The Brief

Thief, Manhunter, The Last of the Mohicans, Miami Vice, The Insider, Ali and Collateral — they're all films brought to life by world-renowned director, screenwriter and four-time Academy Award nominee Michael Mann. His latest feature, Ferrari, is set in Italy in the summer of 1957, and follows ex-racer-turned-carmaker Enzo Ferrari, whose company is in crisis. To keep Ferrari viable, his team must make a treacherous race across Italy.

A still from the new motion picture "Ferrari."

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Based on Brock Yates’ 1991 book Enzo Ferrari: The Man, The Car, The Races, The Machine, Mann’s Ferrari is a character study he says is unlike anything else the director has done on the big screen. The film made its world premiere at the 2023 Venice Film Festival followed by a theatrical release at Christmas and stars Adam Driver and Penelope Cruz.

The dramatic lure of Enzo Ferrari

"The thing that attracted me to [this project] and kept me engaged in the story was purely the drama and operatic nature of this volatile relationship and the tumultuous life that Enzo and Lara and Lina were living in 1957," said Mann in an interview with Larry Mantle on LAist's daily news program AirTalk, which airs on 89.3 FM.

Mann said he was not only drawn to this iconic innovator, but also this specific time period in his life. In the three months in which the film takes place, everything that Ferrari had been and built is falling apart around him. He's in a dissolving and tempestuous marriage, his son Dino has just died, and his company is on the edge of bankruptcy.

"All of these elements come together in the period of the film and that's what kept me hooked into it. My friend and fellow director, the late Sydney Pollack and I, both fell in love with this thing, and we developed it together for a number of years and I kept going back to it for that reason."

Bringing Enzo Ferrari and 1950s Italy to life

While Michael Mann began talks around this film in 2000, it would be years before he received a studio offer that felt adequate to the story he wanted to bring to life.

"I could have made it at any time in these past couple of decades if I wanted to reduce it and make it for $35 or $40 million dollars. But I didn't want to do that. I wanted to make the film the right way or not make it at all. Just replicating the race cars is a $5 or $6 million dollar item."

Mann was able to make the film thanks to a substantial tax credit from Italy to the tune of $24 million. He also had two producers worked for zero fees and cut his and Adam Driver's salaries.

The Oscar-nominated director also knew the film wouldn't come to life without the perfect actors to bring these dynamic characters to life.

"After 20 minutes of meeting Adam Driver I knew that he had a certain ferocity inside of him that in his heart, this is Enzo Ferrari," he said.

Mann talks about casting as a core part of filmmaking and one that takes skill, intuition, and artistic projection. Depending on which actor inhabits a character will yield a totally different outcome for the audience.

"That's the mystery of casting and right at the heart of artistic decisions you make as a director," he said.

Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari on set in Modena, Italy.

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The decision to cast Penelope Cruz was one Mann felt similarly about.

"I couldn't have made better choices," Mann said.

Facing the technical challenges

In order to recreate the signature racing scenes in the film, Mann said he had to design operating systems that allowed the camera to move in the way he wanted. But even before these designs began, he started by asking himself two essential questions:

"How do I want this racing to impact upon you?" and "What do I want your experience of the racing to be dramatically?"

These questions, Mann said, were fundamental to the crafting both the scenes and the technology required to shoot them.

Photo from the set of "Ferrari."

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"I could shoot race cars with long lenses and it's quite beautiful and elegant. But that to me distances audiences and makes them into observers. I didn't want you to be observing it. I wanted you to be experientially empathetic to, almost within it."

In the case of Ferrari, Mann said, being "within it" means hurtling with massive agitation down bad Italian roads at 160 mph. As for the cars, all were replicated for the film, except for one Maserati owned by Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason.

"All the other ones are mathematically perfect replicas done with 3D scanning. Between the aluminum skin of those cars are tubular chassis and a contemporary drive train. "

Michael Mann said the cars have to be three things:

"They had to be reliable, they had to be very fast and they had to be very safe."

The lasting effect of Mann's stylistic choices

Mann has done films in all different styles and tones, which he said often forces him to push the bounds of filmmaking. To make the world of L.A. come alive at night in Collateral, for example, Mann said he experimented with shooting in high-definition video on film. The result was the first major motion picture to use a high-def camera. To evoke Miami in an exciting way, in Miami Vice, he restored the tropical pastels of South Beach to more strongly and powerfully evoke a sense of place.

"I want the form of the film to deliver an experience of the story and the world that the story is taking you into. It is exciting to be doing a different thing every time," said Mann, adding that he has no interest in repeating his work.

"When people believe the world you're creating than the story and believability increases. That's where the film form comes from. It's exciting to do something that's novel."

Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari (yellow).

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Listen to the conversation

As Los Angeles homeowners grapple with the expense of rebuilding after last year’s devastating fires, an L.A. City Councilmember is putting forward an idea that could lower some costs.

Councilmember Traci Park, who represents the Pacific Palisades, has introduced a motion to explore waiving part of the city’s portion of the local sales tax for fire victims who purchase rebuilding materials in the city.

The 1% of the local 9.75% sales tax that goes into the city’s general fund would be given back to consumers under the proposal. The waiver could apply to lumber, appliances and other rebuilding goods purchased within the city.

The motion, introduced Friday by Park and seconded by Councilmember John Lee, says: “The City should do everything within its power to alleviate the financial burden for these residents and businesses in order to facilitate their return and stabilize the Pacific Palisades community.”

Would it make much of a difference? 

Economists told LAist the proposal could help many homeowners mitigate the high cost of rebuilding, but likely wouldn’t tip the scales for under-insured, under-resourced property owners.

“It wouldn't hurt if it's very well designed and easy to use,” said Alexander Meeks, a director at the Santa Monica-based Milken Institute. “But I'm not sure if it's really going to tackle the scale of the financial challenge that survivors are facing.”

Meeks noted that the tax waiver wouldn’t lower up-front costs such as environmental testing, architectural design and permitting. And it may not help homeowners sourcing raw materials from outside the city.

Zhiyun Li, a UCLA Anderson School of Management economist, said the waiver could help some homeowners justify the additional cost of rebuilding more fire-safe structures.

“Homeowners must typically pay out of pocket to upgrade to IBHS+ standards, which are more stringent,” Li said. “The tax waiver could encourage upgrading to IBHS+ standards or investing more in mitigation, thereby reducing future risk and improving the likelihood of maintaining insurance coverage.”

What’s next for the proposal? 

The proposed tax relief would not be available to properties that have been sold since the fires started in January 2025.

The motion has been sent to the City Council’s budget and fire recovery committees. If approved by the full council, it would require the city administrative officer, the Office of Finance and the city attorney to report back to the council within 60 days on options for crafting a tax relief plan.

The motion calls for the report to consider factors such as how to minimize the burden of administering the tax relief, what documentation homeowners would have to submit and what it would cost the city to oversee the program.

Senate and House Republican leadership have resurrected a stalled plan to fund the Department of Homeland Security after a record 47-day funding lapse.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said in a joint statement on Wednesday that the House will take up a measure passed by the Senate last week to fund most of DHS except Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol through the end of September.

Republicans would then attempt to fund ICE and Border Patrol for three years using a party-line budget reconciliation bill that would not require support from Democrats.

"In following this two-track approach, the Republican Congress will fully reopen the Department, make sure all federal workers are paid, and specifically fund immigration enforcement and border security for the next three years so that those law-enforcement activities can continue uninhibited," Thune and Johnson wrote.

The agreement comes nearly a week after House Republicans dismissed an identical plan, refusing to take up the Senate-passed measure and instead passing a 60-day short term funding bill for all of DHS that had little chance of overcoming Democratic opposition in the Senate.

Johnson called the agreement a "joke" and President Donald Trump declined to publicly endorse the deal. Trump had previously resisted any package that did not include his push to overhaul federal elections known as the Save America Act.

"I think any deal they make, I'm pretty much not happy with it," Trump told reporters last week.

Democrats welcomed the agreement as in line with their pledge not to give ICE any more money without reforms after immigration enforcement agents killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis. But the deal does not include any of the policy demands Democrats are pressing for, such as a ban on masks for immigration enforcement officers and requiring warrants issued by a judge, not just the agency, to enter homes.

"For days, Republican divisions derailed a bipartisan agreement, making American families pay the price for their dysfunction," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote in a statement Wednesday. "Throughout this fight, Senate Democrats never wavered."

Trump seemed to bless the revived plan earlier Wednesday, writing on social media that he wants a party-line bill to fund immigration enforcement on his desk by June 1.

"We are going to work as fast, and as focused, as possible to replenish funding for our Border and ICE Agents, and the Radical Left Democrats won't be able to stop us," Trump wrote.

Despite the shutdown, ICE has been minimally impacted because Republican lawmakers approved $75 billion for ICE through another party-line budget reconciliation bill last year.

Congress is on a two-week recess, but the Senate and House could move to fund all of DHS except ICE and CBP as early as Thursday using a procedure known as unanimous consent that allows the chambers to circumvent formal voting as long as no member objects.

Even during a recess when most members are not in Washington, this could be unpredictable, especially in the House, where many hard-line conservatives oppose a deal that does not fully fund DHS.

"Let's make this simple: caving to Democrats and not paying CBP and ICE is agreeing to defund Law Enforcement and leaving our borders wide open again," Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., a member of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus, wrote on X. "If that's the vote, I'm a NO."

If a member does object, that could require waiting for another vote when all members are back from recess.

Claudia Grisales contributed reporting.
Copyright 2026 NPR

California clocked its second-worst snowpack on record Wednesday, a potentially troubling signal ahead for fire season.

It’s an alarming end to a winter that saw abnormally dry conditions briefly wiped from California’s drought map in January, for the first time in a quarter-century.

Though precipitation to date has been near average, much of it fell as rain rather than snow. Then March’s record-breaking heat melted most of the snow that remains. The state’s major reservoirs are nevertheless brimming above historic averages and are flirting with capacity, and a smattering of snow, rain and thunderstorms are dousing last month’s heat wave.

But experts now warn that California’s case of the missing snowpack could herald an early fire season in the mountains.

On Wednesday, state engineers conducting the symbolic April 1 snowpack measurement at Phillips Station south of Lake Tahoe found no measurable snow in patches of white dotting the grassy field.

“I want to welcome you call to probably one of the quickest snow surveys we’ve had — maybe one where people could actually use an umbrella,” joked Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources. “We’re getting a lot of questions about are we heading into a hydrologic drought? The answer is, I don’t know.”

State data reports that California’s snowpack is closing out the season at an alarming 18% of average statewide, and an even more abysmal 6% of average in the northern mountains that feed California’s major reservoirs.

Only the extreme drought year of 2015 beat this year’s snowpack for the worst on record, measuring in at just 5% of average on April 1st, when the snow historically is at its deepest.

“I think everyone's anticipating that it will be a long, busy fire season,” said Lenya Quinn-Davidson, director of the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources Fire Network.

“Without a snowpack, and with an early spring, it just means that there’s much more time for something like that to happen.”

‘It’s pretty bizarre up here’ 

In the city of South Lake Tahoe, which survived the massive Caldor Fire in the fall of 2021 without losing any structures, fire chief Jim Drennan said his department is already ramping up prevention efforts.

“It's pretty bizarre up here right now. It really seems like June conditions more than March,” Drennan said. “People are already turning the sprinklers on for their lawns.”

Without more precipitation, an early spring may complicate prescribed burning efforts. But Drennan said fire agencies in the Tahoe basin can start mechanically clearing fuels from forest areas earlier than usual.

“That means we can get more work done,” he said.

It also means homeowners need to start hardening their homes now, said Martin Goldberg, battalion chief and fuels management officer for the Lake Valley Fire Protection District, which protects unincorporated communities in the Lake Tahoe Basin’s south shore.

Goldberg urges residents to scour their yards for burnable materials, create defensible space and reach out to local fire departments with questions. The risks are widespread — from firewood, wooden fences, gas cans, plants, pine needles — even lawn furniture stacked against a house.

“In years past, I wouldn't even think of raking and clearing until May,” Goldberg said. “But my yard's completely cleared of snowpack, and it has been for a couple weeks now.”

‘A haystack fire’

Battalion chief David Acuña, a spokesperson for Cal Fire, said fire season is shaped by more than just one year’s snowpack.

Climate change has been remaking California’s fire seasons into fire years. And California’s recent average to abundant water years have fueled what Acuña called “bumper crops of vegetation and brush.”

“Most of California is like a haystack. And if you’ve ever seen a haystack fire, they burn very intensely because there's layers of fuel,” Acuña said.

Like Quinn-Davidson, Acuña wasn’t ready to make specific predictions about fires to come.

But John Abatzoglou, a professor of climatology at UC Merced, said the temperatures and snowpack conditions this year offer a glimpse of California in the latter decades of this century, as fossil fuel use continues to drive global temperatures higher.

How this year’s fires will play out will depend on when, where and how wind, heat, fuel and ignitions combine. But it foreshadows the consequences of a warmer California for water and fire under climate change.

“This,” Abatzoglou said, “is yet another stress test for the future in the state.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.