![]() It was a new cinematic way of making television, and definitely not your grandfather’s Miami. No one had ever seen anything like this on TV before. Thus attired, Crockett and sidekick Ricardo Tubbs were then sent out in a Ferrari or a cigarette boat on high-speed chases that almost always ended in a fireworks of gunfights and explosions. They dressed the good-looking, multiracial cast in dazzling tropical shirts and Versace silk and linen jackets, in Crockett’s case draped in devil-may-care fashion over T-shirts and unbelted slacks. They recut the familiar Miami film reel of water, flamingos, palms and sky to include the previously unseen or unappreciated, and not just those old Deco buildings, but also picturesquely seedy warehouses, the ultra-modern mansions where drug lords invariably dwelled, and - here was something new - the glass skyscrapers that had started popping up along Brickell Avenue.Īll of this they saturated in subtropical colors and set to pulsating music a la MTV. They decorated beaches and hotel pools that hadn’t seen anyone under 70 in two decades with crowds of attractive young extras in abbreviated swimsuits. Obeying producer Michael Mann’s famous edict - “no earth tones” - they painted over the beige-and-brown that dulled some Art Deco trophies, revealing splendid facades. ![]() Producers and art designers created decadently luxurious dance clubs, bars and restaurants in the bare lobbies and basements of Deco hotels where none of that existed. The show not only helped save South Beach, broadcasting the architectural charms of its long-neglected Deco hotels and apartment houses to millions around the globe at a time when city fathers wanted nothing more than to tear it all down for condos, Miami Vice practically invented the idea of South Beach. ![]() It’s a remarkable trajectory, from South Beach flophouses to $1,000-a-night rooms at the Setai, that Miami Vice played no small role in launching. ![]()
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