NEWS
December 11, 1986
Michael Mann, the new lead guitarist for the Blasters rock band who was known to fans as Hollywood Fats, died Monday of an apparent heart attack. Mann, 32, was rushed to Santa Monica Hospital Medical Center in full cardiac arrest, said Ted Braun, assistant hospital director. The guitarist came by his nickname because of his weight, estimated at more than 250 pounds. "He worried about his weight," drummer Bill Bateman said. "It was his genes. He was a chubby kid."
ENTERTAINMENT
July 6, 2009 | PATRICK GOLDSTEIN
When I spent an afternoon talking with Michael Mann about "Public Enemies" last month, I asked him, half-jokingly, if he had a technical advisor that helped him with the details of John Dillinger's bank robberies. Mann is a famously intense stickler for detail. When he shot "Ali," for example, he filmed the scenes of the young champion at home at the boxer's actual house in Miami.
ENTERTAINMENT
December 22, 1985 | BARBARA ISENBERG
The walls of Michael Mann's Universal Studios office were just painted black. The Mies van der Rohe chairs are black leather and stainless steel, and coming soon is a black credenza. "I love it," says the 42-year-old producer, dressed nearly all in black himself. "This place is visually quiet." Not exactly. Mann's black-jacketed elbows rest on a huge aqua desk with red trim and a yellow base, courtesy of Milan's Memphis design group.
ENTERTAINMENT
November 17, 1987 | DIANE HAITHMAN, Times Staff Writer
Three years after being hailed as the seminal force behind a revolution in the way television looks and sounds, Michael Mann dismisses the acclaim with an impatient wave of his bagel. The executive producer of "Miami Vice" and another NBC police series, "Crime Story," is happily breakfasting in the Formica splendor of Canter's Fairfax deli ("I've been in these booths writing episodes sometimes through three shifts of waitresses--14, 16 hours," he says fondly).
ENTERTAINMENT
June 12, 2001 | PATRICK GOLDSTEIN
Will Smith is dancing around the boxing ring, throwing a few practice jabs before shooting a scene, when he notices a pesky newspaper columnist leaning against the ropes, taking notes. "Is there a journalist out there?" he shouts, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "Because I need me a journalist to whup!"
ENTERTAINMENT
July 1, 2009 | Kenneth Turan, FILM CRITIC
It was the movies that killed John Dillinger -- Gangster No. 1 until he was gunned down outside a Chicago theater after taking in the pictures one hot night in 1934 -- and it was the movies that brought him back to life. More than once. But this time it's different. This time Michael Mann is in charge. Win, lose or draw, Mann, director of "Heat," "Ali," "The Insider" and the current "Public Enemies," is inescapably one of the masters of modern American cinema.