Michael Mann: Mann on a Mission

Q: When you take someone into this structured schizophrenia, are you like a manipulative football coach, antagonizing some, reassuring others as they're hanging out on a high wire?

A: No, it is never quite that dramatic. It is a long, structured program, one that can be a lot of fun. To truly make yourself into a boxer is not a bad thing, and Will did that. There were also Islamic studies, the nature of Ali's humor, the rhythms of his speech pattern. We worked with dialecticians. We worked with neurophysiologists to somehow find a way for Will to build within himself the reflexes of Ali, the eye-hand coordination, the hand-foot coordination. At 22, Ali had been boxing for 10 years. And if you slow down and see what he's doing, it's a blinding series of feints. A boxer always looks to

counter the opponent and takes cues as to what he'll do by the way he positions his shoulders and shifts his weight. Ali switches, and the fighter thinks he's going to lead with his left. No, he's switching again, and now he'll lead with his right. Ali confuses you so much that you don't have a counterpunch. Then you become like Liston in that first fight. Demoralized: I can't hit him, and I can't stop him hitting me, and no one told me he could hit. And so you quit after six rounds. We had to get Will to that level of speed and reflexes.

Q: When you assessed Will, what did you feel you had to work on most? Certainly he arrived with Ali-like charm and charisma.

A: I think what will surprise people about Will Smith and this motion picture is, you could describe it as acting, but it ain't acting. It is total immersion into another character. You know what he's thinking without him speaking. To reach that level, you have to become that other character. Will did it in Six Degrees of Separation, and I don't think he'd done it again until now. And he's a man now--the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is dead.

Q: What about Will most surprised you?

A: How incredibly present he could be. He would just be on, all the time, and had the kind of fast mind that great comics have. You wonder how Robin Williams can come up with what he does so quickly, and Will has that. What surprised me most was the consistency of his behavior. He and I became partners in a very stressful and highly ambitious endeavor, and you can't have a better partner in any endeavor than I had in Will Smith. No matter what it took, how hard it was, how many takes we had to go, or how exhausted we were, there was never anything other than, I'm here for you. You're here, I'm here. Whatever it took, he was there with me every single time, never wavering. There are plenty of small dramas in the shooting of a motion picture. People get irritated, they get hurt feelings, they get in bad moods. But I can't point to one moment--not one moment--that I could say that Will was not a gentleman whose commitment to this was total. And the demands on people here were extreme.

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