If you’re hungry to watch some of the great police series from the late 80’s + 90’s, find a full list of my writing & producing credits on IMDB.com Then go to the following links to screen some of the episodes I wrote. My first script ever was “Top Of The World,” which was Episode 20 of Season 1 of CRIME Story, which Michael Mann, himself directed. After going on staff, I wrote the Season 2 opener: The Senator, The Movie Star and The Mob.
Michael then put me in The Writer’s Room on Season 4 of MIAMI VICE: where I co-wrote “A Bullet For Crockett” Later, Stephen J. Cannell hired me as the showrunner on WISEGUY where I wrote the two hour ” Season 4 opener: Fruit of The Poisonous Tree:
Crime Story starred, the late great former Chicago detective Dennis Farina. That opening episode was the first major television role for Kevin Spacey playing a Bobby Kennedy-like figure who flies to Las Vegas to hold racketeering hearings.
The Miami Vice episode, Baseballs of Death, was based on an investigation I did for ABC News on cluster bombs.
The Season 4 Wiseguy episodes, starred Steven Baur who replaced Ken Wahl in the lead role. Cannell, who died tragically years before his time, was arguably the most prolific writer-producer of drama in TV history.
Wiseguy also co-starred Jonathan Banks, the veteran character actor whose career would later soar to new heights on “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul.”
Ironically Bauer jump-started his career again after appearing opposite Banks and Brian Cranston as Don Eladio Vuente, boss of the Mexican Ciudad Juarez Cartel who was poisoned by Gustavo Fring, the New Mexico meth kingpin played by Giancarlo Esposito.
A BULLET FOR CROCKET was a “clip show,” in that Sonny Crockett (played by Don Johnson) gets shot in the Teaser and for the rest of the hour we intercut him in ICU with great scenes from the first three seasons. I wrote the teaser, which I’m very proud of and almost all of the “connective tissue” dialogue.
The episode opens with the Phil Collins classic “In The Air Tonight” then moves into a drug bust gone bad, followed by a serious car chase and a shootout in a Miami Metro station.
And that’s just in the first five minutes.
“Miami Vice” was a breakthrough series, created by Anthony Yerkovich, but fully realized by Michael Mann.
It brought feature film production values to television and soon-to-be stars like Bruce Willis, Chris Rock, Ben Stiller, Liam Neeson, David Strathairn, Benecio del Toro, Stanley Tucci, Steve Buscemi, Helena Bonham Carter, Charles S. Dutton, Michael Chiklis, Joan Chen, Ron Perlman, Annette Bening and Wesley Snipes.
Also, the series boasted an astonishing list of legendary character actors like Oliver Platt, Luis Guzman, Tony Sirico, Tony Plana, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Miguel Ferrer, Joaquim de Almeida, Mark Linn-Baker, Lonette McKee, Chris Elliott, John Turturro, John Spencer, Phillip Baker Hall and James Hong.
And then there was the “stunt casting” of performance legends like Phil Collins, Glenn Frey, James, Brown, Willie Nelson, Little Richard, Leonard Cohen, Issac Hayes and Frank Zappa.
All of that the work of the great casting director Bonnie Timmerman, who also cast Crime Story for Michael Mann and most of his other feature film work. “A Bullet For Crockett” is temporarily on hiatus at NBC but when it returns watch it with a Cuba Libré in your hand. If that doesn’t take you back to the 80’s nothing will. A complete list of the cast & crew of Miami Vice can be found at imdb.com.
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