Heat

Maybe a year and a half ago I was at a very Hollywood party full of up-and-coming actors and influencers at a big house in the Valley. No one you would necessarily know but it had a vibe. I met a girl at that party, an actress/filmmaker. We got to talking. It somehow came up that she had never even heard of Heat. Later that week I invited her over to come watch Heat in 4K, with the ultimate goal of seeing her naked. Yeah, that’s right. I planned to use Michael Mann’s 1995 crime thriller masterpiece HEAT to seduce a woman. What can I say? For me the action is the juice. The day she was due to come over I tested positive for COVID and we had to reschedule. That never happened for various reasons and then I ended up leaving LA more or less permanently. For a year and a half now, every chance I get, I send her every Heat meme I come across as if she knows what it means. It has become the defining joke between us in our off-and-on flirtation. She loves it. A separate story. One night my friends and I went to a bar in Highland Park to grab dinner. It was late on a not busy night so the vibe was chill. It was me, another guy, and his girlfriend. The second we walked into the bar the guy and I both clocked Heat playing on one of the TVs in the corner. We walked in right before the central heist started. The three of us ordered delicious wings and watched the rest of Heat more or less in silence and without sound and were absolutely mesmerized. Heat is a magical, special movie, its spell even more potent when you live in LA. As bewitching as the city itself. With the announcement that Heat 2 is actually happening I decided to rewatch before reading the book. Still flawless. The best crime movie. The best heist movie. Maybe the best LA movie (in competition with Mann’s other masterpiece Collateral). Just the best.