HOF Waingro

1st nominee up for this blog's official Kinematograph Hall of Heroes, (the inaugural class of which will enter Movie Valhalla at the end of this year), is Waingro. 

In a movie with DeNiro, Kilmer, Danny Trejo, Jon Voight, Ashley Judd's world class booty, and Tone Loc, 1995 caper epic, Heat, should rightfully be remembered for Waingro; from the opening armored truck robbery, to the revenge tragedy endgame, Waingro is the irredescent algae in the night sea that is Heat; I realize that reference may be obscure: DeNiro tells Amy Brenneman about this glowing algae while they stand together on the porch of his empty house on the sea. 

And speaking of Judging Amy, Heat is a movie cast touchstone, only paralleled in American movies by pantheon behemoths like The Godfather, in that it either launched, Dennis Haysbert, Amy Brenneman, Diane Venora, Danny Trejo, William Finchtner; legitimized, Ashley Judd, Natalie Portman, Tom Sizemore; rebooted, Voight, Pacino; or reinterpreted a staggering number of actors' careers, as a result of Heat, DeNiro, at 52, began his new career as an action hero, something he's still cashing checks for at 70.

Heat is also populated with stunt-casting, rappers and punks like Tone Loc and Henry Rollins; the film geek mind melt that Tony Montana's two top detectives are Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs, and Bubba Gump.

Beyond these categories, you still have Hank Azaria, Jeremy Piven, Wes Studi, Xander Berkley, it never ends.

Heat set the course for a generation of working actors, it's cast has starred on twenty cable channels every night for 18 years. All but Gro.

No fan in referring to Heat speaks of Neil McCauley or Vincent Hanna, they say De Niro and Pacino. The same goes for the entire cast: Bubba Gump, the president from 24, Judging Amy, Machete, and on and on: Heat, unlike great movies, doesn't have characters, it has the answer bank to a movie trivia game, a DVR scheduled for Tuesday night on TBS, Netflix Drama rotation.

Heat is not a forgotten movie, the opening of the Dark Knight Rises is an homage, including stunt-casting William Finchtner as the mob's bank rep trying to get tough with the wrong clown: it happens that young Bill Finchtner also played lizard larceny victim Van Zant, he of the bearer bonds ripped from armored truck in Heat's legendary opening. 

The biggest hit of last year, Grand Theft Auto V, has so many Heat references, it's clear that the grittiest industrial areas of Rockstar's San Andreas are Michael Mann's L.A. 

So how can a film of some historical importance sport a cast of twenty known actors, where not one of those actors is best known for the film in question? Heat eighteen years later seems like a movie you'd invent in a dream state, where the actors from movies you've seen recently do a walk on -- it's Oz: "And you were there, and you, and you."

Heat could be great, (the universe Mann created seems more beautiful for every year of dumb heist movies that stacks atop it), were the cast not there to take you out of it -- it's like a bunch of reverse engineered cameos.

There is just the one character in Heat who is completely of the world he inhabits; his existence is why I don't finally shut the door on Heat being a great movie, (great as in pantheon -- here in one hundred years). The man who will forever stand under that overpass, at that taco stand, sitting at that Denny's booth, in that hotel luxuriating in that bathrobe before Travis Bickle puts the bullets in him, before Michael Corleone does the same to Travis Bickle. 

Waingro. HOF? Perheps. Perheps.

RIP Mr. Gro: that concussed, temporarily deaf armored truck guard was eyeballing you, I understand why you had to make a move. 

Maybe as a criminal Waingro was unfit for DeNiro's crew, but as a noir relic, he's the Maltese Falcon, greater than either DeNiro's dead man grimace, or Pacino's incessant bleating. Salud, Gro. I hope to see you in the Hall of Heroes come XMas '14.