Music is always key to me, whether it’s ‘Miami Vice’ or not ‘Miami Vice.’ It’s dictated by the story, about what Crockett and Tubbs and Isabella and Trudy are doing. – Michael Mann
Everything we do on ‘Luck’ is absolutely no different than if we’d had been doing it in a feature film. There’s no short cuts. The specificity of what every single line might mean. Everything Dustin Hoffman does. Kevin Dunn is as authentic in the last scene of the last episode as he is in the first scene of the first episode. – Michael Mann
I realized horses have personality when I bought one and I had one, who’s now out to pasture, a horse named Drifter. Before that, I was a city boy. Horses, I used to go out to the LaBagh Woods and ride at a stable once every two years or something; no idea about horses. Dogs, I knew, had personalities, but not horses. – Michael Mann
Could I have worked under a system where there were Draconian controls on my creativity, meaning budget, time, script choices, etc.? Definitely not. I would have fared poorly under the old studio system that guys like Howard Hawks did so well in. I cannot. – Michael Mann
Miami is one of these great places that is a really sensual, physically beautiful place. – Michael Mann
Video looks like reality, it’s more immediate, it has a verite surface to it. Film has this liquid kind of surface, feels like something made up. – Michael Mann
I don’t story board. I do something else, which is, I block it. We then train to the blocking. In other words, when everybody’s training, they’re actually training a lot of the moves that we are definitely going to use, and then, I do a lot of photography of that, and that becomes where the cameras go. – Michael Mann
There’s people who live life authentically and there’s people who live a life of fabrication. And it begins with the question of how you’re gonna do your time. And these are observations I made about Folsom when I was there with Dustin Hoffman when he was directing ‘Straight Time.’ – Michael Mann
A 65-ft.-wide screen and 500 people reacting to the movie, there is nothing like that experience. – Michael Mann
Dillinger at one point was the second most popular man in America after President Roosevelt. And he was a national hero for a good reason. He was robbing the very institutions, the banks, which had afflicted the people for four years, and after four years nothing was getting any better. – Michael Mann
I think it’s easy for directors to stay fresh more than actors, especially once an actor becomes a star. It’s hard for Russell Crowe to walk down a street or take a subway. I can fly coach. – Michael Mann
HBO is not an advertiser-based model, it’s a subscription model. So what’s significant to HBO is not necessarily the debut of an episode, it’s the cumulative numbers. – Michael Mann
I see the world from the perspective of a 5’8″ person, not someone who is 6’4″. so naturally, I’m going to choose certain lens heights over and again… Sometimes nature makes choices for you. – Michael Mann
In ‘The Insider,’ I had violence – lethal, life-taking aggression – all happening psychologically, all with people talking to other people. – Michael Mann
Suffice it to say, every actor works differently. Laurence Olivier would put on his costume and when the wardrobe was right, he was in character. That sounds superficial, but it’s true, and look at the results. – Michael Mann
‘Police Story’ had some of the best writing on television, and one reason for that is because most of the scripts were based on real cases. – Michael Mann
We take safety very, very seriously on every film I make, and that’s why I’ve never had a serious accident or anybody killed when I make a picture. – Michael Mann
When you say that I can go and make a movie, I feel like I’m one of the most fortunate men. I feel myself to be a fortunate man that I found something to do that I really love. – Michael Mann
I relate more to the fact that 80-inch plasma has just started to become ubiquitous and in people’s homes the fairly decent 5.1 sound system and the big screen isn’t that out of reach. – Michael Mann
What I try to do – I mean ‘try,’ because you don’t get there all the time – is to have impact with content. It’s those moments in which you’re trying to bring people beyond filmed theater. If I have an ambition, it’s that. – Michael Mann
