The Vice Squad
Words: Jake Lemkowitz
Original wardrobe courtesy of: TheGoldenCloset.com
Original wardrobe courtesy of: TheGoldenCloset.com
The mark of Miami Vice will be on the city of Miami for all eternity. When Crockett and Tubbs first started blasting Phil Collins out of a yellow Ferrari in 1984, Miami Beach was a slum. But Michael Mann, the show’s director, made it look like a surreal Art Deco paradise by throwing up pastel paint and renovating the fronts of the buildings that were used for exteriors. All the interiors were shot in Los Angeles, but you’d never know that in real life the high-class drug dealer hotels where Don Johnson supposedly kicked it in the show were actually occupied by rats and homeless people. Philip Michael Thomas got a cut from the inside of one of these hotels and it caused such a bad infection that he had to go on an antibiotic drip.
But Miami Vice’s style was so fresh that it did what urban planners couldn’t. It created a resurgence in Art Deco and the South Beach area. As the show’s popularity grew, rundown buildings were suddenly bought up and turned into luxury hotels, Art Deco restoration groups were formed and money poured back into the city. The Art Deco revival made South Beach a hip tourist destination, and everywhere you looked there were beautiful people rocking the look that Michael Mann and the show’s stylists invented. Who would have guessed that a white sport jacket could give so much back to the community?
Miami Vice was clearly ahead of its time. When episodes broke out into full-on music videos without warning, people freaked out. The show was also on the cutting edge of firearms. Michael Mann was a gun enthusiast, and police officer Bob Halscher was kept on staff as an advisor for weapons and tactics. He trained all the principle actors in how to fire live rounds, and made sure that the characters on the show packed state of the art heat. These were not standard issue guns being used on Miami Vice. Don Johnson used an AUG Assault Rifle years before the DEA adopted it, and Colt Model IVs were standard issue for Crockett and Tubbs before the United States military ever laid eyes on them (now they are standard issue in Iraq).
By 1989, the show had run its course, and it was taken off the air. Fashion had turned away from pastels towards neon colors, and the plot lines had become totally ridiculous (cryogenically frozen Rastafarians). But 20 years later, Miami Vice’s legacy lives on. Not only in the city of Miami, but in rolled up sleeves and Ray-Bans all over the world.
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