HBO's sci-fi series Westworld takes us on an intriguing journey into an artificially
intelligent future and a synthetic, reimagined past, to a place where incredibly life-like
robots cater to the every whim of human guests at an Old West theme park.
Based on Michael Crichton's 1973 movie of the same name, the show brings together a
fantastic cast including Anthony Hopkins, Jeffrey Wright, and Evan Rachel Wood.
So, let's take a look at 10 crazy facts about HBO's Westworld.
The fly that crawls across the face of Dolores Abernathy in the show's premiere is actually
real!
In fact the production lists three fly wranglers in its credits, and according to actress Evan
Rachel Wood, who plays Westworld's oldest host, the flies used in the scene were semi-frozen,
so they were in a dormant state.
Then when they were placed on her face, they thawed and crawled around for ten minutes,
until eventually they could fly away.
However of course when we see the fly on her eyeball, but was added later in post production.
Apparently, Evan Rachel Wood got so Zen during filming that she actually fell asleep while
she was shooting a scene with Jeffrey Wright, who plays the head of Westworld's Programming
Division, Bernard Lowe!
It happened during one of the show's "Analysis Mode" scenes, which are when the park's staff
question the hosts who aren't meant to remember anything about it.
Wood says that filming those scenes was almost like meditating or going into a hypnotic state,
as she had to really concentrate on every move she made because each slight move or
subtle facial expression would really affect how Dolores would be interpreted both by the
other characters in the story and by the audience watching the show at home.
Although it's a rather adult theme park compared to Disneyland, Westworld was actually inspired
by the Happiest Place on Earth!
Yes, when author Michael Crichton first saw Disneyland's animatronics, it gave him the
idea to write and direct the 1970s movie Westworld, which this new series draws on.
Likewise, showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy have designed their Westworld theme park
to be, as they see it, "a fantasy world […] compelling enough to last generations", in other words,
it's a cultural institution much like Disneyland.
Indeed, one of the inspirations behind the show's character Dr Robert Ford, who founded
Westworld's park, is Walt Disney himself, and not Jurassic Park founder John Hammond,
as showrunner Lisa Joy says she's never seen the dinosaur-sized blockbuster!
Which is funny because the character of John Hammond was also created by author Michael
Crichton, and was likened to Walt Disney!
The production crew transported several big interior sets from California to Castle Valley
and Dead Horse Point State Park in Utah where they filmed a number of the show's exteriors.
For example, they put the set for the train we see arriving at Westworld on a flatbed
truck and drove it up and down Route 128 in Utah.
So, when we see James Marsden or Ed Harris's characters looking out of the train window,
they're actually looking out at the real Utah landscape, and not a green screen.
Showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy chose Utah for filming Westworld as they wanted
the show and its theme park to have the feel of the vast landscapes seen in director John
Ford's classic westerns, which also shot in the state.
The town at the heart of Westworld was filmed at Melody Ranch in California's Santa Clarita
Valley, which was has also been home to many productions from the 1950s Lone Ranger TV
series to Deadwood and the recent Magnificent Seven remake.
According to the website Deadline, extras who appeared in Westworld were asked to sign
a pretty interesting consent form.
The form included possible requirements the extras might face on set, for example to 'have
[their] genitals painted', or to 'pose on all fours while others who are fully nude
ride on [their] back', or even 'to contort to form a table-like shape while being fully
nude'.
The Hollywood website also said the extras were paid around $600 for the shoot, which
is nearly four times their usual day rate.
HBO responded to the claims saying that the "document […] was created by an outside
extras casting vendor" and that it "was not requested, written or approved by HBO, Warner
Bros Television, or the producers."
Showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy did a lot of research to create the theme park
in Westworld.
This included visiting Las Vegas to study how casinos are laid out and specifically
how the Strip is designed to lure visitors into different experiences.
Nolan and Joy also dug deep into the contemporary world of Augmented Reality and explored the
rules under which Artificial Intelligence is created and destroyed.
In fact, some of the questions put to Westworld's hosts, for example, whether they're lying,
are based on criteria used by real-life AI researchers to decide if the AI they're creating
is problematic.
The conversations Nolan and Joy had with people in Silicon Valley about the current and future
state of AI were mostly off the record, so they also decided to bring that notion of
extreme secrecy to their show.
Video games such as Red Dead Redemption, Skyrim, Grand Theft Auto, and a number of games by
BioWare also had a big impact on Westworld.
While Jonathan Nolan is a long-time gamer, his fellow showrunner Lisa Joy isn't, so to
fully understand the rules and components of gameplay, which were crucial for their
show, they played a lot of Grand Theft Auto together, however Joy's approach to the game
was rather unusual and included obeying traffic signs rather than mowing people down!
When it came to writing their show, the realism, immersion, violence, idea of morality as a
variable, and the level of sophistication of non-player characters in contemporary gaming
all made their mark on Westworld's theme park.
Movie-wise, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner was also an influence on Westworld.
In fact, Jonathan Nolan says he's watched the 1982 classic sci-fi flick countless times
as it's his brother, Christopher's favourite film.
And while the look of Westworld's amusement park draws on the classic Westerns of director
John Ford, for the control room scenes the show's cinematographer Paul Cameron went for
a mix 'of the starkness of 2001: A Space Odyssey or A Clockwork Orange for the upper floors'
and Slaughterhouse-Five for 'the bottom floor'.
Nolan has also compared the amnesia programmed into Westworld's hosts to the amnesia of Guy
Pearce's character in Memento, which was based on Jonathan's short story and adapted for
the big screen by his brother Christopher.
You can thank JJ Abrams, co-creator of Lost and director of Star Wars: The Force Awakens,
for getting the ball rolling on the new Westworld series.
Abrams came up with the idea to turn Michael Crichton's original movie on its head and
focus the new series on the robot characters and their perspective rather than just the
park's human guests.
Funnily enough, this isn't the first time Abrams has tried to get a new Westworld off
the ground.
Over 20 years ago he sat down with Michael Crichton, although things didn't work out.
To bring the new Westworld to life, Abrams, who was also a producer on Person of Interest,
reached out to that show's creator Jonathan Nolan, who's co-written movies such as Interstellar
and The Dark Knight with his brother Christopher.
Westworld is the first collaboration between Nolan and his wife, Burn Notice producer Lisa
Joy.
The perforated paper rolls that spin through the saloon's player piano, performing Old
Timey versions of songs by the likes of Radiohead and The Rolling Stones, are real, fully-functioning
rolls created especially for the show by Stephen Kent Goodman, whose California-based company
Gnaw-Vol-ty Rolls was given a super-tight deadline to complete the highly specialised
work.
Jonathan Nolan has said that the player piano that features in Dr Robert Ford's workshop,
the saloon, and the title sequence is a shout-out to author Kurt Vonnegut whose first novel
Player Piano was published in 1952 and takes place in an almost fully mechanised near-future.
And not only does the instrument serve as a metaphor for Westworld's hosts, but the
fact that it plays modern music in an old-fashioned style is also a reminder of just how artificial
and anachronistic the show's theme park is.
Now, guys, what do you think of Westworld so far?
And what are your theories about the world the show's set in?
If you enjoyed this video, do comment, like and hit that subscribe button.
And before you head off, I've got some really interesting videos exploring the making of
the movies Ex Machina and Interstellar.
Click here to check those out.
Thanks for watching and see ya next time!
Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers!