Top 35 Quotes & Sayings by Michael Mann
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American director Michael Mann.
Last updated on April 14, 2025.
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.
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.
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.'
To just tell a story from beginning, middle and end doesn't motivate me that much.
I think the resolution involved in the high-def, Blu-ray image demands we pay attention to every detail to a level we've never seen before. The audiences have to believe everything they're seeing. As viewers, we're all so experienced and so much smarter than we realize. With Blu-ray, there will be less tricking of the eye.
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.
I don't underestimate audiences' intelligence. Audiences are much brighter than media gives them credit for. When people went to a movie once a week in the 1930s and that was their only exposure to media, you were required to do a different grammar.
We bring our preparation to the table, and opportunity may present itself, and if you are well prepared, you can seize opportunity and then maybe something good happens, and you call that luck.
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.
The best-kept secret about Don Johnson is the fact that he is a terrific actor.
I own a horse and ride, but I don't know racing or betting.
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.
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.
Horses have really distinct personalities, and they're magical in many ways.
Digital makes things feel more real, like you could reach out and touch them.
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.
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.
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.
Personally, I find looking at all of the supporting materials and bring it all back to me - the people I worked with, the experience of working on a project - makes it come alive again. So, I try to put those experiences into my commentary for the viewers.
'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.
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.
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.
I like change. I don't like being in the same room for too long.
As filmmakers, we want the audience to have the most complete experience they can. For example, I interviewed Stanley Kubrick years ago around the time of '2001: A Space Odyssey.' I was going to see the film that night in London, and he insisted I sit in one of four seats in the theater for the best view or not watch the film.
By the time I was 21, I knew what I wanted to do, and that was to direct films.
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.
Blu-ray and the technologies emerging around it are the premiere format for reproducing what we do as filmmakers. There's more space on the disc, more bit rate.
In 'The Insider,' I had violence - lethal, life-taking aggression - all happening psychologically, all with people talking to other people.
There's a tired notion that the photojournalist has to be disengaged to be able to shoot what he shoots, and that's such a cliched idea of what the experience is. Of course they're engaged, and they're not distanced.
Miami is one of these great places that is a really sensual, physically beautiful place.
A 65-ft.-wide screen and 500 people reacting to the movie, there is nothing like that experience.
I've never made any film that I wouldn't go back and re-edit.
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.
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.
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.
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