Strange Days | 1995
- Locations |
- Los Angeles, California
- DIRECTOR |
- Kathryn Bigelow
Kathryn Bigelow’s dark techno-thriller harks from back in the days when when Millennium Eve was a scary date way in the future.
Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes, cast brilliantly against type) is a scuzzy wheeler-dealer peddling virtual reality experiences around a nightmarishly benighted, riot-ridden Los Angeles.
The vast Millennium party clogs the street in front of the Westin Bonaventure Hotel, South Figueroa Street, downtown. The landmark building was a major location for Wolfgang Petersen’s In The Line of Fire, with Clint Eastwood, and the John Badham real-time thriller Nick of Time, with Johnny Depp, and was also featured in Barry Levinson’s Rain Man, James Cameron's True Lies and as the ‘Atlanta’ record office in This Is Spinal Tap.
Lenny meets VIP client Mr Fumitso at, what was then, the St James Club. This striking zigzag moderne highrise, towering over Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, seems to change its name with every season. After several years as the Argyle, it's now the Sunset Tower Hotel, 8358 Sunset Boulevard, West Hollywood.
Built in 1931, this luxury block once housed Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, Howard Hughes and the Gabor sisters. Legend has it, John Wayne kept a cow on the balcony. Whatever, it was recently restored, and can be seen in movies as diverse as Robert Altman's The Player, Barry Sonnenfeld’s Get Shorty, the 2003 remake of The Italian Job, Jean-Claude Van Damme’s A.W.O.L. and the 1944 Farewell My Lovely.
