By Christina Radish
Returning to the seminal franchise on which he first gained his reputation in television, filmmaker Michael Mann is bringing Miami Vice to the big screen. As he set out to make the big summer blockbuster, Mann realized that what attracted him to the series in 1984 -- the reality of life undercover -- was equally compelling to him in 2006, but he also knew that he’d have to step it up a notch.
No longer restricted by the limitations of television, Miami Vice examines what globalized crime looks and feels like today, with Colin Farrell and Academy Award winner Jamie Foxx stepping into the roles of Miami vice cops James “Sonny” Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs. Both Farrell and Foxx sat down, along with Mann, to discuss filming love scenes, being the topic of tabloid stories and why their Miami Vice won’t even make you think of the old one.
MediaBlvd Magazine> Michael, you had huge success with this series 20 years ago. Did you worry about going back to do it as a movie?
Michael Mann> First of all, it’s all Jamie’s fault because he talked me into this, starting in 2002, at Muhammad Ali’s birthday party. It became really exciting for myself, and then for all of us, with the idea of really getting into undercover work and what it does to you, what you do to it, and the whole idea of living a fabricated identity that’s actually just an extension of yourself, and doing it in 2006. You’re not going to have crocodiles or alligators, and you’re not going to have sailboats. You’re not going to have nostalgia. And, you’re going to do it for real, as a big picture that’s going to be R-rated because you do dangerous work in difficult places where bad things happen, you have relations with women, there’s sexuality and there’s language, and that became an exciting proposition
MB> Colin and Jamie, what was the appeal of taking on these iconic roles?
Jamie Foxx> I was in it because it’s hot. When I talked to Michael Mann, and just learned about who Michael Mann was, I made a couple rookie mistakes, saying, “Why don’t you do Miami Vice? You did it as a television show. And, we can have Jay-Z on the soundtrack, and do this and do that.” And, he was like, “Get out of here!” But, after me going up to him and saying, “Look, I really think that this is a great opportunity for you to take a commercial hit -- a franchise -- and bring the real film capability that Michael Mann has, together.” We did a big-time summer movie, but it’s still held together by the Michael Mann way of thinking. That’s why I wanted to do it.
Colin Farrell> I had been talking to Michael for a couple of years about finding something to do together, and then this came along and it was just the perfect opportunity. We all know Michael can handle an action sequence. He understands the choreography of an action sequence, and a very highly volatile one, but it has to be backed up with some human drama, and you have to have some kind of emotional investment in the characters. He understands that the validity of doing big-scale things isn’t there, unless you really do care about the characters that you’re watching. So, with that in mind, I didn’t really think much about good old Don Johnson. If I was to think about the early Crockett, I would have been in fuckin’ trouble because I would have been arguing with him over the suits that I wanted to wear, with no socks with my slip-ons, and all that kind of stuff. Jamie said that he met Don in a restaurant in Los Angeles, and what did he say?
Jamie> “You tell Colin Farrell, when he’s through with my jock strap, to give it back.”
Colin> I’m still waiting. The jock strap never arrived. It might have added something interesting to the character. “Why is he always itching his balls?” “He’s wearing Don Johnson’s jock strap.” The TV show was the original genesis for this piece, but we approached it from a very contemporary standpoint, and it’s its own entity, really.
MB> How will this Miami Vice make people forget the old Miami Vice?
Jamie> Not everybody is thinking about the television series because I don’t think that people are actually remembering every single episode. This is just a hot concept, and I don’t think they’re going to be comparing the two. I always view things like, “What do I want to see when I’m in the movie theater?” I’ve got my popcorn, I’m sitting there, and I’m thinking, “What would be hot to see right now? A car, two guys in Miami, Jay-Z on the soundtrack, and something is going down.” They know what happened with Miami Vice, years ago, but they’re ready to go see what the new thing is. A lot of kids who are watching this trailer, are into the hipness of Colin Farrell, and, maybe, Jamie Foxx, and they’re going, “That looks hot. I want to see that.” I put my hoodie on and sneak into the theater, or take a girl to the theater and act like I don’t know the trailer’s about to run. And then, I hear people say, “Oh, man, I’ve got to go see that,” and I pull the hoodie off and let people see that I’m in the theater, and then I bounce.
Michael> We never conceived of it as derivative. It’s 2006, it’s Miami Vice for real, right now. At it’s core, it has an emotional, overt way of telling its story, and it takes place in the alluring, perfumed reality of Miami, in which you’ve got this layer of things that are very sensuous and beautiful, and underneath it, there’s stuff that’s very dangerous. In that sense, it has an independent origin. The series occupies its place in cultural history, for better and for worse, and this is 2006.
MB> Why call it Miami Vice then?
Jamie> You saw Starsky and Hutch, but it wasn’t anything like the TV show. You’re not taking Miami Vice, the series. You’re taking the spirit of that, and you’re doing the movie.
Michael> That’s exactly right. It’s the spirit and core of it. It’s who these people are. At the core of Crockett is Crockett, and at the core of Tubbs is Tubbs, but they’re re-imagined in 2006 -- in a different world, in a different place, in a different Miami.
MB> The music was such an integral part of the television show. How important was it for you to maintain that level of authenticity with the film?
Michael> Music is always key to me, whether it’s Miami Vice or not. It’s dictated by the story. And, since the movie tries to get into the lives of these folks as intensely as possible, I wanted music that, hopefully, had the power to do that, consequently, the Mogwai and some of the Audioslave.
MB> Can you talk a little bit about what it was like to film the love scenes?Jamie> I thought the most important thing to do with my love scene with Naomie Harris (who plays intel-analyst Trudy Joplin) was to show that, after you’ve been with someone for a period of years, its never like music and flowers and candles. There’s a little bit of fun. You know each other. That was the reasoning of having that comic relief.
Michael> It comes out of the nature of the relationship. Tubbs is the more volatile of the two partners, but his life is centered in this relationship. It’s not the profound experience that Crockett has, when he meets Isabella (played by Gong Li). That’s what was appealing to me about the whole structure of it -- these two very different kinds of events.
Colin> Isabella and Crockett are two people who find each other, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, though they’re the right people. That’s the unfortunate thing about what transpires between the two of them. To quote good old Jerry Maguire, they do kind of complete each other. They are two people that live in very volatile environments. He’s on one side of the law, and this woman, Isabella, is on the other side of the law, and they come together in what is a very dangerous and very bad idea. Crockett’s someone that would have had one night stands, prolifically, over the years, and never be emotionally attached to anyone, and one of the primary reasons would be the work that he involves himself in. But, with this woman, he finds someone that seems to make complete, perfect sense. Doing our scene together was just about emotional investment, or emotional realization, in seeing some of yourself in the other person. There is something quite tragic too it, as well, I suppose.
MB> What was the most difficult aspect of filming this, and was there any kind of training for the weapons used in the film?
Michael> Everybody went through a lot of training. A lot of hard work went into it, and they look good because they are good, and they are good because they really can do everything that we see in the film, including all of the physical stuff. The most difficult thing to acquire is all the skills that I think these folks have, in terms of really being in an undercover situation. The skill and the self-confidence they have came from lots of scenarios that Colin, Jamie, Naomie and Gong Li did, with real folks, who really do this stuff. They did simulations that were very realistic. I’m real proud of their work, and the benefit of it is what you see on screen.
MB> Being 2006, obviously, drug trafficking is a very serious thing, and you treated it that way. Even though this is a serious topic, the tongue-in-cheek from the old series wasn’t in the film. Was that on purpose?
Michael> It’s a different subject. If I took you through the first two years’ episodes, which I consider to be the real core of Miami Vice, these are exactly the kind of stories that were being told. They were poignant, they were emotional, and they didn’t have happy endings. And then, there was some lighter stuff that would enter in, once in awhile.
Colin> As I remember it, and a lot of people I know remember it, Miami Vice only became camp in hindsight. At the time, it was a really cutting edge show. The subject matter was really dark -- drugs, prostitution, and so on. Some very reality-based situations were dealt with very honestly, for the time. This has just been elevated to today’s modern age.
MB> Michael, how has your personal view on of these characters changed in the 20 years since you did the series?
Michael> Tony Yerkovich wrote the pilot, and created Miami Vice, and there was a line in it where a woman says to Crockett, “Do you sometimes forget who you are?” And, he says, “Darlin’, sometimes I remember who I am.” That is the core of that character, and the volatility of Tubbs and the way he would rise to anger. That spirit is the same in these characters. These characters, in that sense -- in their hearts and their souls and what they reach down into when they really have to rise to the occasion -- are identical.
MB> How much of the action sequences was story boarded, and how much do you do once you’re there with the actors?
Michael> I don’t story board. I block it. We then train to the blocking. In other words, when everybody’s training, they’re actually training a lot of the moves that we are definitely going to use. And then, I do a lot of photography of that, and that becomes where the cameras go.
MB> How did you feel about all the tabloid stories that were written during the filming of this?Jamie> This is one of those films where a lot of stories were just written.
Colin> The second week into the shoot, me and Jamie were killing each other, and I hadn’t even met him yet.
Jamie> But, that makes the opening [bigger]. “Let’s go see what all the hubbub’s about.” You let all that go. Everybody descended on Miami. People were coming to Miami just ‘cause we were shooting down there. I’ve read crazy, crazy stuff that wasn’t true, but I think it all plays into the hands of making people get up in there and get them tickets, and see what’s going on.
MB> Michael, what was the purpose behind cutting the opening boat scene you had shot, and will it be on the DVD?
Michael> You always do it. I asked myself, way in the beginning, how this story should tell itself. One of the things that attracted me to Collateral was the fact that it was a really tight construction, and I always felt the Miami Vice story should be tight. You should be dropped into their lives and just taken away from it. I think audiences are really smart and they’re really intelligent, and I think that you can place the audience almost like they’re right on Jamie and Colin’s shoulder. You don’t have to explain, “Well, now we’re going to go into this club and maybe this pimp, Neptune, is going to show up.” Hopefully, you can bring the audience into a much more immediate experience of what these guys do and how they do it. Consequently, I have to make a lot of really difficult, hard, heart-breaking decisions about material that is really great and that I really love, and people do fabulous work in, but unfortunately, I have to serve the greater good of the experience of the picture. So, the stuff will absolutely be on the DVD.
