The new mystery thriller BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE tells the story of seven strangers who cross paths at a run-down hotel that straddles the border of California and Nevada. Written and directed by the inventive filmmaker, Drew Goddard, and set in the late 60s, this riveting movie is timely and resonant, dealing with intrigue, morality, corruption, and redemption. All the guests Goddard has assembled in the El Royale have dark secrets.
Jon Hamm, Jeff Bridges and Cynthia Erivo are amongst the film's leading stars
His gifted, ensemble cast includes Jeff Bridges as a priest, Cynthia Erivo as a lounge singer and Jon Hamm as a vacuum cleaner salesman. Chris Hemsworth plays a charismatic cult leader and Dakota Johnson portrays a determined young woman on a mission.
The title of this gripping film noir from Drew Goddard says it all. Times are indeed bad at the El Royale – and as events unravel at the hotel, which has clearly seen better days, they will get progressively worse. “BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE is a crime story that takes place over one night in this hotel, which is half in California and half in Nevada,” says Drew Goddard, director of THE CABIN IN THE WOODS and the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of THE MARTIAN. “The script started with a simple question: ‘Who’s checking in?’”
The answer: a colourful group of people, who are all harboring secrets they are determined not to expose. Some of the characters seem to be leading double lives and it’s impossible to know whom to trust. But what are these individuals hiding? We gradually find out over the course of a strange, rainy night at the hotel, as the plot unfolds in an ominous way.
There are exceptional performances across the board from the excellent ensemble cast. A major motivation for Drew Goddard as he embarked on the project was the prospect of working with a group of actors, all of whom he admires. “In general, when it comes to casting, I always look for two characteristics: Can you break my heart and can you make me laugh? If you can answer those two questions it’s a ‘yes’,” laughs Goddard. “For my entire life, Jeff Bridges has been both breaking my heart and making me laugh. So the movie really started with my wanting to work with him, to explore things that I hoped he hadn’t had a chance to explore before as an actor. I thought: ‘I want to see Jeff Bridges wearing a priest collar checking into a hotel; I want to see Jon Hamm carrying a vacuum cleaner checking into a hotel; I want to see Cynthia Erivo carrying her own bedrolls and the mystery that implies; and I want to see Dakota Johnson – who’s not carrying anything!”
Several of the main characters, says Goddard, represent 60s archetypes. “There is the tradition of the lounge singer, the priest, the vacuum cleaner salesman, the concierge and the dark outlaw with a mysterious past. It was very important to me to explore those archetypes as actual people, rather than as storytelling devices. I liked the idea of seeing them standing in the lobby together and I let the story progress from there,” says Goddard, adding that he can’t reveal more about his intriguing story.
Woven through the riveting and twisty plotline, are spying, wiretaps, lies and deception. In the El Royale, a dark basement passage leads to a hallway with two-way mirrors. “The people on the inside see themselves in the reflection in the mirror but, of course, on the other side, in the hallway, it’s glass and you can see through into the rooms and what the guests are doing,” explains the film’s production designer, Goddard’s frequent collaborator Martin Whist. “The person on the other side, in the room, doesn’t know there’s someone watching them.”
It’s no accident that Goddard set his story in the 60s – and it’s interesting that the film is relevant today too. Intelligent and philosophical, along with its theme of redemption, the movie deals with morality. Metaphors abound with allusions to fake news, secrecy and corruption. “I have always been intoxicated by the 60s,” explains Goddard. “In America, it was a time of great turmoil. You had the Kennedys getting killed; Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated; and Nixon taking over as President and everything that happened with that in terms of Watergate. At the same time, there was a revolution in art, music and film. So those two things – the tumult of real life, juxtaposed with the inspiration of the art – have always captivated me.” The film, says Goddard, is “my love letter to the 60s.”
Jon Hamm, who stars as vacuum cleaner salesman Laramie Seymour Sullivan, is, of course, no stranger to the 60s, having spent years playing Don Draper in the hit, multi-award winning series, MAD MEN. “The 60s is an era that suits me particularly well, I think,” says Hamm, commenting that socially, politically and artistically, “it was a very interesting time. You have the dichotomy of things that are at odds with each other. There’s the culture and the counterculture, the conservative folks and the hippie generation, the baby boomers. The younger generation was really driving the culture. It was a very turbulent time, a time of upheaval. And I think it’s a great time to set a story about redemption.”
“Everything was being challenged and pushed to the limits and questioned,” concurs Chris Hemsworth, “due to a whole lot of restriction in society at the time and previously. In the film, there is a real sense of people breaking out from all that. That’s reflected in everything from the costumes to the hair and the way the characters move.”
Key to evoking the atmosphere of the film is the hotel itself. Inspired in part by the legendary Cal Neva Resort in Lake Tahoe, which slices through the border of California and Nevada and was once owned by Frank Sinatra, the El Royale was conceived in Goddard’s imagination and became a reality when it was constructed on the set in Canada. “I liked the idea of a hotel that had a shadier side to it. I found that exciting,” explains the director. “Also, the movie is about these characters – who they are and who they were. I felt that the hotel would be a perfect petri dish in which to explore each of them,” says Goddard.
“The place has a faded glory, it’s like a faded rose,” says Martin Whist, “it appears to be alluring and pleasurable to begin with but the more you learn about it the more sinister it becomes.” There are also different colour palettes for the two sides of the hotel: “The California side is all warm colours and the Nevada side is all cool colours, a purple spectrum,” says Whist.
“California is about hope and opportunity in my mind, so that’s a much more vibrant and warm side. We have fun with the idea that there are different laws in terms of liquor licenses in Nevada as well, so you can only drink alcohol in the California side of the hotel. There’s gambling on the Nevada side,” says Goddard.
From the outset, there’s a sense of foreboding. Miles, the hotel concierge, played by newcomer Lewis Pullman in a nuanced and moving performance, warns Father Daniel Flynn, played by Jeff Bridges: “This is not a place for a priest, Father, you shouldn’t be here.” Bridges gives a powerful and moving performance as Father Flynn. “He is not your everyday priest. He seems a little un-put together, a little scattered in his thoughts. He is both good and bad, all kind of rolled into one. That sort of fits with my own personal philosophy, that there is goodness and badness in all of us. This film is shining a light on that idea, I think with all the characters.”
Rising British star Cynthia Erivo, a Tony Award winner for her performance in THE COLOUR PURPLE, is extraordinary as Darlene, a down-on-her-luck singer. “I like her a lot because she’s a fighter, she is fighting to be alive – literally,” says Erivo, “and she will not give up at all. She started out in a band, things didn’t go very well and she has decided to try and make it on her own. She knows that music is the thing that she wants to do and being in this hotel is probably one of the things that she needs the least, but it turns out that it could also be the key to her getting to where she wants to be. She’s there because it’s the cheapest option – and she finds herself right in the middle of all the crazy events that unfold around her. She’s savvy, she’s street smart, and she knows that something is going on!”
Another guest who is well aware of the goings-on at the El Royale is Laramie Seymour Sullivan, who checks in (alone) to the honeymoon suite and proceeds to spy on the other guests. “He appears to be an overblown, Southern gentleman, who sells vacuum cleaners door to door. Then we rapidly realise that’s probably not all he is,” says Hamm about his character. “He’s stayed at the El Royale before because of his job. He’s been everywhere.
He knows a lot of things. We wanted him to be this larger-than-life character, who is charming in a way, but also kind of menacing.”
There’s also a standout performance from Dakota Johnson as Emily Summerspring. “It’s hard to talk about Emily because I can’t give anything away,” says Johnson, who shot to stardom in FIFTY SHADES OF GREY. “I can say there’s a side to her that I think is resentful and she doesn’t really take any shit from anybody. Emily is certainly troubled; she’s kind of a bleeding heart. I think she was raised up in an environment which was dark and troubled, and where you had to fight for your life. Emily is extremely loyal and protective towards her sister Rose (Cailee Spaeny); she’s determined and very sure of herself.”
Fascinated by the era, Johnson says the late 60s “was a time when women were breaking rules and breaking out of the traditional female role. But I think at that time it was not typical for a woman to be so outspoken verbally and physically. In the late 60s there was a birth of freedom and expression, and Emily was definitely a part of that whole movement. Also, she fundamentally does not care what other people think.”
As the lives of the characters become inextricably entangled, we meet Billy Lee, an egomaniacal cult leader (seen shirtless in one memorable scene), played by Chris Hemsworth in a role unlike any he’s tackled in the past. “Billy Lee sees himself as a God-like figure. He believes he's rescuing people and saving them from ‘the system’ or from the government or forces that are controlling all of us. He is saying, ‘There is another way; look how we can live in peace and warmth and love one another.’ But it is all a façade for his own psychotic ego. He is essentially a lost soul himself. I desperately wanted to do something like this and not just for the sake of being a villain. I’ve spent a lot of my career playing the ‘hero,’” says the actor best known as Thor in THE AVENGERS films. “That becomes kind of predictable and so to be able to be unpredictable and turn left when you should turn right was great. This role meant digging into the psyche of someone a bit further. It was also the most free I've ever felt, because there is so much texture to the role,” says Hemsworth, who previously worked with Goddard on THE CABIN IN THE WOODS.
At the heart of the film is the emotive and vibrant 60s music. Goddard insisted on specific soul classics. Every song was chosen deliberately. “The music is the eighth character of the film. The conceit is that there is a jukebox in the middle of the El Royale, and so it started with the question: ‘What would be on the jukebox there in 1969?’ and from then on, frankly, I picked my favourite songs that I felt had an emotional resonance with particular scenes. The music functions as an emotional counterpoint to the story of the El Royale.”
Cynthia Erivo delivers a moving rendition of The Isley Brothers hit This Old Heart of Mine. “I sang it about 23 times because we needed all the different takes. And you know I relished that scene. It goes from beginning to end and is shot on two cameras and they move across the room. I saw the unedited version of it and it’s just brilliant. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“That’s my era; it’s the music I grew up listening to – it’s dear to my heart,” says Jeff Bridges, an accomplished musician himself. “It was such an exciting time. We had The Beatles and Bob Dylan and Motown. Drew would often play songs while we were acting, so we could get a sense of the music that was going to be supporting the various scenes.”
“Music in movies is such an important element,” adds Bridges, “and I think the way it is used makes a difference. For example, if you’re doing a moving scene, you’ve got to be careful about how you’re using violins, if you know what I mean! You don’t want to be telling the audience what to feel by shoving the emotion down their throats with over-sentimental music. You don’t want too much music or it will be distracting, and you don’t want too little. I think the choices that Drew made on the music are great.”
Goddard’s choices and his sense of detail are evident in every aspect of the film, from the hotel’s décor to the outstanding 60s costumes designed by Danny Glicker, whose impressive credits include MILK and UP IN THE AIR. “Jon Hamm’s vacuum cleaner salesman is a loud, vulgar person: he wears a loud, plaid jacket. There’s something very American about salesmen,” says Glicker. Cynthia Erivo’s Darlene, a lounge singer facing prejudice as she travels the country, is always attempting to be immaculately turned out. “There is a sense of properness and occasion for Darlene,” says Glicker. “As a single woman traveling the country, she really cares about presenting herself in a refined way because she has to demand respect wherever she goes. She’s wearing a skirt and blazer to check into the hotel. You can tell that she’s making do with the nicest things she has but her clothing budget has dried up a couple years ago.”
One of the most interesting challenges for Glicker was dressing Chris Hemsworth’s maniacal cult leader. “The idea was to really find an outfit that expresses the kind of effortless sensuality he projects to get what he wants. The shirt he’s wearing has hand embroidery all over it and really represents the efforts of his followers – because he’s not doing the embroidery, they’re doing it.”
In line with every other member of the BAD TIMES filmmaking team, Glicker says the highlight was working with the gifted filmmaker: “This is my first movie with Drew and what I loved about him is that, in addition to being such a brilliant writer, his visual vocabulary is so playful and sharp, and he takes such pleasure in it. To work with a director of that caliber is a joy.”
What’s interesting about Goddard’s work is that, while the film is thrilling, it’s also reflective. “It is well thought-out and nuanced, but it is also lean and mean,” says Chris Hemsworth. “This film holds your attention and speaks to the deeper subconscious in us. It addresses our fears, our darker sides and our vulnerabilities. And it challenges us to interpret these things ourselves. It is provocative and compelling.”
“It is both a psychological thriller and a whodunit, and it is an original piece of entertainment,” says Jon Hamm. “We don’t make movies like this anymore, that someone’s thought up and imagined. Visually, it’s amazing and there are big surprises. You won’t see what is coming – that’s for sure.”
“I love movies where you don’t know what to expect,” concludes Drew Goddard, “when you can surprise an audience – when you can make them laugh and break their hearts too. It is my ambition with this movie to give the audience something they have never seen before and to take them on a ride and a journey to a place they have never been to before.”
Bad Times at The El Royale is out in UK cinemas now.