After graduating high school, I did not have a clear idea of what I wanted to do in life. I have since learned that this is nothing to worry about and certainly no reason to rush to a decision, but at the time it made me feel quite miserable.
I had been rejected from Film School – a blessing in disguise, as it turned out – and did not immediately see an alternative. Not one to sit at home and vegetate, I took a job as a logistics manager at a company that sold either valves or pistons – I am still not entirely sure. I was reasonably happy just going through the motions, but couldn’t deny that there was something seriously lacking.
But then I received a phone call that would definitively shift my life’s trajectory. My grandmother had been close with producer Pieter Jan Brugge, and my father had reached out to him for advice to give to his son with film aspirations. Instead of brushing off my dad with some run-of-the-mill quotes, Brugge immediately offered to contact me himself to see what he could do.
What followed was just a lovely, personable conversation during which I was basically too star-struck to say anything remotely intelligent. Brugge however, took extensive time to tell me that if this was what I wanted to do, I should find a way to make it happen.
Not much later I had quit selling pistons, was back in college studying Film History at the University of Amsterdam, and had set my sights on a film scheduling position with European broadcasting giant RTL.
Yesterday I revisited Heat (1995), a film that I consider to be a singular masterpiece in the Crime genre, and probably one of the five best films ever made period. It is still mind-boggling to me that “our own” Pieter Jan Brugge was the producer on this landmark entry in film history.
What’s more – when I was watching Heat for what was probably the gazillionth time, I realized that even more than an intensely gripping story about cops and robbers, the film is really a brutally honest study of relationships. Justine and Vincent Hanna, Hanna and Lauren, Eady and Neil McCauley, McCauley and his crew, Chris and Charlene, and so on.
Most poignantly of course, Heat is a dissertation of Hanna and McCauley and the legendary actors who played them, together in the same frame for the first time in film history. The “coffee scene”, in which we actually see Al Pacino and Robert De Niro flexing their acting muscles off each other, still gives me the chills today. Also, the picture accompanying this piece should conclusively put to bed the ugly rumor that the actors were never actually on set together because of their alleged egos.
In any case, Heat will always remind me of that time when a busy, successful Hollywood producer took a moment to build a relationship with a struggling logistics manager and changed his life for the better. I think of that life-defining conversation often, and if I will never get the chance again to thank Brugge in person, I hope through this piece my gratitude will shine forever.
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Twitter (X): Robin Logjes | The Screen Addict