"Look, I've had more than 900 shows in here - Smashing Pumpkins, Modest Mouse, Rise Against, Lady Gaga - and the energy in the room that night was equal to any of those shows," John said. ManyF-bombswere dropped between director and actor, John said, but the scene and Cruise's vocals were "amazing" and won the approval of Def Leppard singer Joe Elliott himself when the band dropped by the set.
The club was closed for about five weeks, butWarner Bros.made it worth his while, John said, and the studio fulfilled his request that it find employment for the Revolution staff, some of it on camera.Īmong his most-vivid memories is witnessing a shirtless, tattooed Cruise ride a keg on a dolly up a ramp behind the Revolution stage and, muscling up on a bar hung over the doorway, swinging onstage for a blistering version of Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar on Me." John said the shoot took 25 or 30 takes before Shankman and Cruise ("a perfectionist," John said) got what they wanted. It would take a case of beer for John to relate all the stories he has about the days and nights spent watching Shankman guide Cruise and other big names through scenes at Revolution, which make up a great majority of the film. "I still don't know how she remembered us," John said. John credits Hayley Williams of the Tennessee-bred indie-rock band Paramore, who was part of an impromptu focus group put together by Shankman as he scouted the nation for a rock club that would be the central setting for "Rock of Ages." Paramore had played a show at Revolution, and Williams recommended it to Shankman, John said. The most-prominent local "extra" that you'll see in "Rock of Ages" is Revolution Live itself, and Jeff John is still dumbfounded as to how the film's director, Adam Shankman, came knocking in the first place. And it would be hard for local tourism folks to put a price tag on this tweet to Baldwin's nearly 900,000 followers: "On a more All-American, I-Love-a-Good-Time kind of note, Fort Lauderdale is cool."
But we made Entertainment Weekly, People and (though they sometimes called us "Miami"), and loved restaurants such as Sublime and Asia Bay, as well as Pro Pilates. For five or six weeks Fort Lauderdale was an extra in its own home, a cheap stand-in for the Los Angeles rock scene of the mid '80s, and there were inconveniences - your favorite nightclub closed, your chance to snap a photo of your aunt in the Himmarshee District forbidden.