The ‘Informant!’ on Location

Happy humpday! To celebrate making it halfway through the work week, we’re looking ahead to one of this weekend’s hotly anticipated new movies — ‘Informant!‘ The film reunited ‘Ocean’s 11’ (and 12 and 13) director Steven Soderbergh with actor Matt Damon, who stars as the real-life Mark Whitacre, a bipolar whistleblower at one of the world’s largest corporations. When Whitacre teams up with the F.B.I., his adventures take him far beyond his home base of Decatur, Illinois — going as far as Hong Kong, Tokyo and Mexico to tape-record covert company meetings. 

 

The film first made a splash last year when pictures surfaced of a very pudgy, very mustachioed Matt Damon (then People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive) lounging by a hotel pool in a Hawaiian shirt. The actor had filled out (to the tune of 30 pounds) and geeked out — adding glasses, a mustache and cheesy haircut — for the film, which was being shot in Hawaii. On-location filming took place at the posh Makaha Resort & Golf Club not far from Honolulu on the island of Oahu. If you go, do the rest of the guests a favor and don’t recreate Whitaker’s cheesy early ’90s duds. 

 

Much of the rest of the film was shot in Decatur, the home of ADM (Archer Daniels Midlands), the real-life company the real-life Whitaker helped expose, and nearby Moweaqua, at the actual site of Whitaker’s mansion. (Click for shots of Damon in Decatur.)

 

 

image courtesy Warner Bros.