Mid-1983 through 1985 are considered Iggy Pop’s “quiet years,” but he was still active and looking for ways to challenge himself. Acting was one such endeavor, with Pop taking classes and auditioning for various roles. This included a 1984 tryout for a part on a new NBC program, Miami Vice. During a 1986 newspaper interview, casting director Bonnie Timmermann talked about Iggy’s audition for the show.

He came in with his big eyes and black hair and sat and stared at me. Despite his reputation as a wild man, he was gentle. I immediately liked him. Iggy came in for a biker role, but we ended up giving him another part.

The Ig was slated to play opposite fellow Michigander Glenn Frey in a February 1st, 1985 episode named after Frey’s song, “Smuggler’s Blues.” But Pop didn’t turn up on set, and his absence was widely reported in the press. “He was supposed to be in the show. We announced it,” said an NBC spokesperson in January 1985. “But when it came time to make the arrangements, we couldn’t find him.” It seemed Iggy had simply flaked.
 

 
But that wasn’t the case. When Iggy saw a February 1985 article in the San Francisco Examiner about his “no show,” he was stunned. He never knew he had been given the part.
 

 
Miami Vice must have accepted this explanation, as Iggy was cast in another season one episode, entitled “Evan.” Pop’s part was that of a police informant named Thumper, a proprietor of a S&M-themed club. A scene was shot in the club’s setting, and Iggy’s guest role was noted in newspapers, but when the episode aired on May 3rd, 1985, the Ig was nowhere to be seen.
 

A publicity photo of Iggy Pop and ‘Miami Vice’ star, Don Johnson.

So, what happened with Iggy and the show this time?

This scene was cut by NBC Censors (Broadcast Standards Division) due to its S&M content. Camille Sands, an actress who had the small part of a dominatrix called Velvet, remembered later that the scene contained a customer of the S&M studio being molested on a torture rack while Don Johnson talked to Iggy Pop. The urge of NBC to cut this out led to the first serious argument with the Miami Vice producers, who refused to alter the episode. Subsequently, NBC used its contractual right of final cut, and cut the whole scene. (from the Unofficial ‘Miami Vice’ Episode Guide)

What would have been Iggy Pop’s dramatic television debut remains unseen to this day. All we have are a handful of publicity photos and snapshots taken on set.
 

 

 
Continues after the jump…

 
One thing about Miles Davis, he’s difficult to mistake for anyone else on the planet. With his high forehead, pinched features, and ultra-raspy voice, he’s so incredibly distinctive a person that it rather impedes any endeavors he might make into vanish into a role in an actorly way—he’s always unmistakably “Miles Davis.” For whatever reason (probably $$$), in 1985 the most restless and innovative jazz musician of the 20th century decided that he wanted to take part in an episode of Miami Vice, at that time one of the hottest shows on TV. Watching the episode, it’s easy to see the appeal the show must have had at the time, the plot is threadbare and the acting attitudinal, but you get the trappings of an R-rated crime thriller without having to think too hard about it.
 

 
Davis appeared on season 2, episode 6, “Junk Love.” The idea is that Crockett and Tubbs arrest the owner of a whorehouse, a dude named “Ivory Jones”—played by Miles. They realize that a local druglord (of course) is obsessed with one of his prostitutes…. do you really want me to go on? The key here is that Ivory is a scumbag but collaborating with the local constabulary, which means we get plenty of scenes of him hanging out with Crockett and Tubbs. It’s a challenge to watch Don Johnson and not perceive him as doing a Kevin Costner imitation, but Costner wasn’t very well known yet. Most of Davis’ dialogue is semi-incomprehensible, but you haven’t lived until you’ve seen the genius behind Bitches Brew croak, “Watch that big cabin cruiser, he has a thing about them.”

Musical cues include Robert Plant’s “Little by Little,” Wang Chung’s “True Love,” and Bryan Ferry’s “Slave To Love.”

This episode is, unfortunately, only available on Hulu—actually the Cloo network, but it amounts to the same thing.
 

 
Thank you Joe Yachanin!

 
At one point during his career—let’s assume rather early on, shall we?—Miami Vice actor Philip Michael Thomas coined the affirmation acronym “EGOT,” which stands for “Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony.” Because he planned to win all four. At the 1984 Academy Awards ceremony, Thomas wore a gold medallion emblazoned with the letters “EGOT.”

So far, Thomas hasn’t been nominated for any of these awards, but he did become the spokesperson for the Psychic Reader’s Network in 1994, claiming that he’d met the world’s top psychics via his world travels. I wonder if he ever asked any of them about his chances for an “EGOT,” the grand slam of showbiz?

From Vanity Fair:

In one profile, he compared himself to Gandhi; in another, he claimed that women came up to him and said, “Oh God, I love your thighs, I want you to take me to bed with you!” He bragged about his friends (“Steven Spielberg calls … I get calls from Nancy Reagan … The Queen of England wants me to come over”) and even about boasted about the breadth of his reading (“I read books on philosophy, religion, higher learning, and spaceships”).

Maybe the Queen and Nancy Reagan just loved his thighs? The gold “EGOT” medallion is a pretty Kanye move, right? Well, either Kanye or Tracy Jordan...

Keep reading.

Thomas made an attempt at a musical career, beginning with a 1985 album titled Living The Book of My Life, which he apparently wrote most of the songs for and produced himself. There’s a music video that was made for the single “Just the Way I Planned It” and it’s THE standard-setting stunner of a massive celebrity ego trip—a goldmine of comic hubris—that has remained unmatched since 1985.

Dig the lasers, the “cosmic” THIRD EYE, his face superimposed over the pregnant woman’s belly, the greasy forehead—WHAT THE FUCK was this guy thinking? Obviously it was Thomas himself who came up with the concept here. WHO ELSE POSSIBLY COULD HAVE??? No, it was Thomas himself who was clearly responsible for displaying himself to the world in this manner. No one else would have had… the motivation. Just him, the gold “EGOT” medallion-wearing guy. It was, ahem, just the way he planned it and that’s undeniable! It looks like he choreographed it, too!

From the LP jacket:

Listen to the magical mystical melodies of the universe…calling out your name…moving your soul and spirit through life’s cosmic game…Look deep into the mirror of your soul and discover a wonderful truth…The greatest book you’ll ever know is written and lived by you!

Or in this case, “Tubbs” from Miami Vice.

I originally saw this atrocity exhibition on a Manhattan cable access program called Bad Music Videos that was hosted by Karen Finley and art critic Carlo McCormick, a mid-80s TV show (and nightclub performance) that mocked, well, bad music videos, long before Beavis and Butthead. After I saw it, I wanted, nay, needed to have my own copy and within a few days, a friend of mine at MTV had a 3/4” dub of it messengered over to the video post-production house where I was then working. I made countless crisp VHS copies of this thing. I was an evangelist for its awful awfulness. It never failed to work its magic. Everyone’s jaw dropped when they saw this shit sandwich

Yours will, too.

Forget about that Billy Squire debacle, there is virtually nothing, I repeat, nothing, that’s worse than the Philip Michael Thomas video embedded below. Keep in mind that he wrote the song, produced it and conceptualized and directed this video, too (WHO ELSE would have produced such an epic piece of dreck to glorify the man-god who is PMT???). Thomas is an auteur of such incredible bad taste that he rivals John Waters in that department, with the important distinction that with John Waters, it’s deliberate.
 

 
Via Everything Is Terrible!

An actual still from the episode. For real. It’s that kind of episode.
 
Honestly, I didn’t think there was a television rock star guest spot weirder than Iggy Pop on Star Trek: Deep Space 9, but the surreal incongruity of James Brown on Miami Vice has my head spinning.

First of all, by this time, James Brown had already been dealing with a nasty little PCP problem, and had been arrested multiple times for domestic abuse while cranked to the gills. This episode aired in November of 1987. Less than a year later, Brown would be involved in a high speed car chase, and subsequently arrested again with drugs and an unlicensed gun (but not until after the cops shot out his tires). A weird choice for a part in crime show about vice cops? You be the judge!

Second, this is just a trippy damn piece of television (with cameo from a young, Jheri-curled Chris Rock, no less!). I don’t want to give anything away (come on, you know you want to watch the whole thing), but six minutes into it, Brown appears as a psychedelic vision, and the rest of the plot is spent trying to unravel his leadership in an extraterrestrial-obsessed cult (I’m not kidding). Honestly, a shyster peacher talking about aliens is kind of a perfect role for “the hardest working man in show business.”

All irony aside, the script is laughable, the “acting” is sporadic, the production values are terrible, and Don Johnson’s hair is a violent assault on your eyeballs. But James Brown? James Brown is always a good show!
 

 
In 1986, Leonard Cohen guest-starred on Miami Vice, playing Francois Zolan of the French Secret Service involved in a plot to blow up Greenpeace boats. The episode was called “French Twist.” His role was all too brief.
 

 
In this episode of Miami Vice called “Payback” which aired on March 14, 1986, Frank Zappa plays Mario Fuente, the head of a drug ring dealing “weasel dust.”

I spent 13 years snorting weasel dust and the best part of the experience was the anticipation prior to snorting the first line. It was straight downhill after that.
 

 
Via Exile On Moan Street