San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Jon Hamm is featured in “Bad Times at the Hotel Royale,” filmed at Lake Tahoe.
During Jon Hamm’s sevenseason run as Don Draper on “Mad Men,” his fans were entranced — and, at times, exasperated and disgusted too — watching him play the enigmatic Madison Avenue ad executive through the misogynist, skirt-chasing early 1960s and into the more free-thinking and slightly less sexist early ’70s.
The span and remarkable flux of those same decades was on Hamm’s mind when he read the script for Drew Goddard’s dark twist on a modern film noir, “Bad Times at the El Royale” (opening Friday, Oct. 12).
The mystery thriller, written and directed by Goddard (“The Cabin in the Woods”), is set in January 1969 at a Lake Tahoe hotel that straddles the California-Nevada border. The setting is inspired by the legendary Cal Neva Lodge & Casino, once owned by Frank Sinatra and frequented by the Rat Pack, Marilyn Monroe and the Kennedy family.
“It was the beginning of a period that ended up being very, very dark and cynical,” said Hamm during an interview this summer in Lake Tahoe. He was visiting with Goddard and “Bad Times” co-stars Jeff Bridges, Cynthia Erivo and Dakota Johnson — to give reporters an early glimpse of their movie in the locale where its drama unfolds.
In “Bad Times,” the onceglamorous resort with a sinister past has a painted red state line running though the premises — “warmth and sunshine to the west, hope and opportunity to the east,” says the jumpy young front-desk manager (played by
Lewis Pullman) as he welcomes to the run-down El Royale the ragtag cast of “equally lost souls” — including Bridges in priest’s garb; Johnson as an angry hippie; Tony Awardwinning Erivo (“The Color Purple”) as a soul singer with more talent than luck; Chris Hemsworth as a shirtless, maniacal cult leader; and Hamm as a G-man undercover as a traveling vacuum salesman who, like any good noir leading man, has a dual identity and a suitcase full of secrets.
All the action — and violence, of which there is plenty — unfolds over one very stormy night. Deep Purple plays on the jukebox. Richard Nixon has just been inaugurated. In an early scene, the new president is seen on a small black-and-white television in the hotel lobby denouncing the word “ceasefire” to describe “a guerrilla war like Vietnam.”
“The characters I play (in ‘Mad Men’ and ‘Bad Times’) are so different, and yet there was something about this that felt like picking up on the tail end of that same ride I’d already been on and knew so well, when American culture, society, business and politics all shifted,” Hamm said. “A few years later, we’d have Watergate eroding people’s belief in government and comfort in what they were being told was the truth. It was a really unsettling, challenging time that I still don’t think we’ve come to grips with as a country. It was clear from the moment I
All the action — and violence, of which there is plenty — unfolds over one very stormy night. Deep Purple plays on the jukebox. Richard Nixon has just been inaugurated.
read Drew’s script that this would be a much harder turn into the dark side.”
“Darker than dark. Inky dark. Let’s be clear, it really is ‘bad times’ at the El Royale,” said Johnson, whose character, the bell-bottomed Emily Summerspring, is first glimpsed in the movie tying up a hostage in her hotel room.
After achieving worldwide fame as Anastasia Steele in three “Fifty Shades” movies, Johnson said performing this ultra-stylized drama with such a talented ensemble was “a complete departure, and so much fun. I play a tough girl with a troubled background, and she’s realizing she’s going to be as assertive as she needs to be even if young women aren’t supposed to be that way. She’s joining in with the seismic shift she feels around her.”
“Every twist and turn is completely unexpected and adds value to the story. Nothing was wasted,” said Erivo, who admitted she was unaware when she got the part in “Bad Times” just how large her role was — or that it would be released first in a series of high-profile projects she appears in this fall.
“It’s a really exciting moment,” Erivo said. In November, she’ll be seen alongside Viola Davis in Steve McQueen’s heist thriller “Widows.” She’s also playing the title role in Kasi Lemmons’ Harriet Tubman biopic and has finished shooting the sci-fi adventure “Chaos Walking” with David Oyelowo.
“The world better get ready for what she’s got,” said Bridges, flashing his famous crinklyeyed smile. A singer himself (he won an Oscar in 2009 for “Crazy Heart”), he has clear admiration for Erivo’s talents, including her stunning a cappella performance in “Bad Times” of the Isley Brothers’ “This Old Heart of Mine.”
The “Bad Times” actors who reunited in Tahoe all agreed that the sense of camaraderie and “all in” pursuit of Goddard’s artistic vision (which in its mashup of genres and plot described by Goddard as “all about humans doing terrible things to each other” is reminiscent of the Coen brothers) was an actor’s dream on set.
“It’s rare to see a script like this, even more rare to see this kind of care put into it,” Hamm said. One remarkably long tracking shot, following Hamm on a surveillance walk down the hotel’s secret corridor as he spies on other guests, took Goddard eight months to plan.
“We got it right on the 27th take,” Goddard said.
“The degree of difficulty in that is so high, if one thing goes wrong, you start over,” Hamm said. “It’s like conducting an orchestra and everybody has to work in concert. The audience hopefully takes that in differently, when they realize, Oh my God, they still haven’t cut away. They’re still going.”