Beirut

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."

In an unsettling irony, the movie's story about terrorist violence almost got derailed by local extremists. Across the street from the film's production offices, authorities discovered an ISIS cell. There, Islamic terrorists had reportedly built a bomb, and were planning to blow up a nearby McDonald's on the first day of Ramadan. "We saw these ISIS guys getting captured right in front of our offices," producer Mark Weber recalled. "The security people said - 'We got them. Don't worry about it'."

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."

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."

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."