Miami’s blast from past will just blow you away
’80s world of sex, drugs & chimpanzee in ‘Scarface’ hangout
THE most notorious member of the scene surrounding The Mutiny, the Miami nightclub that epitomized the excesses of the 1980s, was a chimp named Caesar.
As Roben Farzad explains in his new book, “Hotel Scarface: Where Cocaine Cowboys Partied and Plotted to Control Miami” (Berkeley Hardcover), Caesar was the companion of drug kingpin Mario Tabraue, who adorned him “with a gold-rope necklace holding a 50-peso gold coin, an 18-karat ID bracelet with his name in diamonds, and a ladies’ Rolex Presidential.
“The primate was partial to turtlenecks and a New York baseball cap, and proudly rode shotgun in his owner’s Benz while waving a Cuban cigar,” Farzad writes.
But just as with salmon-colored jackets and shoes with no socks, Miami residents didn’t bat an eye at Caesar — it was all just part of the show.
At the center of it all was The Mu- tiny at Sailboat Bay, a 130-room hotel and club that was Miami’s version of Studio 54, “a criminal free-trade zone of sorts where gangsters would both revel in Miami’s danger and escape from it, Farzad writes.
With narcotics fueling at least onethird of Miami’s economy, The Mutiny was the country’s drug capital, swimming in so much illicit cash that the club sold “more bottles of Dom Perignon than any other establishment on the planet.”
IN 1983, shortly after Miami drug kingpin Nelson Aguilar got out of jail, he hooked up with his friend, funk star Rick James. Their subsequent night of partying might have killed a mere mortal, but it was business as usual at The Mutiny, Miami’s home for drug kingpins and those who enjoyed their offerings. At one point in the evening, Aguilar was “midcoitus with two women” when James, in the middle of a crack binge that fed his paranoia, “started banging frantically on his room door.”
“‘ What’s that sound?’ yelled James. ‘You hear it, Nelson? What is that sound?! Nelson!’ ”
The Miami Dolphins were regular clients, as was Dallas Cowboys running back Tony Dorsett, who spent one Sunday night partying hard with Aguilar. The next night, the Cowboys lost a game by a touchdown to the Dolphins, and Dorsett, looking ragged after his wild night with Aguilar, had an especially poor showing.
Celebrities were everywhere. There’s Arnold Schwarzenegger, hitting on a waitress. There’s Paul Newman, swilling so much Chateau Lafite that he “had to be carried up to his suite by a hostess.” Ted Kennedy once got so drunk there that he picked a fight with the DJ.
Miami Dolphins majority owner Earl Smalley Jr., Farzad writes, had a suite in the hotel overlooking the pool, and installed a “pink pneumatic [sex] bench that beach babes could saddle up on after long days on his speedboat.”
And when a Peruvian dealer named Pepe brought in high-quality cocaine he had “dyed light pink and spritzed to smell like bubble gum,” Liza Min-
nelli reportedly became such a fan that she inadvertently derailed surveillance on the club. A police officer named Wayne Black had an informant there wired, and hoped to get dirt on Pepe while listening from a van across the street. He had one problem, though. “Liza Minnelli would not shut up for even a minute,” he said. “She kept bugging Pepe for more blow.”
EARLY on, one of the club’s highest rollers was Rodolfo “Rudy Redbeard” Rodriguez Gallo, a drug kingpin who kept his gun wedged in the seats of the club’s leather booths.
Rudy Redbeard, so named for his reddyed beard, docked his 58-foot yacht right in front of the club, and had women “actually kneeling before [him] to kiss his ring and get a Quaalude.” His home included a bedroom “the size of most houses, and featured a grand piano on a rotating stage.”
Business was so strong that Redbeard had “six rooms at The Mutiny blocked off for both business and pleasure, some of them adorned with paper grocery bags full of cash.” According to a hotel employee, the cleaning staff would fight about who would handle his rooms, knowing they might find “fist-sized chunks of hashish left in trash bins,” or a “giant rock of cocaine” in the carpet.
As grandiose as the clientele was, The Mutiny was uniquely equipped to cater to their needs. The club had its own private plane to retrieve high rollers, and the hotel converted an entire suite into a walk-in cooler to house the incredible amount of booze it required.
If you needed to stash weapons, they had you covered there as well.
The club’s champagne cave held a secret chest where partying drug lords could lock up their machine guns, and “a hostess would hide your piece in her skirt if the cops showed up.” The waitresses also had special pager codes they would use to warn dealers if law enforcement was nearby.
By the ’80s, The Mutiny was notorious. As Oliver Stone and Brian De Palma planned their “Scarface” remake, they would meet at the club, hoping to film there.
But after a massive outcry from local politicians and media — who feared the film would portray Florida’s Cubans in a negative light — plus threats made against the family of co-producer Martin Bregman, the decision was made to film “Scarface” in Los Angeles instead. Still, many elements of the film’s Babylon Club, from the phones plugged into the tables to the presence of a dancing mime, were modeled after The Mutiny. One former regular even commented that “every doper in Miami thought ‘Scarface’ was based on them.”
TV’s “Miami Vice,” which filmed in Miami and epitomized ’80s excess, had no such qualms about the association. As the show’s writers “dined with FBI agents and drug dealers” at the club, stars Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas became regulars. Johnson even moved into a condo nearby, right below “flamboyant kingpin Juan ‘ Johnny’ Hernandez.”
Hernandez, who spent around $25,000 a week at the club, called Johnson “a pain in the ass” for the actor’s constant complaints when Hernandez “refused to let him land his chopper on the roof.”
Despite this, Hernandez was likely thankful for the show’s success, as it gave him plenty of business. “At The Mutiny, Hernandez said he was approached by one of the top producers of ‘ Miami Vice,’ who confided to him that many of his cast and crew were users of cocaine,” Farzad writes. “He didn’t want them out in the mean streets of Miami, dealing with tabloid-bound dealers and middlemen to score blow of questionable quality. Would Hernandez agree to discreetly supply them?”
Not only was Hernandez well paid for his troubles, he was cast as a criminal in two episodes of the show.
AS law enforcement began catching up to the dealers — and their enablers, meaning most of The Mutiny’s clientele — the hotel suffered accordingly, and numerous shootings there led law enforcement to threaten to close it down.
The owner, Burton Goldberg, sold the club in January 1984 for $17.5 million. The new owners tried to convert it into a highclass establishment, but it didn’t catch on, and the hotel was foreclosed on in 1986.
There were various attempts at rebuilding it, and today, a condominium hotel called The Mutiny stands at the same location. Still, its sordid heritage has followed it at times, recalling the years when The Mutiny was synonymous with wretched excess.
“In 2001,” Farzad writes, “O.J. Simpson, his girlfriend, and a Penthouse model filmed a sex tape in Room 310 of the new, gutted and completely sanitized Mutiny Hotel.”