By Kevin H. Martin

In director Wim Wenders' The Million Dollar Hotel, mysterious circumstances surround the death of Izzy (Tim Roth), the son of billionaire media mogul Stanley Goldkiss (Harris Yulin). The young man, a would-be artist, takes a header from the roof of the titular hospice, which is a decaying abode populated largely by outcasts of society and former mental patients. FBI Special Agent Skinner (Mel Gibson) probes into Izzy's demise, coming into contact with the various tenants - one believes himself to be infamous Indian chief Geronimo (Jimmy Smits) while another, Dixie (Peter Stormare), claims to be the "unknown" fifth member of The Beatles. Ultimately, Agent Skinner is revealed to be as freakish in his own way as any of the hotel's off-kilter residents.

During the investigation, a swarm of press-hounds descends on the hotel, resulting in a media circus with many parties seeking to exploit the moment for selfish gains. Tar paintings purported to be creations of the recently deceased artist surface and are quickly seized upon for exhibition (and a quick cash-in) right there on the rancid premises. But flashes of beauty exist amidst this squalor as the possibility for love flares between two Million Dollar inmates - the shy, mentally slow Tom Tom (Jeremy Davies) and emotionally detached prostitute Eloise (Milla Jovovich).

Tortured souls, like those inhabiting this hotel - whether mad or simply different - have often been the focus of filmmakers. The cinematic lineage for such tales includes Tod Browning's 1932 classic Freaks (photographed by Merritt B. Gerstad), to Spellbound (George Barnes), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Haskell Wexler, ASC) and The Ninth Configuration a.k.a. Twinkle Twinkle, 'Killer' Kane (Gerry Fisher,). Such tales often touch on different perceptions of reality, and arguments revolving around what constitutes sanity.

The Million Dollar Hotel took a rather circuitous route to the screen, one spanning more than a decade. In the late Eighties, mega rock band U2, while prepping to shoot a music video for "Where the Streets Have No Name," selected the roof of an ancient hotel as its location. Built four-score and some-odd
years ago, the hotel, now known as the Rosslyn (located in downtown Los Angeles at 5th and Main Street) was once among the tallest edifices in Southern California, and played host to several visiting U.S. presidents before falling into disrepair. The U2 video was shot during the Reagan era, when many social programs had been cut-to-the-bone or eliminated. To the socially conscious band members, the results were quite visible in this area, with its mainly disenfranchised inhabitants, and the whole area overflowing with citizens attempting to carry on in spite of no healthcare. Fascinated by the rooftop sign, U2 lead vocalist Bono declared this edifice to be 'The Million Dollar Hotel,' (the edifice's longest-lasting and best known moniker) and began developing a notion for a script to take place there.

Specifics for the singer's tale varied, as a stage production was considered for a time before Bono approached screenwriter Nicholas Klein. Over a period of years, Bono made several consultations with German helmer Wenders (Wings of Desire, Until the End of the World, End of Violence) about the project. (The director had previously shot videoclips of the Irish band for a TV special and utilized U2's songs in several of his own movies.) Later, Mel Gibson's Icon Productions became involved, and the project received a green light when Gibson himself agreed to take an acting part in the under $20 million production, which would be shot on a tight 36-day schedule.

Wenders chose cinematographer Phedon Papamichael, ASC to shoot The Million Dollar Hotel due to an association that emerged some 18 months prior to principal production. "We had met through Deepak Nayar, a friend who produced this film as well as The End of Violence, and had also done a lot of David Lynch projects," relates Papamichael. "Wim and I started doing commercials together, which was interesting because he doesn't usually make commercials and I hadn't done many myself at that point. These were shot on distant locations, for Cadillac in Prague and Renault in Buenos Aires, and so they created good opportunities for us to spend time together traveling. Our backgrounds are very similar because we both speak German - he went to Munich film school and I grew up in Munich. While I am quite a bit younger than he is, I grew up being influenced by Wim's films as well as Robby Muller's photography."

"We're also both still photographers and we enjoy walking around cities and exploring, finding seedy little neighborhoods with good restaurants and wine bars," the cinematographer continues. "We'd take pictures of these areas. It was a nice way for us to ease in to develop a working relationship, rather than being thrown into a project and having to work stuff up on the fly." Papamichael's professional career in moviemaking began after a stint as a photojournalist. After shooting several shorts, he served as cinematographer on a series of low-budget features produced by Roger Corman. Recently, Papamichael has been twice nominated for an ASC Best Cinematography Award - for the TV pilot White Dwarf and the mini-series Wild Palms. He has also gone on to photograph a number of high-profile features, including While You Were Sleeping, Phenomenon, Unhook the Stars, Mouse Hunt and Patch Adams.

California Suite
Though Papamichael wound up shooting The Million Dollar Hotel in anamorpic, that format had not been his initial plan. "I had conducted extensive testing of Super 35 with Burbank's FotoKem facility," the cinematographer states. "We called them the 'Million Dollar' tests. I wound up being forced to switch the package to anamorphic based on these test results. I had chosen the 5289 800-speed stock, and after going through that whole IP blowup process needed to get a release print from Super 35 - the blow-up turned out to be just way too grainy. By switching to anamorphic, because of its big negative, I could use the 800 stock and it would still look really good. The new release print stock had come along by then, so we had good contrast and blacks I was happy with, despite the fact that I was slightly underexposing, having rated the exposure index for the film at ASA 1000." He used Vision 800T (5289) for 80 percent of The Million Dollar Hotel, with Vision 500T (5279) being employed for all daylight exteriors. "I could have chosen to go with a much-slower, finer-grained stock, but I found the 5279 was a much better match with the 800."

The switch to anamorphic actually took place just two days prior to Papamichael starting prep. "Fortunately, Panavision was able to come up with a package quite like the one I used on Patch Adams," he explains. "I shot Panavision on their C-series primes, which are a beautiful set of lenses. But you do have to shoot them at a stop of at least f/4 or they fall apart." He elected to rely on a limited selection of lenses: a 50mm, 75mm and 100mm, with the occasional use of a 180mm."

Perhaps as a result of their previous time together on various commercial shoots, Wenders and Papamichael wound up not having to devote the usual amount of time developing a preconceived notion for the film's photography. "He's a director who puts a lot of emphasis on visuals, so I had figured that we'd need a lot more prep and development time, but the look came to us without that kind of effort. Instead we let the building dictate a lot of the visual language."

At the time of production, the aging edifice was undergoing renovation, so the moviemakers ended up shooting on both occupied and unoccupied floors. "Moving the company around inside the building was a challenge," he acknowledges, "because this was a functioning hotel. We had to share the elevator with residents. Since this was a $55-a-week hotel - a place with junkies, lunatics and people throwing needles off roofs - we were all wearing helmets since bags of urine could come flying down." Even so, the production remained committed to using the Rosslyn for the duration. "Wim was really high on the idea of not having to cheat the locations. He didn't want to take the lobby from the El Dorado and the roof from the Million Dollar and cobble it all together. It wasn't a strict situation like a 'Dogma' rule, but he liked the idea of everything being from the same building." Most of the movie occurs within the hotel itself, but about a quarter of the action unfolds in a one-block radius around the hostel - a neighboring alley as well as an X-rated bookstore, a coffee shop and liquor store.

But since the actual Million Dollar lobby had to remain open and functioning for patrons, production designer Robbie Freed did have to construct a small dummy lobby for Million Dollar Hotel, within the actual foyer. "That three-walled construct allowed the residents to pass behind us and to check in," remarks Papamichael. "Other than that, the big art direction issues were mainly just a matter of painting hallways and staircases, along with the rooms that we chose to shoot in. The halls became a deep dark purple, while the stairs wound up orange. Everything else was really just detailing the rooms to reflect the tastes of their occupants."

The hotel's rooms are often seen from outside looking-in, while reverse angles presenting LA outside serve as a constant reminder of the relationship between those trapped in their dwelling and life outside in the rest of the world. "There are many different textures visible on the hotel's exterior surface," says Papamichael, "and while we showed these on occasion, we were more concerned with lighting the rooms within which these characters lived. We were shooting in a sort of Edward Hopper environment, making use of windows in these very small practical locations. Those windows also let us tie in the city exteriors so they were visible from inside the rooms. I lit everything that was going to be visible outside from the roof of our hotel with multiple Dino lights so the eye could see back four or five blocks deep. We laid cable from the generators in the parking lot and ran them up to the roof, and were wired in with a dimmer board so that it was all controllable from these 12-by-12 or 15-by-15 rooms we were shooting in."

On opposing rooftops, including the neighboring Frontier Hotel, Papamichael and longtime gaffer Raphael Sanchez also situated larger units (20Ks) to project a streetlamp-like aura. "Since the environment throughout has this dirty yellowish tone, I colorized some with one-quarter CTO and Y1 to simulate the sodium-vapor look. This made the situation feel much larger, because you were sensing the city coming through the room windows all the time. That helped us with the Hopper feel and, in fact, a lot of reviews coming in from Europe picked up on the Edward Hopper motif. We'd use very little light in the interiors during night scenes and instead have these lights from outside push in through the windows. Beyond a few little practicals, we usually used no more than a softbox or a Baby. This created a challenge for the dedicated crewmembers because we were working under difficult conditions - mostly at night, and spread over such a large area - our electrical crew was in constant motion. "

Ironically, that lighting scheme sometimes created a too-perfect look. "When we looked out of Tom Tom's room, the building across the way lined up perfectly. It wasn't overlit, but still it almost looked like a painted backdrop. As a result, while shooting down and out of the windows, I tried to keep the camera up high in the rooms in order to show more than the usual across-the-way views in painted backings. Viewers would see cars going by and realize there was more to it and that it was real." (Production often staged little scenarios in rooms across the way in the Frontier as well.)

Some dynamic, fluid camera moves also helped convey the reality of the location in relation to downtown Los Angeles. "We had occasion to push out past Tom Tom as he sits in the window. To do that, our key grip Dean King and his excellent crew rigged a mini-Lenny with a Matthews mini-mote into the little room, then pushed out past him, telescoping the rig to go out the window and then pan around the city. We'd turn the camera round and go toward the window right next to his, showing the actions of a musician going on inside that room. These days, it might be done on a stage and completed with computer augmentation, but we did it all for real." While views into neighboring and opposing windows suggest a measure of voyeurism a la Hitchcock's Rear Window, Papamichael did not emphasize this aspect, though the opportunity - especially through the character of Agent Skinner - certainly presented itself. "There's no surveillance camera-type stuff. Agent Skinner just plants bugs in the various rooms and listens to them in a command center he has created for himself. We cut from him to the rooms he is eavesdropping on to see what is happening, and then cut back to Mel's reaction."

While Million Dollar Hotel takes place predominantly at night, several instances did require daylight shoots. Out of both economic and aesthetic reasons, Papamichael opted for natural direct sunlight. "Being up on the ninth or eleventh floor a lot of the time on a show when we couldn't afford to carry 120-foot Condors for the duration of the shoot meant we had to use what was at hand," he reasons. "So I laid out the shooting day according to where the Sun was going to be in order to maximize natural and direct sunlight. Wim was very open to that; he understood the restrictions. If we could shoot a scene between 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., we could use the Sun and not need much supplemental lighting at all. I used an inclinometer and a compass, along with something I've used in the past, [Wide Screen Software's] sunPATH sun-tracking program, to figure out the path of light in advance. This let me get an idea of the sorts of light patterns that would spill into areas of specific rooms."

His natural light, narrow-shooting window approach obviated concerns relating to shifts in color temperature, since the scene would be wrapped before extreme changes in sunlight became noticeable. The grip crew mounted sheets of 85 gel on each window and applied layers of neutral density material that could be easily removed to maintain the desired F4 stop throughout. Supplemental interior lighting was minimal. "We'd have bounce cards in the room to reflect the sunlight, or else I would maybe use HMI Par lights to fill a bit."

High Art
The flophouse's rag-tag residents attempt to cash in on their 15 minutes of celebrity by bringing in a venerated British art dealer (Julian Sands) to evaluate the worth of Izzy's tar paintings. After canvasses are deemed to be of high-price value, the opportunistic occupants stage an elaborate gala opening that requires them to make a grand entrance for the gauntlet of reporters. (In the end, it is revealed that Geronimo appropriated stolen Julian Schnabel paintings as a basis for his tar work.) "Some of these people haven't left the hotel in 20 years and aren't very comfortable with this idea," notes Papamichael. "So they go out the back alley, get in the limo, then just drive around the corner to the front of the building to create the impression for the media that they are coming from a distance for this event. That was a very contrasty situation with little fill, so that was one of the rare instances requiring filtration. I used a white ProMist there, but went very light - one quarter at the maximum."

While slight use of a black ProMist - ranging from one-eighth to one-quarter - came into play when photographing unlikely romantic leads Tom Tom and Eloise, the most important aspect of portraying their relationship revolved around the cinematographer's moving camera. "Tom Tom and Eloise are always involved in a sort of dance, with each moving back and forth and around while checking the other out, almost like animals sniffing one another out," observes Papamichael. "I felt that Steadicam would be a very useful tool for this. Wim was not so keen on Steadicam because he felt the movement would be too random - he'd had some not-so-good experiences. We ended up using it much more than Wim ever thought we would, because the work of my Steadicam operator Kirk Gardner was just so good. Plus, this approach gave the actors a lot of freedom and let us get away from traditional scene blocking so we didn't fall into a lot of over-the-shoulder coverage. Also in terms of lighting, since most of the light came from outside the room, this and Steadicam made it possible for them to go anywhere in the room. Kirk was told to react to their actions. Usually a two-shot had someone coming into foreground, turning around, then moving again, away from camera, so the dance wound up being extended from the two characters to include the operator."

The would-be lovers also had their liaison enhanced visually through digital processing. "During post, Wim decided he wanted to be able to ramp to slow-motion for some sections of the film," recalls Papamichael. "This was used especially in Tom Tom/Eloise scenes to create a different reality around them, suggesting a unique kind of perception - kind of like what Alex Cox chose for parts of Sid and Nancy [Roger Deakins, ASC] when Gary Oldman [as Sex Pistols' vocalist Sid Vicious] observes certain things." Recently, Wenders' has developed more than a general interest in electronic acquisition, having shot his music documentary The Buena Vista Social Club entirely on digital video. He also joined his Road Movies production company Das Werk, the German-based visual effects/production house (translated as The Work) which handled digital trickery for The Million Dollar Hotel. In addition to these stylistic alterations introduced in post, Papamichael had also played with speed changes during shooting. "I shot some scenes of the characters that went from twenty-four to six frames-per-second. The acting would start normal, and then they began hopping around and going crazy. We watched dailies and saw this going on with the sound all off-synch as the frame rate changed, and I loved it. It didn't end up in the movie, but it was a great experience."

The Million Dollar Hotel both starts and ends with Tom Tom launching himself from the hotel roof, an act that duplicates Izzy's plunge to the pavement many stories below. "I wanted to shoot the fall entirely during magic hour," reveals Papamichael, "so we had to think it all out rather thoroughly, since this was going to be a pretty involved sequence, with multiple cameras and variable frame rates. There was stuntwork and a descender rig, so that was the one part of the film we storyboarded. We shot that over four consecutive days, moving from wherever we had been shooting up to the roof at around 4 p.m., then waiting for a 20-minute shooting window."

A helicopter-shot vista of the City of Angels opens the picture, leading into the first plummet. "You see all of downtown L.A and get an idea of the relationship of the hotel to the city. We fly around town and then the 'copter does a boom-down kind of move, allowing the hotel's rooftop sign to come into view from the bottom of frame to form the movie's title. We had to do some alterations before shooting, by taking some lettering off the real sign and changing it so 'The Million Dollar Hotel' letters were there. There were supposed to be blinking lights on the sign, and they were put on digitally [by Das Werk] as the sign is silhouetted against this dusk sky. Then we cut to Steadicam of Tom Tom walking on the roof, and he begins to run toward the edge in super slow motion before jumping off. That part was shot between 60 and 90 frames-per-second." The higher frame rates reduced exposure, so Papamichael compensated by starting each magic hour shoot with the most extreme slow-motion, and then going to slower frame rates for follow-up takes to maximize the waning magic hour illumination. (The movie concludes with a Hopper-esque view, this time of Eloise as glimpsed within a window. "She is sitting and looking at a photo while we pull away from her in a helicopter flyback that heads way out east so you're looking back at downtown Los Angeles - a kind of reversal from the opening fly-in.")

The two bookending suicides each feature shots of a stuntman (on a descender rig) plunging off the building, but these views lead into two separate and very different POVs from the falling man. "For the first jump, Tom Tom's POV as he falls has him looking into rooms on various hotel floors on the way down. We used the descender rig to send a camera down on a SpaceCam unit, within a remotely operated ball. As the camera dropped down 11 floors, it would see more of these little scenarios, including a couple in bed, and a guy doing kung-fu exercises." During the camera descent's final stage, the cinematographer achieved an unusual temporal morph in-camera. "While the shot was done at dusk, I had lit the lower floors - the bottom third of the building - with a simulated harsh sunlight through the use of Dinos on a Condor. As the camera drops, this change in lighting created a time-transition that took place on the side of the building right before your eyes. This let us go from magic hour into full daylight before the camera reaches the ground. As the camera turns down to go directly into the pavement, there is a smash-cut transition, and from there we're in daylight on another day. We see Eloise walking past and the Steadicam takes us back inside the building."

The second version of Tom Tom's flight features another point-of-view descent, but this one is pointed straight at the ground for the drop's duration. SpaceCam Systems president and unit designer Ron Goodman executed both plunging camera setups. While the looking-in-windows descent was accomplished by hanging the unit off the hotel roof, the more vertiginous down-view utilized for the second fall required a more elaborate rigging job, with lines run between a pair of buildings.

While some motivations are uncovered throughout The Million Dollar Hotel and a number of revelations hinted at, many of the story's mysteries remain unresolved with characters' fates hanging by tenuous threads. As such, cinematographer Phedon Papamichael, ASC believes that its artistic ambiguities might challenge stateside viewers. "Even though we see Tom Tom's recollection of how Izzy fell, a lot of the specific pieces of the puzzle are pretty unclear, even at the end," he allows. "I think this is why some people have problems with the story, since it is more atmospheric than plot-driven, and therefore not a traditional linear experience. Wim quite consciously chose to make this movie for young people. It has played all over in Europe, and there have been good responses there. [The film earned the Silver Bear and the Golden Camera awards at the Berlin Film Festival]. But American audiences are a bit different, and there's been a bit of a battle to get distribution here. It is a very moody piece, and so it will only be going to about 10 screens in February. After that, we'll just have to see what happens."

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