The Best Hollywood Shootout Ever
By: Jean Campbell
Tags: Screenwriting, True Crime, Police, Chicago, Filmmaking

The Best Hollywood Shootout Ever

Robert DeNiro (Neil McCauley) and Val Kilmer in the famous scene. Photo courtesy Warner Brothers.

In the crime thriller Heat, Al Pacino plays a hyperactive detective named Vincent Hannah. The original script had him addicted to coke, but in the final version, Hannah was just a very obsessive man bent on catching a thief named Neil McCauley, played by Robert DeNiro.

In real life, that criminal was also named Neil McCauley, while the detective who hunted him was a technical advisor on Heat and a former Chicago cop named Chuck Adamson.

What most film lovers remember about Heat is the gripping extended shootout scene, which began outside a bank and spread into the busy streets. The film was shot in Downtown Los Angeles, entirely on location.

The actors were trained in how to use high-powered weapons. By the time they filmed the scene, which appeared midway through the 3-hour film, the star-studded cast looked like real cops and robbers.

From cop to screenwriter

Chuck Adamson was born in 1936 in Chicago. At the age of 22, Charles (who early on went by Chuck or Chucky) began working Major Crimes for the Chicago Police Department. Like the city it served, CPD was growing and looking for recruits to handle crimes like homicide, assault, and robbery.

Violent crime has always marked the Windy City, from the 1920s Al Capone days and the internationally famous Leopold-Loeb murder, to the Chicago riots of 1968. Today, it’s the murder capital of America with 700 homicides in 2020.

Adamson served in the Major Crimes Unit till 1958. When he retired from the police force, he began a second career, striking up friendships in Hollywood. He began by writing books, then became a screenwriter.

He was first known in the biz for creating the television series Crime Story in 1986. He appeared as two characters — Nick Aiello and Sugarman — on screen.

Chuck Adamson. Photo courtesy Mubi.com

But where did he get his stories? From personal experience, like any good writer. Adamson was trained by tough guy and legendary cop Lieutenant Frank “Francois” Pape, of Major Crimes (he later wrote a book about Pape). He also served with another cop-gone-Hollywood, Dennis Farina, of Get Shorty fame.

Adamson wrote four episodes of Miami Vice, and also appeared in films: A River Runs Through It, The Stand, and Quiz Show.

As a technical advisor, he eventually moved between screenwriting and producing, where he worked with the director of Heat, Michael Mann. He’d first met Mann in 1981 when he advised him on the fledgling director’s first film, Thief.

In 2008, Adamson died at the age of 71 from lung cancer.

The story came from a different time and place

Heat was released in 1995 and set in present-day L.A., but it was born on the Chicago streets of the 1960s from Adamson’s work tracking down one man.

The character DeNiro breathed life into, Neil McCauley, was named after a real-life criminal who was sent to Alcatraz in the 1950s.

McCauley was later transferred to one of the most notorious prisons in the nation, McNeil Island, and released in 1961. In the film, there is no reference to Alcatraz, just to McNeil — Det. Hannah asks McCauley, “McNeil as tough as they say?”

In 1962, McCauley began planning his next heist with his old gang. Adamson was ready for him, surveilling the gang just as the film portrays. The classic coffee shop meetup where Pacino and DeNiro face each other happened, nearly word-for-word. Adamson warned McCauley he might have to take him down and his enemy replied — Or maybe I’ll have to take you out.

In March 1964 McCauley and three of his henchmen robbed a Chicago grocery store of over $13,000 and sped off as cops shot up their vehicle. (In today’s money, the heist would’ve netted over $100K). Adamson and eight other squad cars had anticipated the robbery and likeliest escape routes and were in position to intercept McCauley’s gang.

The real-life shootout

Mann’s experience with the less sophisticated film Thief and his Hollywood successes set him up for a big-budget film. He developed and scripted Heat with Adamson’s help, then cast DeNiro and Pacino along with Val Kilmer, Danny Trejo, Ashley Judd, and Jon Voight.

In the film, only one robber made it to their getaway car and when the driver was shot dead, he was was forced out onto the streets. The other two were already battling it out with dozens of police, firing nearly constantly with high-powered automatic weapons. All three, with varying success, tried to literally outrun their pursuers.

In real-life, the four robbers drove away but were boxed in by cop cars. They opened their car doors and began firing in an attempt to escape on foot. The police, who outnumbered the gang four to one, shot and killed two of the men in an alley. The character of Chris (played by Kilmer) was loosely based on a man named Miklos Polesti. He got away, just like in the film. (Polesti was later recaptured).

McCauley made it to someone’s front lawn, where he was shot six times and died at the scene. He was only 50 but had been a criminal for over 30 years and had spent most of his life behind bars.

Adamson went on to take down other hardened criminals, but he truly respected McCauley’s ability as a professional thief. In Steven Rybin’s book about Mann, the director commented.

“Chuck had respected the guy’s professionalism — he was a really good thief, which is exciting to a detective, and he tried to keep any risks to a minimum — but at the same time he was a cold-blooded sociopath who’d kill you as soon as look at you.”

Adamson lived a colorful, dangerous life as a cop but survived to write some of the best crime drama of the 1980s and 90s.

The result is a cops-and-robbers classic with roots in true crime.