Hail, Caesar! Information

Hail, Caesar! is a 2016 American comedy film written, produced, edited, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. The film stars Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Alden Ehrenreich, Ralph Fiennes, Jonah Hill, Scarlett Johansson, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, and Channing Tatum. The film is a fictional story that follows the real-life "fixer" Eddie Mannix (Brolin) working in the Hollywood film industry in the 1950s, trying to discover what happened to a cast member who vanishes during filming.

First revealed in 2004, the film was originally set to take place in the 1920s and follow actors performing a play about ancient Rome. The Coens shelved the idea until late 2013, when they stated it was in development. Principal photography began in November 2014 in Los Angeles, California. The film premiered in Los Angeles on February 1, 2016, opened wide February 5, 2016, and opened the 66th Berlin International Film Festival on February 11.

Hail, Caesar! received generally positive reviews from critics, many of whom praised its casting, and has grossed over $53 million.

Plot

In 1951, Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) is the head of physical production at Capitol Pictures and a "fixer" to keep the scandalous behavior of its stars out of the press. The Lockheed Corporation has been courting him with an offer of a high-level executive position, but he is unsure about taking it. When unmarried synchronised swimming actress DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson) becomes pregnant, Mannix arranges for her to put the baby in foster care and then adopt it without revealing herself as the mother. He often has to fend off inquiries from Thora and Thessaly Thacker (both played by Tilda Swinton), twin sisters and rival gossip columnists.

The studio's major production is Hail, Caesar!, an epic set in ancient Rome and starring Baird Whitlock (George Clooney). During a shot, Whitlock drinks from a goblet of wine that was drugged by an extra (Wayne Knight); he passes out while rehearsing lines by himself behind the soundstage and is abducted. A ransom note soon arrives, written by a group calling itself "The Future" demanding $100,000. Mannix arranges to get the money from the studio's Accounting Department, as "petty cash." Whitlock awakens in a beach house and finds his way into a meeting of The Future, a Communist cell. The members, who introduce themselves as mostly writers in the motion picture industry, explain their doctrine to him and begin to win him over to their cause. At the same time, Thora Thacker threatens Mannix by stating she will release an article about a scandal involving the earlier film On Wings With Eagles. Mannix successfully negotiates for her to postpone the story by a day in exchange for information about the romantic lives of several actors.

Meanwhile, singing Western film star Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich) is cast in a period drama helmed by posh director Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes) in an attempt by the studio to broaden his appeal. After Doyle's initial performance is hopelessly inept, Laurentz visits Mannix and asks him to remove Doyle from the project in order that Laurentz can preserve his artistic vision for the film. Mannix informs Laurentz that Doyle's role is non-negotiable and convinces him to coach the young actor to give a better performance. Later, Doyle comes to Mannix's office and admits that he feels the part is too far outside his comfort zone. Mannix reassures him that he has the needed acting abilities and also reminds him how good the studio has been to him.

That evening Doyle attends the premiere of one of his own Westerns with starlet Carlotta Valdez (Veronica Osorio), per instructions from Mannix. While watching the film, Doyle is initially disappointed that his lone singing scene in the film is depicted in a comedic manner, rather than as heartfelt as he intended. However, after seeing the audience react positively to the scene, Doyle warms to it himself. Following the premiere Doyle and Valdez visit a nightclub, where the pair are genuinely developing chemistry with each other until they are interrupted by both Thacker sisters each looking to get a scoop on their relationship. Doyle suddenly spots the briefcase containing the ransom money across the room, recognizing it as he had lent Mannix his belt to keep it closed. It is being carried by Burt Gurney (Channing Tatum), star of a sailor comedy film depicted earlier in an elaborate dancing scene.

Doyle follows Gurney to the beach house in Malibu but, after walking in the front door, finds only Whitlock inside. The rest of The Future's members have rowed a boat containing Gurney offshore so that he can rendezvous with a Soviet submarine and move to Russia. The members of The Future give him the money for the Communist cause. As he boards, his dog jumps into his arms, causing him to drop the briefcase, which sinks into the ocean. Doyle takes Whitlock back to the studio just before the police arrive at the beach house to arrest the group.

Whitlock tries to explain his new-found Communist leanings to Mannix, who cuts him off sharply, slapping his face numerous times, and orders him to finish his role in Hail, Caesar! Thora then meets with Mannix and informs him that the column she plans to publish about On Wings With Eagles will reveal that Whitlock got his major role in the film by having sex with Laurentz. However, Mannix has deduced that Gurney is her source for the piece and persuades her to not run the story since Gurney is a Communist"?which would cause her own reputation suffer by association. DeeAnna marries Joseph Silverman (Jonah Hill), a surety agent who had agreed to take her baby into foster care. Mannix decides to reject the Lockheed offer and continue working at Capitol.

Historical context

Set in 1951, Hail, Caesar! takes place at a transitional time for the film industry. The studio system was breaking down, and a Supreme Court ruling had forced studios to divest their movie theaters. Television, then still in its early years, threatened to pull away audiences. The Cold War and the Red Scare were both underway. Hollywood responded by creating escapist fare: westerns, highly choreographed dance and aquatic spectacles, and, as the film title suggests, Roman epics with massive casts.

Writing in the Washington Post, Kristen Page-Kirby noted that the nostalgia for the Hollywood golden age is heavily filtered by time. "It"?s easy to look back at any part of the past and say, 'Yeah, that"?s how it should be today.' Hail, Caesar! uses the uniformly terrible fake movies within it to show that while we all remember 1946 for stuff like The Yearling and Notorious, it also gave us Tarzan and the Leopard Woman."

Cast

• Josh Brolin as Eddie Mannix, a tough but conflicted "fixer" who keeps actors' scandals out of the press.
• George Clooney as Baird Whitlock, a Kirk Douglas-type film star.
• Alden Ehrenreich as Hobie Doyle, a Kirby Grant-type "singing cowboy" actor and one of Mannix's clients.
• Ralph Fiennes as Laurence Laurentz, an acclaimed European film director, long resident in the United States.
• Jonah Hill as Joseph Silverman, a surety agent who works with the studio.
• Scarlett Johansson as DeeAnna Moran, an Esther Williams-type actress who becomes pregnant while her film is in production.
• Frances McDormand as film editor C.C. Calhoun
• Tilda Swinton as both Thora Thacker and Thessaly Thacker, feuding identical twin sister gossip columnists, mimicking the rivalry between Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons.
• Channing Tatum as Burt Gurney, a mysterious Gene Kelly-type actor/dancer. Another of Mannix's clients.
• Alison Pill as Connie Mannix, Eddie Mannix's wife and mother of their two children.
• Vernica Osorio as Carlotta Valdez, a Carmen Miranda-type actress
• Emily Beecham as Dierdre, an actress who appears opposite Hobie Doyle in Doyle's debut non-Western film role.
• Heather Goldenhersh as Natalie, Mannix's secretary
• Wayne Knight as unnamed film extra and Communist operative who carries out the kidnapping of Baird Whitlock.
• Max Baker as John Howard Hermann, head of a communist screenwriters "study group".
• Christopher Lambert as Arne Slessum, a Scandinavian filmmaker, who is most likely the father of DeeAnna's child.
• Fred Melamed as Fred, a Communist screenwriter
• Patrick Fischler as Benedict, a Communist screenwriter
• David Krumholtz as a Communist screenwriter
• Fisher Stevens as a Communist screenwriter
• Alex Karpovsky as Mr. Smitrovich
• Clancy Brown as a co-star in Hail, Caesar!: A Tale of the Christ
• Robert Picardo as Rabbi
• Natasha Bassett as Gloria DeLamour
• John Bluthal as Herbert Marcuse
• Dolph Lundgren as the Soviet submarine commander who brings Burt Gurney to Russia, shortly before the other communists are arrested and their cell broken up by the authorities.
• Michael Gambon as the narrator

Production

• Joel Coen - director, screenwriter, producer, editor
• Ethan Coen - director, screenwriter, producer, editor
• Eric Fellner - producer
• Tim Bevan - producer
• Roger Deakins - cinematographer
• Mary Zophres - costume designer
• Carter Burwell - music composer

Development

The idea and title were first suggested by the Coens in July 2004. A comedy film, the story was originally said to follow "a troupe of actors in the 1920s putting on a play about ancient Rome", with the focus on a matine idol. George Clooney was to play the main character. In February 2008, the Coens said that the film did not have a script, but only existed as an idea. They stated that it would be the third in the "Numbskull Trilogy" with Clooney, following O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) and Intolerable Cruelty (2003).

The project was mentioned in a December 2013 interview about Inside Llewyn Davis. Joel Coen revealed that they were "working on" Hail, Caesar!, and that it would likely be their next project. The Coens reconfirmed the film's development in May 2014, with the plot now focused on a "fixer" working in the Hollywood film industry in the 1950s.

Pre-production

In December 2013, the Coens confirmed that Clooney would remain involved with the project. In June 2014, Josh Brolin, Channing Tatum, Ralph Fiennes, and Tilda Swinton joined the cast, Universal Pictures was announced to be distributing the film, and Eric Fellner and Tim Bevan signed on to produce the film for Working Title Films. In July, Jonah Hill and Scarlett Johansson entered talks to join the production. Johansson would portray "an actress who suddenly becomes pregnant as her film is about to go into production". The next month, Johansson and Hill were confirmed to have joined the cast, and Alden Ehrenreich entered negotiations to star. In a September 2014 interview with The Daily Beast, Frances McDormand said she had a role in the film. In October, Patrick Fischler, David Krumholtz, and Fisher Stevens joined the cast as communist screenwriters, and Clancy Brown joined as an actor in the film within a film, also titled Hail, Caesar! The following month, Christopher Lambert was cast as Arne Slessum, a European filmmaker who has an affair with Johannson's character. In a November 2014 interview at the Ottawa Pop Expo, Robert Picardo revealed that he had a role in the film and that he was set to begin filming in December.

Costume design

Costume designer Mary Zophres began work 12 weeks ahead of shooting, researching period wardrobe from the late 1940s on the assumption that most people routinely wear clothes purchased over the past few years. She designed for a working film studio of the early 1950s, plus six genre films, each of which featured a major actor working on the set for about a week. Photos from the MGM library and the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences showed that film crews dressed more formally: no shorts or sneakers. She produced about 15 boards of preliminary sketches, including "sculptural Technicolor gowns" for the ballroom drama that were inspired by the work of Charles James. Her double-breasted suit for Josh Brolin was intended to blend with his skin tone, his moustache was styled after Walt Disney's, his hair was permed, and his character alone wore a fedora. Zophres modeled Channing Tatum's look on Troy Donahue and Tyrone Power. The film ultimately required more than 2,500 costumes, including 170 Roman extras, 120 Israelites and about 45 slaves. About 500 of the costumes were custom-made for the actor. Toward the end of the shoot, the scope of the project overtook the budget, and Zophres completed some of the sewing herself.

Filming

In October 2014, Roger Deakins posted on his site that he would be the film's cinematographer and was shooting test footage. Principal photography on the film began in Los Angeles, California on November 10, 2014. According to the Los Angeles Times, the Coen brothers' decision to film in Los Angeles increased filming activity in the city, which had previously been down by "a double-digit percentage... in the fourth quarter [of 2014]". Later the same month, Kate Morgan Chadwick was seen filming with Brolin. Also in November, Emily Beecham was said to have a role in the film. In December, Clooney was photographed in full Roman regalia while filming scenes in Downtown Los Angeles.

Tatum dyed his hair blond for his role as a tap-dancing sailor, one of five in the "No Dames!" sequence set in the Swingin"? Dinghy bar. The actor, who had danced hip-hop and street, but not tap, worked without a double after much training. Other dancers came from Broadway, including Clifton Samuels, who said that the scene's greatest challenge was not Christopher Gattelli's choreography, per se, but maintaining the style of the period "in which the dancers must stay on the balls of their feet." A split-screen scene from the That"?s Entertainment! trilogy influenced the Coen's decision to widen the shot to reveal crew members pushing the set into place.

Hail, Caesar! was the first movie that Deakins shot on film since True Grit in 2010. The Coens had themselves said that their previous movie, Inside Llewyn Davis, would probably be their last use of the medium. But with Hail, Caesar!''s classic Hollywood theme making film an obvious choice, Deakins agreed to give it one more try. ("I don"?t mind," he recalled saying, "I"?ll shoot it on a cell phone if you like.") Ultimately, though, film proved a limited palette due to the narrowing choices of stocks and processing options in the wake of digital cinematography. He didn't recall encountering those kinds of problems on earlier projects. "But it makes me nervous now. I don"?t want to do that again, frankly. I don"?t think the infrastructure"?s there."

Locations

Southern California locations were used throughout the film, presenting a challenge to location manager John Panzarella. He noted that "period locations are disappearing fast", including several employed in an earlier film he scouted, the 1997 LA Confidential. The Warner Bros. studio, which, unusually, has retained its vintage buildings, stood in for most of the fictitious Capitol Pictures Productions after trailers, electrical hookups and other contemporary fixtures were removed. Union Station in downtown Los Angeles was also used for some studio exteriors. The synchronized swimming scene with Scarlett Johansson was choreographed and directed by Mesha Kussman, and performed by the Aqualillies, a Los Angeles-based group of professional synchronized swimmers. They worked at the water tank on Stage 30 at Sony Pictures Studios; the tank was also used for Esther Williams films and was under restoration until a week before shooting. The wood-paneled conference room where Mannix vets the movie with religious leaders was filmed at the Cravens Estate's drawing room in Pasadena. The office of general counsel Sid Siegelstein was shot at a 1929 building in Los Angeles's Arts District later owned by Southwestern Bag Co. The building was designed by the same architecture firm that did UCLA's Royce Hall.

Locations used for scenes beyond Capitol Pictures included the Appian Way scenes, which were shot at the Big Sky Movie Ranch in Simi Valley, and the western sequence, which was filmed at Vasquez Rocks Natural Area Park. The well of Jehoshaphat sequence was shot at Bronson Canyon, formerly a quarry, in Griffith Park. The nightclub interiors, scene of Carlotta and Hobie's date, was shot at the Hollywood Palladium, with the exterior at the Fonda Theatre. Carlotta's house exterior was filmed at a 1927 home in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles; this was also the locale for The Good Luck Bar, which stood in for the Imperial Gardens Chinese restaurant. The movie premiere was shot in the Los Angeles Theatre, selected for its spacious lobby.

Post-production

Digital effects for Hail, Caesar! encompassed three areas: standard effects like Ehrenreich's lasso tricks, period effects including a matte painting of Rome that referenced the 1951 film Quo Vadis, and effects intended to blur the line between a 2016 film and the vintage movie-making techniques it portrays. Examples of the latter include a green screen car sequence made to look as if it employed the older technique of rear projection, and the submarine sequence, which employed computer graphics that suggested the use of miniatures. "It was important that the sub not look silly", said effects supervisor Dan Schrecker, whereas "the whole point of that Rome matte painting was that it was ridiculous." He said that the burning film frame in McDormand's Moviola scene was the real thing, created by Sam Spreckley, a Scottish visual artist who experiments with the technique. The special effects of the beach house on the bluff were meant as an homage to North by Northwest.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack for the film, titled Hail Caesar!: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, features the original score by Carter Burwell, and an original song performed by Channing Tatum. The soundtrack was released via digital download and physical formats on February 5, 2016, by Back Lot Music.

Carter Burwell composed the score for the film, and wrote original songs along with Henry Krieger and Willie Reale.

Marketing

Universal and Working Title released the official trailer on October 9, 2015. On December 29, 2015, the first poster for the film was released. On January 7, 2016, another poster was released.

Release

The film premiered at the Regency Village Theater in Los Angeles on February 1, 2016 and was released in the United States on February 5, 2016. The film opened the Berlin International Film Festival on February 11, 2016. It was released in the United Kingdom on March 4, 2016.

Reception

Box office

, Hail, Caesar! has grossed $29.7 million in North America and $23.8 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $53.5 million, against a budget of $22 million.

The film was released in North America on February 5, 2016, alongside Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and The Choice. The film was projected to gross $9-11 million from 2,231 theaters in its opening weekend. It made $543,000 from Thursday night previews and $4.3 million on its first day. The film grossed $11.4 million in its opening weekend, finishing second at the box office behind Kung Fu Panda 3 ($21.2 million). In its second weekend the film grossed $6.4 million (a 44% drop), finishing 6th at the box office.

Critical response

Hail, Caesar! has received positive reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes the film has a rating of 84%, based on 243 reviews, with an average rating of 7.1/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Packed with period detail and perfectly cast, Hail, Caesar! finds the Coen brothers delivering an agreeably lightweight love letter to post-war Hollywood." On Metacritic the film has a score of 72 out of 100, based on 50 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

The New Yorker's Richard Brody called the film "a comedy, and a scintillating, uproarious one, filled with fast and light touches of exquisite incongruity in scenes that have the expansiveness of relaxed precision, performed and timed with the spontaneous authority of jazz." Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan called it a "droll tribute to and spoof of Hollywood past [that] amuses from beginning to end with its site specific re-creation of the studio system and the movies that made it famous." The Coens were "helped enormously by a splendid and committed ensemble cast."

John Anderson of The Wall Street Journal wrote: "A dispiritingly vitriolic, only sporadically funny satire of "?50s Hollywood, Hail, Caesar! verifies a suspicion long held here, that the Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, really hate the movies. Their central character, Eddie Mannix...is being wooed by Lockheed. Better hours. Better pay. Lifetime employment. Fewer nut jobs. And work that wouldn't be quite so . . . frivolous. The movie makes a strong case that the Coen brothers feel the same way. You start to wonder why you're sitting there watching."

The Atlantic associate editor David Sims concluded the opposite. Coen protagonists, he wrote, sometimes ask questions of higher powers"?and receive no answer. "In Hail, Caesar! the answer is given, and it"?s as hopeful as one could expect from the Coens: Cinema"?s somber, weighty moments matter, but equally crucial are the frivolous, joyful bits of entertainment"?watching Channing Tatum tap-dance on a table, or George Clooney ramble overwritten monologues."

Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote that Hail, Caesar! falls between the filmmakers' masterworks and duds. "It"?s a typically sly, off-center comedy, once again set against the machinery of the motion-picture business. And, as usual with the Coens, it has more going on than there might seem, including in its wrangling over God and ideology, art and entertainment."

Richard Roeper gave the film four out of four stars, calling the film one of his favorite movies ever made about making movies. IGN gave the film 7.7/10, saying, "Hail, Caesar! may not be one of the Coen Brothers' finest efforts"?and it might not engage viewers beyond Los Angeles or those who truly understand or work in the film industry"?but it's nevertheless a fun, charming, and oft-hilarious take on Hollywood's Golden Age." In a review for The Village Voice, Melissa Anderson praised the performances, but found that the tone and humor of the film "too often goes flat."

Audiences were unenthusiastic about the film. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C?" on an A+ to F scale. 52% of the opening day audience were males while 84% were over 25, with both demographics giving the film a "D+" grade, while those over 50 years old gave the film a grade of "D?". On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 45% from audiences.