Michael Mann compares current political climate in America to 1960s upheavals
During a two-hour masterclass on film and his career, Heat director Michael Mann compared the current political climate in the United States to the upheavals of the 1960s.
Michael Mann has compared the current political climate in the United States to the upheavals of the 1960s.
Speaking at the Lumière Festival in Lyon, where he was recently honoured with a career tribute, the 82-year-old filmmaker reflected on his formative experiences documenting the 1968 student uprisings in Paris for NBC, and said today’s cultural resistance is found in satire rather than the streets.
He told Thierry Frémaux, the Cannes chief and Lumière Festival director, during a masterclass lasting nearly two hours: “That experience was so formative to me personally, because 1968 was this pivotal year.
“It culminated in the Democratic Convention in Chicago and a police riot, in 500 students being killed in Mexico City, in the death of Martin Luther King, of Bobby Kennedy. It was the pivotal year in wakening consciousness of people.”
Michael went on to draw a connection between the unrest of that era and the present-day political divide in America.
He said: “What’s going now is like the ’60s in America in a sense. Except that the vanguard and the resistance today is in South Park,” he joked, prompting laughter from the audience.
According to Variety, Michael also said his films often contain echoes of that turbulent period, including 2001’s Ali, which references the 1974 Rumble in the Jungle boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman.
The director was celebrated at the Lumière Festival with a retrospective featuring 12 of his feature films, along with his pilot for the Max series Tokyo Vice and The Jericho Mile, a prison drama shot inside Folsom Prison with real inmates.
Discussing his upcoming projects, Michael said: “We’re in the middle of negotiations and it looks like (Heat 2) will go forward sometime in the summer of 2026.”
The sequel is being developed by Amazon MGM-owned United Artists, with producer Scott Stuber in talks to finalise rights from Warner Bros.
When asked about new genres he would consider, Michael said he was drawn to science fiction.
He added: “I’ve always wanted to do a significant science fiction film. I haven’t done it yet.”
Michael also said he was inspired by the “new wave of science fiction in the late 1960s, ’70s and ’80s” and was a fan of Metal Hurlant – published in the U.S. as Heavy Metal magazine.
He also revealed plans to produce a Western titled Comanche, written by himself and directed by filmmaker Scott Cooper, who was at the festival for the premiere of his film Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, starring Jeremy Allen White and Jeremy Strong.
