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Miami Vice Documentary | The Inspiration Behind Grand Theft Auto: Vice City_ Hotline Miami & Outrun
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“On the trail of cocaine, cash, and hot cars…in the drug trade.”
“Friday on Miami Vice…”
“The popular impact of the show?
Huge.
Huge!
”Changed the look of television.
Changed the rhythm of television…”
It isn't every day that a work of entertainment changes our world for the better.
Sure, we all have our favorite movies, books, comics and shows that we grew up with, that
shaped our tastes and hobbies.
Even if the original intention was to sell some ads while killing an hour every Friday
night—every so often, a work of entertainment actually improves the lives of the people
woven into its story.
So it was in 1984.
Our eyes were glued to the screen when we witnessed the most stylish show TV had to
offer: with fashionable cops, cinematic action, and the meditative experience known as the
“night drive.”
Cruising down the highway in a Ferrari Daytona Spyder, convertible top down, with only headlights
and neon signs to guide you through the darkness.
You could feel the sultry Miami air brush against your skin.
All the while, the electric sound of Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight" serenades.
This scene from the pilot episode of Miami Vice etched itself in the minds of a generation.
Video may have killed the radio star, but the internet left them both in the dust.
And it's no secret that television used to be a lot more momentous than it is now.
Whether it was the 1969 moon landing, when half a billion souls watched a man take giant
steps for mankind, for the first time.
Or in 1981, when gawkers the world over attended Charles and Diana’s royal wedding, from
the comfort of their homes.
To say nothing of M*A*S*H's Nielsen record-breaking finale in '83.
The fleeting nature of live broadcasts and the rarity of reruns meant that in a pre-streaming
world, you had to catch these moments live on air, else miss it forever.
Perhaps no other work captures "Eighties Americana" as deftly as the seminal police procedural,
Miami Vice.
It's both a cultural touchstone and massively influential to movies, television, video games
and fashion that tread in its wake.
Even decades later, the mere mention of the words, "Miami," or "vice," conjures images
of neon-lit clubs, white suits, Italian shoes, and the sobering "night drive" experience.
But it wasn't always so.
Before Vice aired, Miami was a sleepy retirement destination, with a bad reputation for crime
and drug smuggling.
Hardly the “party city” it is today.
Was this just a flavor-of-the week hit, or does the show have depth and staying power?
Did Miami Vice earn its place in history?
In this documentary, we’ll take a deep dive into one of the most celebrated and influential
franchises of all time, its origins, and its long-lasting legacy.
Both in entertainment: the movies, shows and video games it would inspire…
…and in the real world: how one show redefined television, and inadvertently helped uplift
a troubled South Florida community out from under the depravity of drugs, cartels and corruption.
Today, we'll examine the relevance, staying power, and colossal cultural imprint of Miami Vice.
As the cavalry that saved the day in two world wars, and fought back the oppressive forces
of North Korea and its allies, morale and confidence in America’s role as leader of
the free world was at its peak.
But all of that would come crashing down over the following twenty years.
Fighting an unwinnable war in Vietnam for decades, shipping millions of drafted men
overseas, and wasting billions of tax dollars led to civil unrest and anti-war activism—staining
the star-spangled banner once again.
The Cuban Missile Crisis only compounded the uncertainty of our future.
Fear of a homeland attack, one president assassinated, and another becoming the first president to
resign, all within a dozen years, went very far to demoralize the American people.
The Great Inflation and soaring fuel prices of the 1970s further disgruntled an already
resentful populace.
The American Dream seemed to be in its twilight years.
So what did the working man turn to as the cure for depression and plummeting morale?
Drinking, drugs, gambling and prostitution.
Vice.
There were several events leading up to the eighties that would make South Florida, and
Dade County in particular, a hotbed of turmoil.
Our neighbors in Cuba, who opposed Fidel Castro’s iron grip over their country since the revolution
in the 1950s, were making an exodus to America.
The rebel-turned-dictator declared he would no longer stop refugees from escaping the
country starting in 1965.
This caused a strain on Coast Guard and immigration services, which led to multiple compromises,
in an attempt to provide an avenue for orderly and legal immigration.
First, the “Freedom Flights” airlift program of the 60s and 70s, and again in 1980, with
the Mariel Boatlift program, which transported refugees by sea, where they were interviewed
to weed out dangerous or criminal elements.
All said and done, over a million Cubans crossed the Straits of Florida during the late 20th
century.
Their port of call?
Miami-Dade county.
“When I saw Scarface, I thought it was hyperbolic and overblown.
When I got to Miami, I realized that Brian De Palma had indulged in understatement—that
Miami was wilder on the ground than most things in Scarface…”
The imminent chaos, fear and uncertainty of change swept over both the immigrants and
their new hosts.
In pop culture, Brian De Palma captured this moment in time in the 1983 crime drama, Scarface.
A depraved fantasy fulfillment tale of an ambitious Mariel immigrant, Tony Montana,
and his rapid rise, and tumultuous fall from grace, from the streets to being a successful
drug kingpin.
Scarface’s characters were fictional, but the first act of the movie plays out almost
like a reenactment, and whether through empathy or sensationalism, was shot just two years
after the boatlift program.
Further rocking the boat were the Colombian and Cuban drug cartels who came into prominence
in the late 70s.
Among these, Pablo Escobar and the infamous Medellín cartel murdered about four thousand
Colombian citizens, cops, and even government officials.
To say nothing of the damage that crack cocaine, especially, caused to troubled communities.
Seemingly overnight, homicides, fetal deaths, and birth defects would skyrocket, as high
as 100 percent—painting a grisly visage of the toll that the snowy and carefree 80s
wrought.
At the height of the cartel’s reign, over 70% of America’s marijuana, cocaine and
quaaludes were funneled through the Miami area.
And surrounding neighborhoods went to hell, drowning in contraband, hedonism and chaos.
As a former Miami prosecutor put it…
"The traffickers were making more money than they knew what to do with.
They were driving round in their Ferraris and Porsches, walking into banks with duffel
bags stuffed with cash…
“But there was no Crockett and Tubbs in a Ferrari chasing the bad guys."
Crime rates skyrocketed to unprecedented levels.
Things got so bad, that the Dade County medical examiner rented a refrigerated truck as a
mobile morgue, to accommodate for the growing body count.
By 1984, Miami’s murder rate was three times the national average, and at its peak, there
was one crime reported for every seven people living in Miami-Dade, every year.
Miami was known as "The Gateway to the Americas," a crossroads between the Caribbean, South
America, and the United States.
It had a storied history dating back decades, when the prestigious airline company Pan Am
relocated to Miami.
But then, a veritable blizzard of cocaine began shipping in via the cartels.
Despite the blistering 90-degree summer heat, it was "snowing" in Miami.
Enter the Metro-Dade Police Department, Vice Squad.
With crime at record highs and uniquely stationed at the drug capital of the country, they had
their hands full.
This growing cascade of events is what fascinated Anthony Yerkovich—a writer for Hill Street
Blues for NBC, to research this unique moment in time: a combination of the rise of brutal
Colombian drug cartels, an influx of Cuban refugees in the streets of Miami-Dade county,
and tension and conflict rising to boiling point.
Coincidentally, Brandon Tartikoff, the President of NBC, and Michelle Bruston, the Vice President
of Drama Series, had just been discussing a pitch that involved a disk jockey private
eye.
Tartikoff was fixated on the recent success of their new competitor channel that was stealing
the airwaves: MTV—back when that actually stood for “Music Television.”
They distilled this idea of a detective with a music element into the concept, “MTV Cops.”
These two words had some potential, but there’s a million ways it could go wrong.
As legend has it, this idea was written on a napkin, or more likely, a piece of paper.
They tapped Yerkovich to write and pitch this new show, and after one meeting and a call
from the president of Universal Television, everything clicked.
Then they convinced Michael Mann to come on board as executive producer.
A rising director/producer, Mann acted as the show’s auteur, bringing his sense of
style and experience, writing and/or showrunning for Starsky & Hutch, Vegas, and other series,
but his heart truly belonged to cinema.
Mann's inimitable eye for visual style and texture, as seen in his movie Thief with James
Caan, sold the team on him coming on as Executive Producer.
Yerkovich then pitched his TV script titled ‘Gold Coast,’ a two-hour long revenge
thriller with the painstaking detail and complexity of a novel.
He compared his original idea to a modern day Casablanca.
The execs loved the first draft.
As it developed, Mann took on a creative control role, where he defined the style and fashion
of the show.
This show follows the classic "buddy cop" dynamic.
Conflict and friendship arise between officers of different backgrounds, which develops a
strong bond over time, despite their differences.
Arguably, the earliest example of this genre was released only four years after Japan’s
surrender at the end of World War II.
American noir films of the 40s heavily inspired Akira ’s Stray Dog—a cascade of events
following the theft of a policeman’s gun, set against a blistering summer in post-war
Tokyo.
The newly appointed homicide detective then partners up with a grizzled veteran.
Murders start piling up, and the clock’s ticking as the two scramble to catch the killer.
In the same vein, In the Heat of the Night made waves in 1967, with its depiction of
inter-racial conflict and violence in post-segregation Mississippi.
Sidney Poitier gives a standout performance as the brilliant Virgil Tibbs.
Tibbs' conflict is the heart of the story, with the town’s culture and prejudice criticized
in the limelight.
The local police chief suspects him of a murder, but upon discovering his reputation as a shrewd
detective from Philadelphia, decides to instead enlist his help to catch the real killer.
Tibbs would serve as inspiration for Yerkovich's new show, found in Ricardo Tubbs, a like-minded
outsider cop, who brings his own special skills and perspective to a place he is unfamiliar
with.
The film was a cultural landmark, exemplifying the myriad buddy-cop shows and films in America:
48 Hours, Lethal Weapon, Rush Hour, and countless others—such as Starsky & Hutch, another
show Yerkovich had previously written for.
Miami Vice’s kickoff double-episode was helmed by Thomas Carter, a former actor, who,
in addition to film, became the so-called ‘Prince of Pilots’, directed over a dozen
in his storied TV career.
They then got to work on location, in South Beach, Miami—now known for its exuberant,
colorful art deco style.
But when Carter researched it, accompanied by undercover cops, it was a ghetto, infested
with drug dealers and other nightlife creatures.
“When I came into the show, there was this notion of MTV cops…
“…But there was no use of music in the script at that point.
When I came in, that sort of allowed me to do “MTV cops.”
I had to bring that to it myself.
I mean, the whole sequence and I think the signature sequence in the pilot, which is
the “In The Air Tonight, the Phil Collins song, which is a no-dialogue, all images-and-music
sequence, you know.
I invented that, it wasn’t in the script…
“So, I really invented that whole sequence.
And I thought he should go to a phone, in a phone booth and call his ex-wife, and just
ask her, ‘if what we had is real.’
If it was real.
“If she said, ‘yes,’ We’d have something that he could hang on to, because he had lost
his best friend and partner, who had proven to have betrayed him and to betray the police
force.
And that if I could tell that—give that feeling of isolation cinematically, filmically,
with images…
“…And I call the editor and said there was a song I want, because I had heard that
song, and I’ve been haunted by it, and it just worked incredibly well.
And I think that’s what that show did best, which is to tell a story with music and images,
with as little dialogue as possible, so that you were really seduced into the film.
“You were mesmerized by it.
You were hypnotized by it.
It somehow caught you in a way that other television wasn’t doing.
That’s what I wanted to do with that show, and what they continued, I think, to do.”
Carter made a slip by calling his pilot episode ‘a film,’ and it’s easy to see why.
At an hour and a half, with all the pizazz of a 3-act crime drama, “Brother’s Keeper”
pushed the envelope of the cinematography and storytelling seen on television.
But despite its now enduring legacy Miami Vice wasn’t a hit—not at first, anyway.
During its first few months in 1984, the show struggled in its unpopular 10PM Friday time
slot, and had middling Nielsen ratings.
Edging dangerously close to the chopping block, it picked up in the latter half of the season.
Then reruns the following summer catapulted Miami Vice into the mainstream.
By its second and third year, Vice rocketed up to one of the top ten shows in the country,
even beating out mainstays like the A-Team and Night Court.
Miami Vice rapidly became a cultural phenomenon.
By the middle of the decade, the show was a household name, acknowledged by late night
TV, news, and award shows.
Folks stayed in on Fridays by the masses, just to get another fix of the series’ patented
“trouble in paradise” formula.
“We've got plenty of time…”
“License and registration?”
“Uhh, we were just trying to get home to watch Miami Vice.”
“Get outta here.”
“That’s the best excuse I’ve heard all day.”
Once it hit its stride, you could see the chemistry and setup that made the show magnetic.
In the OCB Vice Division, there were stylish hunks, hot girls who could handle themselves,
zingy dialogue, elaborate sets and action scenes, and a splash of humor to lighten the mood.
Not to mention the show’s dedication to becoming a tastemaker in fashion and music.
What began as an attempt to capitalize on MTV's success became the show where music
labels clamored to have their latest single featured in an episode.
The 1980s was a golden age for pop music, the middle of the decade, especially.
Thirty years after the fact, Rolling Stone crowned 1984 as the single best year of popular
music.
Incidentally, listeners of Greatest Hits Radio in the UK also identified
1984 as the greatest year the genre has ever seen.
The pop music charting on the Billboard 100 in 1984 is so star-studded, it has to be heard
to be believed…
This music renaissance was no coincidence.
The rise of MTV in the early 1980s helped popularize music videos, which gave artists
a new way to showcase their music and their personalities.
This led to an even stronger focus on image and style, and pop stars became more like
fashion icons than ever before.
Three years into MTV’s reign, there wasn’t more fertile ground than this for the debut
of Miami Vice—a stylish crime drama literally designed around the synthpop, rock ‘n’
roll, and greatest hits it featured in its episodes.
The show often featured pop and rock stars in its episodes, a nod to how influential
music was to its DNA.
Famous rockers and vocalists often played dealers, suspects or red herrings.
Phil Collins even played a shady TV show host who moonlighted as a drug smuggler.
The show's iconic score was brought to life by Czechian synth maestro Jan Hammer.
Michael Mann commissioned him for one song at first, but after Hammer knocked it out
of the park, he basically got free reign to express his style throughout his tenure on
the show.
His music ranged from digital marching noise to reggae and Caribbean influences to synthpop,
both bright and inspiring and haunting.
Hammer's electronic anthems gave a high amount of energy to the fast pace of the Miami underworld.
However, it's in the quieter moments where our characters truly shine.
Crockett's theme isn't loud or triumphant, it's a tragic melody, one of remorse and reflection.
Miami Vice is only one of only five TV shows to ever have its theme song chart on the Billboard
Top 40, and the only instrumental TV show theme ever to do so.
The Miami Vice soundtrack album went triple-platinum, thanks to its addictive Jan Hammer score and
top-shelf talent such as Phil Collins, Chaka Khan, and Tina Turner.
“...Pick up the script from Universal, and I read it.
And, after I finished reading it, I remember pacing up and down the hall in my house at
the time—which was about this big, it was a small hall.
“I remember thinking, ‘If I don’t get this one, then there were no gods, that there
was no justice, and that I should go ahead and hang it up.
Because it just seemed like the part had been written for me.”
Don Johnson is a born charmer, with the style and panache of a Hollywood moviestar, but
with the charisma and banter of a small-town Missouri boy.
Johnson’s portrayal of "Sonny" Crockett opened up viewers’ and suspects’ minds
and hearts, with a smile, a wink and a look.
But he had been working professionally since the late 60s, and his catapultic rise to fame
was hard-earned.
From commercials, stage work, bit parts, and lead roles in a 1970 sensual hippie flick,
to the strange post-apocalyptic film, A Boy and His Dog.
The former was so poorly received that it lost him a 3-movie contract with MGM.
And the latter didn’t break the box office either.
Over the next decade and a half, he was the lead in upwards of five failed pilots for
NBC, and was desperate for a big break.
Opposite him is Philip Michael Thomas, whose first love was Broadway and musicals.
With charisma to spare, Thomas could also dress up to the nines, and as Detective Ricardo
Tubbs, slid into a wide range of exotic accents and characters while undercover.
"I've been thinkin', uh, you look a little dark for an Italian, Richard."
"I'm from southern Italy.
Way south, it's called, 'Afreeca.'"
[Everyone laughs] Sonny Crockett is a Miami badge, and Ricardo
Tubbs is a New York cop.
They clash violently during a criminal investigation, and it gets personal.
Someone in Miami PD is on a drug lord’s payroll.
And as misfortune would have it, the same man Tubbs is on a manhunt for—as a vendetta
for killing his brother—has his crosshairs dead-set on Crockett.
Sonny is a cocksure, brash and confident detective, but underneath is a tragic character.
His distant wife and son can never fully understand or be part of long nights and weekends away
from home, delving deeper into the criminal underworld.
His friends and colleagues suffer and die around him, and there is little in the world
for him but his continued work to bring down the scum of the Earth, for everyone’s but
his own benefit.
He lives on a boat with his pet alligator, Elvis, who he doesn’t even get along with
well, either.
Tubbs may like to play the party animal, but he also has a deep sense of loyalty and soul.
When the whole department or the entire world is working against Crockett, he knows Tubbs
is the one man he can trust to have his back, and do the right thing.
"Hey pal.
You're not in the process of forgetting you're a cop, are ya?
We go by the book."
“Just like we did before?”
There’s an ebb and flow here.
Crockett and Tubbs often go the extra mile needed to catch the guys pulling the strings,
but are constantly being held back by the jungle of red tape they have to wade through.
Corruption, jurisdiction, and interdepartmental conflict eat at their moral code—especially
when a person of interest has ties to the DEA, FBI, or other three-letter agencies.
Villains are occasionally given carte blanche by the powers that be, even if it defiles
the name of order and decency, and poisons the soil once blessed by the American Dream.
When Crockett or Tubbs mess up, nobody is harder on them but themselves.
It’s heartbreaking to see them stricken by the guilt of one bad decision, considering
the hundreds of heroic deeds under their belt.
But Miami Vice shines in these story beats stronger than any other.
Don Johnson deftly pivots from harmless charmer, distant and moody, to ice-cold deadly, with panache.
And Philip Michael Thomas once described his peace with being resigned to the supporting
role, acknowledging that his vital chemistry with Don was the reason both characters worked
so well.
“It's uh, Tubbs.
T-U-B-B-S—Tough, Unique, Bad, Bold and Sassy.”
These rising stars were at the top of their game, and their undeniable sex appeal also
led to the show being popular not only for its drama and action, but for its “hunk”
factor as well.
Johnson once told Rolling Stone about the infamous “rain of panties” story—where
the film crew had to remove thousands of women’s undergarments from the set, after an organized
shower of them fell from the office buildings overlooking a New York City shoot.
This is the stuff of guy legends.
You had to be there to understand just how insanely popular these heartbreakers were
in their prime.
“Philip is the kindest, most joyful person you could ever hope to spend 16 hours a day
with for five years.
I never had one argument with that guy.
We were closer than brothers.”
But just like the fiction this show weaves, there was trouble in paradise…
Hill Street Blues alumni, Gregory Sierra, played the original Lieutenant in charge of
the Vice department, but he requested to be written out of the show just four episodes in.
A new foil and boss for our lead detectives was needed, leading Michael Mann to hunt for
a replacement.
His top pick: Edward James Olmos.
Despite a dozen bit parts in television, and film credits in Wolfen and Blade Runner, Olmos
struggled as an actor.
He still moved furniture to support his family, when Mann called him, offering him the role.
Olmos regretfully declined several offers, all of which had increasingly enticing price tags.
The final offer for this one role totaled more money than his father made in a lifetime.
To Olmos’ surprise, an insistent Michael Mann eventually convinced him to sign on.
His holdout?
Getting the studio to agree to seemingly impossible demands: full creative control over his character,
and a non-exclusive contract with NBC.
And so the entrance of a new Commander of the Vice Division, Lt. Castillo kicked off
one of the characters that made the show special.
As is customary in police procedurals, our detectives have a complicated relationship
with their new boss.
As a mysterious Drug Enforcement Agency veteran who has a shadowy past working in the Far
East, he is a man of few words, and many skills.
But when he speaks, you listen.
The chemistry between Crockett, Tubbs and Castillo went down in history as one of TV’s best.
“Hey, which side are you on?”
“Don’t ever get up in my face like this again, detective.”
We were in the OCB, I’d never been in there.
So, I’m looking around and I shut the door…
And Don goes, “Hey Eddie, just leave the door open.
Because, you know, this whole place, we just walk in.
I don’t want to work with doors.”
I said, “Don, talking story, I’ve never been here.
In this episode, I come walking in, I have nothing here!
I’m trying to find my bearings.
I don’t know who you are, I know you’re working, you’re one of my detectives and
this is the OCB, and I understand the situation.
But you know, I’m gonna shut the door.
In MY office, you’re not just going to be able to walk in…”
“Don, this is not personal.
This has nothing to do with you or me.
This has everything to do with the situation in which we find ourselves—shut the door,
I want the door shut…”
And he goes, “Oh okay we’ll see about that.”
And he walks away, you know… I said, “Here we go,” and so one hour
goes through, two hours goes by, and we have the entire crew and this was a very expensive
show at that time, so…
Tens of thousands of dollars, if not hundreds of thousands of thousands…
…and so finally Don comes back on the set…
“…Action!”
He knocks on the door, but as soon as he knocked on the door, he shoves the door open.
Pop, pop, boom!
And flings the door, it hits the bookshelf, or the cabinet, file cabinet…
And he walks in, and he throws the book on the table, and he goes…
“It’s a hit,” with an attitude…
…I turn sideways a little bit, and I look at the thing and he finishes his lines, and
I said my lines but I didn’t look at him when I said my lines.
And he walks out, and we played the scene that way, tension was excellent.
You could feel it, you could cut it with a knife…
I didn’t look at him or Ricardo Tubbs for 10 episodes, from that moment on…
…But the guys could not dismiss me.
They could not look at each other after talking.
If they did look at each other, it was to say, “You know this guy’s not even paying
attention to us…” …and they didn’t even know what I’d
done, you know, neither Don or Philip Michael, knew what I had done.”
In spite of, or perhaps directly due to Castillo serving as a foil to our heroes, the most
impactful moments in the OCB are often when the cold, stern lieutenant stands up for his
crew.
The rare, vulnerable interactions between Crockett and Castillo are arguably the most
powerful moments of the show, as two grizzled war veterans, now fighting the incessant wave
of corruption and depravity stateside, show a mutual respect that no others could.
Olmos and Johnson’s professional squabbles alchemized the show into gold.
"...Crockett, where's the Clarence Darrow defense?
Why not just hang it up and become a security guard, huh?"
"Schroeder."
"Yes, Lieutenant."
"Who do you think you are, to walk into my office, and mouth off to one of my detectives?”
If you turned on your TV on a Friday night in 1985, you might have seen this…or this…or…this!
Vice certainly stood out from the pack in terms of lighting, cinematography and style.
Whereas broadcasts were traditionally flooded with flat, even lighting so that the images
came across clearly through the airwaves to even the dinkiest television set, Miami Vice
took a chance with dramatic, nighttime shots, bright neons and depth of field, fully exploring
the medium with the same artistry as the silver screen.
A subtle thing that most might not notice about the show is its curated and intoxicating
color palette.
A pastel painting by day, and a neon spectrum by night.
Mann set strict color guidelines, based on swatches he collected previously while visiting
South Beach.
The exclusion of red and earth tones in its wardrobe and prop department were mandated.
Every neon sign, wall, building and article of clothing was carefully coordinated in pastels,
teal, pink and other nonstandard hues.
This created a dazzling and heightened atmosphere that distinguished itself from any other show
on television.
“The popular impact of the show?
Huge. Huge!
Cannot be overestimated.
Changed the look of television.
Changed the rhythm of television.
That’s all Michael Mann.
“...The wet down streets and the pink glow and all that stuff—that was Michael.
“...He is the American director who puts the most in the frame of any working director.”
Like Starsky & Hutch, Miami Vice worshiped the automobile.
Whereas Hutch would showcase the roaring American muscle cars of the 1970s, Vice paraded the
sleek sports cars of the 80s.
Civil forfeiture allows police to seize property they allege is involved in a crime.
This federal law inspired Miami Vice’s detectives to better blend in with the pimps and pushers
of Miami, with luxurious flats, sports cars, and bling, repossessed from the "legally impaired."
Many vice cops go undercover, playing the bad guy with dealers, smugglers, prostitution
rings and crime operations in order to make the bigger busts.
Crockett and Tubbs’ day-to-day activity is bona fide police work, as recognized by
other Florida metropolitan cops of the time—persuasion, using informants, wearing microphone wires,
bugging homes and offering lighter sentences in exchange for the testimony from a key witness.
The show took some creative license in its portrayal of policing, of course—your average
real-life vice cop doesn’t drive a Lamborghini Countach to work, these props were just barely
within the realm of possibility, adding a sense of reality to the hyper-stylized show.
But like the show's detectives, their vehicle was undercover, too.
Their budget was strained over its high production costs and pricey fashion, and couldn't afford
the iconic Ferrari Daytona Spyder the heroes drove.
So they faked it.
Tom McBurnie built a fiberglass chassis on top of two black Corvettes, to maintain the
facade of flashy, expensive cars—one for beauty shots, another to fling off of ramps
or race around town during chase scenes.
This shortcut later got the studio into hot water with the actual car manufacturer, since
they didn’t want phony Ferraris paraded around on TV.
Thankfully, the two parties came to an arrangement: to replace the fake Daytona Spyder with the
newer Testarossa—quickly becoming the envy of every car enthusiast in the world.
The vehicular guest stars were as varied as the human ones, with a veritable fleet of
the most stylish rides of the 80s, with sightings of Lotus, Aston Martin, the Lamborghini Countach,
and of course, the inimitable DeLorean.
Behind the scenes, the show pioneered many cinematic techniques and style choices we
now take for granted, but were foreign to network television at the time.
Using car-mounted cameras made driving shots, night cruises and chases visceral and nail-biting—something
you simply can’t replicate with rear projection of yesteryear, or the green-screen galore
of today.
Vice used powerful songs to carry the emotional impact of a scene, with little to no organic
or foley audio heard over it.
Musical montages were used in place of quiet establishing shots, further characterizing
the locales.
There was regular use of telephoto and other lens effects to create dramatic shots, with
a dream-like bokeh lighting in the backdrop, rather than flat shots where everything is
in focus.
Michael Mann had an obsession with capturing night on film.
Most contemporary media would flood a scene in blue light, or more recently, shoot day
for night.
But the night was alive in Miami Vice, Manhunter, and Mann’s future work—where he painstakingly
strove for night shoots that looked as realistic as possible.
And the atmosphere that technique created was unmistakable.
“To me, there’s film form and there’s film content, and one complements the other…”
“If [the style] is not doing something about telling stories, then it’s gratuitous.
Form degenerates into style when there is nothing for it to interact with.”
The South Florida Sun Sentinel once described the show as, “TV’s First Designer Series,”
and for good reason.
The original show’s costume designer, Bambi Breakstone, stressed the challenge of dressing
these heroes to the nines: changing costumes between five and eight times each episode,
while always being over budget.
The series transmitted cutting-edge dress and style directly to the mainstream.
Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas became unmistakable trendsetters for mens’ fashion.
Legendary fashion designer Gianni Versace’s first individual he personally dressed in
Miami was none other than Don Johnson.
And if you’ve ever mixed blazers with casual clothes, or worn a designer stubble, you can
thank Johnson for trailblazing that look, too.
His signature style of a tee shirt, suit, sockless shoes and handsomely disheveled stubble
was born of his interpretation of Sonny Crockett’s character as he saw it…
“I took what was handed to me and I turned it into my style.
The rolled-up sleeves [were] a function of the fact that I had to have a jacket to cover
the gun and the holster.”
“I just stripped everything down to the bare minimum.
I didn’t wear socks because it was too hot to wear damn socks.
And the stubble was born out of the character, because it was intimated that he had been
up partying with drug dealers for two or three days at a time.”
“That was sort of an unspoken thing, which is why he was always unshaven and looked like
he slept in his clothes.”
The show has a lot of big personalities both behind and in front of the camera, but the
unsung heroes of the show are the many producers, crew members and writers that literally held
the franchise together.
From the talented writer’s rooms—filled with up-and-comers that weaved the slice of
life tales Vice told—Joel Surnow was instrumental in story editing, writing, and story concepts
behind many of the best episodes of season 1 and 2.
He would later go on to create the counter-terrorist thriller series, “24.”
John Mankiewicz wrote and edited 20 episodes of Miami Vice, as one of his first big breaks
of his career.
He would go on to write and produce the detective series Bosch, and political drama House of Cards.
And let’s not forget the many producers, coordinators and designers, who acted as the
glue between the show’s stories, actors and sets.
Producer John Nicolella was only supposed to help with the pilot, but was asked to come
back, and masterfully wrangled the moving parts of over forty episodes, and directed
nine of them.
“No other city gets to look this good for a whole hour.
How much do you think it’s worth?
I’m going to send Miami a bill.”
With Miami Vice, style was everything.
With all its zippy dialogue and 45 minute story arcs, the soul of the show resonated
best through its music.
Many episodes were named after the songs it featured, such as Smuggler’s Blues, where
the entire episode is serenaded by Glenn Frey’s song of the same name, and the lyrics practically
narrate what’s going on in the story.
But it's when the show drops its suave charade, and gets uncomfortably real with us, that
we really start listening.
Where other shows like Magnum P.I. or The A-Team might pull their punches, do a fake-out
and end on a happy note, Miami Vice had the habit of landing an emotional haymaker instead.
Often the greatest victories are undercut by a deceased friend, a bond broken, an unjust
sentencing, or a single moment of understanding and empathy for the perpetrator, right before
the bullets fly.
Such as the memorable “Little Miss Dangerous”, a one-off story about a troubled young dancer
who moonlights as a call girl.
She gets heat on her tail when she’s connected to multiple missing person reports.
Is it an obsessed killer, stalking her clients?
Or is the truth even darker?
The episode is wrought with emotional damage, revenge, and unsuspecting johns who pay the
final price for her troubled past.
Then there are times when all the diegetic sound and foley cuts out, and only a song
is left to tell the tale.
Such as one of the most celebrated episodes, “Out Where the Buses Don’t Run,” which
follows a brilliant former vice detective Hank Weldon (a breakout role for Bruce McGill),
who provides almost prophetic insight regarding an open case, but he clearly has a few screws
loose.
“Let me ask you something, Hank.”
“You can ask, Sonny.
But they no have to tell you.
[gunshot sounds]” “Trust me!”
“Why does the concept of that make me so nervous?”
Weldon had left the force long ago, shortly after spending 3 long years of work to get
a cartel leader on the stand.
But when this dangerous criminal was acquitted and walked out of the courthouse a free man,
never to be seen again, Weldon couldn’t take it, and turned in his badge.
Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms plays while Crockett and Tubbs speed down the streetlamp-lit
highways of Miami, toward the episode’s finale—a stirring piece about losing fellow
soldiers in an uncaring and hellish war.
They arrive at an abandoned building—where Weldon claims he is holding his nemesis, ready
for police questioning.
Crockett and Tubbs treat the situation as hostile, but are shocked beyond words when
Weldon, alone, reveals the source of his mania.
He busts open the walls to reveal the mummified remains of the cartel drug lord, who never
lived a day after his acquittal.
The guilt of taking the law into his own hands ruined his marriage, and put him in a psych
ward for years.
Possibly more heart wrenching is that his partner (played here by David Straithairn),
knew what he did, and helped cover it up for him.
“He was my partner, you understand?
You understand?!”
This is one of the many times Crockett and Tubbs get to see the dark reflection of themselves,
should they go too far in the name of justice and what’s morally right.
There are occasional movie-length stories told in two-part episodes, which carried story
arcs that felt like an entire season or movie in itself.
Such as when ghosts from Castillo’s past as a grizzled DEA agent come back to haunt
him.
The mysterious drug lords of the Golden Triangle in southeast Asia come to Miami, and Martin
becomes the unlikely protagonist of the story.
These episodes are often the highlights of the show—unheard of in an era filled with
stereotypical police bosses, who only exist to yell orders and demand your gun and your
badge.
At one point, Castillo’s supposedly long-dead wife from another life suddenly reappears
in Miami, remarried, and with connections to a powerful drug baron from Southeast Asia.
Castillo must juggle his personal feelings and professional duties as head of the Vice Division.
And who could forget the time Castillo takes on a USSR hit squad with a katana, samurai style?
The two-parters’ enclosed nature, high production value, and two-hour runtime (often broadcast
together), makes Miami Vice feel like a series of movies at times, rather than a police procedural.
Fellow OCB detectives, Stan Switek and Larry Zito, were often relegated to surveillance
or backup for sting operations.
And frankly, they often served as comic relief or bumbling officers, or to contrast to the
slick and experienced Crockett and Tubbs.
But in ‘Down for the Count,’ a powerful two-parter in season 3, Switek and Zito get
their time in the sun, and take the lead in investigating an underground boxing ring with
shady bookkeeping.
Zito gets too close to a dangerous man, and is killed in cold blood.
What’s worse, the criminals make it look like a drug overdose.
Losing his partner and closest friend is a life changing event for Switek.
The personable, bubbly character we knew is gone, replaced by a more serious and determined
detective, sculpted by pain and loss.
Detectives Gina Calabrese and Trudy Joplin often worked the prostitution angle of Vice,
posing as call girls, or using their womanly charms to entice drug-related suspects into
a trap.
But their characters get further development and dedicated episodes later on.
Being the “lure” in many touchy situations involving pimps and mobsters, Gina endures
assault during her undercover work, under the threat of blowing her cover—a horrifying
experience that is a very real occupational hazard for cops in extreme situations.
Gina has an infatuation with Crockett, who, after a messy separation preceding the show’s
beginning, rebounded with her on more than one occasion.
Gina wants Crockett, but knows that she could never fill the role of his one-and-only, and
so the tension between the two ensues.
One of the more tragic episodes revealed Gina’s backstory as a Cuban immigrant, whose parents
were killed during the Cuban Revolution while she was just a baby.
And as the tensions and conflict continue in Miami, so does her understanding of herself
and her place in the world.
‘The Dutch Oven’ explores Trudy’s chaotic and complicated existence as a Vice cop, where
her personal and professional lives intertwine and compromise one another.
When an old flame of hers comes back into her life, she stands at a crossroads, with
one path leading to her happiness and personal fulfillment, and the other, toward duty and
to the law, busting a dealer friend of his.
“Here’s the thing: Our show will never be the same every week.
Which is one of the reasons I love it.
We don’t have a formula.
The problem is trying to tell the story from beginning to middle to end in an hour without
losing the human aspect.
The character bits and studies.
The relationships.”
The story kick-starts with the investigation of the devious drug lord Calderone, whose
family empire stretches from New York to the Bahamas.
Calderone crosses paths personally with both our heroes, permanently marking their personal
and professional lives, and further blurring the ever-fainter line between work and family
life.
Though the show is decades divorced from our modern struggle, many of the topics, themes
and episode plots still resonate today.
From broken families affecting the next generation’s mental health, to an onerous justice system
that makes it nigh impossible to put the real villains away.
Crooked televangelists, cronyism, international dealings with the devil, high-tech dating,
and obviously, substance abuse.
The Vice Squad have a delicate dance with sin, to get close enough to real dangers to
society: the untouchable drug lords, criminal degenerates and human traffickers who cause
untold suffering the world over.
Sometimes the detectives and lieutenant need to bend the rules a bit to deliver justice.
Like when Lt. Castillo offers a clean slate to a prostitute, in exchange for cooperation
in a sting operation, to crack down on dirty cops in another department.
With crime, excitement, fashion and culture in an uproar, the world is on fire.
The show regularly alludes to the cultural and literal scorching of Miami—cartels have
moved in, the police are ramping up the heat, and it's a sweltering eternal summer here
in South Florida.
As if to drive the point home, the opening scene of ‘Definitely Miami’ kicks off
with the image of a solar flare.
“Even the breeze is hot today.”
We are occasionally given clues about our characters’ pasts.
Crockett left the failed skirmish in Vietnam of his younger years, to fight in another
conflict with no victors, in the form of the Miami drug war.
As busting perps is their day job, the vice squad has little sympathy for most of the
criminals they bust.
But it was the episodes where they gained an understanding and sort of empathy for the
human being behind the crime, that were the most memorable.
These are stories we connect with, people we could never forgive for what they did,
but we understand why they did it.
The show didn’t whitewash the administrative and ethical problems in law enforcement, either.
Miami Vice addresses the red tape that bogs down the road to justice, and the tendrils
of corruption that plague our society: from corrupt prisons, to bought-and-paid-for police
officers.
From alphabet agencies that do unspeakable things “for the greater good,” to the
men behind the curtains, feeding and maintaining the drug war, which has set fire to communities
for years.
Miami Vice’s more somber episodes often ended with someone's life ruined, or an unspeakable
tragedy.
Then the upbeat theme song would play during the end credits, like a grisly punchline after
a practical joke.
It’s a strange tonal shift, but it emulated the sky-high highs and the hellbound lows
of the eighties.
For every pop song montage, there was a cocaine bust or murder—undercutting a victory with
a grim reminder that it’s not always a happy ending…
“Whoa, Crockett.
Here’s one with your name on it.
“You ever think that, Sonny?
That there’s a bullet somewhere, with your name on it?”
After a confrontation at gunpoint, Crockett connects with the dangerous and unhinged Evan,
an estranged friend from their days at the police academy.
Evan’s buried his guilt deep inside himself, and hasn’t come to terms with the prejudiced
actions of his past, which ostracized one of their mutual buddies, and indirectly got
him killed.
In an act of redemption, he takes a bullet meant for Crockett while his back is turned.
A powerful episode, but a tragic one, where hollow victories cannot fill the holes that
living, breathing human beings once filled.
Or the time when the vice squad convinces a battered wife to work in coordination with
wiretaps to nail her gun smuggling husband, only for him to walk out of the courthouse,
at the behest of a shadowy government operation.
Tearful and betrayed, the wife chooses to face a premeditated murder charge over her
husband coming home.
A horrible outcome where nobody wins.
When a ruthless gang of serial house invaders plagues the city, the Vice Squad are called
in as support for the Robbery Division.
The catch?
Crockett is now stepping on the toes of his first boss and mentor, Lt. Malone, and their
relationship is complicated.
Mishaps, civilian injuries, a dead cop, and a very messy case later, the team catch the
perps and celebrate by going out to lunch.
Crockett’s interrupted with the somber news that Malone was turning in his badge, out
of shame for a botched investigation that Vice stepped in and handled.
“I figured you might wanna go fishing someday.
I hear it’s real fashionable to go out on a boat with a retired lieutenant from Robbery.”
“I turned in my badge this morning, Sonny.”
Tubbs' past with the late drug lord Calderone came back to haunt him in the episode "Sons
and Lovers."
Back in 1984, Crockett and Tubbs had chased Calderone—the man who killed Tubbs’ brother—
to his lavish abode in the Bahamas.
There Tubbs fell in love with Angelina, not yet realizing she was Calderone's daughter.
But their love affair was interrupted when Crockett was captured, and the duo took down
Calderone for good.
Two long years later, Angelina arrives in Miami with Tubbs' son, Ricardo Jr.
However, what was to be the start of a new family life was cut short by Calderone's maniacal
son, who kidnapped them, and rigged a bomb to kill Tubbs' son and Angelina if he interfered.
In a selfless act, Angelina activated the bomb, killing herself, and the baby was presumed
to be dead as well.
But Calderone stole Ricardo Jr. far away, before the explosion—and we’re cursed
to know that father and son were never reunited.
This event scarred Tubbs in ways we’ll never fully know, killing his newfound family and
his dreams, in one cruel act of misplaced vengeance.
One of the most haunting episodes was when Crockett and Tubbs come across a modeling
video, which Sonny is convinced is a snuff film.
The lady starring in it seemed to vanish without a trace, but nearly everyone refuses to humor
his hunch.
It explores a depraved underworld veiled in high art and fashion, but where celebrity
and cultural influence essentially renders you immune to scrutiny.
This is one of the few times where the bad guy walks, and Sonny cannot help but watch
it happen, with tears of anger in his eyes.
In ‘Child’s Play,’ Crockett and Tubbs intervene on a violent domestic dispute during
a surveillance assignment.
When the image of a gun appears in the corner of his eye, Crockett shoots, only to discover
in horror that he gravely wounded a young boy who was also trying to stop the assailant.
He visits the boy every day, who is in critical condition at the hospital, and while the incident
is investigated, Crockett takes some leave to spend extra time with his own son as a
sort of penance, but this only makes him feel more remorse.
Billy, his son, now has a step-father who wants to adopt him, filling the paternal role
that Crockett had struggled to.
This episode is one of the most emotionally taxing, as it explores a guilt-ridden man,
who blames himself for failing both as a police officer and as a father.
His shooting is legally cleared of any official wrongdoing, but his conscience says otherwise.
Crockett tries to bury his emotions and get back to work, but his colleagues and therapist
won’t ignore the obviously hurting individual in front of them—resulting in a moment with
Castillo that is both touching and haunting…
"WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO SAY?!
I’d like to see you up there.”
“I shot the kid...
I shot him, he may die, it was my gun, I can't pull the bullet back in there, and there's
nothing that you say, or that anybody says, OR NO SHRINK IS GONNA CHANGE THAT!"
“It’s my responsibility.
I’m responsible!
And if it’s NOT me, then who the hell is it?!”
“You pulled the trigger.
Now, live with the responsibility.
It's gonna scar you, eat you, burn you inside, and it should.
But you got work to do that you care about, people are depending on that.
You got people who care for you, Sonny, like me.
Don't lose yourself.
Keep on going.”
These somber notes at the end of crime dramas stick with you more than the predictable endings
would.
The most poignant moment in the show may have been in the premiere episode of season two,
when Crockett and Tubbs caught a glimpse of one of the men behind the curtains.
An unfathomably connected and powerful banker acts as a liaison between the drug pipeline
of South America, and the financial interests that would collapse if their loans to those
countries weren't repaid.
‘Prodigal Son’ painted a very ugly picture of the long-fought war on drugs, by highlighting
the disquieting and very real fear that the agencies and authorities we’re meant to
trust, may not always be fighting on our side.
“We are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars.”
“Now they aren’t going to repay that by selling straw bags and clay pots.”
“If these Latin borrowers default, we would be decimated.”
“We are the entire Free World.
When we sneeze, everybody catches cold.”
"I can't touch you.
I know that."
"Too many roadblocks, politics, favors."
"But you're dirty, ace.
And I'm patient."
As if to drive that point home, the detectives meet with said drug smugglers at the moonlit
World Trade Center Plaza, which ends in an explosive shootout.
Exciting, feel-good justice for 1985, but it is particularly ominous now, when we look
at the ruins of what once stood as the symbol of international cooperation and commerce.
For a Friday night prime-time show, Miami Vice occasionally walked the line in terms
of what was permissible during the quaint TV era of the 80s.
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.
And if you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
One of the recurring themes of the show is the corruption of the human soul, and the
moral depths an undercover agent goes to catch the bad guys.
It's a cautionary tale of losing yourself when you get just a bit too close to the enemy.
In the episode ‘Heart of Darkness,’ Ed O’Neill expertly portrays an FBI operative
spiraling out of control, and no longer knows which side he’s on.
He’s estranged from his family, and has been undercover for so long that he has become
just as violent, scary and unhinged as the villains he’s supposed to bust.
This is one of many times we see the sinister side of undercover work, and who Crockett
and Tubbs could one day become, should they stray from the path.
The title and theme of the episode, ‘One-Eyed Jack,’ refers to the Jack of Spades and
Jack of Hearts in a playing card deck.
They share one thing in common: only one side of their faces are revealed—like someone
who hides a darker side that few know about.
Crockett's loyalty to the police department and the law is questioned, when someone fingers
him as a crooked cop, and Internal Affairs is itching to prosecute.
This is one of the toughest spots Sonny ever found himself in, as now forces on both sides
of the law want his badge, or his head.
The seeds to Crockett’s inevitable fall were planted as early as season 1, but the
way they cast our hero into darkness had less and less connection to how the show was envisioned
back in 1984.
Yerkovich was long gone, and Mann was less hands-on at that point.
The later writers, under the direction of Dick Wolf, played a few wildcards to respark
interest, but had a very mixed audience reception.
“Yeah, and I was brought in, because if you remember the first season of Miami Vice,
it was great-looking, but there were no stories.
You couldn't, you'd watch it for an hour and go, what was that about?
(audience laughs) “And it was great, I mean it was—it had
other production values.”
“A kaleidoscope, but it was not a story.”
From this standpoint, you can see Wolf’s influence and how it changes the show’s
tone and storytelling style toward the end of its run.
First off was Crockett falling in love and marrying a pop star, played by real-life Scottish
singer, Sheena Easton.
The ensuing episodes have to juggle a supposedly undercover cop’s marriage to a celebrity,
and the paparazzi, rag articles and PR nightmares that ensue.
They share a full five episodes before a longtime enemy of Crockett puts her into an early grave,
mid-concert.
It’s here where Crockett finally goes off the deep end, as he tracks down his wife’s
killer, and shoots him, unarmed, in cold blood.
His character arc is further cemented in ‘Mirror Image,’ the season 4 finale.
Crockett suffers a major head injury from an explosion, is presumed dead, and wakes
up only remembering his undercover alter ego: Sonny Burnett.
His character and moral outlook are irreparably damaged here—where a previously law-abiding
and straight-edged Sonny is putting bullets into rival thugs at the mob’s beckoning.
He is just as good at being an amnesiac hired gun as he was at being a cop, if not better.
He does unthinkable acts, racks up a body count, and even shoots Tubbs without remorse,
until finally recovering his memory.
It's a bit like movie magic, and it's hard to believe that he is not only not charged
in any of these counts, but gets to keep his job!
Bear in mind, years ago he nearly lost that same job over the false report that he was
accepting bribes—let alone committing murder.
There are a few redeeming moments here, though.
As he recovers from his trip to the dark side, Crockett has a rare moment of honesty about
his job and life, while sharing his perspective to a work-mandated therapy session in ‘Miami
Squeeze,’ revealing how dark and twisted his perspective had become after a lifetime
of “gazing into the abyss.”
“You see?
My problems are just psychological.
They're real.”
“As in?”
“Twenty-four hours ago, I shot a drug dealer dead.
He was 20 years old.
“And no amount…of talking, or learning about ourselves.
Is going to bring him back.
“That's where I live.
“Crazy part about it—You get to like your sewer after a while.
Get real comfortable.
You know all the rats, all the bugs, all the germs.
You should see some of the ‘reptile’ dealers.
Part peacock.
Part rodent.
They wear plumes, and designer skin.
“And they eat their young…”
“The truth is…
I'm a junkie myself.
I'm hooked on the action. A junkie to the street.”
“…A good thing we had, we had a wonderful budget.
We had over a million dollars per show, that we could do, and we had a lot of things.
We ushered the golden age of television into the platinum age.
And a lot of the music that happened to come from Europe, et cetera, helped that show to
be what it was.
“I remember we had so many people that wanted to do the show, they would call and say, ‘I
want to be on that show, I want to be on that show!’
“They had to turn people away, yeah, you know?
So when I watch it and I see what's happening, it's like we were able to do major motion
pictures for television.”
The show's production was meticulous.
Neon lights were designed and built to add flair to every street corner.
Standard “TV lighting” was replaced with color gels, neons and creative choices to
make the mood and atmosphere of the series stand out.
Painstaking detail would be put into most shooting locations, where crew would often
repaint walls or redress an area to make it pass the rigorous standards Michael Mann imposed.
And unlike many movies and shows before and after, the entrancing feel of the vehicle
segments were—for the lack of a better word—magical!
Rigging cameras sports cars, motorcycles, vans and trucks for visceral chases where
you’d swear you were in the passenger seat.
You could feel the wind through our heroes’ hair, every bump in the road, and you could
see the sunlight and shadow cast over them as they drove through the beautiful, troubled
city of Miami—something you miss with rear projection or the now popular greenscreen
effect.
And this love of raw horsepower wasn’t just an act.
Don Johnson was a real-life car and boat junkie.
He started the Team USA powerboat racing team, and raced alongside Kurt Russell and even
Chuck Norris!
He went on to win the Offshore World Cup in 1988.
His love of Scarab powerboats, inspired by his time with one on the show, led him to
co-designing a Don Johnson Signature edition, with twin-Lamborghini V12 engines under the
hood.
The show's action and style were so popular that Universal Studios Hollywood launched
a Miami Vice stunt show through the late 80s and 90s.
The 15-minute live performance wowed audiences with mock shootouts, a powerboat, hovercraft,
minecart rides, and an advanced computer system with sensors designed for stuntman safety
and Hollywood-quality action.
At its climax, a mock helicopter crashes with full pyrotechnics—exciting stuff to be performed
in person, without the crutch of post-production or camera angle tricks.
The show was a kingmaker for future Hollywood stars.
Props to the casting department, Miami Vice provided the breakout role for dozens of future
A-list actors.
From a teenage Julia Roberts, to a pre-Schindler Liam Neeson.
Giancarlo Esposito, Madsen, Turturro, Snipes, Leguizamo…
Even a pre-Die Hard Bruce Willis played a gun smuggler, while the actor was still bartending
as a day job.
“Miami Vice helped politically, economically and artistically.
I have absolutely no doubt.
It certainly put the Art Deco district on the world map.”
“They were filming all over Miami Beach.
They could film in the middle of the street.
There was literally nobody there.”
In 1980, tourism brought five billion dollars to Florida.
Cocaine brought seven.
To make matters worse, Miami experienced one of the most violent riots the country had
ever seen, following a police brutality case the previous year.
Skyrocketing crime rates, the influx of drug cartels, tens of thousands of Cuban refugees
via the Mariel boatlift, and a nearly 50% drop in tourism in just a couple of years
brought South Florida to its breaking point.
So when it came time to shoot 1983’s Scarface, the Cuban communities were obviously against
the concept of portraying a Marielito, fresh off the boat from Cuba, becoming a cokehead,
murderous drug lord.
But Dade County was struggling financially, so the mayor and other civil leaders tried
to attract more filmmakers.
Scarface producer Martin Bregman once told the Miami Herald:
“It’s obvious to me that they are afraid I am going to depict the Cuban community as
a bunch of animals.
That’s not the type of movie I make.
If they don’t want us there, we’ll leave.
Believe me, this is not going to give Miami or that area a bad image.
It already has that image.”
Dire times, indeed.
While Scarface might have infused millions into the economy, drugs were raking in billions.
So when studios pitched a show called “Miami Vice” and were set to shoot on location,
locals were concerned that the image of a drug-fueled ghetto was set in stone.
Communities, again, reacted strongly to the show’s production.
But their tune changed when they actually watched it.
Miami Vice presented a more optimistic view of Miami than Scarface.
It showed good persevering over evil, set against the beautiful but troubled metropolis.
“Is television so powerful that Miami Vice can alter reality, creating an image Miami
will aspire to?
The post-Angelino glamor of a designer city, where vice is an accessory.
No history.
No depth.
Miami at 100 miles an hour and $100 a gram.
It's hot, it's sexy, it's up your nose."
In addition to its vivid portrayal of the area, the production crew took the color and
style guide (as curated by Michael Mann and the fashion and creative team of the show)
and applied the pastel colors they chose for the show to the entire town, as part of their
production budget.
Suddenly, the bleak ghettos and alleys of Miami started to look like the fantasized
version of the city, the series advertised.
Five seasons of a television series essentially remodeled the city.
Ironically, the color, violence and danger of the series actually led to a newfound fascination
with the town.
As crime rates slowly recovered over the years, the season finale of Vice coincided with Miami
tourism back to pre-cartel, riot and immigration numbers.
Just as Miami earned its nickname, “Magic City,” for sprouting tall buildings quickly
in its infancy, it was transformed again into “Party City,” seemingly overnight.
Miami inspired the lightning-in-a-bottle energy that fueled the show.
In a way, Vice saved Miami from crime and poverty in return.
“Someone asked me once: ‘Did I think the
show was going to, uh, last very long?’
And I said, ‘as long as there are drugs and rock and roll, we'll stay on the air.’”
“You betcha.”
Despite Miami Vice featuring the greatest hits of the decade musically, the show had
quite a few misses narratively, in its hundred-odd episodes.
As the seasons continued, the show’s scope expanded well beyond Miami: to the Bahamas,
Columbia, New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and beyond.
This helped keep the show fresh, with Tubbs and Crockett liaising with federal law enforcement
to crack down on vice the world over.
But it also served to muddle the show’s Miami inner-city theme.
Like many long-running programs, there was a revolving door of talent attached to the
show, and few people who made the series work in the first two seasons were the same folks
who saw it through to the end.
Show creator, Tony Yerkovich, left the show after only six episodes, leaving the rest
of the writers, producers, and Michael Mann, to carry it forward.
Mann is often credited as the auteur of the show, and his rigid demands and particular
tastes were cited as the reason the show’s style was so magnetic.
But his heart was never fully in TV, preferring the longer production, runtime and creative
freedom of film.
“With ‘Miami Vice,’ we’re going out there every week trying to make a little movie
in seven days…”
“It’s extremely dumb, but we keep trying to pull it off.
You can’t hit one out of the ballpark every week.”
In 1986, Michael Mann pivoted back toward his film career.
The result: the first film based on a Thomas Harris novel.
Manhunter introduced the now famously demented Hannibal Lecter.
Its mesmerizing dream sequences set in Florida were likely inspired by his work on Vice.
During this time, Mann also began producing another show for NBC.
Crime Story starred Dennis Farina as a grizzled detective, who takes on organized crime in
1960’s Chicago.
A 3-year Vietnam veteran and police officer for 18 years, Farina’s real-life experience
as patrolman, all the way up to detective, made him an invaluable police consultant turned
actor, often utilized in Michael Mann’s films and shows.
Farina also played the recurring character Lombard on Miami Vice—a mob bookmaker, initially
depicted as a cold and cunning mastermind.
"Handcuff him and book him!"
"On what charge, conspiracy to commit lunch?!"
"I’ll be out on time for my 2 o’clock racquetball game."
However, he later attempts to break free from the criminal underworld, and mend his relationship
with his estranged son.
Yet, he faces daunting obstacles from the law demanding he testifies against his cohort,
and the deadly grips of the streets, hindering his path to redemption.
"At 21, I was making fifty times more than my father running numbers."
"Who says crime doesn't pay?"
"It evens out.
You pay a price."
"I've got a stable full of boats, broads, cars.
And I like all that stuff.
But you do pay a price."
"Got a kid in college, huh?"
"That's the price."
After season two smashed its way to the ninth highest rated show on television, season three
saw the series’ apex of popularity shift gears into its implosion and decline.
Don Johnson wanted a raise, which would quickly make him one of the highest-paid actors on
television.
Universal budged a little, but Johnson refused their smaller offer than what he wanted, and
walked off set, effectively holding their hot new show hostage, bleeding tens of thousands
of dollars, daily.
Within a week, Universal were filing breach of contract suits, and were ready and willing
to replace their lead man with either Treat Williams or future NCIS lead man, Mark Harmon.
This expensive game of chicken led to an undisclosed compromise sum, and the season got a late
start, with continuity errors occurring due to the chaotic production.
Tubbs loses and regrows his beard between episodes, and a demolished car shows up six
episodes later, unscathed.
“I’m very proud of those stories in the first year and a half, were about.
And they’re the best episodes.
I liked seeing those again, I’m not as sanguine about the later episodes…”
With Mann’s attention split between films, Crime Story and Vice, more dedicated oversight
ultimately came in the form of Dick Wolf—another Hill Street Blues veteran, who wrote numerous
episodes and produced much of season 3, 4 and 5.
Wolf later became a household name as the mastermind behind over three decades of Law
& Order and its spinoffs.
But this was before all of that, and Wolf had a different vision for Vice than his predecessors.
For starters, Mann’s eye for color and style slipped away in later seasons.
Garish displays of red, royal blue, and brown crept up more often, and the show’s iconic
pastels became less common.
Season 3 dropped from the #9 slot to #26, while season 4 and 5 didn’t even make it
into the Top 30.
For an expensive and high-profile show like this, it was clear that Vice’s days were
numbered.
Some of the best and worst episodes in the series came under Dick Wolf’s new role as
Executive Producer.
Jan Hammer started phasing out his contributions to the series around this time, and the show
started to change in terms of tone and character.
The writers started forcing major life changes for the main characters, only to vanish just
as abruptly in a few episodes.
The actors, directors and crew still gave it their all, but the magic of Vice was dwindling,
and so was its audience.
Season four was host to some truly baffling stories that “jumped the shark” for the
once must-see television program.
‘The Big Thaw’ follows the hullabaloo surrounding a cryogenically frozen reggae
star, and ‘The Cows of October’ centers around semen from a prized bull.
But the most confounding episode hands-down was ‘The Missing Hours,’ a confused mishmash
of cults, UFOs, government secrecy, science fiction, hallucinations, and, for some reason,
James Brown—straight out of a mediocre X-Files episode.
"Backup was sloppy."
"Is Castillo burning about the backup?"
"Yeah well you can't blame him, he almost lost one of his best cops this morning."
"Yeah, not to mention you!"
Season five didn’t plummet to the lows of season four, but it was clear the magic that
made the show sensational was missing here.
The writers were running out of ideas, so wild character arcs had major players like
Crockett, Tubbs, Castillo and even Switek at odds with one another, and felt out of
character.
This new dynamic lacked the camaraderie and chemistry that held the previous seasons together
like glue.
Due to NBC’s eagerness to empty the 10pm Friday slot that Vice had occupied for years,
the finale was bumped to a Sunday slot, and a few complete episodes were left unaired,
only appearing later in reruns.
One of these episodes teased the Young Criminals Unit, with junior vice detectives working
undercover as college students.
This was a failed backdoor pilot to a new series meant to compete with the young and
hip “21 Jump Street,” but never came to fruition.
‘Freefall’ is the true finale of the show, which saw Crockett and Tubbs face incredible
odds, oppression and corruption—ending in them figuratively “riding off into the sunset.”
The franchise remained dormant for nearly 20 years, only refreshing in people’s minds
through pop culture references, reruns, VHS and DVD releases.
“The very nature of cool is that you think about it too much and it becomes uncool.”
While Crockett and Tubbs were making waves through the Straits of Florida, Miami Vice
was making waves in the entertainment industry.
Franchises new and old borrowed from its pioneering cinematography, musical influence and editing,
and unmistakable energy.
In 1985, Universal Television hocked a shameless Miami Vice copycat to ABC, called ‘The Insiders.’
The attempt at fashion, neon lights, and style are all there, but the series failed to tread
the thin line between bleeding-edge cool and ridiculous.
At one point, our journalist duo pose as vice cops, perhaps as a cheeky nod to this show’s inspirations.
The showrunners even went so far as to use a Phil Collins song for the intro, in their
desperate attempt to retrace the success of Vice.
It wasn’t renewed for a second season.
That same year, Stingray aired.
A suave, mysterious protagonist, a cool car, stylish editing, and music video-style interludes,
all read like they were pulled straight from the Miami Vice playbook.
A solo lead named after his choice of vehicle may not have had the same chemistry to inspire
audiences beyond just one season, but the short-lived series had moments of inspired
storytelling. 1987’s Wiseguy was a serialized crime drama
which followed a deep-cover FBI agent who is tasked with infiltrating the mobster underworld—starting
with a real prison sentence to legitimize his cover, all the way up the ranks of the
family.
This show is notable for helping popularize this trend toward longer story arcs over bite-sized
episodes, and is often cited as a bridge between shows like Miami Vice and the later HBO smash
hit, The Sopranos.
The series borrowed much of the style of Vice while also carving out its own niche of mob
drama, and Season 4 even took a tour of Miami’s criminal underworld.
Joel Surnow, a former Miami Vice writer, contributed to this show and its movie follow-up.
Even the longest-running action movie franchise of all time, James Bond, took cues from TV's
most stylish show in the form of License to Kill.
Not even setting foot in the UK, the second and final Timothy Dalton outing borrowed the
tropical setting, colorful fashion, drug lord premise and even a few actors and pop music
choices from the show.
Tropical Heat (or “Sweating Bullets” in the States), jumped on the “macho detective
in the tropics” bandwagon, driven by Magnum P.I. and of course, Vice.
But the series was short-lived and promoted under different titles, likely inhibiting
its notoriety.
Acapulco H.E.A.T.
was something of a mix of Miami Vice and Baywatch, featuring flashy tropical locales, and the
golden mane of Fabio, and not much else of note.
And South Beach shamelessly aped the style, neo-noir narrative and even graphic design
from Vice.
The shows that aped Vice’s style proved that copycatting didn’t pay off, and whatever
magic Crockett and Tubbs wielded was indeed lightning in a bottle.
But the real legacy of the Miami Vice sensation is seen in the media that took its lessons
of style and technique, but brought something new to the table.
After Vice wrapped, Dick Wolf went on to create a veritable television empire, with Law & Order
and several spinoff shows, running for over fifty seasons collectively, with its popularity
lasting not years, but decades.
It learned much from its predecessors like Miami Vice, Hill Street Blues and Starsky
& Hutch, but ended each case relatively early, making room for a tense court battle to wrap
each episode up.
Law & Order’s mainstream success could be attributed to its casual narrative: it’s
a bite-sized, episodic show that you could turn on, watch, forget about for months, and
not miss a beat when you catch another episode.
Michael Bay’s breakout buddy cop films, Bad Boys, were not only set in a stylish,
drug-infused Miami, but feature partners who butt heads and play by different rules.
However, their unique strengths and perspectives prove to be stronger combined than when they
played solo.
Bad Boys took a simplified and streamlined Miami Vice setup, a heavy-hitting pop music
soundtrack, and slapping more violence and comedy into the formula to make a roaring
popcorn success.
This is the movie that launched Will Smith's star power into the stratosphere, after his
previous success in music and TV.
“Hey, freeze mother bitch!”
“We’re police officers.”
“You are not police officers!”
“Hey, freeze, bitch!”
“YOU freeze, bitch!”
“Now back up, put the gun down, and get me a pack of Tropical Fruit Bubblicious.”
“And some Skittles.”
As we entered the new millennium, you can trace the origins of later cop shows like
Crime Scene Investigation and its many spinoffs, stylistically to the good old days of Vice.
David Caruso’s character in CSI: Miami is a gun-carrying lieutenant, unlike the lab-dwelling
forensics experts of the original show.
Layers of his past get revealed over the seasons, and there’s a dash of Castillo seen in his
personality and history.
Many plots and character arcs have analogs in Miami Vice’s fourth season, especially.
Though the gravity of his character is undercut by the show’s trademark use of one-liners,
right before the screeching vocals of The Who played during the show’s opening credits.
“Have to be pretty cold to pull this off.”
“Not 'pretty cold,' Frank.
"Cold-blooded.”
Production-wise, however, CSI: Miami was a bit of a charade.
Caruso and the show’s production were all based in Long Beach and Manhattan Beach, California.
None of the showrunners, actors and crew lived, performed in, or experienced Miami.
Despite a long and successful run, it failed to capture the soul of its Floridian namesake.
Fox's short-lived Fastlane was a cult favorite for its fast cars, humor, and early-Oughts
sex-charged, full-throttle energy.
The series was sort of updated revival of the stylish action of Bad Boys, Miami Vice,
and Starsky and Hutch, where our undercover LA detectives drive flashy confiscated cars
to infiltrate the world of high-stakes crime.
In a night drive during the pilot episode, the show serenades us with, "In the Air Tonight,"
a direct nod to its inspirations.
The show wasn’t renewed, but like many one-season wonders canned by Fox, it grew a cult following,
and many demanded a revival over the years.
In fact, every series filmed south of the panhandle owes something to Vice.
Be it the gator-dodging police procedural, The Glades.
Or the ex-CIA smooth operator in Burn Notice, which put Miami back on the map of high-profile
television for a vibrant, seven-season run.
In fact, Burn Notice acted as a sort of spiritual successor to Vice in terms of cultural impact.
It took on the daily grind of Michael Westen, an experienced CIA agent, who is blacklisted
and grounded in Miami, after being burned mid-mission.
He picks up the pieces in his life, both professionally and personally, by reconnecting with former
spy colleagues, his ex-girlfriend, and his mother.
All the while using his particular set of skills to good use as a private eye, and digging
into the mystery of why he was unceremoniously dropped by the CIA.
Burn Notice quickly became a popular detective TV show, combining the accessibility of a
weekly police procedural, with the added spice in the form of Westen’s monologues, which
served as secret agent tutorials.
It was both deceptively formulaic and easy to digest, but occasionally let slip its clever
writing and research.
In a solid return on investment, the Miami Beach Film Office provided incentives which
made filming there attractive.
Burn Notice single-handedly revitalized the Miami television industry, since the drought
following Miami Vice’s 1989 finale.
“As much as Miami Vice was the signature show for this community, Burn Notice had an
equal effect.
It has carried us for the last decade and re-launched us as a television city.
After Vice, no television series had succeeded here.”
- Graham Winick, director of Miami Beach’s film office
As Philip Michael Thomas once said…
“Once you get to the mountain top, that's where you really begin to climb.”
So it was for the actors after their breakout show ended.
Born in a tiny Missouri town of less than 5,000, then growing up in Kansas, Don Johnson’s
head must have been in a strange place after blowing up to superstardom.
This small-town boy now had millions of people screaming his name.
However, his post-Vice career was as rocky as the Ozarks.
Around the time of Vice season 2 and 3, Don Johnson turned down the lead role of Brian
De Palma’s The Untouchables, which would eventually make Kevin Costner into an A-Lister
as Eliot Ness, the man who took down Capone.
“The character was a slick-dressing—it was a period piece—but he was a slick-dressing
guy, and it was all about the bad guys and the FBI, and all that stuff, and at the time
I said, "Okay, I've got to not do this if I want to have a career outside of the slicky
boy hero type.
I've got to not take this part," even though I know it's going to be pretty good, and I
loved the director.”
“I turned it down, and I've struggled with that over the years, but I also think that
it was the difference between me being identified forever as Sonny Crockett, even though it
was a different film.”
Don Johnson, Collider, 2022✅ This opportunity, plus a near miss as John
McClane in Die Hard, could have propelled him further into the movie scene.
Instead, he never broke into film as a leading man, outside of low-profile indie projects
and B-films.
His most famous roles in theatrical releases were bit parts later on in Machete and Django
Unchained.
TV remained his comfort zone.
A whole five years after Vice went off the air, he co-created the San-Francisco police
procedural series, Nash Bridges, in an attempt to recapture that familiar buddy cop formula,
along with weed-comedy legend Cheech Marin, as his partner.
While not nearly as influential as Miami Vice, especially staring down the barrel of enduring
heavyweights like Law & Order, Bridges quietly enjoyed six seasons, and more episodes in
total than Vice aired.
Nash Bridges was a comfy, popcorn TV show that followed Johnson as a charismatic veteran
detective with a photographic memory.
It was a lot more laid-back than Vice, and wasn’t beloved critically, but it did do
numbers.
Johnson called a few friends into the show for work, including vice pal, Philip Michael
Thomas, reuniting in two separate episodes.
Philip Michael Thomas’s TV and movie career would be quieter than his co-star.
Throughout his experience as an actor, singer and model, he refuted tradition and labels.
Once asked what racial category he represented, Thomas responded, “I’m American gumbo.”
Despite his notoriety as a trendy vice cop on TV, the former Broadway performer maintained
that his first love was always music.
In ‘93, he co-composed and sung the song, “My, My, My Miami,” which was officially
recognized as the city’s anthem.
Throughout the 90s, he starred in some low profile TV movies and bit parts, and strangely,
two short-run series with Italian screen legend, Bud Spencer.
One of which was about—you guessed it—detective work in Miami.
Thomas didn’t seem to take film as seriously as his other passions, and picked some poor
movies to star in after his Vice career put him in the public eye.
1993’s “Miami Shakedown” was a particular low point, being shot on a VHS camcorder—hardly
worthy of a star as big as him.
Thomas would focus on his music career (one he started in the wee hours of the morning,
after Miami Vice shoots).
He bought his own recording studio, and the Miami Way Theater, showing colors as a stage
actor and singer at heart.
He even had a big contract as a TV psychic at one point, until he was unceremoniously
replaced by none other than Miss Cleo, resulting in a lawsuit.
A rollercoaster career for an undeniably passionate and charismatic performer.
As the years went by, Miami Vice evolved from a cultural touchstone, to a reference or a
meme placeholder of the outdated culture of the 80s, and boy, was it ever referenced and
mocked as such.
Either through overexposure, or a soured public perception after the last two seasons, public
opinion on the show flipped, and people made lots of cracks at its once-coveted style.
From Eurotrip, to Friends.
From the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, to The Wedding Singer.
From Ace Ventura, to The Sopranos.
“Where’s Tubbs?
[laughs]” “Hey man, Miami Vice is number one new show!”
“Gonna be alright with that?
You might miss Miami Vice.”
“That is SO Miami Vice.
You’ve seen…Miami Vice?”
“Miami Vice?
Nah.”
“Yeah, we were just talking about that…Can’t believe how stupid we used to look.”
This begs the question: was it all gaudy style over substance?
Or did it take someone with remarkable charisma and confidence, like Philip Michael Thomas
or Don Johnson, to pull this off?
How was Versace and Armani in the 80s any more embarrassing than the red carpet walks
and fashion shows of today?
In either case, the style and fashion of "Miami Vice", which once stood for the bleeding edge
of cool, had become shorthand for being "out of touch."
Among other merchandise was a licensed board game which sported a surprisingly detailed
street map of Miami and Miami Beach.
In it, up to four players took on the roles of cops hunting down drug smugglers, who had
to make it to drop points undetected.
Unfortunately, the interesting premise is undermined by poorly thought-out game mechanics,
as the game relies on lucky rolls and unsatisfying tactics to succeed.
There were early attempts at bringing the unforgettable style of Miami Vice to the video
game world, such as Ocean Software’s release in 1986, right after the peak of the show’s
relevance.
The studio was known for its licensed movie and TV tie-ins, which are historically notorious
for tight budgets, and even tighter deadlines.
The game featured an overhead driving mode, where you blaze down the streets of Miami.
These sequences are broken up by sidescroller segments where you could engage in primitive
shootouts, interrogations and arrests, somewhat comparable to the Blade Runner game adaptation
from the year before.
Hardly a video game classic, but an interesting touchstone on how limited video games were
from a technical standpoint.
These games were the crude ancestors of future megahits like Grand Theft Auto and L.A. Noire,
but struggled to achieve the open-world detective gameplay on primitive 8-bit hardware.
There was another, even more obscure game in 1989 that bore the name of the show.
Yet despite its catchy chiptune theme song, its obtuse puzzle mechanics and confusing
scenario design failed to emulate the show’s premise, or entertain the few players who
got their hands on it.
Miami Chase had the honor of being one of the first “Vice clones” in game media—an
early Amiga title from future Worms developer, Team17.
The game was a simplistic top-down car game with basic gunplay, where you play “Don
Ferrari,” an intrepid cop tasked by the mayor to take down the four drug lords plaguing
the city.
The open world sandbox formula continued in what Scottish game dev DMA Design (now known
as Rockstar North) would tackle next, after their success with the Lemmings series.
The game was originally conceived as a cops and robbers game called “Race ‘n’ Chase.”
But when a glitch occurred in which police cars would try to drive through the player,
cops became violent, psychopathic pursuers.
This, when combined with the sheer chaos you could cause by driving, shooting and punching
your way through a sandbox city, lent itself much more favorably toward playing a criminal,
rather than the law.
And so, the game evolved into the enduringly successful Grand Theft Auto series, and true
to the series’ namesake, GTA puts you in the shoes of a car-jacking thug, who must
complete missions for shady individuals who contact you via a payphone, in order to gain
cash, clout and rise the ranks of the criminal underworld.
Though commonplace now, the original GTA was novel in how players could seamlessly switch
from on-foot gameplay to driving a vehicle.
Its open-ended world design, where every pedestrian, car and piece of scenery was interactive and
often destructible, and the sheer havoc and freedom the game offered turned these miniaturized
metropolises into playgrounds of violence, destruction and adrenaline.
Inspirations came from all over: but were particularly strong from the American crime
dramas over the years.
Anything from Scarface, The Godfather, The French Connection and Reservoir Dogs.
The world of GTA was a fictionalized version of Earth, with cities like New York, San Francisco
and Miami being renamed to Liberty City, San Andreas, and Vice City, respectively.
The latter was an obvious nod to Miami Vice, and this inspiration, style and mythos would
carry on in their later work.
Though moderately successful in the 90s, the GTA series really hit its stride critically
and financially in 2001, when it leapt into full 3D with their third entry.
Grand Theft Auto III quickly became one of the best-selling games of its generation.
Taking criticism of its rough driving mechanics and simplistic missions to heart, the title
quite literally came to define the open-world game, realizing the potential that the older
games like Ocean Software’s Miami Vice attempted many years before.
“Holy shit, where did you get all this stuff?”
“Been saving it for a rainy day!”
“You like?”
“Yeah, I like!”
Almost as if to pay homage to its inspirations, their next GTA game was a love letter to Miami
Vice, and everything 1980’s.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City puts you in the shoes of Tommy Vercetti, a seasoned ex-con
from a prominent crime family.
Fresh out of prison, your first job goes south.
A deal gone wrong ends in a bloody ambush, and both the goods and the money are gone.
You’re whisked away to Ocean Drive, to collect your thoughts and figure out how to get back
at your double-crossers, and pay back the Family who wants return on investment.
Tommy is wise enough to know that he either has to make up the missing funds or else,
and his one shot at survival is to rise to the occasion, and become a big-time mobster,
while not getting whacked in the process.
One of many steps forward Vice City took was that your character is now fully voiced, unlike
the silent protagonist, Claude, from GTA 3.
He is joined by a stellar cast of characters voiced by celebrity actors, including Ray
Liotta, Robert Davi, Tom Sizemore and Burt Reynolds.
The game follows the blueprint of Grand Theft Auto III closely, but improves on its predecessor
in many ways.
You could ride motorcycles, and partake in life simulator elements, like collecting cars,
renting apartments, and even taking over businesses for recurring income.
Vice City is a stylized parody of Miami, and the setting of the game is a fantastic satire
of 1980s life.
Rockstar licensed a massive catalog of classic 1980s music, comprising a comprehensive, seven-disc
soundtrack.
There are classic 80s electronic tracks, such as Crockett’s Theme and Love on a Real Train,
from Risky Business.
And Lex Horton’s original score is reminiscent of Jan Hammer's work on Miami Vice.
Hammer is even referenced by name on one of the games’ billboards in the city.
As is tradition, several radio stations exist in the game, which have period-accurate heavy
metal, early hip-hop, and a smattering of synth music, nostalgic commercials and radio
commentary—fleshing out the universe in true Grand Theft Auto fashion.
“The Degenetron, you can play video games just like you're in the arcade!
“Excellent!”
“Degenetron!”
“The Degenetron gaming system plays three exciting games, including Defender of the
Faith, where you save the green dots with your fantastic flying red square…
“Cool!”
“The Degenetron brings arcade realism to your living room.
It can even take quarters, and a strange, sweaty man comes by to empty the machine on
Fridays.”
“Degenetron!”
The setting is a tribute to the synthesizer-backed, cocaine-fueled symphony of the eighties, with
clear inspiration from the crime dramas of the time.
Not the least of which, the color, style and flashiness of Miami Vice, and its vision of
the city it helped realize.
But this is a Grand Theft Auto game, not a cop simulator—and so the story borrows more
from Brian De Palma’s gangster movies: Scarface and Carlito’s Way.
Tommy Vercetti is like an amalgamation of Scarface’s main characters.
Tommy's plight is a lot like Carlito's: a gangster just out of prison, aided by his
lawyer friend, as he navigates the underworld.
Tommy often dresses up like Omar from Scarface at some points, Manny in others.
Or you can shop around and play dress-up on your own, if you want to look like a Miami
Vice regular.
Tommy’s boss is named Sonny—though that could be as much of a nod to The Godfather’s
Sonny Corleone as it could be Sonny Crockett.
The game is almost like a safari tour through the shared universe of classic crime drama,
and players loved every second of it.
Ocean Drive features prominently in GTA: Vice City.
And late-game, you’ll get access to a mansion, which is the spitting image of Tony Montana’s
estate at the end of Scarface.
And the backstabbing, ambition, greed, and climbing to the top of the food chain are
shared by all of these great works.
This hybrid of classic De Palma films is topped off with a dash of Goodfellas—in Ray Liotta’s
appropriately charismatic and aggressive performance.
One of Tommy’s associates is Lance Vance, a slick cocaine dealer dressed to the nines.
Miami Vice fans will recognize the loveable voice of Philip Michael Thomas, taking on
a role on the other side of the law.
There are a lot of references to his characterization of Tubbs here.
And though it was a clear case of stunt casting, the fan service was welcome, and it was one
of Thomas’s most notable roles since Vice aired.
“Let me guess…
You thought I could use a guardian angel?”
“I’m just saying, you need to let me in there, my man.”
“But I know one day, I’m gonna save your ass, and you’re probably gonna want to kiss
me.”
“Wacko.”
[Lance Vance laughs] As in previous GTA games, violating the law
increased your wanted level from one, all the way up to six stars.
In Vice City, once reaching Wanted Level 3, an unmarked sports car (not unlike a Ferrari)
will hunt you down.
Behind the wheel are two intrepid and stylish undercover cops—clear stand-ins for Crockett
and Tubbs—chasing after you, pistols in hand.
One of the many ways the game proclaims itself as a love letter to Miami Vice.
Released in 2002, GTA: Vice City was an earnest and nostalgic look at the 1980s, just 13 years
after Miami Vice went off the air.
At the time, TV shows and movies were actively mocking Vice and its peers for being gaudy
and dated.
But Vice City paved the way that many media titles in the 2010s would follow, like the
retrowave music movement, Stranger Things, and a slew of 80s movie reboots and revivals.
In other words, Vice City celebrated the 80s retrospectively before it was cool.
Four years later, they released a Playstation Portable prequel to the game, which followed
the story of Vic Vance, Lance Vance’s ex-soldier brother.
Despite its hardware limitations, the game’s core storyline is often cited as being better
than the original console game.
With a tighter narrative and more of a motivation formed around its new protagonist—this game
showed that the developers actually put passion and craft into a new and enjoyable experience
set in this evocative locale, rather than just churning out a portable port of a previous
console success.
Vice City Stories even had three whole missions involving Phil Collins.
This is both the first time a real celebrity played themself in a GTA game, and an entertaining
riot, where players get to chauffeur, bodyguard, and listen to Mr. Collins.
Once these missions are complete, you’re rewarded with a full virtual performance of
“In The Air Tonight,” solidifying the obvious reverence the game series has for
Miami Vice and its talented music cast.
Seemingly inspired by the popularity of Grand Theft Auto and the slow-mo shooter Max Payne,
another stab at a Miami Vice game was released in 2004, two whole decades after the show
premiered.
It's a stripped-down third-person shooter with simplistic cover mechanics, harking back
to the difficult transition between games like Grand Theft Auto III, and the polished
cover mechanics found in Gears of War.
But the title has a couple tricks of its own…
The player can arrest suspects by shouting at them to stand down, then cuffing them—similar
to the SWAT series.
During a mission, you can swap between the pistol-wielding Crockett, and Tubbs, toting
a sawed-off shotgun.
Each can revive the other if they’re down, adding a bit of teamwork and depth to an otherwise
barebones shooter with a linear progression of maps.
Stiff animations and basic gunplay aside, the game missed out on the most important
parts of the experience: the nightlife, compelling drama, cars, music and atmosphere.
Aside from the Miami Vice Theme gracing the main menu, and an over-enthusiastic use of
Crockett's Theme in seemingly random cutscenes, the game's original tracks are bland and overused
synth drones—as if they couldn’t afford to license more official music.
The characters and their voices crudely imitate Tubbs, Crockett, Castillo and the usual cast,
but aren’t convincing.
A few enemy cameos from the show are welcome, however, such as the deadly assassin Ludovici
Armstrong.
There are optional objectives on each level, which include arresting perps instead of shooting
them, collecting drugs or contraband, or gathering evidence.
These unlock bonus content accessible through the main menu.
Looking back at this artifact of a game, it was really a genre misfire.
An adventure or detective game with occasional bouts of action may have worked better thematically.
This licensed game failed to capture the spirit of Vice, and really had no excuse being as
mediocre as it was, considering the show was already twenty years old, and no rush job
was necessary.
Instead, fans got a cheap cash grab title, seemingly out of nowhere, as a consolation
prize for a franchise that seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth.
Until…
“What’s going on?”
“As in?”
“As in there’s undercover, and there’s ‘which way is up?’”
“You think I’m in so deep, I forgot?”
Jamie Foxx, who had a supporting role in Michael Mann's biopic of Muhammad Ali, approached
the director at Ali's 60th birthday party in January 2002.
It was here that Foxx first pitched to Mann, a Miami Vice film reboot in modern style,
with music from hot new artists like Jay-Z.
But Mann initially recoiled at the idea.
It wasn’t until Foxx started getting buzz for his portrayal of music legend Ray Charles
in 2004, that Mann reconsidered, and eventually landed on Irish heartthrob Colin Farrell as
Crockett, and Jamie Foxx as Tubbs.
Series creator Anthony Yerkovich was called in as executive producer, and Mann took on
writing and direction.
Jan Hammer expressed surprise and disappointment when he learned that Mann wanted to distance
the movie from the now 22-year-old show, and didn’t ask him to return as composer.
Miami Vice 2006 oversees an original story featuring our two Miami-Dade vice detectives
who have to go deep undercover in an unusual liaison between Miami-Dade police and the
FBI.
A leak in the bureau already cost the lives of undercover agents, and they need new, unknown
faces from Miami to make contact with a dangerous cartel.
Crockett and Tubbs volunteer for a dangerous investigation into a drug trafficking ring
that spans Florida through the Caribbean, all the way to Columbia.
Much of the plot was inspired by "Smuggler's Blues," one of the best episodes from season
one of the series.
Both the episode and the movie see the duo fly to South America, posing as drug smugglers,
and have heated exchanges while trying to get to the big bad, to bust the case wide
open.
"We have business to look forward to, which we will never see if we close each other's
eyes."
“So, we can close each other's eyes right now, real fast.
Then ain’t nobody gonna make no money.”
Mann’s insistence on not shooting day for night, and relying on realistic nocturnal
lighting created the bleak, grainy look of the film, through use of relatively early
digital cameras, and lots of gain.
A dull color grade and film grain gave the movie a unique look and atmosphere.
Writing and delivery has changed quite a bit since the 80s, and the film’s dialogue is
filled with chaotic jargon and quips, putting the viewer in the uncomfortable position of
barely keeping up while eavesdropping on unfiltered professional banter.
Miami Vice 2006 brought the style, fashion, and technology to then-modern times.
Gone are the white blazers, tee shirts and wild patterns, instead you see 2000s-era tropical
dress and designer short-sleeves.
Pre-smartphone cellulars play a big part, and the movie has a grimmer, post-9/11 gravitas
to it.
The soundtrack was updated as well, with the first second of the film blaring off Linkin
Park and Jay-Z’s collaborative remix of “Numb.”
Mid-2000s nu metal, electronica and post-rock replace Jan Hammer’s synth score and 80’s
pop music.
Though a few references remain, like an electronic instrumental by Klaus Badelt which pays tribute
to Crockett’s Theme, and a nu metal cover of In The Air Tonight, by Nonpoint.
When strapped in bullet proof vests for a raid, Crockett and Tubbs look more like s
than vice cops, setting a very different tone and vibe than the show it was based on.
The setting itself veers further from Miami as well, with a stronger international focus:
Paraguay, Uruguay and Cuba.
“What do you like to drink?”
“I’m a fiend for mojitos.”
Colin Farrell adds a lot of panache and machismo to his portrayal of Crockett, and to prepare
for the film, even worked with undercover cops to learn how to behave in this role,
and puts up an aggressive front when his identity is challenged.
To get into character as a Vice police officer, Colin Farrell took part in a covert operation,
but during the meeting, things went sideways, and the perp reached for his gun.
Farrell acted cool under pressure, and convinced him he wasn’t a cop by ripping open his
shirt, revealing no wire.
But a sleepless and distraught Farrell later rang the undercover officer, and feeling pity
for the guy, gave up the secret that the meeting was staged, and that he was never in any real
danger.
This authentic experience was under the direction of Michael Mann, and is thanks to his obsessive
attention to detail and authenticity.
[Farrell talking about being scared, found out it was a prank]
However, the film was not without its problems.
Mann is a notoriously tough director, and often got into dressing-downs with cast and
crew.
The script was rewritten almost daily, even while filming.
And personalities and egos clashed.
The film was shot primarily in Miami and Uruguay, which presented a number of challenges.
Two tropical storms almost wiped the entire production out, due to Mann’s insistence
to shoot on location, with real boats and planes.
Colin Farrell was known as a good sport, ready and willing to do just about anything for
a role.
But some time after shooting this film, he checked himself into rehab for substance abuse,
later claiming he was ashamed of his work ethic at the time: not giving it his all,
missing his marks, and showing up late.
Jamie Foxx was also difficult to work with on this project, and having won an Oscar between
signing on and filming the movie, demanded a substantial raise (which cost Farrell some
of his paycheck).
Foxx also brought an ego and entourage with him, and insisted that Universal hire a private
jet, rather than fly commercial.
He was also resistant to filming in boats and planes, further causing tensions with
the bullheaded Michael Mann at the helm.
Then there was the incident that brought the whole movie to shambles.
While filming in the Dominican Republic, an armed man approached the set, and was shot
down and hospitalized, by a Dominican soldier assigned to protect the film production.
Jamie Foxx famously hopped on the earliest plane back to the States, and refused any
further international shoots.
Michael Mann, in his desperation, took the entire crew and cast and redirected the ending
back home, and they ended up shooting much of the climax in a dark, post-hurricane Miami,
surrounded by debris and power outages.
Though Mann praised the new ending at the time, later on, he regretted the events that
forced his hand, failing to make the movie he really wanted to.
“I don’t know how I feel about it.
I know the ambition behind it, but it didn’t fulfill that ambition for me because we couldn’t
shoot the real ending.”
The Director’s Cut added in a go-fast boat race before the theatrical cut’s opening
at the nightclub, and added a lot of context between scenes to make things more sensible,
but it was essentially just an expanded version of the same film, warts and all.
Followers of Mann's previous work will note recurring themes throughout: that every second
of happiness we enjoy in life is luck, and good fortune never lasts forever.
“Time is luck, Will.”
“I know the value of every single day.”
“I don't even know what I'm doing anymore.
I know life is short, whatever time you get is luck.”
“…All I know is there's no point in me going anywhere anymore if it's going to be
alone...without you.”
“Once, I had a fortune…
‘Live now, life is short.
Time is luck.’
“Things go wrong, the odds catch up, probability is like gravity.
“You cannot negotiate with gravity.
“One day you should just cash out, y’know?
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.
As far away and as fast as you can.”
“Would you find me?”
“Yes, I would.”
Miami Vice 2006 tells a unique brand of crime drama, but didn’t capture the magic of the
original show that captivated a generation.
It felt colder and less satisfying.
The TV series showed how close Crockett and Tubbs had become as partners, after getting
to know one another.
The movie barely develops their friendship, and in fact strains it to a point where we
see how far apart they are.
What probably doesn’t help is that the cast is almost unrecognizable.
A dark-haired Colin Farrell sports a handlebar mustache as Crockett, instead of the iconic
sun-kissed locks and stubble of Don Johnson.
Jamie Foxx plays a much more curt and angry version of Tubbs, compared to the smooth-talking
Philip Michael Thomas.
Lt. Castillo is now a very minor role, played by the talented but very un-Latin Barry Shabaka
Henley, from Louisiana.
Trudy and Gina’s counterparts are solid enough, but the upbeat curly-mop Switek is
now a bald background character, and Zito also plays a very minor role here, too.
To further confuse things, we have a new man in charge: FBI Special Agent John Fujima—probably
the only time Belfast-native Ciarán Hinds will ever play a Japanese-named character.
It comes across like ticking boxes off a list of returning character names, rather than
reimagining or recreating the interesting dynamic of the show, in a modern setting.
Most of these characters have very little agency or dialogue to speak of, so focusing
and developing a select few of them may have resulted in a tighter story, rather than a
cast relegated to cameos.
The movie’s plot drops us into the middle of a bedlam of FBI informants, the Aryan Brotherhood,
Colombian cartels, Miami-Dade police, a love affair, and in-fighting between Crockett and
Tubbs.
The heart of the movie focuses on the forbidden love story between Crockett and a dangerous
drug lord’s girlfriend.
But you can easily lose the plot if you don’t follow each and every fast-paced conversation.
And the last-minute change to a new ending left many plot threads unresolved.
The primary antagonist of the film is still at large, and the open-ended finale feels
like a sequel was needed to wrap things up.
Fans of the original TV series weren’t really satisfied with a reboot movie this unrecognizable,
and the film was met with middling reviews on release.
It has however, gained a cult classic status from film aficionados, for its unmistakable
mood and confident (if not always coherent) style of storytelling swagger.
“Luck ran out.”
“This was too good to last.”
That same year, sports and action game veterans, Rebellion, adapted Miami Vice’s less-beloved
movie reboot, and launched on the technologically-strained Playstation Portable.
Good movie tie-in games are about as rare as they come, but this title went under the
radar for most due to lukewarm box office results and cooling interest in the franchise.
A solid game that came out at the wrong place and time.
It certainly evoked a sense of style, with dynamic camera use, loud and frenetic shootouts,
architecturally interesting locales, and blaring electronic music, to accentuate
the ride.
At first, it may play familiarly to fans of Resident Evil 4, with its stop-aim-and-shoot
controls and a laser bead to ease aiming at foes.
But with a focus on cover mechanics, diving over obstacles, and all around rough-and-tumble,
third-person action, it feels like a Gears of War knockoff.
The twist being that Miami Vice launched a full four months before that game.
A vast majority of each game map is a maze of cat-and-mouse encounters, and has a raw
energy to it, like a good Michael Mann set piece.
In fact, had Miami Vice 2006 been released on home console, with the extra horsepower
and better controls, it would have been comparable to the likes of Kane & Lynch, for better or
worse.
Much more so than the 2004 game, Miami Vice 2006 emphasizes the musical experience.
A blaring soundtrack plays through the game, and switches up with each major scene, totalling
in nearly 3 and a half hours of original music.
And though it shed its 80s synth style from the show, it matches the heavy electronic
and post rock style of the movie.
Aside from the shootout setpieces, there are attempts to branch out of just being a simple
3rd-person shooter, into a full undercover cop simulator.
Such as the marine segments, where you get to drive a boat through obstacle courses,
marinas and rivers, and enemies you need to gun down.
There are tense situations where you have to mingle with suspects, keep your cool and
stay undercover, by participating in a persistent quicktime event to measure your concentration.
There’s also a minigame where you can hack into USB drives you obtain during a raid,
to acquire intel about upcoming missions.
Details like the enemies you’ll face, their whereabouts, as well as the location of other
pickups along the way are provided here.
Your accuracy and thoroughness gets rated at the end of each mission, which translates
to reputation points.
These allow you to better deal with criminals in the future, during meet and greets, pat
downs and deals.
There is also an economy system, where you can collect and trade a variety of street
drugs to different dealers for cash.
Who you trade with and when directly informs your profits, so there is some strategy here.
You can then spend cash on equipment such as suits or weaponry.
Your stylish white suit gives a reputation boost, whereas the armor provides defense
instead, allowing you to play more dangerously for a bigger payoff.
Like the movie it was based on, the game received middling reviews at release, but accurately
captured the audial and visceral moments of the work it was based on—including its dismissal
of the 80s aesthetic of the original series.
With a co-op mode playable over wi-fi and a short but entertaining campaign, the game
was better than it had any right to be, but the softened impact of the movie undercut
this game’s release.
The franchise was showing its age, and its fading brand power.
But as we entered the 2010s, new properties would tap into the energy and atmosphere that
Miami Vice trailblazed, to a greater or lesser degree.
“It was just a time of “more” [and] “bigger,” this period where the world
was going through this growth spurt of style and fashion and enormous wealth, before technology
took over in the Nineties.
The last days of technological innocence, if you will.”
After nostalgic media like GTA: Vice City sparked an 80s renaissance, the so-called
“synthwave” genre saw a rise in popularity.
French house producers and a new generation of artists drew inspiration from legendary
composers such as Jan Hammer, Vangelis, John Carpenter, and Tangerine Dream.
Synthwave really hit the mainstream after the ever-popular soundtracks of Tron Legacy,
Drive and Stranger Things proved that retro synthesizers and arpeggiators were cool again.
The genre is alternatively known as Out Run, inspired by the 1980s racing game of the same
name.
Game designer Yu Suzuki was inspired by 80s Americana, including the Testarossa, which
became Crockett and Tubbs' new ride in Miami Vice season 3.
The game's tropical locales, synth pop instrumentals, suggest a connection between the Japanese
game and the Floridian show.
And so, this new genre of art—both visual and audial—emerged.
Some call it Out Run (after the racing game), others call it synthwave or retrowave.
Essentially it was a revival of 1980s graphic visuals and logos you’d see on TV, or at
the start of VHS tapes, with gridlines, sunsets and colorful vectors—accompanied by synthesizer-heavy
music.
Palm trees, the tropics, and fast cars were also a strong component to the aesthetic.
Miami Vice even shares its title font with some of these idents.
Another, stranger inspiration was the surreal and abstract geometry of 80s graphic design,
interior decor—and shopping malls, of all things.
This led into the “vaporwave” and “mallsoft” genres of music and visualizations.
The proliferation of the internet allowed for tribute artwork, photo-manipulations,
and independent music and games that fit this style to resonate with younger audiences.
Much of these were inspired by the 80s renaissance, spearheaded in part by Vice City.
You’d often hear Jan Hammer’s original soundtrack crop up in these playlists, and
they fit perfectly—from the theme song, Crockett’s Theme, or Payback, which all
have a strong following, decades on.
Many have cited Miami Vice as one of the progenitors of “neon noir,” a loose genre that embraces
the darkness and moral ambiguity of noir classics like Double Indemnity and The Third Man, but
brings it to the colorful neon nights of modern nightlife.
Like its 1940s inspirations, happy endings aren’t common, the villain often escapes,
and few: cop, civilian or crook, have completely clean hands when the bullets start flying.
In 2011, Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, offered a gorgeous and mesmerizing neon noir experience
that captured the attention of would-be fans of the genre, and would set his style and
filmic preferences for years to come.
Drive follows a mysterious unnamed protagonist, who plays a Hollywood stunt driver by day,
wheelman by night—pulling off heists silently with an icy stare.
Winding Refn cites synthpop music, and the legendary driving films like Bullitt, as inspiration.
While courting Ryan Gosling to star in the movie, he fell ill and instead asked Gosling
to drive him home that night.
And through the magic of the music on the radio or perhaps the mystique of the “night
drive”, director Winding Refn let out a yell, and had a “eureka” moment.
He identified that Drive’s protagonist cures his mental ails by cruising to the soothing
sound of synthpop music—whether directly or not, mirroring some of Miami Vice’s most
iconic scenes.
Inspired by the likes of Jan Hammer, Tangerine Dream and Moroder, several 1980s synth pop
style artists appear in the film’s soundtrack.
Among them was Kavinsky, a french electronic musician with a strong connection to all things
1980s.
His aesthetic is attached in no small part to the Ferrari Testarossa, featured prominently
in his cover art, and in the title of a song on his debut album, OutRun.
Kavinsky’s “Nightcall” featured prominently in the movie, and became an instant classic.
With its distorted vocals and synth melodics, they are the perfect accompaniment to Ryan
Gosling’s vehicular journey through the streets of LA.
And they have a striking resemblance to those atmospheric night drives in Miami Vice.
Winding Refn once cited Mann’s Thief as a cinematic inspiration to the film as well.
Drive’s deliberate and easy pace, long holds on character’s faces, and minimal dialogue,
makes the movie a dreamlike experience.
The film is somber, gritty and brutally realistic at times, but was imagined as a modern fairytale.
Winding Refn said that an unlikely inspiration came from Grimm fairy tales.
In his view, he saw the Driver as sort of a knight in shining armor, and the romantic
lead, Irene, as a fair maiden, needing rescue.
Ryan Gosling, on the other hand, had a different take, describing his character as sort of
a werewolf: a charming man of few words by day, and a horrifying monster by nightfall.
Following in Drive’s stylish tread marks was Hotline Miami, a 2012 top-down shooter
game which took on the energetic frenzy of 80s action films.
Its hypnotic and addictive synth soundtrack, and intense violence turned heads in an otherwise
story and puzzle-focused indie game revolution at the time.
At its core, the game is essentially a basic shooter/melee action game with a one-hit death
system and instant level replay.
You can kill with your fists, or use any handheld weapon or firearm lying on the ground.
In true Hollywood fashion, guns only have one usable magazine before they get tossed,
so you’re constantly on the prowl for more tools of death to finish the job.
The split-second reaction time needed to spot and take out enemies before they unload on
you, could be considered poor game design by some, but it was embraced as brutally challenging
but fair by its enjoyers.
There’s an undeniable quality of retrying a tough level for the 50th time to take out
all the threats—be it baseball bat-wielding thugs, guard dogs, or gun-toting warriors—before
they get you.
Hotline Miami became an instant sensation with its psychotropic storyline and presentation,
and speed-laced combat.
Its head-scratching dialogue is abstract, and would feel right at home in a David Lynch
script.
The game wears its synthwave and movie inspirations on its sleeves: the protagonist wears a similar
baseball jacket as Kavinsky.
And the action plays out like the cocaine-fueled rampages of movies like Scarface.
There are also many stylistic nods to Drive, such as your character putting on an unsettling
mask right before the violence starts, like in the third act of the film.
Hotline Miami boiled down the essence of these experiences: slow, musical interludes to lull
you into the atmosphere of a drug-laced fantasy, with sudden intermissions of horrific violence
which ends in a carpet of viscera.
Once all of your enemies are dead, the music suddenly stops, replaced with white noise
and a sort of musical tinnitus, quickly jarring you back to cold reality, as you begin to
take in your trail of decimation and murder.
“It was the iconic 1980s cop show, and it showed Miami as the capital of cool.
It oozed glitz and glamour.
Fast boats and flashy cars were everywhere.
‘Miami Vice’ had it all.
“Too bad the city itself back then had a murder rate more than quadruple the national average.
Tourism revenue was at rock bottom.
"Sleepy metropolis" and "haven for retirees" were common descriptions.
“But when "Miami Vice" was canceled, a funny thing happened to the real Miami: It started
to look more and more like the TV show.”
They say the sincerest form of flattery is imitation.
If that’s true, then Miami Vice has gotten a lot of compliments over the years.
The WWE (or WWF at the time) did a parody skit with pro wrestlers Mr. Fuji and Don Muraco,
called “Fuji Vice” in 1985.
Disney even tipped its hat to Vice in 2001.
In this animated short featuring Goofy, called “How to Be Groovy, Cool, and Fly,” the
goofster dresses up fashionable styles of decades past.
In the segment dedicated to the 80s, he emerges in Miami Vice fashion, suit, tee shirt, sports
car and all.
When Lebron James left his home state Cleveland Cavaliers to join Miami Heat in 2010, his
heavily criticized decision was countered with a flashy Nike ad, which included a Sonny
Crockett cameo, over 20 years after the show went off the air.
In a 2012 episode of Top Gear, James May drove a stylish electric sports car, the Fisker
Karma, through South Beach, Miami—while “In The Air Tonight” serenaded.
In 2014, adult spy comedy series, Archer, dubbed its fifth season, “Archer Vice.”
The titular James Bond parody character donned Crockett’s iconic white suit, Wayfarer sunglasses
and a colored tee shirt/blazer combo, with several episodes centering around the South
Florida drug trade.
One episode was even called Smuggler’s Blues, to further cement the reference.
Ashes to Ashes, the follow-up show to the hit UK series, Life on Mars, embraced the
fashion, style and music of the 1980s.
And as a love letter to another police drama of the era, had callbacks to the famous “In
the Air Tonight” drive on two separate occasions.
“...Over the years I've been doing a lot of international travel.
I mean, to Russia, several places in Europe, South America, Canada…
“And people just respond to it like we're very much a part of their consciousness.
And that's why it's such an honor to come back here, and find out that it's going to
be running for the next couple of years!”
The question now is whether the show was lightning in a bottle.
Did it merely have the right pizzazz and pop music to trick audiences into tuning in every
Friday night?
Could this entire phenomenon be summed up with those three deadly words—style over
substance?
There is always a growing disdain for anything that becomes popular.
You could argue that Miami Vice’s initial rise was due in part that it was a lot better
than its first season ratings claimed it to be.
But after people started seeing the show everywhere: in our fashion, magazines, commercials, games,
and in Billboard music charts, some just started to tune out.
And what was the razor’s edge of cool and fashionable, became overexposed and old news.
Perhaps it is more popular in retrospect, now that we don’t have to be bombarded with
the show’s rise and fall from grace.
Miami Vice, whether you love it, hate it, or are indifferent to it; is more than a Friday
night show that aired on NBC.
It was a collective dream that we’ve all shared or experienced in some way.
It’s a verb.
It’s a place.
It’s an activity.
It’s part of our history.
Invisible, yet present everywhere.
You see it in every designer stubble, every Italian fashion choice, every pair of Wayfarers,
every 80s sports car, or unconventional color scheme.
And even the mention of driving through the tropics, or the city at night, can’t help
but trigger some small image of two detectives riding the road into the sunset.
A cultural touchstone that took the world by surprise and can never be forgotten.
It will remain a trailblazer for the medium of episodic and serialized television, an
enduring symbol of the 1980s, and the generation that lived them.
This has been Erik Peabody, on behalf of Indigo Gaming.
Thank you for watching.
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