Michael Mann Seeing Red

It's common knowledge that Michael Mann's eye for detail borders on the insane. He ordered whole areas of Miami repainted when shooting Vice for TV in the 80s. He had to re-shoot the Robert DeNiro/Ashley Judd hotel room scene from Heat countless times because he had to try every metal hanger known to mankind until they made just the right clang when DeNiro swiped them. And now Entertaiment Weekly, in their cover story on the new Miami Vice, reports that Mann banned the color red from the entire movie.

Even if the movie turns out to be sub-par, this one fact alone makes all the hype worthwhile. Pure hubris of this magnitude is pure entertainment to me because it's the furthest thing from my (and probably everyone else's) daily reality.

The only question now is whether his red-less vision was actually realized. With the movie still four days out, all we have are pictures to go on, and they don't tell the story of a visionary who always gets his way. Two of the most popular movie stills floating around show Jamie Foxx as Tubbs wearing a red shirt in one, and both men wearing black t-shirts with red writing in another. You could argue that Tubbs' shirt isn't really red and that the red on the t-shirts is immaterial. But I would argue that if the Mann with the vision doesn't want to see red, there can be absolutely no red ever for any reason whatsoever.

Even if you can defend your way around that indefensible case, there's no way around the next one: the very title of the movie that's being used for all trailers is half red. So either EW failed in their fact checking or Mann failed in his vision.

After seeing that Mann appeared publicly during the shoot with Foxx wearing a red shirt, I'm starting to worry he might be losing focus.