MOVIES : One Mann, Two Worlds : The director leaves the city landscapes for the forest of the 'Mohicans,' but draws on his urban roots to give the Cooper classic a contemporary edge

By ELAINE DUTKA

Sept. 20, 1992 12 AM PT

<i> Elaine Dutka is a Times staff writer</i>

Two decades in Hollywood haven’t taken the Chicago out of Michael Mann. The director may live in the Santa Monica mountains and have an office on Sunset Boulevard. But those formative images of “El” tracks and brick alleys, he insists, are still firmly in place.

“My knowledge of nature was limited,” Mann says. “If it was flat and green, it was grass. If it was low and green, it was a bush. If it was tall and green, it was a tree. My orientation is definitely urban . . . yet I’ve just made a movie in a forest.”

The movie is “The Last of the Mohicans”--a $35-million adaptation of James Fenimore Cooper’s novel, starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Madeleine Stowe--which will be released by 20th Century Fox on Friday. The forest is New York’s Hudson Valley during the French and Indian War, a far cry from the stylized gloss of “Miami Vice” and the metallic “Thief,” which became the director’s trademark.

“Vice’s” blend of visual cool, pulsating rock and Armani cops electrified prime-time TV, turning the focused, often difficult executive producer into a small-screen superstar. Success in feature films--his medium of choice--however, has been longer in coming.

“Mohicans,” according to industry insiders, is a chance for Mann to show the world--and the industry--that his palette contains more than tropical pastels.

“Those who label Michael ‘Mr. Miami Vice’ will see that his talent is far deeper than that,” says Roger Birnbaum, president of worldwide production for Fox which, along with Morgan Creek Productions, financed the movie. “ ‘Mohicans’ is a departure for him, but Michael’s urban-contemporary background was a selling point for us, a way of bringing urgency to a period piece and making it more palatable for audiences today.”

The 49-year-old director, a University of Wisconsin English literature major, had never read the Cooper novel during his college days. But the 1936 screen version with Randolph Scott, to which he obtained the rights in 1989, made a lasting impression. More than half the plot of Mann’s film is taken from the Philip Dunne screenplay.

When pitching the project to Fox in May, 1990, Mann emphasized the contemporary relevance of the material: The early stirrings of feminism, ongoing class struggles and interracial attractions, the commercial motivation for the conflict itself. “This was a war fought for the fur trade,” says Mann. “In that way, it’s not unlike the Gulf War (over oil) in Kuwait.”

The massive scale of the story was another draw. Like “Apocalypse Now,” he says, “Mohicans” is an intimate tale unfolding against a much larger canvas. The anti-authoritarian, ironic Hawkeye, to him, was the nation’s first Western hero: A Colonial-born, Indian-raised precursor to Daniel Boone and those who followed, culminating in what Mann describes as the “fascinating racist” portrayed on the screen by John Wayne in “The Searchers.”

If Mann and co-writer Christopher Crowe drew heavily on Cooper’s hero, they chose to sidestep a lot else from the 1826 novel. “I regard Cooper as Mark Twain did,” says the director, “which is to say not very charitably. He was a reactionary man who believed that racial groups and class were the social equivalent of the great chain of being, that people got in trouble when they tried to move out of it. In his image of the ‘noble savage,’ he heaped one historical crime upon another--retroactively stealing both their humanity and their history.”

With Russell Means cast in the central role of Chingachgook--Hawkeye’s adoptive father and the figure to whom the book’s title refers--there was little danger of repeating that error. As the 52-year-old co-founder of the American Indian Movement and founder of the newly formed American Indian Anti-Defamation Council, he’s been outspokenly critical of previous Hollywood fare--including the Oscar-winning blockbuster “Dances With Wolves.”

“That movie created a lot of sympathy for Indians worldwide which led to more movie work and larger congressional appropriations,” Means acknowledges. “But it was totally lacking in character development. The Good Indian and the Bad Indian were virtually indistinguishable.”

Means’ watchdog organization also issued an eight-page condemnation of Bruce Beresford’s “Black Robe”--a movie he calls “a lie, a direct descendant of the Manifest Destiny attitude of Americans.” The self-described “militant” liked this year’s “Thunderheart”--a drama about an American Indian FBI investigator rediscovering his roots while checking out a murder on the Pine Ridge reservation. Still, he refers to it as “South Dakota Burning”--an allusion to Alan Parker’s controversial “Mississippi Burning,” which portrayed the civil rights struggle from the vantage point of a heroic white FBI agent rather than that of the protesters themselves.

Mann’s portrayals, Means believes, are, at long last, on target--presenting American Indians as the social, economic and intellectual equals of the Colonials, fully integrated with them on a frontier resembling a mini-U.N. Even the Bad Indian, he points out, is finally multidimensional: a Huron bent on avenging the loss of his family--with a higher IQ than his white and Mohawk colleagues.

“All Indian movies will be measured against ‘The Last of the Mohicans,’ ” he says. “And not because I had anything to do with it. Michael knew the subject inside out before I arrived. He never asked my advice.”

The director had done his homework and then some: immersing himself in arcane 18th-Century saber-fighting manuals, watching the French and Indian War film “Northwest Passage” and John Ford’s “Drums Along the Mohawk.” In the Depression photographs of Dorothea Lange, he found images of the struggles and determination of common people. By studying 19th-Century landscape painters such as Albert Bierstadt, he got a sense of the quality of light in old-growth forests.

The challenge, Mann says, was heightened by the fact that everything had to be created from scratch. A historically accurate Ft. William Henry was constructed on a 38-acre tract. A Huron village emerged. One breechcloth made out of porcupine quills took months to make--and the production required 1,000 of them.

Asking Mann to describe the creation of the “Mohicans” world is to embark on an inner journey from which he has yet to emerge. Each film is a design problem, he explains: a puzzle in which each piece must not only fit but ring true.

“When (filmmaker Federico) Fellini was asked why he didn’t make films in the United States, he responded ‘How can I? I don’t even know what kind of ties people wear,’ ” the director recalls, his gray-green eyes lighting up at the thought. “That’s the point. If the war paint on an extra looks like Peter Max circa 1966, the audience will spot it in a moment.”

Though the director has always been drawn to history “along with astronomy and the design of intake manifolds for automobiles,” he adds, only half-jokingly), authenticity takes a back seat to entertainment at times. “My mission is not to be historically accurate and immensely boring,” he states. “I’m using history, not doing it. I telescope events, combine characters, put quotes from one man into the mouth of another. I’m working like a collagist, combining elements to re-create the spirit of the time.”

While Mann’s obsessiveness has improved his work, it hasn’t endeared him to the ranks. Even Stowe and Day-Lewis, fans of the director, joked about confiscating his production notes and sending them to a psychiatrist. “Michael is generally perceived as a pain in the ass,” admits Fox’s Birnbaum. “He’s a perfectionist, working 25 hours a day, on top of details in every single department, very demanding of the people around him. On a movie of this scope--the biggest moment in Michael’s life in the film business--you need that kind of general. But if someone isn’t willing to go the extra mile, his work ethic can seem oppressive.”

Madeleine Stowe was angry during her early weeks on the shoot. “Michael would be lining up a shot and, if a coat on one extra wasn’t right, everything would stop,” she recalls. “It’s difficult to have access to your feelings. You had to stay in character 24 hours a day. Initially, I stormed around, annoyed at having to give up my bit of self-determination, like Cora, trying to find ways of exercising my will. After two or three weeks, though, I surrendered to it all . . . and was actually quite happy.”

Not so some high-profile members of the crew. James Acheson, costume designer for “The Last Emperor” and “Dangerous Liaisons,” went home with a case of nervous exhaustion--even before the cameras started to roll. Vera Mitchell, a hair stylist whose credits include “A Passage to India” and “Out of Africa,” also walked off the set. Five weeks into the shoot, Mann made a change of his own, replacing director of photography Douglas Milson (“Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves”) with Dante Spinotti, with whom he worked on “Manhunter.”

The subject is not one of Mann’s favorites, but, when pressed, he pulls no punches. “I like a good time,” he begins. “I like blowing off steam. But if someone wants a country-club shoot, they’re in the wrong movie. I was deadly serious about pulling this off. I try to be very explicit about what I want in every aspect of cinematic expression. Because I reserve the right to involve myself in every department, I need self-confident people with strong egos around me so I won’t make them nervous. That’s my version of the directorial process, and the last thing I’d do is apologize for it.”

Show business evidently hasn’t tempered Mann, a smart, scrappy kid raised in Chicago’s working-class Humboldt Park. Graduating from high school in 1960, he escaped to the University of Wisconsin where, during his junior year, he stumbled into a life-altering course on the history of film. After graduate work at the London Film School, he directed short films, commercials and documentaries overseas.

Homesick for America, Mann headed back to Chicago in 1971 and, a year later, moved to Los Angeles. After paying his dues, he turned out scripts for such small-screen hits as “Starsky and Hutch” and “Police Story” as well as the pilot for “Vega$.” His 1979 TV movie “The Jericho Mile,” which brought him a co-writer’s Emmy and a Directors Guild of America award, helped to get his first feature film “Thief” off the ground.

A 1981 film noirish tale of a top-of-the-line jewelry thief played by James Caan, “Thief” received strong reviews, but never took off. “The Keep” (1983)--an allegorical horror film about man and the nature of evil--was a critical and commercial flop. “Manhunter” (1987) was based on Thomas Harris’ “Red Dragon” novel about serial killer Hannibal Lecter, a story that went on to win Oscars for Anthony Hopkins, Jodie Foster, and director Jonathan Demme in 1991’s “The Silence of the Lambs.” Mann’s effort, succumbing to a lack of marketing support from the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, disappeared from theaters in a matter of weeks.

“It’s just life in the big city,” says Mann philosophically. “For better or worse, I’ve never had a career plan. I just go for things that get my blood flowing, my imagination working overtime.”

His credo, he says, is “Do the work”--one he shares with his “Mohican” star Daniel Day-Lewis. “Daniel and I share the same religion,” the director observes. “He’s got even better powers of concentration than I. Like Jimmy Caan, he’s an island amidst all the movement and the noise on the set. Besides being one of the two or three most brilliant actors in the English language, Daniel is disciplined. There’s no free lunch in any of this.”

This match made in heaven, however, took a while to ignite. The actor, on the heels of his Oscar-winning performance as Christy Brown in “My Left Foot,” became emotionally exhausted and was not reading scripts. After meeting with Mann in London in October, 1990, however, he agreed to sign on.

Eight months of intensive preparation followed, a period when Day-Lewis’ natural athleticism and hand-eye-coordination were put to the test. Enrolling in the Special Operations Center--an anti-terrorist facility in Alabama--the actor learned to shoot both contemporary and 18th-Century firearms, to start a fire in 25 seconds, to trap and to hunt. A long-distance runner, he gave up the sport for a while--focusing on eating and bulking up his upper body instead.

“By the end of it all, Daniel would be walking three feet behind you and you’d never know he was there,” Mann says. “He’d be breathing when you breathed and walking your pace.”

Stowe, like her co-star, had initial reservations about the project. If the film was to be just another “studio action-adventure film in costume,” the actress believed, she’d just as soon pass. “I was resistant to it and he to me,” she says, referring to the project and the director. But, four months after reading the script, she and Mann sat down.

“Michael convinced me he understood the difficulties of a woman at that time,” the actress recalls. “I wouldn’t just be ‘the girl,’ but a person entering an entirely new world with no idea of its dynamics. A woman who falls for a man she has no rational reason to be drawn to . . . yet everything about him makes perfect sense. Cory was actually an early feminist--like Hawkeye, reluctant to surrender herself to authority. It was important to Michael that she exercise her freedom of choice.”

The two also saw eye-to-eye on the subject of sex. Rather than go for the primal erotica of a “Basic Instinct,” they opted for a simmering sexuality between Hawkeye and Cora. Physical proximity and torrid glances make up their cinematic foreplay. When the climax comes, it takes the form of a kiss.

“Michael saw that moment as a collision between the two,” says Stowe. “It was a moment of truth, a sense that each had found their other half. For Cora, it wasn’t just passion, but the beginning of a new life. Love scenes have become so boring, so lacking in emotional reality. Ours was infinitely more erotic. Much more private and personal.”

Russell Means, in his first acting job, blew the initial audition. After some pointers from drama coach Sandra Lee, however, he managed to land the part. Mann, he maintains, gets the best out of everyone . . . even if it takes a while. The emotional closing sequence, containing a multitude of camera angles and a complicated monologue ultimately cut for narrative reasons, required 3 1/2 hours to shoot--and 67 takes.

Mann, says Means, never yelled. When offering pointers, he did it in private. Only twice, he recalls, did the two lock horns. “I won an argument about wearing a larger breechcloth so that, unlike the extras, less of my butt showed. But I lost a battle to have the single stereotypical scene taken out. I told Michael I objected to the part in which the white princess is brought back to the bloodthirsty Indian villagers. He told me that when I become a producer and buy a script, I could make a movie of my own.”

When Mann filmed “The Jericho Mile” at Folsom prison, 13 stabbings took place within earshot of the crew. “Mohicans” was stressful in another way. “This picture called on me to be more disciplined, more concentrated than any other,” says the director. “I had to keep my eye on the prize. Even thinking about the difficulties wasn’t allowed.”

For starters, he says, location-scouting in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina was almost like boot camp. During the 73-day shoot, it rained off and on for 40 days. (“We were the first production in recent memory to collect on our rain insurance policy.”) No one got hurt scaling slippery rocks or shooting on a precarious ledge for three weeks, but when Wes Studi--who plays the Huron antagonist--tore a ligament in his knee, three days of shooting went up in smoke.

The originally non-union production was the scene of a brief strike called by organizers from the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employes (IATSE) in the midst of shooting. Mann says he had no problem with a union shoot, but the studio refused to cut a deal. When the crew--joined by nearly 100 American Indian extras already being mobilized by Means--not only observed an IATSE picket line but joined in, the producers recognized the union as the crew’s representatives, and the crew resumed work.

Still, says Mann, he doesn’t long for his “Miami Vice” years. “Those weren’t the Golden Days,” he hastens to point out. “We were a bunch of overweight, goofy people in the lobby of a hotel catering to Philippine package tours trying to figure out how to do episodic TV. We got a lot of mileage out of being ‘different,’ because everyone there came out of movies.”

The show had its rewards, Mann admits. There was immediate gratification from shooting a show and seeing it air four weeks later. A measure of satisfaction in producing some programs he considered “politically significant.” The only drawback, in his mind, is that he wasn’t directing.

“I have nothing against TV,” he states. “My filmmaking education occurred in a country (England) where directors like John Schlesinger routinely moved between movies, opera, the stage and BBC 2. What motivates us is the content. I wouldn’t do a weekly TV series again, but I would consider a limited one like (1990’s Emmy award-winning “Drug Wars: The Camarena Story”) or a miniseries at some point. But I see myself primarily as a feature film director--one who stepped sideways into TV.”

After “Mohicans,” others may, too. Daniel Day-Lewis--who rose to prominence in such movies as “A Room With a View” and “My Beautiful Laundrette”--has never had to carry a major studio release. But Fox is playing up the movie as an “event”--and preview audiences (as well as moviegoers in France, where it has been playing a month) have responded in kind.

Mann, for his part, hopes the movie won’t be pigeonholed. More than history, he says “Mohicans” is about life.

“In 1989, before making this film, an image from a Cartier-Bresson photograph flashed through my mind,” he recalls. “People were standing on a ledge, staring at mountains in the distance--the scene that now closes ‘Mohicans.’ I find a bittersweet quality to it all--tremendous sadness and beauty existing within the thrust of progress. My challenge was turning those eight or nine days in 1757 into a story that’s edgy and immediate in 1992.”