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There is no shortage of unique architecture in Southern California. The Bradbury Building, LADWP, and the 8500 apartment complex all immediately come to mind as highly individualistic spots. One structure stands heads and shoulders above the rest, though, as being extra extraordinary – The Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites in downtown Los Angeles. If you’ve ever found yourself on the 110 Freeway, you are sure to have spotted its futuristic edifice gracing the skyline. It’s been called “the world’s largest cappuccino machine,” “a bronzed grain elevator,” and “Camelot in glass” (all per a 1976 Baltimore Sun article that is not available to link to online). Regardless of one’s feelings about the aesthetic of the massive towered building, its Hollywood allure can’t be argued. Location managers have flocked to it like a beacon since its inception. I happened to pop into the exceptional hotel last month and when my eyes landed upon the fountain Harry Tasker (Arnold Schwarzenegger) famously rode a horse through in True Lies, I realized that, although I wrote a brief post on the place back in 2008, it was definitely time for a redux.
The Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites, originally known simply as the Los Angeles Bonaventure, was constructed from 1974 to 1976 at a cost of $110 million. Designed by architect John C. Portman Jr., at the time it was the most expensive lodging ever built and the city’s largest. It still holds that latter distinction today.
The 367-foot-tall Postmodern structure, which consists of 5 mirrored cylindrical towers flanked by 12 glass elevators, makes for a strikingly unique vision along the downtown horizon.
Housing 35 floors, the goliath hotel boasts a lobby with a 6-story atrium and a rambling indoor fountain so large it is often referred to as a “lake.”
The Bonaventure also features 1,358 rooms, 135 suites, an outdoor pool, a gym, 155,000 square feet of meeting and event space, and a plethora of restaurants and watering holes including the famed BonaVista Lounge, a revolving bar situated on the 34th floor.
There’s even a mall on the premises with more than 40 stores and a food court!
The Grim Cheaper and I have checked into the Bonaventure several times over the years and have always enjoyed our stay. The rooms are small, but well-appointed and modern . . .
. . . and boast views for days!
And days!
To say that the Bonaventure is unique would be an understatement.
With its cement-clad interior, the hotel is almost post-apocalyptic in its minimalism and starkness . . .
. . . and I mean that in the best way possible.
Though no longer the case, the Bonaventure formerly boasted a highly unusual open-air gym on its third floor with pod-like overhangs holding exercise machinery cantilevered over the lobby below . . .
. . . each of which branched off a small indoor track, as you can see in the images above and below that the GC and I snapped during a 2005 visit.
The exercise equipment has long since been removed and today the former gym area remains eerily vacant.
The place even has a few ties to true crime! On October 7th, 1979, a North Hollywood couple was shot, killed and dismembered in one of the Bonaventure’s rooms (their bodies were later removed via trash bags!) thanks to a drug deal gone wrong. And it was there that John DeLorean was videotaped agreeing to smuggle cocaine as part of an FBI sting operation on September 28th, 1982, which is rather ironic being that a few years prior the hotel was used as a futuristic backdrop in an ad for the businessman’s infamous DMC-12 car.
Though management likely doesn’t relish those moments in the hotel’s past, great pride is taken in its cinematic history. Not only is the hallway leading from the parking garage to the lobby lined with posters from the various productions lensed on the premises . . .
. . . but the elevators that have cameoed onscreen are outfitted with plaques denoting their respective résumés. (Oddly, the In the Line of Fire placard pictured below boasts some erroneous info. The action hit was released on July 8th, 1993, so there is no way that any filming of it took place on the Bonaventure grounds in September of that year, a full two months later!)
A poster noting the hotel’s use in Interstellar was even on display in the lobby the last time we checked in.
The Bonaventure has been featured in so many productions over the years, it would be impossible for me to chronicle them all here.
But I’ve corralled a list of some of my favorites.
As I mentioned earlier, the Bonaventure most famously figures in a climatic action sequence in the 1994 hit True Lies in which Harry Tasker, on horseback, chases a motorcycle-riding Salim Abu Aziz (Art Malik) through the hotel’s lobby . . .
. . . into one of its elevators . . .
. . . and onto the roof, which he subsequently almost falls from.
The BonaVista Lounge masked as the restaurant Above the Top in the 1980s sitcom It’s a Living. Though all actual filming took place on a soundstage, the hotel was featured regularly in establishing shots as well as in the weekly opening credits.
The BonaVista Lounge is also where David Addison Jr. (Bruce Willis) ambushed Maddie Hayes’ (Cybill Shepherd) date in the pilot episode of Moonlighting, which aired in 1985.
MacGyver (Richard Dean Anderson) lands on top of the Bonaventure via helicopter at the beginning of the Season 1 episode of MacGyver titled “Deathlock,” which aired in 1986. (The chopper apparently experienced dangerous “ground resonance” during the filming, as detailed here.)
Dr. Bruner (Gerald R. Molen) attempts to buy off Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise) while walking around the Bonaventure’s pool in the 1988 drama Rain Man.
The following year, Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) and Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover) got into a car crash in front of the hotel while chasing a suspect in Lethal Weapon 2.
Mason Storm (Steven Seagal) is ambushed at the Bonaventure in 1990’s Hard to Kill.
It is at the hotel that Mitch Leary (John Malkovich) sets up his plot to assassinate the President (Jim Curley) in 1993’s In the Line of Fire.
Many areas of the property appeared in the thriller, but I am unsure if the California Ballroom is where the actual assassination attempt took place as has been asserted on a few websites. That particular venue looks considerably smaller than the one featured, as you can see in these photos as compared to the screen captures below.
The Bonaventure also prominently appears in the 1995 thriller Nick of Time as the spot where accountant Gene Watson (Johnny Depp) is sent to kill Governor Eleanor S. Grant (Marsha Mason).
Dr. Eugene Sands (David Duchovny) visits the Bonaventure to perform surgery on a gunshot victim in the 1997 thriller Playing God.
Usher made great use of the place in his 2002 “U Don’t Have to Call” music video.
In 2005, the outside of the Bonaventure was utilized in exterior shots of the hotel where Roberts (Michael Kenneth Williams) met with Carter (Paul Ben-Victor) in the Season 4 episode of Alias titled “Another Mister Sloane.” The property’s elevators also appeared in the episode, but all other interior filming took place at The L.A. Grand Hotel Downtown, which I blogged about here.
The hotel portrays a top secret NASA facility in the 2014 sci-fi drama Interstellar.
That same year, the outside of the Bonaventure popped up as the Manhattan hotel where David Clarke (James Tupper) stayed in the Season 4 episode of Revenge titled “Repercussions.” As was the case with Alias, interiors were filmed at The L.A. Grand Hotel Downtown.
In the Season 4 episode of Bosch titled “Dreams of Bunker Hill,'”‘”‘” which aired in 2018, Harry Bosch (Titus Welliver) and Honey Chandler (Mimi Rogers) visit Michael Harris (Keston John) who is sequestered at the Bonaventure.
The hotel is also said to have been featured in Forget Paris, but I scanned through the 1995 romance and didn’t see it anywhere.
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Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: The Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites. from True Lies, is located at 404 South Figueroa Street in downtown Los Angeles. You can visit the property’s official website here.
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