Zen Pulp: The World of Michael Mann, Pt. 5: Crime Story

Zen Pulp: The World of Michael Mann, Pt. 5: Crime Story

By Keith Uhlich on July 23, 2009 in Film Jump to Comments (0)

This is the fifth and final installment in a series of Moving Image Source video essays on Michael Mann, whose new film, Public Enemies, opened July 1. To read a transcript of the video's narration, click here. For links to more episodes, click here. To read MZS's review of Public Enemies at IFC.com, click here.

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[Editor's Note: This is the original comments section for this entry, which did not transfer in the Blogger to WordPress import.] Roberto Quezada-Dardon said... What a great series, thank you so much Matt. Insightful and very effective when we're able to see samples of Mann's various works all in one place. Roberto 7/23/2009 9:32 PM wstroby said... Season Two did have its moments, including the Torello-free "Love Hurts," in which Luca romances an actress while trying to shore up a Mexican drug connection. They really went for the GODFATHER II vibe in that episode and were mostly successful. "Pauli Taglia's Dream" earns points just for sheer deliriousness. Almost the entire episode is devoted to Pauli's fever dream while he's recovering from gunshot wounds, a sort of predecessor to what THE SOPRANOS would do years later with "The Test Dream." 7/24/2009 3:41 AM David said... Jeeeez, I loved this show. One of the most thrilling revelations I've seen on ANY series was the last (?) episode before they went to Vegas, "Torello on Trial" -- when we realized how many minor characters and events that we'd seen in the first half of the series actually tied in to the central plot. I watched that, agog, marveling at the way Mann and his team had structured it all, knowing all along that it was one big story, and gleefully laying it all out in one single episode. When you showed the clip of Torello tossing the cuffs on the table, I was hoping you'd play the dialogue, which I vividly remember: "You got nothin', Torello." "What I've got... is about five feet four inches tall... has a haircut from Mars... and has a driver's licence that reads Paul... Taglia." I know I'm leaving some of that out, but Farina's precision in delivering his bombshell absolutely RULES. 7/24/2009 6:28 PM Matt Maul said... Nice piece. I was a hard-core Crime Story fan until its shark jumping move to Vegas. Great line about it being like Godfather 2 flattened out to comic book form. RE: The East Side/West Side rat scene (which still gives me nightmares) and the CS slumlord episode...I was reminded of a great moment from The New Centurians where street cop George C. Scott is similarly (and unexpectedly) rough with a landlord who's milking a bunch of illegal immigrants. BTW, was the "conventional wisdom" concerning the short attention span of the 80's audience correct? As I recall, Hill St. Blues had a myriad of story arcs and seemed to have been well received. Just wondering out loud. 7/24/2009 6:46 PM Matt Zoller Seitz said... Matt: "Hill Street" did pretty well, though it was never a huge hit, either. And it didn't keep long-term story arcs right at the forefront week-to-week like "Crime Story" (particularly the Luca-Torello rivalry, the spine of the series). Plus most of the "HSB" long arcs weren't all that long, really -- for instance, the Sal Benedetto (Dennis Franz) corruption stuff was handled in three episodes, maybe four tops (just remembering out loud here, could be wrong, sure Alan Sepinwall will tell me if I am). I don't recall any equivalent of the overarching narratives of "Crime Story," "Deadwood," "The Sopranos" and the like happening on "Hill Street Blues." It was lived-in and messy and had an enormous cast, but I remember that show having more in common with a Robert Altman film than with the sorts of shows I'm singling out in this piece. Again, though, it's been a very long time since I watched it, so I could be remembering incorrectly. 7/24/2009 8:47 PM Matt Maul said... Matt...I'm not quite sure exactly how long those arcs ran either. For what its worth, toward the end of HSB's run, I remember reading an entertainment piece discussing how the show was cutting back on the number of running characters (as part of a cost-cutting effort) and confining storylines to single episodes. Again, this was after the show had been on for a while. So, audience interest may have been on the wane by that point anyway. The same article mentioned that adding Buntz had breathed some extra life into the show as well. BTW, it's amazing that I can recall that sort of esoterica instead of important stuff ;) 7/24/2009 10:38 PM Matt Zoller Seitz said... Matt: "BTW, it's amazing that I can recall that sort of esoterica instead of important stuff ;)" You know, I used to say stuff like that all the time -- stuff like, "I can recite most of the Best Picture winners in alphabetical order, but I can't remember the important stuff." But I've eventually come around to thinking, "Well, since movies and TV are what I've decided to devote most of my life to, maybe that IS the important stuff." But I digress. 7/25/2009 12:55 AM Matt Zoller Seitz said... Re: "Hill Street," the major difference between that and subsequent epic drama series was, "Hill Street" never did have a master narrative that pulled everything else along the way an engine pulls along all the other cars in the train -- the equivalent of the town of Deadwood petitioning to be recognized by the territorial government, or Tony Soprano's near-death experience in Season Six and how its aftershocks ultimately changed (and partly destroyed) the entire gangster and gangster-affiliated community, illustrating other, similar personal stuggles along the way -- or the season-long umbrella narratives of "The Wire," such as the crisis in the school system, the corruption on the docks and the effect of the media on every other aspect of society. "Hill Street" had a unified vision and a coherent TV community that doled out little personal narratives in bits and pieces over a period of weeks or months, but it wasn't all tied together in the way that subsequent dramas were. 7/25/2009 12:59 AM Matt Maul said... "Hill Street" had a unified vision and a coherent TV community that doled out little personal narratives in bits and pieces over a period of weeks or months, but it wasn't all tied together in the way that subsequent dramas were. I can't really take issue with any of that. I guess this is part of my general musing that TV execs sold their audience short in the intelligence department. Like taking Police Squad off the air because "it required viewers to pay TOO much attention." As a glass is half full kind of guy (STOP LAUGHING), I'd like to think that this was an incorrect assessment. Then again, there were all those people who sat on the edge of their seats waiting to find out "who shot J.R." 7/25/2009 1:09 PM Matt Zoller Seitz said... Matt: "I guess this is part of my general musing that TV execs sold their audience short in the intelligence department." Yeah. Funny thing is, people have been saying that ever since TV was created, and it's only somewhat recently that common wisdom has been proven wrong. The shows that stay in the public mind after they've left the air, and that continue to generate revenue via DVDs and other methods of repeat viewing (and merchandise) are the shows that ask a lot of the viewer. About ten years ago I wrote a piece for the Star-Ledger arguing that the networks were locked into short-term vision, looking for shows that would be huge in the ratings right away, generate enormous amounts of revenue and then be totally forgotten, when what they should be doing is getting behind shows that have small but loyal viewerships and that reward repeat viewing and the creation of audience communities. Though I can't imagine I was the only critic arguing for such a thing, it's still a pleasure to realize that in retrospect I wasn't being ignorant or crazy. TV revenue is still driven by those mammoth, here-and-gone phenomena (like "Survivor" and "American Idol") but I think we've gotten to the point where the more demanding series (at least in terms of plot architecture, number of characters and the sustainment of drama over a long period) are proving to be big earners as well. It's the marathon-vs.-sprint argument. 7/25/2009 3:10 PM Matt Zoller Seitz said... David: "When you showed the clip of Torello tossing the cuffs on the table, I was hoping you'd play the dialogue, which I vividly remember: "You got nothin', Torello." "What I've got... is about five feet four inches tall... has a haircut from Mars... and has a driver's licence that reads Paul... Taglia. The original cut of this segment had the dialogue, but I cut it out because I figured a lot of people watching the segment haven't seen the show, and I didn't want to spoil such a wonderful twist (as we just did in this comments thread). 7/26/2009 1:28 AM GLI said... Great, great series, Matt. Thanks a lot for putting it together. It seems like in 2009 TV is polarizing - at one end are the short-attention-span, throwaway "reality" and game shows, on the other are the deep, detailed, character-driven, multi-story-arced dramas and drama-comedies. I think it's telling that the former category is dominated by the networks, while the latter is dominated by cable producers. The broadcast networks just don't want to take the financial or creative risks involved in developing the next Michal Mann, reinforcing their continuing irrelevance, IMO. 7/26/2009 12:37 PM Michael Whalen said... Great piece, Matt. Thank you. I think the seeds Mann's Crime Story planted in the industry are especially fruitful today. In this underwelming movie decade, with the general artistic collapse of the movie industry, I think these recent shows (Wire, Sopranos, Deadwood, Rome, Mad Men) have filled a major hole in American film. The classic genres of Hollywood (The Western, The Gangster Picture, the Crime Drama, the Roman Sword & Sandal Epic) have been kept vital by HBO's ambitious projects. Hollywood filmmakers always used these genres to dramatize and ask important questions about the American experiment. In the 2000's, this hasn't been happening at the cinema, but it has been happening on T.V. 7/27/2009 9:23 AM Michael Whalen said... About ten years ago I wrote a piece for the Star-Ledger arguing that the networks were locked into short-term vision... It's exciting and frustrating to think of how many would-be T.V autures could be out there, and what could be produced if networks recruited and gave them the autonomy that David Chase Simon Milch & Larry were given at HBO. Granted HBO had no commercials, which freed its creative hands in ways the Networks never could hope for. Still, Crime Story and Twin Peaks alone speak to how much can be accomplished on network T.V. with a real creative mind behind a show and trusting network. And, of course, those shows also demonstrate how much damage a network can inflict on shows when they loose faith in the creators. 7/27/2009 10:56 AM Matt Maul said... This would be a great doctoral project (I'm just thinking out loud here): Categorize a number of television shows (network and cable) by qualities discussed in this thread such as "complexity" or "artistery," (subjective measures, for sure, but certainly doable). Then compute their ROI based on dollars spent (production costs, promotion) against short-term (ad revenues, paid subscriptions) and long-term (DVD rentals/purchases, syndication revenues, etc.) returns. Of course, you'd have to incorporate the "present" and "future" value of dollars spent and received into the mix as well as other factors such as audience trends, what additional ad dollars a hit show may bring in by keeping an audience tuned in, and additional subscription fees a presitge show can garner (such what as a Sopranos did for HBO), etc, etc. I honestly don't know how it would all shake out. But it would make damn interesting reading. ;) 7/27/2009 12:32 PM OMAR said... Enlightening essay as usual Matt. Crime Story seems to provide the missing link between public enemies and his television work - it's all here, similarly like LA Takedown and Miami Vice, television seems to provide the perfect training ground for Mann in terms of developing ideas and themes that he went on to explore much vividly in his films. 7/27/2009 6:54 PM OMAR said... You might want to check out my length essay on the films of Michael Mann - labour of love so to speak, thanks Matt. http://omarsfilmblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/public-enemies-dir-michael-mann-2009-us_20.html 7/27/2009 6:56 PM JF said... This series was great (as everybody's said), possibly even better than your Wes Anderson one. I'm definitely going to revisit this when I start really delving deeply into Mann's filmography, which until recently I've only admired from a distance. 7/28/2009 1:54 PM Matt Zoller Seitz said... Omar: That was an exhaustive and insightful overview of Mann's movies. Thanks so much for the link. 7/28/2009 10:13 PM
Posted by Keith Uhlich on 2010-06-06 03:13:44

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