On Nov. 3, 1994, police in Oak Brook, Ill., outside Chicago, were called about a vending machine break-in at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. An employee said he'd seen two men running from the hotel with suspicious black bags. He'd noticed the men before, around the time of a previous burglary.
A short time later, police stopped a car driven by 55-year-old John Schiavone. Inside the car they found more than 100 items classified as burglary tools: pry bars, sledgehammers, rings of keys, books about locks, locksmiths' picks, a police scanner, and a couple of black bags, one containing $394.75 and the other $297.65, in dollar bills and change.
They arrested Schiavone and his passenger, a 41-year-old ex-Chicago police officer named Anthony Barone. It seemed like a pretty open-and-shut case. Schiavone took a plea bargain; he pleaded guilty to possession of burglary tools and was placed on 24 months' probation. He paid a $1,000 fine and was ordered to donate another $100 to the DuPage Crime Commission. Judge Thomas Callum agreed to these conditions in part because he thought Shiavone had no prior criminal record.
And his lawyer managed to secure permission from the judge for his client to leave the state of Illinois while serving his probation in order that he might continue pursuing his "acting career."
Shiavone, better known by the stage name John Santucci, made his film debut in Michael Mann's 1981 film "Thief." Santucci plays a corrupt detective named Urizzi, who hounds the protagonist Frank, an honorable and highly professional jewel thief played by James Caan, demanding to be cut in on his scores.
Santucci also worked as a technical adviser on the film. He was a recently paroled jewel thief who had been arrested by Chicago cop Dennis Farina, who has a small role as a mob henchman in the film. (Both Farina and Santucci went on to star in Mann's '80s TV series "Crime Story.") A spectacular heist involving a thermal lance depicted in the film was based on a real-life burglary Santucci engineered. All of the tools the fictional Frank uses in the movie were Santucci's actual tools. He showed the actors how to use them.
Mann has said Santucci--who "never stopped being a thief and an informant"--was the chief inspiration for Frank's character. Still, you find dissenters.
"Thief" was based on "The Home Invaders: Confessions of a Cat Burglar," written by Frank Hohimer, the pseudonym of John Seybold, a Wisconsin-based jewel thief who claimed he was coerced into working for the mob because they admired his skills.
Others note some similarities between Frank and Jerry Scalise, a real-life career mob soldier who, in September 1980, dressed up as an Arab sheikh and robbed a London jewelry store in broad daylight, making off with more than $3 million worth of jewels, including the 45-carat Marlborough diamond (which has never been recovered).
The final draft of Mann's "Thief" screenplay is dated March 6, 1980. Mann was aware of Scalise (who served as a technical adviser on Mann's 2009 gangster film "Public Enemies") but he wasn't a jewel thief when the script was being written, and his strong-arm methods were the antithesis of Frank's technology-heavy approach.
Mann probably based Frank as much on himself as anyone else; "Thief" is a movie about the morality of work. Frank is a man who does a job--by his lights, honest work. On every side, he's opposed by those who want to take shortcuts, to "round off the corners." But he has nothing but contempt for those too lazy to "line up their own scores."
I hadn't seen it since it came out, and really didn't remember that much about the initial experience. I probably saw it on a date, distracted by other things. Sometimes it's hard to remember how I received movies in the days before I was a professional movie watcher.
We watched it again the other night, as part of what has become our late pandemic habit: Saturday movies where I dig through the crates and bring out a film I've been meaning to rewatch, simply for the enjoyment of watching a movie. But the thing about being a professional movie-watcher is that once you've begun to see around the sides of these things--once you have learned a few of the magician's tricks--it's hard to go back.
You watch films in a different way than you did when you were innocent; you think about other characters Caan has played (and will play). You think about remarkable Tuesday Weld and the way she savvily sabotaged her own career (she really didn't want to be a huge star; there were monsters in those waters).
You think about how Mann's visual style, embodied in the terse stage direction "Taillights on wet black streets", would go on to define a certain American aesthetic. Watching the rainy neon-streaked opening minutes of "Thief," I thought about "Blade Runner," which came out a year later. (Also compare the Tangerine Dream's synth score of "Thief" to Vangelis' score for "Blade Runner.")
"Thief" is very much an action movie, with two thrilling and technically precise burglary set pieces and a violent coda that somehow avoids feeling like a compulsory exercise. But the heart of the movie is in an early scene. Frank, having arrived late for a date with diner cashier Jessie (Weld), physically forces her to go with him to a Howard Johnson's that straddles I-94, where he lays out his naive, touching dream of a quiet, normal life.
Frank, recently paroled, has spent most of his life in prison. He understands respectability has been foreclosed. He just wants a few things, a house, a family. He's cut pictures from magazines to make a dream collage to carry in his wallet.
In 2001, when jewel thief John Seybold was past 80, he was interviewed by a news service that specializes in telling convicts' stories. He told them his worst fear was dying in prison.
"It diminishes your existence," he said. "You're not with the people that truly love you. You feel you're only half the human you should be."
In "Thief," Frank pays off a judge to assure the compassionate release of his prison mentor Okla (Willie Nelson), so the man won't have to die in prison. Okla is released and collapses in the courthouse on the way out the door. He's taken to a hospital, where he dies, but not before thanking Frank for making the effort.
Seybold also managed to get out before he died in 2004.
And when Schiavone/Santucci died in 2004, his obituary described him as a beloved husband, loving son, devoted father and fond brother. No mention of either his acting career or his days as a thief.
Philip Martin is a columnist and critic for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at pmartin@adgnewsroom.com and read his blog at blooddirtandangels.com.