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print this'Miami Vice' cultural influence still reverberates after 22 years
By DAVID HILTBRAND
Philadelphia Inquirer
Television's future dawned without warning on Sept. 16, 1984. On that Sunday night, NBC's impossibly stylish "Miami Vice" debuted, rocketing the medium from drab to fab.
TV had always been a cheesy, fast-food form of entertainment. Other shows bowing that same season included "Three's a Crowd," "Charles in Charge" and "Finder of Lost Loves." But with its sleek and vibrant look and its sexy and dangerous mood, "Vice" immediately established itself as that contradiction in terms: hip TV.
It was like that moment in "The Wizard of Oz" when everything goes from black-and-white to color. With its bright, Christmas-lights color scheme, straight-from-Milan fashions, turbo-charged action, happening music, and brilliant cinematography, Vice unlocked primetime's hidden potential.
That startling synthesis has become so ingrained in subsequent expressions of TV and film that today we merely regard it as modern. At the time, it was revolutionary. It's hard to conceive how this week's big-screen remake with Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx can improve on that formula, even 22 years later.
But back to the original: Talk about must-see television. Across the country, Friday night dinner parties were suspended mid-bite so people could huddle around the set. This was the era of disco and Peruvian marching powder, but weekend revelry couldn't begin until "Vice" was over.
Springing from the pithy concept of then NBC president Brandon Tartikoff - "MTV cops" - "Vice" starred Don Johnson as Miami-Dade undercover Detective Sonny Crockett and Philip Michael Thomas as his partner, transplanted New Yorker Rico Tubbs. Together they brought down swaggering cocaine cowboys amid the tropical splendor of Miami.
Crockett was a sheepdog in wolf's clothing. To lend credibility to his cover as a coke broker, Sonny was outfitted with expensive but casual Italian threads, drink-my-wake cigarette boats, and futuristic sports cars. He out-cooled James Bond.
In the process, Johnson, a journeyman actor, was accorded rock-star status. "I visited the set just before the premiere, and Don was asking me for advice on how to get interviews," says Brian Robinette, the show's publicist. "I went back the day after the '84 election, and he had bodyguards. Less than three months on the air and he had to hire private security."
"I was being offered money to try to get to Don and Philip by tons of women," recalls Saundra Santiago, who played Detective Gina Calabrese, Crockett's sometime lover. "It was insane."
"Miami Vice" had a couple of ingredients that made it spectacularly unique.
First there was the visual elan of executive producer Michael Mann. He reimagined Miami, which in reality was beginning to look rather dowdy, as a decadent pastel paradise, keeping his set designers busy because he banished all earth tones from the show's palette.
Mann favored neon and reflective surfaces for his night shots, even hosing down the streets so they shimmered like black glass. Combine that glossy look with striking camera angles, smash-cut editing, and dramatic use of freeze frames, and Mann had developed a powerful visual language that is still widely copied.
His ambitious accomplishment unleashed a once unthinkable exodus. In the two decades since "Miami Vice" first aired, more and more feature film talent - actors, writers, producers and directors - have moved over to work in television, resulting in a remarkable improvement in the quality of TV drama. Without "Miami Vice," there is no "ER" or "The Sopranos" or "CSI."
Just as important as the look of "Vice" was its sound. From the industrial-strength opening of Jan Hammer's electronica theme, this was a show fueled by music. "If you remember what other TV show theme songs of that era sounded like, this was shock therapy," says Hammer. Both the "Miami Vice Theme" and the "Miami Vice" soundtrack album would top the Billboard charts.
In addition to Hammer's score, "Vice" also used a rich variety of contemporary pop and rock songs during episodes. Until that time, if a TV show wanted to employ a pop hit, it usually resorted to a sappy, elevator music version to avoid paying stiff rights fees. But "Vice" used the original recordings of artists from Eric Clapton to Depeche Mode, from U2 to Peter Gabriel.
Not only that, it often let these songs play out in their entirety over scenes without dialogue. The impact of these music video operettas, beginning with Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight" in the two-hour pilot, was unusually powerful.
Not surprisingly, as soon as "Vice" became the epicenter for hip in the '80s, everybody wanted to get into the act. It became a favorite parlor game to see who would show up in cameos from week to week. Miles Davis, Don King, G. Gordon Liddy, Frank Zappa - they all dropped by to work on their tans.
"There was always something going on on the set," Robinette recalls. "At the time, people were carrying around giant cell phones the size of walkie talkies. Everyone was walking around with money hanging out of their pockets, living the life. Even the grips thought they were Crockett and Tubbs."
Of course, no pot can stay at a boil forever. And "Vice" started losing its edge after a couple of seasons, when NBC put it on head to head against "Dallas," a competition that wounded both shows. But while it was hot, "Miami Vice" was incandescent.
Mann, who directed the film remake, avoided recapitulating the TV show in any way (although there is a hip-hop remake of "In the Air Tonight" in the score).
"It's nostalgia, and I find that passive and not interesting," Mann told the Associated Press. "If you're going to do `Miami Vice' for real, you're not going to get into the cartoon stuff, and you're not going to try to trigger recall of the show."
That's his loss.
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Don Johnson (Det. Sonny Crockett), 56: The actor has stayed busy in films ("Guilty as Sin") and TV series, both successful ("Nash Bridges") and quickly yanked ("Just Legal"). He's developing a new TV series with Ron Shelton, his director in the golf film "Tin Cup."
Philip Michael Thomas (Det. Rico Tubbs), 57: The post-"Vice" resume is sprinkled with TV movies ("Perry Mason: The Case of the Ruthless Reporter") and B-movies ("River of Stone"). Lately, Thomas has been doing voice work for video games such as "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City."
Edward James Olmos (Lt. Martin Castillo), 59: Oscar-nominated for his role in "Stand and Deliver," Olmos has worked steadily in film ("Selena") and TV ("American Family"). He's currently playing Commander Adama on the Sci Fi Channel's "Battlestar Galactica."
Saundra Santiago (Det. Gina Calabrese), 49: You name it, she's done it: film ("25th Hour"), Broadway ("Nine") and TV - both daytime ("Guiding Light") and prime time (a recurring role as Jeannie Cusamano on "The Sopranos").
Olivia Brown (Det. Trudy Joplin), 46: The actress has had recurring roles on a string of TV series: "Designing Women"; "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman"; "Beverly Hills 90210";" Moesha"; and most recently, "7th Heaven."
A 'VICE' SOUNDTRACK
"Miami Vice" used contemporary pop and rock songs to startling effect. Among the songs:
Phil Collins, "In the Air Tonight"
Eric Clapton, "Wonderful Tonight"
Tina Turner, "Better Be Good to Me"
Godley & Creme, "Cry"
Glenn Frey, "Smuggler's Blues"
Depeche Mode, "Flies on the Windscreen"
Peter Gabriel, "Biko"
The Police, "Tea in the Sahara"
The Doors, "Break on Through"
U2, "Pride (In the Name of Love)"
Madonna, "Gambler"
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