Truth in the cross-fire

Who could forget those images: outgunned Los Ange- les police officers exchanging fire with two heavily armed and armored gunmen. It was Feb. 28, 1997. It was on TV, but it wasn’t a movie or a cops-and-robbers show. Instead, it was a botched bank-robbery-turned-gun-battle on the streets of North Hollywood.

The masked gunmen blasted automatic weapons at anyone who moved, even shooting at news helicopters overhead. Detectives, without bulletproof vests, commandeered a delivery truck to scoop up injured officers and bystanders. The terror lasted all day as police searched for a possible third or fourth suspect. One officer, among the first shot by the robbers, stood shaking, wearing one shoe and shredded nylons; it was her first week back from maternity leave. The whole day was frantic, chaotic, disorienting.

Now comes another TV version of the violent North Hollywood bank robbery. “44 Minutes: The North Hollywood Shootout,” tonight on cable’s FX network, is a mix of fact and fiction about that terrifying day when two bank robbers held up the Bank of America on Laurel Canyon Boulevard and then engaged police in a lengthy gunfight.

Police, arriving from many parts of the city, quickly closed streets and freeway ramps, and locked down schools and offices throughout the day and evening. Los Angeles Police Department officials set up a command post inside a furniture store, where they had access to desks and telephones. At one point, some officers borrowed guns and ammunition from a North Hollywood gun shop: heavier artillery to better compete with their opponents. The robbers eventually left the front of the bank and entered a residential neighborhood, where the shooting continued.

In the end, both robbers died, one killed by his own bullet, the other by the LAPD. Amazingly, no police or civilians were killed; 10 officers and four bystanders were shot.

For the Police Department, the North Hollywood shootout was a shining moment. Just five years earlier, Los Angeles had seen its police seemingly flee from violence during the riots following the verdicts in the beating of Rodney King. News helicopters had shown unforgettable images: truck driver Reginald Denny being beaten at Florence and Normandie avenues. No police were in sight; the beating appeared to go on and on.

In the North Hollywood footage, viewers saw officers streaming toward gunfire, firing their 9-millimeter handguns at men with AK-47 assault rifles.

What redeemed the LAPD that day was sheer willpower over firepower. Guts over guns.

Truth and a good story

It’s ironic -- though, given TV history, hardly surprising -- that television made it real the first time, but makes these events so unreal this time around.

Whether the topic is as profound as the rise of Hitler, or as specific as the kidnapping of a child, the conventions of Hollywood filmmaking and the constrictions of TV make it all but impossible to tell such a story accurately and in context. The aim of the studios and the networks is to entertain large audiences. Fact-based stories almost always have nuances, subtleties and other plot lines that don’t survive the transition to a two-hour movie.

Consequently, this film about an unforgettable day has been largely turned into an unexceptional cop show.

And as is often the case with fact-based films, the ones who complain the loudest often are those who witnessed the actual event. That seems to be the case this time.

At my request, two officers who held key roles that day viewed “44 Minutes” and offered their analysis. Sgt. Larry “Dean” Haynes, injured in the shoulder and leg, was among the first group of officers outside the bank. Haynes immediately began sending out reports on his radio and engaged the gunmen in heavy fire. The other was the incident commander, the officer who made tactical and other crucial decisions. He has since left the department and asked that his name not be used.

Both were disappointed in the movie version of the event.

“I just thought the real thing would have been an interesting story on its own without the artistic license,” Haynes said. “If I was grading it on authenticity, I’d give it an F.”

Haynes said he was annoyed, for example, that the filmmakers took shortcuts: They combined officers with important roles into single characters and they added others who weren’t as involved, he said.

The incident commander said he was disappointed that the patrol officers, the first to arrive at the bank, weren’t the stars of the movie. Instead, they’re shown to be secondary players in the gunfight.

Shooting and its aftermath

Of course, Hollywood authenticity generally depends on the life rights the producers obtain. This time, they secured the rights to the three SWAT officers who shot one of the gunmen, Emil Matasareanu, down the street from the bank. They also bought the rights of the assistant bank manager -- who is shown in the film having a key role in foiling the robbery -- and three other LAPD officers. There were many others who refused to participate. (A group of North Hollywood cops long ago decided to refuse to participate in any films or television episodes based on the shootout.)

The scenes of the SWAT officers driving their patrol car right up to one of the robbers is accurate. The SWAT officers had planned to go running at the Police Academy near Dodger Stadium when they heard about the robbery and hustled to the area, still in shorts and sneakers. They arrived at the end of the gun battle but in time to engage Matasareanu, finally shooting him in the leg -- the injury that caused the robber to bleed to death in the street.

What transpired after that shooting is controversial. A Times investigation found that a police officer erroneously told the Fire Department that he believed Matasareanu was dead, and emergency medical technicians did not examine him. He was left on the street, handcuffed and bleeding, for more than an hour. An emergency room doctor who reviewed the autopsy found that Matasareanu could have lived if he had received immediate treatment. The city subsequently was sued on behalf of Matasareanu’s two young children. The film does not address any of that.

Michael R. Goldstein, who produced the movie along with Gerald W. Abrams and Robert Port, said that he felt a strong obligation to the facts. “We really wanted to make sure that the LAPD was shown as the heroes they were,” Goldstein said. “We felt it was really important to show as much as possible how brave they were.”

The idea for the movie, Goldstein said, came during a pitch meeting at Fox more than a year ago on a different cop film he had developed with Port. Instead, the development executive expressed interest in a movie about the North Hollywood shootout. Goldstein said he had pretty much forgotten about that event until he began researching it. The two producers came up with a treatment and the deal was done.

What they came up with was a kind of re-creation of the day’s events as told mainly through three cops -- a robbery homicide detective (Michael Madsen), a SWAT officer (Ron Livingston) and a patrol officer (Mario Van Peebles). The film begins at daybreak on the day of the robbery and continues until the shootout ends.

“It’s a big, fun film,” Goldstein said. “It’s certainly one of the rare times you’ll see something like this.”

Well, almost. Michael Mann’s 1995 film “Heat” was perhaps closer to the event even though it predated it by two years. Police said that movie, about a violent bank robbery and police shooting in Los Angeles, was a favorite of the North Hollywood gunmen.

Goldstein acknowledged that his film, which begins with a statement that it is based on a true story, needed “some fictionalizing.” A female television reporter, for example, can be seen broadcasting from outside the bank as gunfire is exploding around her.

“She’s a fictional character,” Goldstein said. “But it also made a very creative bookend for us. And it gave us the media perspective

Additionally, the filmmakers put words in the mouths of the robbers. Because both died before they could be interviewed, police know little about motivations besides what they learned from family members and search warrants. Matasareanu and Larry Eugene Phillips Jr. apparently had a “safe house” in Granada Hills and several other residences. They were determined to be self-taught criminals, using manuals to learn to assemble automatic weapons and live as fugitives, police said.

They were arrested in Glendale in 1993 on weapons charges after police found a “bank robbery kit” complete with firearms, ammunition, bulletproof vests and fake mustaches. They served less than four months in jail and had their weapons returned to them.

In “44 Minutes,” then, the filmmakers had to create conversations between the robbers based mainly on police reports. At one point in the movie, for example, they are sitting in their car, waiting to rob an armored truck when one character says: “Change of plans -- we do the bank.” The other then responds: “OK, let’s do the bank.”

In reality, police do not know for sure whether the gunmen had intended to rob an armored car or the bank. Police later said Matasareanu and Phillips had conducted several other bank heists and killed an armored truck driver. Overall, they were believed to have amassed $1.3 million to $1.7 million, but none of it was ever recovered.

Although the movie suggests the police figured out early in the day that these were the same robbers who had committed those crimes, in reality it took officers at least a day or two longer.

Moreover, police believed there could have been a third or fourth suspect involved. Police brought in special equipment to knock down doors, even a shed, to search the residential area around the bank. It took until nearly midnight before the police finally determined that the two gunmen acted alone.

Life rights and dramatic license

The movie does not portray that element of the day at all.

The film does attempt to show the LAPD in the best possible light. So despite the objections of some of those who were there that day, “44 Minutes” was screened at the Police Academy on Tuesday night. LAPD Chief William J. Bratton, along with the three SWAT members who served as technical advisors, discussed the movie at a reception held by FX. Bratton, who has said the LAPD’s response to the shootout was exemplary, is a former police commissioner in New York City.

Madsen’s robbery-homicide division detective is the film’s main character, exchanging gunfire with the robbers and playing a key role in the day’s events. In fact, robbery homicide had a much smaller role that day. But, again, the producers had secured the rights of a robbery homicide detective.

Another main character, played by Van Peebles, is a religious cop who arrests a young man for beating his mother. In the film, the young man is in the patrol car when the officers receive the bank robbery call. They take him to the bank and release him. It didn’t happen. “There were so many things an officer wouldn’t do,” Haynes said. “A felony arrest is turned loose? No way.”

The movie was shot in Los Angeles County, primarily in a parking lot in La Habra. This was another attempt, the film’s producer said, to make the movie authentic. TV movies, particularly on cable channels, where budgets are even smaller than the broadcast networks, usually are shot in Canada as a cost-saving measure. But, Goldstein said, “it was a really important factor to us to do this movie in Los Angeles.... We wanted to be here.”

Additionally, Goldstein said he and the other producers and the writer, Tim Metcalfe, did not just base their film on the life rights they obtained, but also on newspaper articles, reports from the LAPD and FBI, and television footage. Goldstein said he also had numerous conversations with officers before the script was completed.

Still, Goldstein readily acknowledged that dramatic license was necessary. “Sometimes you need to take the dramatic license to insert your character,” Goldstein said.

Authenticity is in the eye of the beholder.

*

‘44 Minutes: The North Hollywood Shootout’

Who: Starring Michael Madsen, Ron Livingston and Mario Van Peebles. Directed by Yves Simoneau. Written by Tim Metcalfe. Executive produced by Gerald W. Abrams, Michael R. Goldstein and Robert Port.

When: 8 tonight

Where: FX

Rating: The network has rated the film TV-14LV (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 14, with advisories for coarse language and violence).

Beth Shuster was a member of The Times’ team that covered the North Hollywood shootout.