Michael Mann

Michael: (on making "Miami Vice" into a series) When I first read Tony Yerkovic's wonderful screenplay for Miami Vice it was supposed to be a pilot for a TV series, my first reaction was...'I don't want to make this into a TV series, I want to make this as a picture.' I couldn't do it and it had to go forward as a TV series. I brought into it all the folks who had been making movies with me at that time. I thought I'd go and do this little seven day shoot and make a one-hour movie. So it had always been a frustration for me. I'd always wanted to make it into a movie. I thought the material always had that in it. Then Jamie brought it up at Muhammad Ali's birthday party. In a kind of joking way he said. 'You should go and do Miami Vice.' He persisted and then one thing led to another and I started taking it seriously.

Michael: (on the travelling involved with filming "Miami Vice") We did a lot of travelling, a lot of research and pre-production in a lot of places. It just was so appealing and terrific to go to all these places and it just all felt really fresh and exciting and you'd want to shoot in all of them and you can't. I wanted to shoot in parts of Rio, and we just couldn't go everywhere. So we shot in Uruguay, we shot in Paraguay, we shot in the Dominican Republic and we shot in Miami. For the scenes in Barranquilla, the interior was filmed in Miami and the exterior was filmed in Montevideo.

Michael: (on Miami) Miami is one of these great places that is a really sensual, physically beautiful place. The weather is really dramatic, particularly during the time of year that we were shooting. I remember shooting episodes there in August, back in the '80s, and they had all these clouds and formations coming in. We didn't have as many hurricanes back in the '80s as we do now. But it's beautiful. It's unique in that respect. And right underneath that allure is a layer of danger. Things can happen. You don't really know, it's a destination for a lot of people. So it becomes a Twilight Zone, one of these great Twilight Zone places. Vegas in the '70s was like that in a funny kind of way. I love Miami.

Michael Mann: (On the way he operates the camera in his movies) The criterion is when I want to see what's going on through the lens. Usually, it comes down to performance more than technique. I've also worked with the same camera crews, even down to the assistants, on the last four films. So, we've developed a family in camera. A family that picks right up where they left off every few years. I see the world from the perspective of a 5'8" person, not someone who is 6'4 so naturally, I'm going to choose certain lens heights over and again. Sometimes nature makes choices for you.