around [inspiring the Feds to pass crime legislation] against moving money across interstate lines."

Mann had always seen the 1930s as fertile territory. Back in the 1980s, he wrote a screenplay about Alvin Karpis, a Chicago bank robber who often crossed paths with Dillinger (he appears in "Public Enemies," played by Giovanni Ribisi). Nothing came of it, but Mann got interested again when he read an excerpt from Bryan Burrough's book "Public Enemies" in Vanity Fair. The filmmaker teamed up with producer Kevin Misher to put the project together. The first draft of the script was written by Bennett, a novelist Mann thought would have an interesting take on Dillinger, since when Bennett was a young IRA sympathizer he was accused of being involved with a series of bank robberies and ended up serving time in prison.

The film paints Dillinger in somber, fatalistic tones. Even though he has a soulful relationship with a Chicago hat-check girl (played in the film by Marion Cotillard), Dillinger always has a dark cloud of doom hovering over his head. He knows he won't be around long enough to worry about tomorrow. But he's also a populist icon. When a farmer offers him a few dollars in the middle of a bank heist, Dillinger refuses to take the cash, saying, "We're not here for your money. We're here for the bank's money."

To Mann, it's easy to identify with Dillinger. "He was a charismatic outlaw hero who spoke to people in the depths of the Depression. He assaulted the institution that made their lives miserable -- the bank -- and he outsmarted the institution -- the government -- that couldn't fix the problems brought about by the Depression."

Mann uses the same word over and over to describe Dillinger -- brio. When Dillinger broke out of Indiana's supposedly impregnable Crown Point jail, "he didn't just take a car, he takes the sheriff's new car, a V-8 Ford, and then he wrote a letter to Henry Ford, telling him that whenever he stole a car, he wanted to steal a Ford."

Once Mann had a finished script, he went to Depp, having been a fan of his work, especially offbeat fare like "Libertine." "Johnny is not afraid to take chances," says Mann. "I thought this was a character he could relate to internally, to mine the deeper currents within himself, the way he would if he were ever to play a musician. I wanted to see Johnny go inside this guy, to do something emotionally open and expressive."

So how does a filmmaker know he's in sync with an actor when they're preparing a film? "The more you do it, the more you know it when you know," Mann says. "When Russell Crowe came in for 'The Insider,' I thought it was going nowhere -- and suddenly we were reading a speech and after two lines -- wham! -- he was Jeffrey Wigand. It was all him." Mann had a similar moment of takeoff with Depp a few weeks before shooting began. "As he was reading, I started hearing the voice I heard in my head when I was writing the words. It was great."

It wasn't always great on the set. According to people who were there, Depp, accustomed to the clockwork production schedule on Gore Verbinski's "Pirates of the Caribbean" films, had trouble adjusting to Mann's more idiosyncratic schedule, which often forced Depp to wait for long hours until Mann was ready to proceed. (I got a little taste of it myself, cooling my heels in Mann's outer office before the filmmaker came out to meet me, with his assistant explaining that I'd have to wait "until he finishes thinking.")

Mann says reports that Depp sometimes left the set in frustration are untrue. "That's nonsense," he says. "He may have kept me waiting, I have may kept him waiting. That's not a big deal. For me, what goes on in a film set is sacrosanct, so I have nothing to say about what went on."

Mann isn't especially enamored by the tag of uncompromising perfectionist either. "If someone says, 'Are you a perfectionist?' I'd say no," he says. "There are many scenes in this film that were great that aren't in it anymore because I don't believe in wasting time on a meaningless detail at the risk of blowing the richness that's down the block. I know what's important [in a film] and what's not."

For Mann, it's all about delivering the goods. not just to the studio but also the moviegoer. "When I set out to make a movie, part of the thrill is the level of commitment," he says. "I ain't playing, you bet. I don't leave things half-[done], saying, 'Well, that scene is good enough. We can move on.' That doesn't happen. The ambition -- and it's a sizable one -- is to make a movie that has a dramatic impact on people."

[Stefen]

She laughs. "You forget about the pain of childbirth too. I mean, whatever you go through, you still want another baby. It's like that with Michael too." 

haha.

I can't wait for this. I trust Mike Mann. Miami Vice had it's moments but I think Mann got too caught up in the nostalgia of the project. He seems to be focused on this.

[cinemanarchist]

I loved Miami Vice and will wait quietly by until it achieves the misunderstood classic status that it so deserves. I will be seeing P.E. tonight at midnight...didn't think this was the type of movie to warrant a midnight show but apparently Depp + Summer = Midnight.