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Sunburn – The Morning Read Of What’s Hot In Florida Politics – 8.9.22

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FloridaPolitics.com
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Good Tuesday morning.

How ’bout that scoop?

“FBI searches Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump says” via Nicholas Wu and Kyle Cheney of POLITICO — The FBI has searched the Mar-a-Lago home of Trump, he said in a statement. “They even broke into my safe,” Trump said Monday in a lengthy statement describing it as a “raid.” It was not immediately clear why the agents were present at Mar-a-Lago, but he said it was “under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents.” “After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate,” he said.

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I recognize this email is supposed to be about Florida politics, but today is no ordinary day.

“Heat 2: A Novel” debuts today.

Michael Mann’s 1995 crime drama is my second favorite film of all time and, without a doubt, the movie I’ve re-watched most often.

Many other fans of “Heat” are working in #FlaPol, including the lobbyist Tony Glover, consultant Brad Herold, The James Madison Institute’s Sal Nuzzo, The Florida League of Cities’ James Miller, and many others.

Today is a day most fans of “Heat” never expected would ever come.

When the screen goes dark at the end of the movie, professional thief Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) and most of his crew are dead, put in their graves either by police or rivals. The sole survivor, a wounded Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer), leaves behind his wife and son to avoid capture.

The Los Angeles Police Department is bloodied, too, by a broad-daylight firefight outside a downtown bank. A robbery-homicide division detective, Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino), has shot and killed McCauley mano-a-mano near the L.A. airport. Hanna had felt an affinity for McCauley, both professionals who sacrifice their personal lives to be true to themselves. They understood and respected each other.

In “Heat 2,” Mann and veteran thriller writer Meg Gardiner return to these complex and compelling characters — McCauley, Shiherlis and Hanna — but watching the movie first isn’t a must to enjoy the book, just a pleasure.

What can happen with one character dead, one on the lam and one emotionally drained? Mann and Gardiner play with time, weaving prequel tales for McCauley and Hanna with a present-day storyline for Shiherlis and Hanna. But such cleverness doesn’t overlook expanding these characters, and each one gets a new facet to a self-destructive trait: McCauley’s cynicism, Shiherlis’ sensation-seeking and Hanna’s anger.

Slick as a Neil McCauley heist and as intense as a Vincent Hanna chase, “Heat 2” is just dynamite. Mann and Gardiner have achieved a rarity with this novel: a screen-to-page sequel that stands tall on its own.

Do yourself a favor and start your day by watching the riveting trailer for the first film (the song in the background is the epic instrumental from Moby, “God moving over the face of the Water.”

To watch the Heat trailer, please click on the image below:

“Michael Mann’s L.A. classic ‘Heat’ has a sequel, and it’s a novel. Here’s how he did it” via Jordan Riefe of the Los Angeles Times — “Heat 2” is an odd sort of novel: a debut by filmmaker Mann that happens to be a sequel to his 1995 film, “Heat.” But it does not, Mann insists, mark a return to the L.A. neo-noir classic. That’s because Mann never left it. So why the novel? It took some persuasion from Mann’s wheeling-and-dealing agent, Shane Salerno of the Story Factory, to decide this was the best format for a sequel. One of the obvious logistical snags in the way of making a film: time. All the actors were older, no longer age-appropriate. A novel allows Mann to revisit the era and his characters unfettered by casting decisions — never mind the contortions and delays of the development process.

—“‘Heat 2’: Why Mann’s sequel to his classic crime movie had to be a novel” via David Fear of Rolling Stone

“Michael Mann on the prequel/sequel novel ‘Heat 2,’ and going deep on the life of cities” via CBS News — The detail-obsessed director has made a career of prompting audiences to feel for the characters in his films. But Mann is particularly adept at making moviegoers empathize with some of the most unsavory characters, including those in his celebrated bank robbery film, “Heat.” Mann said, “I had to learn L.A. for ‘Heat.’ I had been living there for 25 years, I thought I knew it, and I realized I did not know L.A. And so, we probably shot at more locations in L.A. in ’94 and in ’95 making ‘Heat’ than any other films before had shot.” Mann said he went out with the police answering emergency calls every weekend for six months preparing for that film.

—“’Heat 2’ heating up into ‘a very large movie,’ says Mann” via Matt Schimkowitz of the AV Club

“Mann’s damaged men” via Jonah Weiner of The New York Times — Mann’s specialty is the meticulous construction of major Hollywood entertainments: big-budget epics and thrillers rich with genre pleasures, rigged with dazzling set pieces and heavy on movie stars. As interested as he is in making movies for mass enjoyment, though, Mann is, by his own description, “not a journeyman director — these guys who go from gig to gig to gig. I need a really compelling reason to do something.” Mann’s artistic signature is to establish a core of painstaking realism, then create around it a heightened visual and emotional atmosphere that can edge, at times, into a kind of hallucinatory, macho camp. It’s an aesthetic Mann began exploring when he oversaw the epochal 1980s cop show “Miami Vice.”

“Mann’s ‘Heat’ at 25: A newly relevant study in loneliness” via Marc Rivers of NPR — With things as bleak as they seem, Mann’s 1995 crime epic doesn’t promise the comforts of a good rom-com like When Harry Met Sally … or a classic family film like Finding Nemo, movies that offer the kind of happy ending we’re looking for these days. Nor does it provide the perverse pleasures of Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 film Contagion; that film’s take on a global pandemic eerily mirrors our own and helps us imagine just how bad things could get. But Heat deals with a more existential kind of emptiness — one that becomes the film’s steady, plaintive bassline against the catchy melody of its cops-and-robbers plotting. And in its own strange and very specific way, it comforted me.

“Why Heat is the greatest heist movie ever made” via Gerardo Valero of RogerEbert.com — “Heat” is the greatest heist movie ever made. It includes the best bank robbery scene ever filmed (by far) and also the most influential (think of “The Dark Knight” and “The Town”). Every part, no matter how small, is cast with a great actor. Mann drops them into the most believable environments with hardly (if any) filming taking place in studio sets, achieving a level of authenticity not unlike that which Steven Spielberg once accomplished by dropping his plastic shark into the real ocean. In “Heat,” Mann displays an uncanny ability to capture the sights and sounds of places and situations that make his characters and their activities utterly believable.

“The story of Neil McCauley and the real heist that inspired Mann’s ‘Heat’” via Neil Patmore of ATI — On March 25, 1964, the Chicago police were in position outside a corner store on the city’s Southwest Side, ready to take down McCauley, a career criminal who had been released from federal prison just two years earlier. The police were led by a detective named Chuck Adamson, who’d recently met with McCauley over coffee and had infiltrated his gang. He knew that McCauley and his crew planned to rob the store. But even though McCauley had already walked away from one job when he learned that Adamson was on to him, he had no idea how thoroughly surrounded he was. Nor that his life story would later be turned into Michael Mann’s 1995 crime classic Heat.

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It’s National Book Lover’s Day, and we’ll give you one guess which Florida politician views the annual unofficial holiday as Christmas in August.

The answer: Chris Sprowls.

Among the exiting House Speaker’s landmark achievements was the New Worlds Reading Initiative, which delivers books to grade schoolers struggling to learn how to read. And in his off time, he hosts a podcast featuring interviews with authors of bestselling books that have influenced his career in politics.

After a short break following its first season, Season 2 of the “Read, White & Blue” podcast debuts today.

Chris Sprowls jumps headfirst into Season 2 of his podcast.

Episode 1 features Vivek Ramaswamy, author of “WOKE, INC.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam.” He and Sprowls discuss Environmental, Social and Governance, or ESG investing, and the ways they believe it threatens democracy.

“The public policy we have passed out of the Florida House over the past two years has pushed Florida into a position of leadership on shifting the power back to citizens, parents and everyday Americans. On Season 2 of ‘Read, White & Blue,’ I explore with bestselling authors some of the best books about these issues — from ‘woke’ capitalism to children’s literacy to law and order,” Sprowls said. “National Book Lovers Day is the perfect time to listen to the podcast and check out the next book you should be reading.”

Further episodes will feature substantive discussions with authors such as Jonathan Issac (“Why I Stand”), James Patterson (“Run, Rose, Run”) and Kellyanne Conway (“Here’s the Deal”), among many others.

“Read, White & Blue” can be heard on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other popular podcast platforms, with new episodes posted every Tuesday morning.

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Here are some other political thoughts:

👫⧘👶 — The Trump administration’s family separation policy may not dominate headlines in 2022, but The Atlantic’s Caitlin Dickerson spent 18 months investigating it, and the final product is must-read journalism. The Atlantic’s national editor, industry veteran Scott Stossel, is not easily impressed, so his five-word take should carry some weight: “important and riveting and maddening.” Check it out ASAP.

🥊 — Can Democrats win for losing? According to the polls … Maybe. As Republicans continue notching wins on culture war issues such as restricting abortion rights — and refusing to restrict gun rights — voters are starting to get fed up, giving the Democrats a chance to counterpunch. If the trend continues, the GOP could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

🥇🥇🥇 — Susie Wiles was key to Trump’s 2016 victory in Florida, and she managed the repeat in 2020. But can she pull off a Florida three-peat for the first presidential candidate since FDR? It’d be tough — especially if Gov. Ron DeSantis is in the mix — but we wouldn’t bet against her if she’s in charge of the Sunshine State theater in two years.

🚨 — There won’t be a truth and reconciliation commission for the “Big Lie” … in fact, Americans may get a sequel instead. According to an in-depth analysis by Ryan Teague Beckwith and Bill Allison of Bloomberg, whether the 2024 election can be stolen will essentially be decided by the November outcomes in five key states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The alarm bells are already blaring.

🤿 — National Democrats may be regaining momentum, but does the party really have a chance to win in Florida? Dara Kam, joined by State Attorney Dave Aronberg, examines the question in the second episode of her new podcast, “Deeper Dive with Dara Kam.” Hear Aronberg discuss his efforts battling the opioid crisis and the “sober homes” racket.

— SITUATIONAL AWARENESS —

Tweet, tweet:

—@marcorubio: Using government power to persecute political opponents is something we have seen many times from 3rd world Marxist dictatorships. But never before in America

—@TracyWalder: As a former FBI agent, this is a big deal. We didn’t execute search warrants of this magnitude/scale unless we had a mountain of cause to back it up

Tweet, tweet:

—@GaryGrumbach: The Georgia Senate runoffs were Jan. 5, 2021. The results got about four hours of coverage on the morning of January 6 before being wiped off the front pages but have been monumental for the (Joe) Biden administration’s priorities.

—@ThirdWayMattB: I dunno, a platform of higher insulin prices, sunsetting Social Security and Medicare, and forcing 10-year-olds to give birth might NOT be popular.

—@ChristinaPushaw: Every candidate running for Congress this year needs to go on the record about what they will do with the massive power grab the DC swamp just passed to terrorize and impoverish the American people. Will you defund the 87,000 new IRS agents or not?!

—@NateMonroeTU: your creepiest haters will always read you so obsessively they make up theories explaining your two-day absence in the newspaper

Tweet, tweet:

Tweet, tweet:

Sunburn is authored and assembled by Peter Schorsch, Phil Ammann, Daniel Dean, Renzo Downey, Jacob Ogles, and Drew Wilson.

The post Sunburn — The morning read of what’s hot in Florida politics — 8.9.22 appeared first on Florida Politics – Campaigns & Elections. Lobbying & Government..

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