Kilmer and De Niro Unknowingly Used Live Ammunition During Entirety of Bank Heist Shootout in Heat (1995)

“Bobby, these extras the studio got are incredible. It’s like they genuinely fear we’re trying to kill them!”

Hundreds of transient and homeless people signed legally dubious waivers from the studio, and were killed or critically injured in what De Niro, Kilmer and audiences assumed was top-notch carefully choreographed special effects and professional method acting

A few weeks back when my train malfunctioned at the station in Chinatown on the way home from work, I decided to jump off and grab some dumplings at this great hole in the wall place nearby.

While I waited for my food, I checked out their used DVDs for sale, and before you start asking too many questions — this is a totally normal thing to have for sale at a hole in the wall dumpling place in NYC.

Somewhere in Chinatown, NYC — Exact street address unknown

Rummaging through their impressive collection, I found a rare limited edition DVD of Heat (1995) with extra previously unreleased commentary.

It’s one of my favorite movies, and even through I already had it on Blu-Ray somewhere, the possibly learning some new movie trivia intrigued me, and it was only five-dollars, so I bought it.

Used DVDs are super fucking cheap, and even though they look like potato quality, renting them for $5 for 48 hrs from whatever streaming service you use when the movie came out like 25 years ago is a total god damn ripoff.

Most of it was pretty much your standard B-Cut interview footage with supporting cast and crew members, but then comes this nugget.

In addition to the film using the live audio from the epic shootout scene outside the bank with carefully placed microphones — instead of dubbing it in later in post-production as it’s generally done, the production used live ammunition in De Niro and Kilmer’s guns.

Hollywood used to be fucking lit back in the day. Mann just likes kicking it old school.

According to Brad, some random-ass 23 year old production intern, the director systematically hired homeless and transient extras to play the uniformed police officers in the bank heist shootout scene, and made them sign legally dubious waivers protecting the studio from any kind of liability.

Copy of studio liability waiver provided by anonymous source

Mann then directed the props staff to secretly switch out the blanks in De Niro and Kilmer’s guns with live ammunition without their knowledge, to further add realism to the screen, and directed them to aim their weapons as “realistically” as possible when firing “blank” rounds in the direction of the extras during the scene.

For those unfamiliar with the shootout scene from Heat, the result is pure fucking carnage:

Re-watching this scene with fresh eyes, it’s insane that De Niro and Kilmer had no idea the police officers in costume cowering behind cruisers getting shot up were genuinely panicking for their lives. They assumed it was all top-notch method acting and carefully choreographic special effects.

It’s estimated that over 90% of the extras dressed as police officers that participated in this scene died or sustained serious injury as a direct result. Arguably for the greater good of film making.

Despite Mann’s best efforts to keep everyone safe, spending a considerable amount of the film’s budget on bulletproof plating to line vehicles and props to protect the crew and staff, De Niro and Kilmer’s extensive weapons training, as part of preparing for their roles, unknowingly resulted in the deaths of over 200 homeless and transient extras during that scene’s week-long shoot.

The omelet being Mann’s masterpiece of film making. The eggs being hundreds of missing transient men buried somewhere in the Sonoran Desert.

“I have no clue how Pacino survived so many of the re-takes, or why he agreed to risk his life being on the receiving end of this bat-shit crazy live ammo thing. Al was just watching these extras around him get mowed down, take after take — and he’d still belt out a big “HOOO AAAAH!” after Mann yelled “cut!” each time, and then within seconds he’d be talking up the extras that hadn’t been killed or injured in the previous shot, offering them a fresh pomegranate juice he was really into at the time. He had a habit of stopping production if he found out someone he was talking to hadn’t had a fresh pomegranate juice before, and the whole production would be delayed or shut down while Al went to his trailer and made these stupid juices that no fucking one wanted. But it distracted everyone from the elephant in the room, you know these dozens of extras you could set your watch to that were about to get shot to death, every time you heard “ACTION!” on set. -Tom Sizemore

Sizmore was not provided with live ammo, as part of a compromise with union officials who were, using sound judgement, not comfortable with the idea of Tom Sizemore walking around a movie set with a fully automatic rifle, unknowingly with live ammunition in it.

Sizemore looking totally badass, moments after Waingro gets his head smashed into a plate of hash-browns by De Niro for being a little too trigger happy on the armored car job.

The extended credits finish with a brief snippet from Kilmer, who weighs in on being “in the dark” during Mann’s during controversial directing process:

“Bobby D. and I really didn’t know what to make of it at the time. Mann would yell “Give me a fresh batch of recruits!” and these guys in cop uniforms would timidly walk out on set into the street, and sometimes they’d break-out crying hysterically, and the production assistants would have to quickly replace them at the last minute before we started rolling. Then they’d just lay there “pretending” to bleed to death, screaming after he yelled cut, and they’d get dragged off the street by the PAs and the whole thing would start all over again. It was all very surreal. In hindsight, when we found out about the live ammo thing during post production, yeah sure — we probably could have cut the re-shoots down and saved a few dozen lives, but that’s Hollywood baby! -Val Kilmer