Trivia

The city of Tangier in Morocco proved to be especially suitable as a stand-in for Beirut because of a quirky chapter in the city's recent history. "Tangier had a building boom ten years ago and it all came from drug money," producer Monica Levinson explained. "When the government figured that out, they immediately put a stop to the construction, so you have a ton of buildings in Tangier that are just half-built shells. The government didn't want squatters to dwell in these buildings so they took sledge hammers and bulldozers and reduced the buildings to rubble. It was incredible to find all of that existing in Tangier."

Sorting through a stack of offers after completing his Emmy-winning run as Don Draper in the hit 'Mad Men' television series, actor Jon Hamm was pleased to find 'Beirut', a thoughtful thriller that offered a refreshing alternative to formulaic action blockbusters that currently dominate Hollywood. "Big political themes don't get addressed very often in movies anymore," the actor noted. "I was excited to make a movie that dealt with something important rather than just having the action element or a comic-book element, which seems to be the tenor of most large-scale movies right now."

Cinematographer Bjorn Charpentier paid homage to the time period chronicled in Beirut by fitting his cameras with vintage lenses. "We decided to shoot everything with vintage anamorphic glass from the '70s and '80s, which are not too sharp," Charpentier said. "You get a soft contrast and soft focus. Because those lenses were built from that era, when you combine that with Carlos [costume designer Carlos Rosario]' beautiful costume design, you look at the screen and 'Beirut' looks like it's actually a movie from the '70s."

The story of 'Beirut' begins long before Tony Gilroy established himself as the acclaimed storyteller. Back in 1991, while working on the romantic comedy 'The Cutting Edge' (1992), Gilroy met producer Robert Cort, who happened to be a former CIA analyst. "We had a lot of geopolitical conversations and Robert thought a movie about a foreign-service diplomatic negotiator would be fascinating," Gilroy said. "At the time, Beirut was a hot topic because Tom Friedman's book 'From Beirut to Jerusalem' had just come out. We wanted to put a negotiator in a historical setting where it could feel true to life without actually being a true story."

While locations in the largely Islamic country of Morocco offered filmmakers a perfectly imperfect landscape as stand-in for 1980s-era Beirut, the production's timing proved to be challenging. This picture was filmed during the month-long Ramadan holiday, which requires devout Muslims to fast all day. "For all of our local crew members, nothing could pass the lips during daylight," producer Mark Weber said. "No water, no food. We had some very hot, sunny, dusty days and that made it challenging to work efficiently." Under the circumstances, Weber said, "The crew did a great job."