Michael Mann Compares Today’s U.S. Politics to the 1960s: “The Resistance Now Feels Like ‘South Park’”

Mann also said he’ll pro­duce a West­ern titled “Comanche” which will be direct­ed by Scott Coop­er, whose lat­est film “Spring­steen: Deliv­er Me From Nowhere” played this week at Lumiere Fes­ti­val

While at the Lumiere Fes­ti­val in Lyon where he’s being hon­ored with a career trib­ute, Michael Mann reflect­ed on his time in Paris doc­u­ment­ing the stu­dent upris­ings of 1968 for NBC. That year, he said, left an indeli­ble mark on him and his body of work.

“That expe­ri­ence was so for­ma­tive to me per­son­al­ly, because ’68 was this piv­otal year,” Mann told Thier­ry Fre­maux, the Cannes boss who heads Lumiere Fes­ti­val, at a packed mas­ter­class that ran for near­ly two hours. “It cul­mi­nat­ed in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­ven­tion in Chica­go and a police riot, in 500 stu­dents being killed the Mex­i­co City, in the death of Mar­tin Luther King, of Bob­by Kennedy. It was the piv­otal year in wak­en­ing con­scious­ness of peo­ple.”

Mann, who also talked about his ear­ly career head of the fes­ti­val, revealed that many of his films are filled with ref­er­ences from that tumul­tuous era, includ­ing 1974’s Rum­ble in the Jun­gle in “Ali.”

Mann then drew a par­al­lel with the cur­rent polit­i­cal divide in the U.S., say­ing: “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, spark­ing laugh­ter from the crowd.

At the Lumière Fes­ti­val, Mann has been cel­e­brat­ed through­out the week with a ret­ro­spec­tive span­ning 12 of his the­atri­cal fea­tures, as well his pilot for the Max series “Tokyo Vice” and “The Jeri­cho Mile,” a sports movie shot inside Fol­som Prison fea­tur­ing real inmates as extras. He will receive a Lumière Award trib­ute on Fri­day evening from Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed French actor Isabelle Hup­pert.

Regard­ing the long-antic­i­pat­ed “Heat 2,” Mann said: “We’re in the mid­dle of nego­ti­a­tions and it looks like it will go for­ward some­times in the sum­mer of 2026.” the Ama­zon MGM-owned Unit­ed Artists and pro­duc­er Scott Stu­ber are in final nego­ti­a­tions to secure the rights to the sequel from Warn­er Bros.

Asked about what dif­fer­ent genre he’d be inter­est­ed in explor­ing, Mann said he could see him­self direct­ing a sci­ence fic­tion movie and men­tioned he was a fan of “Met­al Hurlant,” the French sci-fi and fan­ta­sy comics anthol­o­gy pub­lished in the U.S. as “Heavy Met­al.”

“I’ve always want­ed to do a sig­nif­i­cant sci­ence fic­tion film. I haven’t done it yet,” he said, recall­ing his fas­ci­na­tion with “the new wave of sci­ence fic­tion in the late 60s, 70s and 80s.”

Mann also said he “want­ed to do a West­ern” and had already writ­ten two screen­plays, one of which is for a film called “Comanche” which he’ll pro­duce rather than direct.

“Scott Coop­er is going to do it,” Mann said, with­out giv­ing fur­ther details about the plot. Coop­er was at the Lumiere Fes­ti­val ear­li­er this week for the pre­miere of his lat­est film, “Spring­steen: Deliv­er Me From Nowhere,” star­ring Jere­my Allen White and Jere­my Strong

Through­out the mas­ter­class, Mann also spoke about oth­er film­mak­ers, includ­ing Christo­pher Nolan, whom he described as a “good friend” and applaud­ed for being “very active in the Direc­tors’ Guild of Amer­i­ca.” When one of the audi­ence mem­bers asked Mann if he was poten­tial­ly inspired by comics and Mar­vel movies, he sug­gest­ed it was the oth­er way around.

“Chris Nolan main­tains that ‘Heat’ influ­enced Bat­man,” Mann said. “I don’t exact­ly know how and why, except that I think it had to do with the idea of a large-scale nar­ra­tive that’s about a num­ber of things.”