MovieChat Forums > Heist (2001) Discussion > Query About Pre-Title Scene

Query About Pre-Title Scene

posted 18 years ago by www.wedd
2 replies | jump to latest

I'm wondering what exactly the pre-title scene is supposed to be saying: the bit where Gene is wandering around with the shotgun and the notebook. I'm aware that he on one hand scoping out and planning the airport job, because he's in that location, and we see the petrol can. However, why is he carrying the shotgun? Is it just Mamet's nod to Chekhov, who he has adapted before, and the dictum (paraphrasing) about when there is shotgun hanging on the wall in the first act, the audience will expect it to be fired in the last? Or is there some relevance to the story that I'm missing? And why is it necessary to show that Hackman has planned the job out well in advance? Given the type of character he plays, we would assume this to be the case anyway. Given that Mamet usually doesn't believe in putting in scenes irrelevant to the drama, is there some plot significance, in terms of the later twists, that I'm missing?
Cheers if anyone bothers to answer (or even read this).
Great film and filmmaker, BTW.

[–] DavidSist 18 years ago

In a way, you answer some of your questions by asking them. Because it's a pre-title sequence, we don't *know* that Joe plans everything out minutely. So this is our first - and really only - view of him actually working out the details to a job, just before he's about to venture forth on the jewelry store heist.

I think the shotgun, along with his jacket, simply offers him cover as a hunter. Of course that begs questions about him having a license, the season, would they allow hunting that close to an airport (certainly not now, post 9/11, but the movie was made a year before), etc., etc.

But we don't question the witches in "Macbeth" nor the ghost in "Hamlet," so either we suspend disbelief here and overlook minor points or we don't.

As an afterthought to the Chekhov line, Hitchcock always said that if he shows two people talking across a desk, and then shows a bomb under the desk, the bomb *has* to go off. Whether he got the idea from Chekhov or came up with on his own is anyone's guess.

D.
"All of life’s big problems include the words 'indictment' or 'inoperable'. Everything else is small stuff."
- Alton Brown

[–] www.wedd 18 years ago

Thanks, you made some nice points.