Mamet and Wife Think Tough on Heist

September 6, 2001 -- VENICE, Italy — The ghosts of great crime movies of the past were summoned when David Mamet met the press for the world premiere of his latest film, Heist, which stars Gene Hackman as an aging burglar out for one last score, Rebecca Pidgeon as his much younger wife, Delroy Lindo as the muscle on his crew, and Danny DeVito as the fence

Said Mamet of his film, which is being distributed by Warner Bros., "It's an homage to the Warner Bros. of the '30s and '40s when Warner Bros. was famous for being the tough-guy studio. And I used their old film music."

Heist is filled with Mamet's typical reverses and game playing, where things are not at all what they are meant to seem.

"I like to see films with a surprise," said the writer/director of The Spanish Prisoner and House of Games. "It's very hard because audiences are pretty smart and used to a [certain] film format. One worries constantly: Will the audience beat me to the punch? It's a terrible anxiety."

Pidgeon, who is the writer/director's wife and frequent leading lady, was asked if she watched the late Jane Greer's hard-as-nails schemer in the 1947 noir classic Out of the Past. She did; however; she also admitted, "I was thinking of Lauren Bacall. She [had] that kind of cool. Sexy. [She had a] toughness, [which] I was thinking of [for] the part. Added the actress, "My husband suggested I take a mugging course to get tough."

As the laughs died, Pidgeon proved she was serious, "You get mugged and beat up the mugger — and I was beating up a 300-pound guy, dressed up in big suit with a helmet — and I took him down. I [worked] out, just to get in a tougher frame of mind instead of being so sweet as I usually am."

She's kidding. We think.