Relatively speaking

As inevitably as the first icy blast heralding another winter, so too the hour eventually arrives when the current generation of film-making bigwigs need to step aside and allow a (theoretically) fresher, hungrier crop of directors their turn. Just one such passing of the baton appears to be already afoot, with Michael Mann apparently all set to hoist daughter Ami into the cinematic top flight with The Fields.

With Sam Worthington having now reportedly signed on in a headline capacity, Michael Mann has been talking to Deadline Hollywood about the new detective movie, which is due to commence filming in Louisiana on 5 April. The Heat and Public Enemies man will produce, with Ami Canaan Mann the one anointed to sit in that big canvas chair with her name stencilled onto the back of it. Before we get into what the big Mann said about The Fields, let us just take a minute or two to recap the project for those who might have come in late, or perhaps haven't been paying attention and have been doodling little pictures of aardvarks dressed as high court judges instead.

Originally called The Texas Killing Fields (presumably the abbreviation occurred to avoid any potential confusing associations with Roland Joffé's 1984 Oscar-winning The Killing Fields), the project had previously been sat in the lap of Danny Boyle; a proposed creative marriage which the Slumdog Millionaire director spoke to MTV about in February of last year. Sounding mildly rueful, Boyle reflected on the merits of the potential movie, while lamenting the obstacles he saw as preventing it from ever making it up on the big screen: “Texas Killing Fields was a fantastic script, really special script, but it was just so dark it would never get made. You'd have to have half-a-dozen megastars for a studio to even consider making it.”

However as anyone who suffered through A Life Less Ordinary will readily testify, Boyle's judgement is not unimpeachable, and by November it looked as if The Texas Killing Fields was ready to defy his bleak diagnosis with all the vigour of a resurgent Lance Armstrong. Pajiba reported that not only was the movie gearing up towards full production (with the Michael and Ami Mann double-act at the helm), but that Worthington and Bradley Cooper were 'attached to the project'. Which of course has all mostly come to pass now, with Cooper the only mentioned element to have apparently fallen by the wayside. Which is possibly the best place for him. Especially if the wayside is littered with bits of broken glass, upturned syringes and baseball bat-brandishing nutjobs who sat through the humour torpor that was The Hangover and would now like to 'discuss' its myriad shortcomings with Templeton Peck in person, face-to-bat.

Putting aside such fantasy hi-jinks and returning to the matter in hand; what can we expect from the now-truncatedly-titled The Fields? Well, as Boyle noted, it is apparently pretty bleak fare, with a plot rooted in grisly, real-life events. Between 1983 and 1991, four female bodies were recovered in the same place on Calder Road in League City, Texas. Two of the bodies have never been identified and the perpetrator of the killings has never been apprehended. The Fields reputedly centres on two detectives who discover that the murder they are investigating has a connection to these prior 'killing fields' crimes. Mann confirmed to Deadline Hollywood that Worthington is taking the role of one of the cops: “Sam will play Jake, this tough-minded misanthropic Texan, who with his partner Brian wind up waging something of a war against these unknown assailants, a ferocious battle to save each other and the life of this young street kid.” With Cooper seemingly out of the picture, no word on who will play Brian - a character Variety describe as a 'New York transplant'. Still, considering the cash harvest yielded the last time that Worthington played a guy called Jake, those super-superstitious Hollywood types probably figure that a second star name is a luxury they and The Fields can happily live without.

The screenplay for The Fields has been written by Don Ferrarone, a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent who Mann hired to pen the script after the pair met on a TV project in the 1990s. Ferrarone is also a son of Galveston County, in which League City lies, and it is the combination of his law-enforcement background and local knowledge that Mann evidently believes sets The Fields apart from other detective tales: “It's a brilliant screenplay, filled with things you cannot make up in Hollywood, things you would have to find the dead bodies in a heroin operation to understand. That's why it's such a haunting piece. This is such a spooky zone in Texas where cell phones don't work, where the homes sit on trailer stilts, and where's a hand-painted sign on the bridge that reads, 'You Are Now Entering the Cruel World'.”

While that description immediately issues forth a tiny grain of doubt that audiences could be subjected to some dire culture clash scenes at the outset of the movie - as 'New York transplant' Brian gets the hump because he can't watch Mad Men on his iPhone - it also paints quite an evocative picture. The coastal region of Texas is not an area that has been portrayed on film too many times previously, while Calder Road (which lies around 20 miles south of Houston, off Interstate 45) is adjacent to the disused League City oil fields, which seem to offer a potent, forbidding backdrop for a dark murder mystery such as The Fields.

Aside from the story itself and the involvement of man-of-the-moment Worthington though, there is another key point of interest regarding The Fields: namely Ami Canaan Mann's date with the director's chair. Boasting a few TV credits, and having delivered just one previous feature offering (the drama Morning, which appears to have been so seldom seen as to make Godard's King Lear look as widely-circulated as Iron Man in comparison), Ami Mann would seem an unlikely choice to call the shots on something which features the star of the biggest movie of all time, had been due to be filmed by the most recent recipient of the Best Director Oscar, and is being produced by the guy behind some of the most (excessively) drooled-over flicks of the last fifteen years. And it is the familial loyalties of that latter figure which appear the pivotal link in her landing the gig, with Michael Mann remarking to DH that it “is a dream come true to enable Ami to do this.” A dream for Dad perhaps, but will it prove a nightmare for audiences? Unsurprisingly, the proud father says not: “I'd say she's better than I am. She has razor-sharp intelligence, and there is great taste and artistry in what she has done as a director.”

That may well be true. Back in 1973, ornery yacht rockers Steely Dan moaned about show biz kids making movies of themselves, you know they don't give a fuck about anybody else, but Hollywood offspring have been doing rather well for themselves behind the camera in recent years. Sofia Coppola won few admirers when dad Francis selected her as the perfect replacement for Winona Ryder on The Godfather Part III, yet she has since forged a reasonably warmly-acclaimed career as a writer-director, even picking up an Oscar for her Lost in Translation script. Jason Reitman must be hopeful of joining both father and daughter Coppola in the Oscar-winners club at some stage too, having already picked up nominations for his movies Juno and this year's Up In the Air, the latter of which had been due to previously shoot under the direction of his Ghostbusters-helming dad Ivan (imagine if, when you were a kid, your dad's job was making Ghostbusters. Are there words available to express the awesomeness of such a scenario? It seems improbable. Almost as improbable as Ghostbusters III not being a load of steaming great donkey droppings). And Sir Ridley Scott has bragging rights over Coppola and Reitman alike, with not one but two of his offspring having delivered new movies recently, in the shape of daughter Jordan's drama Cracks, and Welcome to the Rileys by son Jake, which went down well at Sundance last month.

Even if you personally found Lost in Translation overrated, and Juno more irritating than a large boil situated in extremely close proximity to your sphincter, there is no real argument that these kids of famous directors have shown themselves to be as capable of making a movie as the next guy or gal. However would Jason and Sofia and Jake and Jordan and Ami Canaan have ever got the shot at helming a feature had their folks not been Hollywood high-rollers? In the latter case it seems inconceivable that Ms. Mann could have secured top job on The Fields (at least in its current star-garlanded form) were it not for the backing of her father. That is not to cast aspersions on her ability. She might be a brilliant film-maker. She might prove precisely that with The Fields. But she has no track record which could have secured her attachment to such a prestige project in her own right.

Which is really rather pertinent to a debate going on here in the United Kingdom at the moment about social and professional mobility. Or rather the lack of it. A recent government-commissioned report suggested opportunities in the top professions, including the media, were increasingly being monopolised by those from the wealthiest backgrounds. The BBC remarked that, 'the report also criticises informal recruitment systems, such as internships and work placement, as becoming a back-door for better-off, better-connected youngsters. ITV executive chairman Michael Grade, a member of the panel, said the current internship system, based on “who you know”, was “grossly unfair”'. Which is precisely how many aspiring film-makers out there – folks with talent, without opportunity – might today be feeling about Ami Canaan Mann's involvement with The Fields.