In Bruce Wagner's television miniseries, "Wild Palms," white Avantis with flashing roof lights added, pass by in the background as "security vehicles." Harry Wyckoff (James Belushi) accepts a job as president of a massive global TV company. He is confronted with a radical technology called "The New Reality" that projects 3 dimensional TV images into living rooms all around the world. Harry rises to the top of the company with his career, but once there he is caught in a web of intrigues, betrayal and murder. Wild Palms is an exotic mix of virtual reality, mind control, religio-political conspiracy, psychotropic drugs, and media manipulation.

Executive producer Oliver Stone offered a '60s soundtrack, retro clothing, and stylish art direction. Japanese techno pop composer Ryuichi Sakamoto composed the soundtrack. Sakamoto won an Academy Award for his score for the Bernardo Bertolucci film, the Last Emporer. For more detailed information on Wild Palms read Scott Woods' 1996 article ("if one of the things you enjoy about watching older films are the trippy-looking automobiles of yesteryear, Palms is a feast for the eyes"). Wild Palms is lurid, paranoid, and too unconventional for some TV viewers. Fans will honor it as an underated classic and critics will deride it as '90s kitsch. The series was rebroadcast by the Sci-Fi Channel in March 1997.