Necessary Vices

Imagine the year is 1984. You're sitting down in your living room, you turn on your brand new 30" floor model color television, you've just made some popcorn on the stove, and you see this.

You would have never seen anything like this. Guaranteed.

I stumbled upon this video a couple of years ago while perusing live performance videos of Phil Collins. I was three years old when Miami Vice aired, so it's safe to say I've never known a world in which the musical and cinematic elements of film and television haven't been so meticulously integrated. Unbeknownst to me, the Miami Vice series was the first time these elements had been as intimately connected and choreographed for each other. From this moment spawned completely new ideas about the audio/visual relationship in television and film.

As a theatre artist, I'm incredibly jealous. I wish more of what we did could be this precise and defiant. We're getting safe and sloppy in our old age.

peace.