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#ALPHA DOG MOVIE MOVIE#
The pool area also appeared in the movie as the spot where Zack – ahem – “swam” with his new friends Julie Beckley (aka Amanda Seyfried) and Alma (aka Amber Heard). And I really do have to apologize for the quality of my screen captures – as I mentioned earlier, Alpha Dog is a very dark movie and my screen captures definitely reflect that. Several areas of the hotel appeared in the flick, including the exterior, which you can see above. In the movie, Frankie Ballenbacher (aka Justin Timberlake) takes Zack Mazursky (aka Anton Yelchin) to a party at the Caliente at the behest of drug-dealer/kingpin Johnny Truelove (aka Emile Hirsch), who has kidnapped the teenager in order to hold him as a marker for a debt his brother owes. In Alpha Dog, the Caliente Tropics Resort is stated to be in Palm Desert, but in actuality the hotel is located about eleven miles west of Palm Desert, right in the heart of Downtown Palm Springs. The pool also has the distinction of being the site of one of the very first Miss Hawaiian Tropic contests. It holds a whopping 100,000 gallons of water and, amazingly enough, looks exactly the same today as it did when the place first opened in 1964. The Caliente Tropic Resort boasts the third largest pool in the Coachella Valley. Sadly, the motel fell into disrepair sometime during the 80’s and remained that way until the year 2000, whereupon it was purchased by new owners who immediately embarked upon a $2.2 million restoration project to bring the property back to its original, Polynesian-themed grandeur. Nancy Sinatra even lived there for a time during her childhood. In its early years, the Tropics was THE place to vacation in the Coachella Valley and such luminaries as Elvis Presley and most of the members of the Rat Pack were frequent guests.
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(While Kimes built and owned over 60 successful motels in his lifetime, he is perhaps best known for being married to murderer/con-woman/Elizabeth-Taylor-impersonator Sante Kimes). The Caliente Tropics Resort was originally constructed in 1964 as part of motel mogul Ken Kimes’ tiki-themed motor-hotel chain and was known simply as The Tropics. It was that resort that the GC and I set out to stalk two weekends ago. In Alpha Dog, the Markowitz character, who was named Zack Mazursky, was kidnapped from Claremont and then taken to Palm Springs for the weekend, during which time he attended a pool party at the Caliente Tropics Resort. In real life, Nicholas was kidnapped from his hometown of West Hills and taken to Santa Barbara, where he was held hostage for three days, during which time he attended a pool party at the Lemon Tree Inn. Pretty much the only differences between the actual story and its onscreen counterpart are the names of those involved and the setting. For those who have yet to see Alpha Dog – and I can’t really say that I would recommend doing so as it is extremely depressing – the movie very closely follows the true life story of the kidnapping and murder of 15-year-old Nicholas Markowitz by drug dealer Jesse James Hollywood and his gang of friends. I found this location thanks to fave stalking book Hollywood Escapes: The Moviegoer’s Guide to Exploring Southern California’s Great Outdoors, which was written by stalking god Harry Medved (who, as it just so happens, will be signing books at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena on Sunday, June 19th at 2 p.m., but I digress).
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Another location that I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to stalk while visiting the Palm Springs area two weekends ago was the Caliente Tropics Resort which appeared in the ultra-disturbing 2006 movie Alpha Dog.