Hans Morgenstern on the state of the Miami film industry

FFCC vice chair Hans Morgenstern wrote an in-depth cover story on the state of the Miami film industry following the loss of state tax incentives for production.

It’s 9 p.m. on a Friday, and the Mutiny Hotel in Coconut Grove is but a sleepy ghost of drug-addled days past. Isis Masoud, a tall, pretty, expectant mother with clear brown eyes that almost match her rusty-brown hair, sits on a gold vinyl couch stacked with embroidered pillows in a vestibule. At a nearby reception desk, a couple of bored-looking hotel employees in polyester uniforms await guests as the droning thump of electronica echoes in the emptiness.

Wearing knee-high leather boots and a modest sundress with a red and white wave pattern, Masoud stands up and then strolls below the foyer’s wood-banistered mezzanine and passes empty plush chairs. Her long arms sway as she talks about the city’s cocaine years, when the Mutiny was in its heyday. The cast and crew of Scarface, the iconic film of that era, even stayed here.

“Their experience at the Mutiny was such a big influence on the film,” she declares before walking past the hotel’s poolside restaurant, where all of the tables are empty. At the bar, a man in a light-green button-up shirt leans uncomfortably close to a leggy woman in a short dress. The bartender has nowhere to go as the pair gets increasingly intimate…

(Read the rest in the Miami New Times)

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