When the pastel-soaked, cocaine-coated cop show aired 40 years ago, contemporary TV was born.
Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
Cinematic television didnt begin withGame of ThronesorTrue DetectiveorMad MenorThe Sopranosor evenTwin Peaks.
It began in September 1984 with the premiere ofMiami Vice.
Its original name, the Miami De-Vice, was changed to avoid a lawsuit.
But it was more than the sum of its plot points.
Most of all, though,Vicewasstylish.
Bad guys got away with murder sometimes.
Innocent people were killed for no good reason.
Before a show is made, it doesnt exist.
This was deemed a potential conflict withMiami VicebecauseScarfacewas also a Miami neo-noir crime dramawith Latin characters at its center.
As we were coming into Miami, the city was vibrating, like on a molecular level.
As vibrating pastels, right?
I was fascinated by undercover wealth, and I still am, Mann says.
ThatsMiami Vice, right?
Its the weather, its the sexuality, its the visuals, its the light, you know?
Michael was totally confident that the pilot would get picked up as a series, says Hammer.
NBC worried he was a bad-luck charm.
There wasnt a lot of enthusiasm from the online grid to hire him, says Carter.
So we read other people.
But we ended up casting Don.
The two flew to Miami to confer with Johnson and ask him to try a different approach.
It was an awkward conversation, but Don was grateful and really wanted this role to work.
The effect was described as chiaroscuro.
It also took 15 minutes to set up the light!
Mann and his crew also committed to filling every frame with color.
It wasnt as easy as you might think.
Then I became interested in how you might combine different colors to generate a sense of heat.
What we basically did was return Miami to Miami.
The result of all this imaginative labor was one of the most innovative pilots ever made for commercial TV.
I thought,Wow this is actually like something that I would watch.
ButVicemade them all seem like relics.
It created not just a world but a mood and sometimes let the moodbethe world.
The show had a pulse, a personality, a signature.
A graphic at the bottom of the screen boasted In Stereo.
It was real … Wasnt it?
In the Air Tonight had been a needle drop before (in 1983sRisky Businessduring a sex scene).
And Im like,Whoa.
Oh my God.The show had immediately taken ownership of the song.
Yerkovich describes the sequence as a tribute to Edward Hoppers paintingNighthawks.
You dont see the cafe, Carter says.
Its almost like haiku or something, what we did there.
Its suggestions of what is.
And as a viewer, you just go with it, right?
There is power in taking things away, Carter says.
It creates a mood.
And at the end, you wake up and go,How much time just passed?
Was it a minute?
Was it 30 seconds?
Was it two minutes?
But it wasnt just the pilot.Miami Viceseason one was one of the best freshman seasons of that decade.
It sparked depiction-vs.-endorsement arguments about its presentation of sex, violence, and drug use.
Luis Guzman was one of countless, now-ubiquitous character actors who got their big break onVice.
The show caught lightning in a turquoise bottle, electrifying every career it touched.
Miami Viceended up receiving 15 Emmy nominations, more thanHill Street Blues.
We havent invented the Hula-Hoop or anything, he said.
And if were different from the rest of TV, its because the rest of TV isnt even contemporary.
Michael Mann did not createMiami Vice, Mann says.
(Its true, Carter says.)
This one described the composition of the phone-booth shot in detail and said it evoked Jean-Luc GodardsAlphaville.
Viceinspired that kind of analysis because it was made by people who were legitimately, enthusiastically, publicly cinephiles.
The mathematician-showman-philosopher aspect of Mann shapes even episodes ofVicethat were made long after hed left the series.
Thats the thing, because style isnotsubstance.
Style is there to enhance the substance, to deepen it.
If its there for its own sake, it quickly becomes hollow.
There were pros and cons, always.
The pros: They brought in all these people, alotof people, who you never saw on TV.
So the show was really about opening a window to a lot of other faces and ideas.
The cons: Sometimes, the faces and ideas worked, and sometimes they didnt.
But even so even so!
And when it did, it was unlike anything else on TV.
