It's a "dysfunctional love story," says Bono. "A fable about the power of love." Ten years after he set pen to paper during an idle post-Joshua Tree moment, The Million Dollar Hotel has finally negotiated its torturous route to the silver screen. Filming has "wrapped," post-production is well underway and a premiere is set for the new year. Propaganda offers an exclusive insider's guide to the film -- and Bono talks about how it all came together.

Set in downtown Los Angeles circa 2001, The Million Dollar Hotel is directed by Wim Wenders, with a screenplay by Nicholas Klein and boasts a cast headed by Mel Gibson, alongside Jeremy Davis, Milla Jovovich, Jimmy Smits, Peter Stormare and Amanda Plummer. The story revolves around a colourful gang of unique and possibly unhinged misfits and outcasts living in the seedy downtown hotel of the title. Their story is told from the perspective of an innocent, lovesick soul named Tom Tom (Davies) who has fallen for a tarnished street angel called Eloise (Jovovich).

His love for her will turn their world upside down. The relationship of Tom Tom and Eloise unfolds as the Million Dollar Hotel receives some unusual attention -- one of its residents, an engaging junkie named Izzy, dies in suspicious circumstances, turning his cohorts into suspects and creating a media sensation. All come under the stoic scrutiny of detective Skinner (Gibson), a tightly wound uncompromising FBI agent.

Well, we're not about to give the plot away. Suffice to say that, according to the production notes, "this is a story of friendship, trust, betrayal, and the heart-breaking, overwhelming power of unconditional love."

"It is grotesque and hard," explained Gibson, whose production company Icon is making the film, "but also about love and has a lot of humour to it. That makes for a lot of possibilities."

Gibson read the script several years ago: "Bono gave it to me. It was an idea that he had a passion for. I really liked it. It actually took that long to kind of come together with all the right elements, the main component, I think, being Win. Last on board but most on passion for it."

A few months back Bono revisited the roof of the Frontier Hotel in Los Angeles, where he had the original idea, and talked on camera about the genesis and development of The Million Dollar Hotel.

Propaganda: When did the idea for The Million Dollar Hotel come to you?

Bono: I think it was on this roof, here. I can't remember the date, but about 10 years ago. Myself and Edge were on the roof, we used to hang a lot downtown here, there were some great clubs here. Everyone goes to bed in L.A. really early and we were looking for a smaller community to play with and we found one downtown, which was kind of nice for us. So we kind of knew this area. Anton Corbijn took us up to this roof to take our photograph. Myself and Edge were up on the roof of the Million Dollar Hotel, finding it kind of hard to believe that it was called the Million Dollar Hotel. And that's the funny thing about America, isn't it? -- the poetry of the place names, words seem to fall out of the sky here and it seemed like the name of a book or a play or a movie already, just waiting to be written.

The first clue we had was that if you got to the edge of the roof here, there's about a ten-foot jump to the other building and Edge was convinced he could make it. He said, "If you have faith, if you believe you can do it, you can do it."
That was the first thing that struck me, that leap of faith. Later on, we were up late, drinking at a home nearby, and I met Nicholas Klein and we were talking about movies, as you do in Los Angeles, and we had this idea that we were calling at the time "Kinetic Cinema" where, because of the invention of the Steadicam, for the first time, you could move the cameras around the actors, rather than the other way around. And we wanted to find a story we could do that way, where we'd rehearse the actors and then move really quickly. I said I had this play in my head called The Million Dollar Hotel about this character who tries to jump off the roof to get to the other side. And Nicholas, I remember, said, "Well, I have a line that I always wanted to start a movie with: 'After I jumped, it occurred to me...'" Nicholas had some very strong ideas and I had some and we thought we'd write a screenplay together. So that's where it all started really, with this jump, this leap of faith. I still have some sense of vertigo when I step on this roof, but now it's more about the movie than it is about the jump.

How did Wim Wenders' involvement come about?

I met Wim for the first time in Berlin when he was directing U2 for a version that we did of a Cole Porter tune called "Night and Day" for Red Hot + Blue, an AIDS benefit record. They had brought musicians and filmmakers together for this. We did music for a couple of Wim's films, so I guess it was a working relationship already. It was a bit too much for me to think that Wim might want to direct The Million Dollar Hotel, so I didn't ask him at first. I didn't think maybe that he'd go for it. But in fact, he has an unusual eye on America. I think he loves America and I'm sure he questions it, but I think through the music, especially. Wim's ears are more important to him, I think, than his eyes, a lot of the time. He grew up with a lot of American music and he loves America. You can see it in Paris, Texas, you can see there is a love of the landscape here. And we needed to have somebody bring a fresh eye to downtown Los Angeles, to not shoot it like a jeans commercial.

A lot of Wim's films seem to be about how hard it is to love and this kind of dysfunctional love story. But it is a love story and Tom Tom has a great sense of wonder, and that's my favourite quality in people. The people I hate the most are jaded people and people who have been there, done that. He brings out the sense of wonder in Eloise. Jeremy Davies and Milla Jovovich are so at home in each other's skin and that's an inspiration too. Yeah, it's a love story, as corny as that sounds, but it is an extraordinary love story about ordinary people.

What's your own role on the film?

My role is as co-writer of the story and producer - even though I don't know what that is. I'm also writing a few tunes for the soundtrack, I'm hoping to bring the band in on the soundtrack as well, if they can fit it into their schedule. We want to make one of those great soundtrack records, a strong mood record, like one mood with many different shades. We've got Jon Hassell to work with, who is maybe one of the greatest trumpet players alive, and a few other people I'd like to use...Nina Simone, I'd really like to work with her. Daniel Lanois is going to produce it and he's got a couple of tunes, Brian Eno as well. When I was here ten years ago, I remember walking through the corridors of the hotel and I found this awful empty bottle of cheap liquor that one of the people who live here was drinking. It's called Wild Irish Rose, it's the cheap liquor they drink down here. So, we've got a tune called "Wild Irish Rose," but it was written ten years ago. Every trip downtown to the hotel sets off a tune or two, but I can't really tell you about it, I don't know enough right now.

Was writing for film a refreshing break from writing songs?

I get tired of writing in the first person. The idea of writing in the third person is a real break for me. A lot of U2 songs are in the first person, that's why they play well live. They're not story songs, we don't do story songs really. So I wouldn't mind a break from that sometimes, and writing in the third person or playing somebody would be my only reason for wanting to act, if I ever decide to do that. It would be to escape myself for a minute and actually disappear into somebody else's life. With scripts, it's like sending off your children and you're lucky if they come back without an arm or a leg or three legs or whatever it is. I'm sure Nicholas feels that way. So you really want to make sure that the foster parents are people you trust. In the case of Wim, I don't feel like it's a foster parent, I actually feel like it was always his story in an odd way. I think he has elevated it and I think the cast has elevated the material, which is what you want to see. You want to be surprised. I've seen the work so far and it's a great script...but there is something going on here that is not just about good writing or not just about good directing, there is a certain magic, a chemistry that I hope will make a great movie.

What has it been working with Mel Gibson?

One of the surprises for me was Mel Gibson and how he managed to bring a kind of mischief as well as menace to the role of Skinner. There is an amazing scene with him and Eloise in the car park where she kind of intimidates him and he almost becomes handicapped, he becomes Tom Tom. I think it was a great piece of improvisation from him. You forget when you've got such a big star in your movie that he can also be a great actor and he really is.

There have been a lot of smart movies made in the last ten years, luminous pieces of work, you know, ultraviolet, beautifully lit, smart dialogue, and it's very impressive, but I want The Million Dollar Hotel to break people's hearts because you don't see that in a smart movie, normally.

It's easy for rich rock stars and the like to romanticise a place like downtown L.A. and I've seen the suits stepping over the bodies on their way to the banks and it seems to heartless sometimes. The hotel is populated by all kinds of people. There are deadbeats and people who were put out from mental institutions and set up here. And then there are just good people getting on with their life, decent people who have come to Los Angeles and want some inexpensive accommodation. And you see some dignity, some real dignity and humour from the locals. I think it's been very amusing to have some of the locals turn up in the food queues here on the set and no one has said anything. I have mixed feelings about the hardships of some people's lives, but I am inspired by the light that's in the odd eye that you bump into on the street.

I'm always looking for the precious gems in the rubble, in the mud. The discovery of beauty is what every artist is looking for. And not like in fashion photography where it is obvious, where you can take a beautiful face and say it's beautiful, that's not a big deal. But actually to find it in unexpected places, that's the job of the artist. To come right into the heart of filmmaking in America, to go to downtown L.A. and to miss Hollywood, to an area that people don't come to when the sun goes down and to find some beauty in downtown, in the Million Dollar Hotel, to find some light, some color, that's not bad.

© Propaganda, 1999. All rights reserved.