‘Task’ Took a Page From ‘Heat’ — Here’s What Filmmakers Can Learn

For the last two months, I have been obsessing over the TV show Task on HBO. It brought back Sunday night viewing and was a riveting crime series set in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. It was created by Brad Ingelsby and starred Mark Ruffalo, Tom Pelphrey, and a bunch of other incredible actors.

It had a cat and mouse structure, with Ruffalo's FBI character chasing Pelphrey's ex-biker character. The show, which lasted seven episodes, kept these characters apart for the first few. We just had a bunch of simmering tension while they hunted each other. But the fifth episode sent them crashing into one another.

In it, we got this amazing car ride where both characters have a chance to sit and talk. It revealed the heart and soul of the narrative and also showed us that these two men are not that different when it all boils down to it.

In order to get those performances and hit that moment hard, writer and creator Brad Ingelsby was thinking about a specific Michael Mann movie, Heat.

Let's dive in.

What Task and Heat Have in Common

What I love about Heat is that it's also a cat and mouse movie, where Al Pacino's cop chases Robert DeNiro's robber. And then they come careening into each other in a tense and landmark diner scene.

Now, in order to build tension both on and off screen, Michael Mann kept those actors apart on set when he was filming, something that inspired Ingelsby to do the same.

While he and Ruffalo were speaking with Deadline, he said, "I think Tom wanted to stay away."

Ruffalo followed with, "He did. He stayed away from me. I’d see him. Be like, hey…and he would just keep going."

Later, Ruffalo laid out the reasoning. He said, "Michael Mann would do something similar. When I was doing Collateral, I came to set one day, and he kicked me off set because I walked over to say hi to Tom, and he saw me, and he’s like, get him off. Literally, I got the hook, and because…and Michael Mann did the same thing with Heat, with Pacino and De Niro, he wanted to keep them apart the whole time."

Ingelsby followed that up with, "Yes. Exactly, but yeah, I just feel like he (Pelphrey) just kind of like encapsulates…it’s almost a more important one, just because there’s so much that he is doing that…the cause and effect of it all. Yeah, he’s driving the plot more, and as Mark’s character has to react to, he’s driving the plot. I think I told you this story, Mark, but we got an audition from Tom, and I was on another set at the time, and I pulled up the audition tape, and I got, like, half a minute into it, and I heard Tom laugh, and I was like, man, this guy’s got something special. Even before I got done the audition, I got a call from Jeremiah. He’s like, this is the guy. As soon as we saw Tom’s audition, we hired him, and it was Mark and Tom..."

So, What The Filmmaker Takeaway?

I'm sure there's an overarching lesson that if it worked for Michael Mann, it can work for you.

But aside from that, I think this kind of strategizing is actually eally smart to add some extra tension on set and to layer them into the filming.

By keeping these guys apart, it felt like like a dam breaking when they were finally together, not just for the actors but for the viewers at home as well.

I love that idea of tapping into something that might payoff for the actors and give them a little extra to work with on set. These are two guys who have been dying to talk to each other now for all of shooting, so you get this underlying tension but also excitement, they're terrified and excited to talk to one another.

And the payoff on screen in the following episodes was great.

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Summing It All Up

There are lots of lessons you can take to add a little flavor to particular scenes. Don't just think about that's happening on screen but also behind the scenes as well. And feel free to beg, borrow, and steal from what worked for other people.

The point is trying to find what works for oyu on set and gets the best performance out of the characters.

Let me know what you think in the comments.