How the Heat Diner scene met, according to director Michael Mann

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This year marks the 30th anniversary of the classic criminal thriller by Michael Mann, “Heat”, who saw the legendary actors Al Pacino and Robert de Niro appear together in the same scene for the first time despite the co-star previously in “The Godfather Part II”. The “Heat” dinner scene, in which the Pacino world cop, Vincent Hanna, sits in front of the stoic thief of De Niro, Neil McCauley, has been an obsession for a certain type of cinephile for years, and has been the subject of tributes through the film and the television specter, including most recently in “Adacevil: Born Again”. Before the closing screening of the night of “Heat” at the Festival du Film Classique du TCM 2025, Pacino and writer / director Michael Mann participated in a Q&A where they talked about this moment and what he felt on the set at the time.

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Pacino explained how much he felt comfortable working with De Niro, whom he had known for decades before the start of production, thanks to Mann’s competence behind the camera and the way the director created a feeling of security for his actors. But when the moderator Ben Mankiewicz asked Mann if he felt an additional feeling of importance while turning this scene because of what it meant in the great diagram of the history of the film, Mann replied cool as one of his characters: “Not at all”.

“At that time, we had a very in-depth pre-production, we have been shooting for five to six weeks,” said Mann. “When I plan a film, I work very hard in planning, and I take a scene like this which is terribly important and I generally put it in the middle of the calendar. Because when you make a film, everyone improves to do this film as you did. So, you would never do something. […] We were concerned about our characters. About Neil McCauley, Vincent Hanna, and their meaning meeting. So no one thinks outside the context of the history of the film, these characters and this collision which is carefully united by all the events that precede it. “”

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One of my favorite Q&A parties was speaking of the nature of Neil and Vincent, the two twin pillars of this story. “It’s a very complex scene,” he said. “I cannot imagine that no one else does this, except Al and Bob. These two men are really antithetical for each other. They have components of their personalities who are completely opposed, and two who are exactly the same. They are the only two in the film which are sometimes aware of itself. […] It’s really a very careful moment. “”

I had never heard him explain a key factor that made the choice of the location to film this scene, and why he chose to have three cameras at the same time during the shooting of the scene:

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“This is why I chose Kate Mantilini, because it was a black and white interior. […] I wanted to make your attention focused on what’s going on. Because when Bob has changed like that [he moves slightly in his chair]And puts his hand closer to the place where he probably has a hidden weapon, [during] The dialogue, you would see Al doing another movement that was counter. There was a kind of organic unity at the catch. So I wanted to capture both, their work, simultaneously. This means that there is an organic unit to take 10 which is different from taking 11 and different from the catch 12. This is why I used three cameras. Most of the stage takes 11 years. “”

Seeing this well documented film in the TCL Chinese Theater in Hollywood, one of the best cinemas in the world, was transcendent. Pacino and Niro do some of the best work of their spectacular careers, they are surrounded by a Who’s Who of great characters (including Dennis Haysbert, who once told me what it was to work with De Niro), and there is not a framework for the cinematography of Dante Spinotti who feels in place. Even the controlled chaos of the famous film shooting worked better for me on the big screen than before, with its sound effects that span the theater in all their glory.

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You can hear me talking about my experience at the TCM Film Festival of this year, where I also saw “suspion”, “Back to the future”, “Fights at the Ok Corral” and “The Talk of the Town”, on the today’s episode of the Daily / Film Daily:

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“Heat” is available on 4K here.