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Guns, storms, sea life add up to 'Vice' grip

By Borys Kit

A manatee almost shut down the set of "Miami Vice."

There have been numerous reports about how Universal Pictures' "Miami Vice," which opens July 28, was almost shut down by hurricanes that hammered Florida and destroyed the movie's production offices. And there was the gunfight in the Dominican Republic that derailed filming in Central and South America, necessitating a new ending back in Miami.

But before all that, there was the endangered manatee.

Director Michael Mann wanted to show off the new Miami in his 21st century version of "Miami Vice" by avoiding the pastels and beaches that dominate the 1980s TV series.

"Michael wanted the future of Miami," says Janice Polley, the movie's supervising location manager. "And that (future) is height. It's condos, it's tall office buildings."

Mann also wanted to explore the city's underbelly. So Polley took trips up and down the Miami River, took helicopters rides around industrial areas and visited trailer parks.

Viewing Miami not as the southernmost tip of the U.S. but as the northernmost point of South America, Mann's movie follows his undercover cops making jaunts to Cuba, Haiti and Paraguay.

Mann had his mind set on a location he once saw in Havana, but unable to film in Cuba, the director was forced to re-create that country in Monte Video, Uruguay. Reimagining the communist country required that the production bring in art moderne and art deco material from Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay.

Part of the movie also takes place in Cuidad del Este, Paraguay. The movie's original ending was set in a building in Cuidad del Este and was re-created in the Dominican Republic (which also subbed for Haiti). But then a gunfight took place near the hotel in which the stars were staying.

"Because of that incident, the powers that be didn't want us to be in an area that could be dangerous for actors," Polley says.

So the production went from the frying pan into the fire when Mann decided to set the flim's climax back in Miami. The city had just suffered a massive hit from Hurricane Wilma, had only intermittent power, long lines at the gas pump, and resources were being diverted to reconstruction. But Miami still was willing to bend over backward for the production, the biggest the city and the state had ever seen.

"One of the things that they had going for them was that 'Miami Vice,' the series, meant so much to this town," says Jeff Peel, film commissioner of the Miami/Dade County Office of Film & Entertainment. "So they had a lot of built-up goodwill. Everybody wanted to help them."

Enter that manatee. The marine mammals found in and around Miami are heavily protected. As a result, water shoots require reams of red tape. Any presence of one of the 3,200 manatees turns waters into a five-mile no-wake zone.

"(The Department of Fish and Wildlife) are very strict," Polley says. "They have spotters up in helicopters that monitor you the whole time you're there. And they have (spotters) on boats. If there is a manatee that won't leave, they will shut you down, it doesn't matter how much money it's costing you."

When a manatee showed up one day, lazily paddling in the water, "we had to shut down," Polley says.

As the filmmakers and crew sat in boats, bobbing in the water, the manatee frolicked, sniffed and explored. Eventually he swam away, and filming resumed. Perhaps he was a fan of the TV series, too, and wanted to help.