theparallaxreview's video: Public Enemies 2009 Trailer

The thing that makes Public Enemies' creative failure such a travesty is that the Midwest gangsters of the 1930s have been on Mann's mind for at least twenty years. On January 16, 1990, he submitted a revised draft of a screenplay called Public Enemy. This script draws from history, combining real historical figures with a fictitious composite for a protagonist. Among other things, this allows Mann to play even looser with historical reality, since he doesn't have to commit to any by-the-numbers recreations of famous moments anyone with a passing interest in crime history already knows. http://www.theparallaxreview.com/columns/script_to_screen/public_enemies.html