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The Rewatchables ·

Heat

year 1995decade 90sdirector Michael Manngenre Crimegenre Drama
host Bill Simmonshost Chris Ryan
All 4 categories

The Coach Finstock Award for Best Life Lesson · 20:31

Never fall for a guy who courts you by asking why you care what he reads and does

The lessons segment opens with a minor lesson: never fall for a guy who starts courting you by asking why you are so interested in what he reads and does; walk away, since he is not making himself emotionally available. Edie, lonely as a graphic designer from Kentucky working in Santa Monica, still hits it off with Neil, who answers 'I am alone. I am not lonely' and talks about going to Tahiti.

The film

Heat (1995)

Directed by Michael Mann · Crime / Drama

170 minutes [ 1 ] [ 2 ]

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Cast

Selected cast credits · Film reference

Al Pacino LAPD Robbery Homicide Lieutenant Vincent Hanna
Robert De Niro Neil McCauley
Val Kilmer Chris Shiherlis
Jon Voight Nate
Tom Sizemore Michael Cheritto
Diane Venora Justine Hanna
Ashley Judd Charlene Shiherlis
Mykelti Williamson Sergeant Bobby Drucker
Wes Studi Detective Sammy Casals
Ted Levine Detective Mike Bosko
Dennis Haysbert Don Breedan
William Fichtner Roger Van Zant
Natalie Portman Lauren Gustafson
Tom Noonan Kelso
Niki Haris Marcia Drucker
Kevin Gage Waingro
Hank Azaria Alan Marciano
Danny Trejo Gilbert Trejo
Susan Traylor Elaine Cheritto
Kim Staunton Lillian
Henry Rollins Hugh Benny
Jerry Trimble Detective Danny Schwartz
Tone Loc Richard Torena
Ricky Harris Albert Torena
Ray Buktenica Timmons
Jeremy Piven Dr. Bob

Everything from the episode

In the order the hosts got to it. Open a row for the discussion.

20:31

The Coach Finstock Award for Best Life Lesson

Never fall for a guy who courts you by asking why you care what he reads and does; never fall for a guy with no furni...

Never fall for a guy who courts you by asking why you care what he reads and does; never fall for a guy with no furniture; don't call anyone slick during an armored-truck robbery; never leave a living witness; don't sell stolen bearer bonds back to the criminal you took them from; 'the bank is worth the risk' and 'the action is the juice' are not reasons to rob a bank; don't wait in the car when your criminal boyfriend disappears into a hotel that police then surround; don't let word get out that it's okay to steal your stuff; if it rains, you get wet; a life that revolves around barbecue and ballgames sucks; have nothing you can't walk away from in 30 seconds if you spot the heat around the corner

In the discussion (13)
Approx. transcript time · 00:20:31Read transcript
  • The lessons segment opens with a minor lesson: never fall for a guy who starts courting you by asking why you are so interested in what he reads and does; walk away, since he is not making himself emotionally available. Edie, lonely as a graphic designer from Kentucky working in Santa Monica, still hits it off with Neil, who answers 'I am alone. I am not lonely' and talks about going to Tahiti.
  • Major lesson number one, which the speaker hopes a daughter will remember someday: never fall for a guy with no furniture. Asked whether that is worse than falling for a man with a debilitating gambling habit like Val Kilmer's character, the answer is that gambling is at least something, while a man with no furniture could be gone tomorrow; the hosts then imagine Ashley Judd's character hearing the robbery money went to debts and a Super Bowl loss.
  • Lesson: when robbing an armored truck, don't call anyone slick; if nobody says it, the crew is never caught. The one unbelievable thing is how the case hangs on the word: running it through the database should return the phone book, yet it is said again later and catches Sizemore's character, the kind of reach these movies always have.
  • Lesson: never leave a living witness, rather than taking out most of them; the witness problem is what gets Wingro (as transcribed) in trouble, since he kills a guy and De Niro reads it as him making a move.
  • Lesson: after stealing bearer bonds from a criminal, don't try to sell them back to him; the footnote added is not to do the resale in an abandoned drive-in parking lot on Sentinella (as transcribed) but somewhere more public, MacArthur Park perhaps, though that may be dangerous.
  • Lesson: when one crew member says the bank is worth the risk and another says 'for me, the action is the juice,' those are not good reasons to rob a bank. Val Kilmer's character also has gamblers to pay off and Charlene to win back, Neil oddly knows all about Sizemore's character's bonds and real estate, and Sizemore's ten-second beat and blinking before the line is called the greatest moment of his acting career, the clip for his obit reel.
  • Minor lesson that almost made the major list: don't wait patiently in the car for a criminal boyfriend who mysteriously walked into a massive hotel without warning when, ten minutes later, everyone pours out and police cars and fire engines arrive; just drive away, especially on the way to the airport.
  • A friend, Juliet, loves movies about women with terrible choices in men; nobody has ever had a worse choice in a man than Amy Brenneman's character, unlike Diane Venora and Al Pacino's, who fully know where they are in their lives; she watches news of the biggest bank robbery disaster, he strolls home, and she should have run.
  • The major lessons are then listed: never fall for a guy with no furniture; don't let word get out on the street that it's okay to steal your stuff; you know the risk, and if it rains you get wet, called a great high school senior yearbook quote and a good fortune cookie; and if you have a regular life that revolves around barbecue and ballgames, your life sucks.
  • The last and most famous lesson, good for anything in life: have no attachments, nothing you can't walk away from in 30 seconds if you spot the heat around the corner. It works the title into the signature quote subtly, unlike films that shoehorn it in, a Corolla (as transcribed) bit, with Face Off and Travolta cited; the film is about loyalty, and Neil should have left but stays for Val Kilmer's character when he gets shot.
  • The 30-second vanishing act is another reason the film could not be remade now: only the greatest criminals could pull it off, a digital footprint such as emails or a plane ticket to Phoenix would give anyone away where back then people paid in checks and cash, yet the film feels timeless rather than dated.
  • At the end Neil has 30 seconds to decide whether to take Brenneman's character and, unlike with Val Kilmer's, leaves her behind; asked whether he does it to keep her safe, the answer is that he decides she is a loser for still being there amid the chaos at the hotel.
  • Later the lesson is turned on Neil as hypocrisy: with the heat around the corner he still went back for Val Kilmer's character and his shattered clavicle instead of running with a bag of money.
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24:14

Sequel, Prequel, Limited Series, or All-Black Remake

12-episode Netflix remake with Michael Mann; Heat 2 with Natalie Portman's character as a Los Angeles homicide detect...

12-episode Netflix remake with Michael Mann; Heat 2 with Natalie Portman's character as a Los Angeles homicide detective; Downey and Denzel as a modern pairing; Heat 2 preferred over the Netflix series

In the discussion (6)
Approx. transcript time · 00:24:14Read transcript
  • Asked whether a 12-episode Netflix remake with Michael Mann involved, or one on Amazon Prime, Hulu or HBO, would be exciting, the answer is that parts would be interesting in the modern world, but surveillance stories are better without the internet: Heat's cops follow the crew with night-vision cameras rather than reading emails and texts, which would feel like cheating, and even this season of Homeland is boring for watching people do stuff on computers.
  • A remake set in the internet world could be part of the charm, but the preference is for it to stick to the streets and get off the net.
  • Earlier the film is called what would have been the greatest 10-episode Netflix series ever: scenes of Val Kilmer's character losing big at Foxwoods or stopping at Morongo on the way back from Arizona, and more on the cook, Natalie Portman's character at school, Van Zandt and Jon Voight.
  • Heat 2 is floated: De Niro's character only passed out, and Natalie Portman's character returns as a Los Angeles homicide detective under Michael Mann, chasing Val Kilmer's character or another bank robber, perhaps falling for Neil's son from another marriage; 'I would see Heat 2.'
  • Asked who could square off as a modern version of the diner scene, no pair is thought to mean what De Niro and Pacino did; Downey and Denzel are proposed as movie stars with acting chops, Downey and Leo are offered instead, Denzel is defended as still having moves as in Flight, and Daniel Day Lewis is ruled out because it has to be guys you'd see on Wilshire or Figaro, prompting an impression of him vowing to work at an old Blockbuster on Fairfax.
  • Choosing between Heat 2 and a 12-episode Netflix modern Heat, the answer is Heat 2, for the big-screen experience, with Heat 2 starring Natalie Portman imagined in theaters in 2019.
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39:53

Probably Unanswerable Questions

Who is Pacino's stunt double in the Henry Rollins tackle; has anyone ever stopped a pickup basketball game to ask whe...

Who is Pacino's stunt double in the Henry Rollins tackle; has anyone ever stopped a pickup basketball game to ask where to get bread

In the discussion (2)
Approx. transcript time · 00:39:53Read transcript
  • Offered as questions rather than lessons: where is the stunt man who doubled Pacino running through the door to tackle Henry Rollins, who looks like Joe Jarevicius (as transcribed) running slant patterns and jumps an ottoman before the film cuts away to Pacino holding Rollins.
  • Has anyone in the history of pickup basketball interrupted a game to ask where to get a loaf of bread, as Val Kilmer's character does after Charlene signals that the cops are there? The players treat it as a normal question, and amid a massive manhunt by police who know he is coming and what he looks like, he is let go though he has only had a haircut and is limping from a shattered clavicle.
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41:50

The Neil McCauley “A Book about Metals” Award for Best Line from the Movie

"Because she's got a great ass and you got your head all the way up it."

"Because she's got a great ass and you got your head all the way up it."

In the discussion (5)
Approx. transcript time · 00:41:50Read transcript
  • Instead of more lessons, a run of Pacino lines begins with the chop shop scene, called a favorite scene in the movie: 'Did you fall in love last night?' and 'Don't waste my motherfucking time'; Pacino is still in Scent of a Woman mode for the first hour, it feels improvised, and the two other actors seem to wonder what is going on.
  • 'You can get killed. Walk it in your doggy.' (as transcribed) is aimed at one of two Black actors in the scene, one Tone Loke and the other identified as the comedian Ricky Harris; 'Shut up, Ralph. Sit down.' is added.
  • From the end, when he thinks De Niro is gone, 'Bon voyage, motherfucker'; a run of scenes about the crew's exit plan seems to get the chronology wrong, since simply pursuing them would have caught them; 'All I am is all I'm going after.' (as transcribed) is called a really good line.
  • The best one, for its pauses (likened to Pat Summerall doing Murder, She Wrote), is Pacino's line to Hank Azaria's character, the result, called the best 10 seconds of Pacino's career; whether it was scripted or ad-libbed is wondered, nobody in the scene seems to have known it was coming, and Azaria is judged either overmatched or playing an overwhelmed man.
  • From the diner scene, 'There's a flip side to that coin,' then a seven-second pause before 'What if I got to take you down?' (as transcribed), called incredible.
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More from the conversation

The 2017 re-introduction explains that this episode was recorded in December 2015, about three months after the Bill Simmons podcast relaunched, for Heat's 20th anniversary; it became the DNA of the Rewatchables feed's deep dives and is called a favorite podcast of the past two years.
Approx. transcript time · 00:00:24Read transcript
Heat is called Michael Mann's peak movie and the hosts' argument over who loves it more a tie; it is named a favorite movie ever and the film seen most, and Mann's habit of collapsing Los Angeles geography is teased, from Figaro and Flower to Venice and Collateral's seven-minute LAX-to-downtown drive.
Approx. transcript time · 00:01:25Read transcript
1995 is cast as the last pre-internet movie year, when all anyone knew was the trailer with De Niro as the bad guy and Pacino as the cop in the same scenes; the two had shared Godfather 2 without a scene together, and De Niro versus Pacino, which one host broke down on ESPN.com in 2001, was called the Bird versus Magic of actors after De Niro's Goodfellas, Bronx Tale and Cape Fear run and Pacino's return with Sea of Love and Scent of a Woman.
Approx. transcript time · 00:02:13Read transcript
Context for 1995 crime movies: Quentin's imitators and The Usual Suspects; one host saw Heat during a Philly blizzard on Christmas break as a college freshman in a nearly empty theater, found it confident and rooted in Los Angeles with Collateral as its LA sequel, and thinks 25 minutes could be cut; it grew out of the LA Takedown pilot, which would have stayed a TV show had Brandon Tartikoff and Mann agreed on a lead such as Scott Plank.
Approx. transcript time · 00:06:18Read transcript
Michael Mann's career: The Jericho Mile, called the greatest TV movie and a top-12 sports movie, Miami Vice and hiring Don Johnson, Crime Story, Manhunter and Last of the Mohicans, compared with The Revenant and Jeremiah Johnson; his directing was painterly until Heat turned more handheld and gritty.
Approx. transcript time · 00:08:20Read transcript
One host's miserable Boston winter of 1995, with the wrong girlfriend, a buried job at the Herald, ten blizzards and a car towed again and again, made Heat at the Somerville Theater around December 15 the highlight of the month; the opening armored-truck heist, built up through the credits and done for real rather than in CGI, had sound that nearly gave you a heart attack.
Approx. transcript time · 00:10:00Read transcript
Heat was one of the first DVDs that felt like the movies at home, and the bank robbery is an action scene on the level of Die Hard, Lethal Weapon or Predator without the fakeness, perhaps the best 15-minute action scene; through cable it became a movie watched in 35-minute chunks until Jeremy Piven or Henry Rollins appears, like The Fugitive, though too long for TNT.
Approx. transcript time · 00:12:11Read transcript
Many in the cast are in their prime: Sizemore's best movie and Val Kilmer at his most interesting, once neck and neck with Cruise after Top Gun; Kilmer's later run, including Dr. Moreau and The Saint, which one host loves, and his weirdness, which a Chuck Klosterman piece covered, are contrasted with Johnny Depp finding Tim Burton and Gordon Brinsky (as transcribed).
Approx. transcript time · 00:14:26Read transcript
The supporting 'that guys' are toured: Jon Voight's turn into a character actor, the Last of the Mohicans villain, Ted Levine, Michael T Williamson (as transcribed), Brian Libby from Silent Rage and Shawshank, William Fichner (as transcribed) as Van Sant, Tom Noonan's internet joke, Hank Azaria, Dennis Haysbert, a hairless Jeremy Piven in one scene, Henry Rollins in about five scenes and Tone Loke.
Approx. transcript time · 00:16:20Read transcript
The women: peak Ashley Judd; Diana Venora (as transcribed), who never fully made it but whose messed-up relationship in the film works; Natalie Portman in her second movie, whose scenes, like the Dennis Haysbert plotline, feel like TV storylines that could be cut, though the film shows lives intersecting; and Amy Brenneman from NYPD Blue and Judging Amy, with Daylight and The Leftovers noted.
Approx. transcript time · 00:18:34Read transcript
A long complaint about Wingro's escape: diner customers barely react as De Niro repeatedly slams his face into the table, though someone would call the police, and in the lot, with the lined trunk ready, a passing cop car makes all three look up and lose him like defensive backs losing Odell Beckham; the bank getaway also has a timing issue, with Val Kilmer's walk to the car taking forever as Pacino gains block after block.
Approx. transcript time · 00:27:18Read transcript
'I'm talking to an empty telephone' is called the best threat, De Niro at his angriest alongside Goodfellas; separately, Neil seems too smart to rob the bank with so much heat on, countered by his need to get out of town to New Zealand with Edie and money tied up in an earlier job paid for up front.
Approx. transcript time · 00:29:54Read transcript
Vincent Hannah's (as transcribed) domestic life is a favorite part: apologizing if the chicken got overcooked, and his anger at Ralph, who may lounge in her ex-husband's 'dead tech postmodernistic bullshit house' but may not watch his television, which he then takes; the hosts call it a messed-up relationship and Brenneman and De Niro's healthier.
Approx. transcript time · 00:34:45Read transcript
The ending: Mann's view, as recalled, is that Neil dies with the only person who truly understands him; the hand-holding at LAX among departures and arrivals, with the end-credit music, is called amazing and moving, Pacino catching De Niro is doubted given two packs a day and two days without sleep, and the airport scene with its unnamed Moby song is why the film should be shown in theaters.
Approx. transcript time · 00:38:29Read transcript
Heat is called the best movie for rooting for bad guys who have murdered cops, shot guards and taken hostages; Sizemore's character grabs a little kid as a shield and Pacino's character makes a long shot that saves the kid and kills him; the bank robbery seemed in 1995 like it might be the ending, and the Wayne Grove plotline, including his murder of a young prostitute, is called another TV plotline that mainly sets up Pacino hugging the mother, though it shows how destructive these men are.
Approx. transcript time · 00:44:49Read transcript
Like many Michael Mann movies, Heat is about the minutiae of work, such as Pacino arriving after the truck robbery and only pointing and nodding as his detectives report; a Rolling Stone as-told-to piece has Mann saying you want Bob to get away and you want Al to get Bob, both true simultaneously, and ending on the two holding hands leaves it both men's movie, which a speaker finds quite emotional.
Approx. transcript time · 00:47:02Read transcript
Diner scene background: Mann and Art Linson discussed offering the film to Pacino and De Niro at the diner where it was later shot, Kate Manolini (as transcribed) on Wilshire in Beverly Hills, now defunct; an internet legend held that the two were not filmed together, which the hosts doubt; the scene pays off the buildup like LeBron and Kobe finally guarding each other, its idiosyncratic talk of dreams beats big shouted lines, and Neil's slip that he has a girl leads to calling him overrated as a criminal.
Approx. transcript time · 00:49:49Read transcript
Who wins the diner scene: Pacino is picked as the aggressor trying to draw Neil out, with De Niro not doing a bad job, scored as a split decision of 115-114 Pacino on one card and 117-111 De Niro on another with a rematch needed; a De Niro view follows ('I thought De Niro won'), held loosely, because De Niro had no shtick while Pacino got a little shticky and smiles at the end as if De Niro broke him. A line transcribed as 'Pacino ultimately wins the movie at the end' sits in the exchange without a clear speaker or referent. No formal Who Won the Movie category is run.
Approx. transcript time · 00:52:09Read transcript
Mann is recalled saying the diner scene used the first take, with little rehearsal; neither star was the same after Heat: Pacino's run of Donnie Brasco, Devil's Advocate, The Insider and Any Given Sunday as his last great moment before the wheels came off, and De Niro's of The Fan, Sleepers, Copland, Wag the Dog, Jackie Brown and Ronan (as transcribed) before a make-me-an-offer phase culminating in 15 Minutes, partly revived by David O. Russell.
Approx. transcript time · 00:53:14Read transcript
The closing verdict gives Heat a thousand thumbs up: it has not aged at all, unlike even Pulp Fiction slightly, and could be released in theaters today.
Approx. transcript time · 00:58:34Read transcript

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