By: Valerie Milano – Miami Beach, FL (Hollywood Today) 1/23/12

coffee-with-stars-writers-director-of-magic-city

Starz is offering up it’s 1960’s style series “Magic City” on the heels of failed “Pan Am” and “Playboy Club”.  During an era of when the mob was running rampant and the blacks were able to perform in these hotels but not allowed to stay there.   At NATPE 2012 in Miami today, the cast and execs gathered outside under swaying palm trees to discuss the new show premieringFriday, April 6th. Starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Danny Huston, Olga Kurylenko, Judi Silver, Kelly Lynch, and Christian Cook, all were in attendance on this gorgeous warm morning.  The panel was moderated by Miami’s own reporter from the Miami Herald, Glenn Garvin.

Carmi Zlotnik, managing director of Starz Media summed up the new show to HT  “Magic City” is beautiful, it’s sexy, and it’s dangerous. But more than anything, it’s very cool, and that’s thanks to Mitch Glazer, our executive producer. And we’ve been mining the memories that Mitch accumulated as a cabana boy in many of the lobbies and poolsides at Miami during this period.”

 “I was born and raised in Miami Beach. I’ve never actually heard the cabana boy thing thrown around so much. This is like a nightmare for me. But I was born and raised in Miami Beach, and these are stories that I’ve been kind of squirreling away, as writers do, for years, going back basically to after high school, and stories that my parents told me,” said Glazer, “my view of this world as being the most glamorous, the most exotic, kind of the beautiful aesthetic of it, this midcentury look of these hotels”.

Chris Albrecht, President and CEO of Starz (and ex-CEO of HBO), was also on hand with Ben Grossman, Editor in Chief Broadcasting and Cable, to discuss the cable network later in the morning from the convention area of the hotel. Albrecht told HT “Starz is in less than 20 million homes.” At TCA this year he spoke about the meaning of this figure saying, “So when our numbers are approaching numbers that networks get and surpassing numbers that networks get that are in a hundred million homes, I think you have to look at the reality of attracting viewers and say, “You know what? That’s probably pretty good.”

Magic City filmed at the Sir John Hotel in Overtown has advantages, “Shooting in Miami is great since the Starz offices are in LA the agents and managers don’t drop by the set, so they feel they have more freedom and are not watched. “ said Glazer. “Plus the weather is a plus.”  As us, NATPE goers are able to experience first hand.  NATPE Day 1 and 2 more to go.