Sam Rockwell takes over the googie coffee shop in Gore Verbinski\u2019s latest movie<\/p>\n
In the new film Good Luck, Have Fun, Don\u2019t Die (in theaters Feb. 13), a soaked and disheveled Sam Rockwell stumbles into L.A.\u2019s iconic Norms<\/a> restaurant after dark, with LAPD squad cars swarming outside. Shocked patrons ignore their club sandwiches as the bedraggled stranger, covered in electrodes, hoses, and sci-fi gadgetry, barks out, \u201cI am from the future \u2026 and all of this goes horribly wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n The juxtaposition of the comfortable family-restaurant setting (complete with Boy Scouts and seniors getting coffee refills) and a potentially dangerous situation unfolding raises tension and sets the scene for an offbeat adventure. Norms on La Cienega is a modernist landmark designed by architects Louis Armet and Eldon Davis in 1957. It has been immortalized in an iconic painting by pop artist Ed Ruscha, a song by Tom Waits, and countless movies and TV shows over the decades.<\/p>\n \u201cI guess that\u2019s where bad guys like to meet, over a cup of coffee,\u201d says location manager Robert Foulkes, who recently scouted Norms for a film set in the 1950s. \u201cThese coffee shops are great-looking, have a lot of character and are perfect for conversation scenes. They\u2019re timeless. A period piece plays really well, or you can do a scene with a contemporary hipster.\u201d<\/p>\n Directors love shooting inside midcentury Googie coffee shops designed by Armet & Davis. Quentin Tarantino used their Hawthorne Grill for the opening scenes of Pulp Fiction and their Johnie\u2019s at Wilshire and Fairfax for Reservoir Dogs. That counter can also be seen in The Big Lebowski, American History X and Miracle Mile. David Lynch chose one of the firm\u2019s vintage Denny\u2019s locations in Gardena for Mulholland Drive. A&D\u2019s masterpiece Pann\u2019s, near LAX, was the setting for Vin Diesel\u2019s fight scene in xXx, and their Corky\u2019s on Van Nuys Boulevard appears in the 2010 reboot of A Nightmare on Elm Street.<\/p>\n \u201cNoir often took place in a diner,\u201d says Alan Hess, author of Googie Redux. \u201cThis is just continuing that tradition. Villains\u2019 lairs are often modern houses that feel evil in some way. Somehow, coffee shops fit into the atmosphere of noir.\u201d<\/p>\n Director Gore Verbinski, who hung out at Norms<\/a> while attending UCLA film school, filmed the exteriors for Good Luck, Have Fun, Don\u2019t Die<\/a> on La Cienega. For the interior scenes, the filmmaker built a larger-than-life version in Cape Town, South Africa, some 10,000 miles from L.A.<\/p>\n \u201cIn our film, the protagonist [Rockwell] is cinematically and symbolically trapped in a world of triangles,\u201d Verbinski tells Los Angeles. \u201c[He\u2019s] ironically imprisoned by this icon of enlightenment as he endeavors to save the world from a new intelligence being born. I think the architecture of Norms is perfectly suited to take the rectangular frame and slash it with the diagonal, making it askew and creating the sense of a world gone cattywampus.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sam Rockwell takes over the googie coffee shop in Gore Verbinski\u2019s latest movie In the new film Good…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168290,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[76726,48,52,51,47,50,49,1399,80879],"class_list":{"0":"post-168289","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-february-2026","9":"tag-la","10":"tag-la-headlines","11":"tag-la-news","12":"tag-los-angeles","13":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","14":"tag-los-angeles-news","15":"tag-movies","16":"tag-norms"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}