Miami Beach residents and visitors can feel it coming in the air tonight — and the rest of the weekend — as “Miami Vice” cast and crew gather to celebrate the iconic television series’ 40th anniversary.
The show premiered on NBC on Sept. 16, 1984, and ran for five seasons. The “cocaine cowboy”-era crime drama, featuring Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas as undercover cops, was revolutionary in its use of pop culture, style and music and spawned a film reboot in 2006. And by filming the show primarily in South Florida, the series helped transform the image of Miami and Miami Beach in a way that would reverberate for decades.
Former cast members, including Edward James Olmos and Michael Madsen, met with fans Friday at the Royal Palm South Beach and were set to return Saturday. Also attending were Saundra Santiago, Olivia Brown, Bruce McGill, Joaquim De Almeida, Bill Smitrovich, Pepe Serna and Ismael East Carlo.
“It was not ‘Hill Street Blues.’ It was not ‘Police Story,’” Olmos said on Friday. “It was way different in artistic endeavor on all levels. The creativity, as far as music, writing, production value. The production value was so overwhelming. We spared nothing. I mean, these people were serious, and they spent a lot of time and money for each episode, and it shows.”
Olmos said that the show had a profound effect on introducing Miami to the world and creating an idealized version of South Beach that would later become a reality.
“When we were here, when we started the show in 1984, there was no South Beach,” Olmos said. “There was a South Beach, but it was dilapidated. The buildings were all literally falling into disrepair.”
Years before serious restoration efforts would transform South Beach into a center of fashion, music and tourism, Olmos said productions crews were painting the exteriors of the neighborhood’s historic Art Deco buildings themselves to make them look good on camera.
“We would paint the facades and put out tables, and we did what now became the reality of South Beach,” Olmos said.
While most television production was still being done in Los Angeles or New York in the 1980s, Olmos doubts the show would have been as successful if they had tried to fake South Florida in California.
“They could have never shot this anywhere else in the world,” Olmos said. “Look at the show from the very first episode, and as it went on, the beauty of Miami is unprecedented.”
Premiering just a few years after the launch of MTV, “Miami Vice” embraced contemporary style and music. Besides Jan Hammer’s original scoring, the producers regularly included songs from popular artists like Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Dire Straits and Foreigner.
Fred Lyle, an associate producer and music coordinator for “Miami Vice,” said the importance of music was evident from the first episode, as “In the Air Tonight” by Phil Collins plays while Johnson and Thomas cruise the streets of Miami in their Ferrari convertible.
“And that’s when ‘Miami Vice’ became different musically than anything else,” Lyle said. “Music was going over this scene, that scene. One song was helping to stitch the fabric of the narrative together.”
Aside from the show’s style, the stories and characters also had substance. Veteran television actor Bruce McGill has played countless cops, coaches and other authority figures over several decades, but he said his guest role as a burnt-out former detective in the second season of “Miami Vice” stands out compared to the straight-laced characters that comprise most of his career.
“It was a very good part that they allowed me to make better, to enhance, to ham it up a little,” McGill said. “And it was very satisfying.”
“Miami Vice” fan Matt Lechliter, 39, traveled all the way to Miami Beach from Oxnard, California, to celebrate the show’s anniversary.
“I wasn’t alive when it premiered, but it’s a part of me,” Lechliter said.
Lechliter said he remembers watching the later seasons and reruns with his parents as a child but really became a fan when he rediscovered the show about five years ago.
“I binge-watched it,” Lechliter said. “I was like, ‘Wow, this really is amazing.’ When I heard about this event, I said, ‘I’ve gotta go.’”
The anniversary celebration will continue through the weekend with career discussions, as well as bus and walking tours of filming locations.
The Miami Vice Museum is open to the public from Friday to Sunday, featuring a wide range of items never before displayed together since the show’s conclusion in 1989. The exhibit is being hosted at the Wilzig Erotic Art Museum.
And to kick off the celebration on Thursday, Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner met with cast and crew at the Avalon Hotel in South Beach to present a proclamation declaring Sept. 16, 2024, as “Miami Vice Day.”
