Attaglia Dennis Farina as Carl Nick Nickeas as Nick W.R. Bill Brown as Mitch Norm Tobin as Guido William Petersen as Katz & Jammer Bartender John Santucci as Sergeant Urizzi Gavin MacFadyen as Detective Boreksco Chuck Adamson as Detective Ancell Sam Cirone as Detective Martello Spero Anast as Detective Bukowski Hal Frank as Joe 'Gags' Patti Ross as Marie Del Close as Mechanic #1 Production Thief marked the feature film debut of Michael Mann as director, screenwriter and executive producer, after five years in television drama. Mann made his directorial debut with the TV film The Jericho Mile. This was partly shot in Folsom Prison. Mann says that influenced the writing of Thief: It probably informed my ability to imagine what Frank's life was like, where he was from, and what those 12 or 13 years in prison were like for him.. The idea of creating his character, was to have somebody who has been outside of society. An outsider who has been removed from the evolution of everything from technology to the music that people listen to, to how you talk to a girl, to what do you want with your life and how do you go about getting it. Everything that's normal development, that we experience, he was excluded from, by design. In the design of the character and the engineering of the character, that was the idea. Mann made James Caan do research as a thief for his role, and said: I always find it interesting, people who are aware, alert, conscious of what they do and are pretty good at it… People who want to put in 50-60 hours a week and go home and are not really conscious of life moving by, don't really interest me very much... As part of the curriculum designed for an actor getting into character, I try to imagine what's going to really help bring this actor more fully into character. And so I try to imagine what experiences are going to make more dimensional his intake of Frank, so that he is Frank spontaneously when I'm shooting. So one of the most obvious things is it'd be pretty good if [James Caan] was as good at doing what Frank does as is Frank. Jerry Bruckheimer and Ronnie Caan served as the film's producers. James Caan's emotional several-minute monologue with Weld in a coffee shop is often cited as the