Christopher Nolan interviewed Robert De Niro and Al Pacino about Heat
It turns out police detective Vincent Hanna is high on cocaine throughout the film
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Your support makes all the difference.Last night (7 September), filmmaker Christopher Nolan (Interstellar) led a Q&A between Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and Michael Mann, the trio revealing little-known truths about Michael Mann's 1996 film Heat.
The British filmmaker moderated a discussion following a 4K DCP restoration screening of the film hosted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at Beverly Hills' Samuel Goldwyn Theatre.
One of the evening's most striking admissions came from Pacino who revealed that his character, police detective Vincent Hanna, is high on cocaine throughout his hunt for professional criminal Neil McCauley (De Niro).
"I don't think I've ever said it out loud," the actor said. "But I've always wanted to say it, just so you know where some of the behaviour comes from."
That's this explained, then.
De Niro spoke about how he was encouraged to collaborate with Mann: “At the onset, I thought there should be that difference in the characters in terms of how they come off, what colors they’re in."
He went on to describe his enjoyment of the way McCauley's life is revitalised while Hanna's falls apart around him as the case intensifies.
Val Kilmer - who plays crook Chris Shihherlis - revealed how, despite filming Batman Forever simultaneously, he was more excited about working with Mann, admitting: "The most fun I had doing Batman was preparing for Heat."
Nolan himself stated he has "drawn inspiration from Heat" in his own films; this is most evident in the way he lovingly emulated the film's daytime cityscape in his 2008 film The Dark Knight.
The director is currently hard at work on WWII drama Dunkirk which is set for a July 2017 release. His previous films include Memento and Inception, both of which made it into BBC Culture's poll compiling the greatest films of the 21st Century.
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