A Hologram for the King

In fact, the Morocco production involved as much “intensity” as any filmmaker could ask for. Equipment trucks broke down. The March-April rainy season caused flooding on coastal areas that were supposed to appear arid. Insects swarmed. “We had one disaster or another every other day, from sandstorms and winds to the time billions of ladybugs came down on our set in Casablanca,” recalls producer Arcadiy Golubovich.


In recession-ravaged 2010, American businessman Alan Clay (Tom Hanks), broke, depressed and freshly divorced, arrives in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia to close what he hopes will be the deal of a lifetime. His mission: sell a state-ofthe-art holographic teleconferencing system to the Saudi government.

In fact, the Morocco production involved as much “intensity” as any filmmaker could ask for. Equipment trucks broke down. The March-April rainy season caused flooding on coastal areas that were supposed to appear arid. Insects swarmed. “We had one disaster or another every other day, from sandstorms and winds to the time billions of ladybugs came down on our set in Casablanca,” recalls producer Arcadiy Golubovich.

In fact, the Morocco production involved as much “intensity” as any filmmaker could ask for. Equipment trucks broke down. The March-April rainy
season caused flooding on coastal areas that were supposed to appear arid. Insects swarmed. “We had one disaster or another every other day, from sandstorms and winds to the time billions of ladybugs came down on our set in Casablanca,” recalls producer Arcadiy Golubovich.

After gave ‘ National Book Award-nominated novel a rave review on his Twitter feed in 2012, only one issue remained unresolved for the two-time Oscar®-winning actor. “I was already a big fan of Dave Eggers’ work, having read a bunch of his stuff including things he did with McSweeney’s literary review,” Hanks says. “Then I read A Hologram for the King in one sitting and my only question when I finished it was whether or not he wanted a movie made out of his book.

German filmmaker , who co-directed Hanks in the 2012 sci-fi epic Cloud Atlas, felt just as strongly about the source material. Tykwer, who had worked with Eggers previously on a miniseries
adaptation of the San Francisco-based author’s novel What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng, arranged a meeting with Hanks and Eggers at a Los Angeles hotel. After pitching his ideas for the book’s cinematic adaptation, Tykwer and Eggers came to a very un-Hollywood-like agreement. “Dave and I trust each other,” the director explains. “I love that he offered to get rid of all the contract stuff and just write on some piece of paper ‘I promise not to be an asshole’ and then we would both sign it. We’re very much on the same page when it comes to artistic exchange. Dave understands that once you let somebody take over your vision, you have to keep some distance.

Tykwer was equally excited about partnering once again with Hanks. “Working with Tom is liberating for a filmmaker because he’s so open-minded to every moment and every situation,” Tykwer says.

In his adaptation, Tykwer mined Alan’s predicament for laughs. “I decided to put most of my effort into making it work as a comedy,” he says. “Even though it’s a dark story about someone who’s in a really bad place, at the same time there’s something absurd about Alan’s situation. If you have Tom Hanks playing with all the potentials of that situation, the movie will be funny in a meaningful, complicated, but very fascinating way. That’s what I aimed for when I started the adaptation.

In addition to emphasizing the book’s humor, Tykwer bolstered the romantic elements as he translated Eggers’ story from page to screen. “The longer I worked on the script, the more profound the love story became because it connects to this whole third-act decision where the movie becomes a more optimistic tale,” Tykwer says.

Alan is coaxed out of his funk by Zahra Hakem, an alluring, talented surgeon portrayed by London-born . The half-Indian, half-English actress says she had her work cut out for her portraying a character that is so completely different from her. “Zahra is so not like me,” Choudhury laughs. To inform her performance, Choudhury followed doctor friends on their rounds, learned to speak Arabic and mastered a -specific accent for her English-language dialogue. Once filming began, Choudhury assumed the traditional clothing of a Saudi woman. “The first time I put on the hijab, it felt weird, like I was wearing a scuba-diving suit kind of thing,” she says. “It was strange wearing the scarf and the hijab until I got used to it. I didn’t think I would feel attractive in those clothes but I actually felt almost pretty, which I didn’t expect.

Before he meets Sarita, Alan forges his first solid human connection in with Yousef, a taxi driver played by Egyptian-born actor . “Yousef is walking on a border between two cultures,” explains Black, who worked primarily as a stand-up comedian before being cast in A Hologram for the King. Black’s Egyptian heritage proved to be a plus for director Tykwer.
Besides having an incredible sense of humor, Alexander brought this interesting balance between Western influences and Middle-Eastern roots from his own life,” he says.

Denied permission to shoot A Holograph for the King in Saudi Arabia, Tykwer and his team began scouting locations in the neighboring United Arab Emirates, where landscape and architecture would have provided a near-perfect match. But UAE officials ultimately decided to prohibit production there. and also proved unworkable, so the filmmakers wound up in Morocco, about 3,000 miles west of Saudi Arabia, where they began principal photography in March 2014.

Working from a few iPhoto images that Tykwer snapped while in Saudi Arabia, filmmakers fashioned their own version of KAEC in southern Morocco. Hanks had worked briefly in Morocco during the shoot of Charlie Wilson’s War, but this time around the actor spent nearly eight weeks in some of the nation’s most remote regions. “My idea of desert is Palm Springs or Death Valley, where if you just keep going a little bit further there’s going to be a city with hot water and every convenience. But we were shooting in the Western Sahara, a place where if you were on foot, you wouldn’t make it out alive.

Choudhury, who grew up in Jamaica, Mexico and Italy, found that some of the Moroccan locations reinforced her character’s sense of cultural constraint.

MoreMovieDetails

All Posts
0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Share this article: A Hologram for the King

Facebook
LinkedIn
WhatsApp
Pinterest
Email

MORE TOPICS

The Raven

A brutal killing spree terrorizes 19th-century Baltimore and a young detective turns to a notorious author for help getting inside the mind of a serial killer in the stylish, gothic thriller, The Raven, an audacious reimagining of the lurid tales of Edgar Allan Poe. Starring John Cusack as the infamous inventor of the detective fiction genre

Hitchcock

Hitchcock is a biographical drama film starring Anthony Hopkins, directed by Sacha Gervasi and based on Stephen Rebello’s non-fiction book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho.

In Love, Wedding, Marriage, a happy newlywed marriage counselor's views on wedded bliss get thrown for a loop when she finds out her parents are getting divorced.

Love, Wedding, Marriage

Love, Wedding, Marriage is a 2011 romantic comedy drama film directed by Dermot Mulroney, starring Mandy Moore, Kellan Lutz, James Brolin, Jane Seymour, Jessica Szohr.

In “A Beautiful Planet,” director Toni Myers and her team capture the gradual depletion of the Colorado River Basin, which supplies water to 40 million Americans in seven states, according to the film.

A Beautiful Planet

“A Beautiful Planet,” narrated by Jennifer Lawrence, gives moviegoers a never-before-seen glimpse of Earth from space and provides an increased understanding of our planet and galaxy.

The Rum Diary

The Rum Diary drama film directed by Bruce Robinson. Starring Johnny Depp, Giovanni Ribisi, Aaron Eckhart. American journalist Paul Kemp takes on a freelance job in Puerto Rico for a local newspaper during the 1950s and struggles to find a balance between island culture and the ex-patriots who live there.

Avatar is a 2009 American epic science fiction film written and directed by James Cameron and starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Joel David Moore, and Michelle Rodriguez.

Avatar

Avatar is a 2009 American epic science fiction film written and directed by James Cameron and starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Joel David Moore, and Michelle Rodriguez. The film is set in 2154, when humans are mining a precious mineral called unobtanium on Pandora, a lush moon of a gas giant in the Alpha Centauri star system.