Clint Eastwood Crew Films Family Jewell In Atlanta

Olympic park/Eastwood mash up image via JoBlo.com

For film buffs and Atlanta residents, summer headlines about Warner Bros. casting a new feature based on Richard Jewell may be old news.

For those further afield, the following roundup includes updates and photos from the set of the upcoming movie centered on the hero of the July 1996 Olympic Park bombing.

Hopefully a detail or two may also serve as informative updates for local readers.

I enjoy Clint Eastwood, a longtime favorite of this writer, equally for his behind-the-camera work and for original characters he created as an actor.

His film career spanning seven decades seldom includes five-ringed themes, but that's quickly changing with Eastwood directing a new picture based on the 1997 Vanity Fair article by Marie Brenner titled "American Nightmare: The Ballad of Richard Jewell," about which I first posted details in 2015.

At that time, Jonah Hill and Leonardo DiCaprio were set to star as the 1996 Olympic park security guard hero-turned-bombing suspect and one of his attorneys, respectively.

Consider me anxious -- for nearly four years and counting -- to experience this film.

For context: Getty Images photo of bomb investigation site taken July 27, 1996

Thanks to an online post by a fellow writer, earlier this month while my girlfriend visited from Russia, we enjoyed an extended peek at one of the Atlanta sets created for the film. For almost a week, Centennial Olympic Park's north end served as a closed set for Eastwood's team.

We snapped two night photos and several daytime images, sprinkled about this post (though not one is worth a thousand words in this case).

The image at right, for instance, offers a little taste of the set designers' take on Atlanta's "look of the Games" complete with an original Olympic torch logo created for the film.

More on what we learned around the site, where one overnight sequence involved detonating noisy pyrotechnics, follows later in this post, but first a bit more recent background.

During spring 2019, online sources said Eastwood reconfirmed involvement with the project in May, a cast was locked in within weeks, and shooting began in July. As of two weeks ago filming remained underway at multiple locations across Atlanta, with reported sightings of cast and crew both downtown and the city's upscale Buckhead district.

Paul Walter Hauser landed the title role. Some may recall his Olympic-tethered scenes in "I, Tonya" with pivotal action (sans Nancy Kerrigan knee-bashing gear) set inside Decatur's local favorite Asian restaurant, The Golden Buddha.

Paul Walter Hauser in "I, Tonya"

There's definitely a Hauser resemblance to Richard Jewell in other "I, Tonya" scenes as well.

Richard isn't the only Jewell family member who'll appear in Eastwood's project. Misery loves company as Kathy Bates signed on in (what I guess to be) a supporting role as Bobi Jewell, the security guard's mother with whom he resided, and endured throngs of media staked out at their apartment, when their lives were upended.

The film also stars Olivia Wilde as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter whose cover story about the bombing investigation put Jewell in a global spotlight, while Jon Hamm will don, er, drape the shoes and uniform of Tom Shaw, possibly a pseudonym for Georgia Bureau of Investigation officer Tom Davis, who helped Jewell to relocate bystanders before Eric Rudolph's pipe bomb detonated.

Sam Rockwell stars as Richard's criminal attorney Watson Bryant. It remains unclear whether Jewell's libel attorney, who made a name for himself by representing pariah clients, will be portrayed.

Now back to the local sets for the film.

In Centennial Olympic Park, Eastwood's crew built a replica of the AT&T stage, sound/lighting tower and concert area that operated in the summer of 1996. As a one-time Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games employee who watched the stage's original construction from the lunch room balcony of The INFORUM (ACOG's headquarters), no matter the angle the modern rebuild looked authentic.

From our western-edge vantage to view filming, we noted some of the finer details of the set, such as the mock Atlanta Olympic banners donning many stage elements.

In the rain, when some extras retreated to a staff tent and others stopped along the fence line to visit with non-cast friends, we noted their costumes included Olympic-branded gear with logos that matched the banners (both are of mock logos, not the actual AGOG trademarks and rings).

Nice touches, right down to the security guard pith helmets and baseball caps.

According to the Vanity Fair article, on the evening of July 26, 1996, a band named Jack Mack and the Heart Attack was playing just before the bomb exploded. We neither saw nor heard any music, as the evening of our scouting they were already filming post-explosion emergency response.











We also saw no EMT vehicles in scenes being filmed at night, but the following afternoon we spotted ambulances and police cruisers circa 1996 (or at least dressed to resemble the era) parked on the set as well. The blue pickup truck has a resemblance to Richard Jewell's personal vehicle, and the FBI investigations van (see photo) also looked "real" in broad daylight.

The centerpiece of the set was a recreation of the sound tower including a park bench like the one under which the original Jewell discovered Rudolph's backpack.

The set designers really nailed it (no pun intended) with "the look" of the damaged tower as it appeared during the 1996 investigation and as the park reopened with Ambassador Andrew Young leading the ceremony all those years ago.

A security guard hired for the film set informed us that the mock bombing, which took place in the middle of the night, brought at least one disgruntled hotel guest to the set to express her frustration for getting jarred out of bed without warning.

I am really curious who created the Olympic sport pictograms that decorated the set, and would love to know who was involved with the fictional XXVI Games banners. The color schemes are this close to authentic. Too bad, but the costume designer did not resurrect the brown skorts donned by summer of '96 female volunteers ... well, not "too bad," actually (they were terrible).

Our study of the set gave me hope Eastwood is committed to creating an authentic audience experience.

Reflecting on "The Ballad of Richard Jewell" article and its conversion for the screen, taken on by Billy Ray of "The Hunger Games" and "Flightplan" fame, I admit to biting my nails about the screenwriter taking liberties with Olympic facts as did the scribe for an earlier Eastwood film.

In 2014, Eastwood and Jason Hall -- screenwriter for "American Sniper" -- played fast and loose with five-ringed details, inspiring the most-read post on this blog (and the second-most read) in which the facts about an "Olympic sniper from Syria" are verified by the Arab state's national Olympic committee (there was no such character in real life).

For the Jewell feature, it's been reported the 2019 AT&T stage set included an actor portraying Kenny Rogers, the Georgia-based singer who did perform in the park in 1996 but, according to the Vanity Fair article, appeared in concert earlier in the week (not the bombing eve).

One wonders: when the final cut hits theatres, will Rogers show up in place of Jack Mack and the Heart Attack during the climactic bombing scene Eastwood & Co. recreated?

I am eager to see how and whether other International Olympic Committee, ACOG or USOPC (then USOC) players may show up in Eastwood's picture. For instance, an archived joint press conference hosted by the IOC, ACOG and FBI includes officials who are potentially quotable in Ray's screenplay, but only the FBI official is listed in IMDB.

Olympian Janet Evans appeared in explosion footage during a live interview that took place on the fateful night -- no listing for her portrayal in Eastwood's film, however.

And though the recreated AT&T stage includes several NBC affiliate studio spaces branded on the set, there are no IMDB-listed credits for cast members portraying NBC, CNN nor other national network reporters who covered the bombing and investigation.

As of this post, the only exception found in IMBD is a cast listing for an actor portraying Bryant Gumbel, who interviewed Jewell in the latter months of 1996, according to Vanity Fair.

It's my understanding "The Ballad of Richard Jewell" filming remains underway in Atlanta. I'll be on the lookout for signs with the production code "KIKI" and post updates as additional details emerge (please share via comments if you have them -- would love to hear from the extras selected for the film).

Photos by Nicholas Wolaver and Valentian Kucheriavenko except the movie still of Hauser from "I, Tonya" via Neon; top image of Eastwood via this site; Getty Images photo of bombing investigation at sunrise 7/27/1996 via this CNN archive link.