VAN DAMME IS ON FIRE!

Originally entitled Coyote Moon, DESERT HEAT was first envisioned by screenwriter Tom O'Rourke as a traditional Western, the type he used to see in Sergio Leone films. But as the script progressed, O'Rourke decided to turn it into a modern-day fable by incorporating his Army experiences in "Opteration Desert Strike," a training maneuver in the Mojave desert, "the middle of nowhere."

O'Rourke: "There was a diner there called the Road Runner Cafe, with all these weird people, which I used as the model for this story. Then I began during that time, particularly a 19-year-old waitress I'm sure that I used as the model for another one of the characters."

DESERT HEAT eventually mad its way to producers Evzen Kolar and Lawrence Levy, who were impressed with O'Rourke's unique spin on a classic genre.

Levy: "there was and still is a timelessness to the screenplay. It's a contemporary Western, a bit offbeat, but with a mythic quality."

Kolar, in turn, sen the script to Jean Claude Van Damme, who agreed top make the film, as it offered him the rare chance to star in a character-driven drama.

Kolar: "There are movies that have a cartoon-action character, but Jean-Claude Van Damme can also play this kind of mature person with all these weird things going on around him. Yes, there's action and hand-to-hand combat, we wouldn't not use the things he's good at, but the action comes out of character and story."

The director assigned production designer Michael Novotny the task of locating desert shooting sites on the "fringe of reality," where audiences would feel "lost, just after getting off the bus." After rejecting Arizona's Sonora Desert as "too pretty," Novotny settled on the desert roads and dry lake beds of Lancaster and Ridgecrest, California. (Much of the town was created off a remote Lancaster road, where Novotny built the Reynolds' diner from scratch; Eli's Emporium was built within a deserted building that used to house a tavern.)

DESERT HEAT began principal photography on June 15, 1997. Joining Van Damme on the desert locations was an eclectic essemble cast that include Pat Morita(The Karate Kid), 90 year-old stage actor Ford Rainey, Bill Erwin, Vincent Shiavelli, Gabrielle Fitzpatrick, Danny Trejo(Con Air) and Larry Drake. Often shooting in 100 degree plus tempratures, DESERT HEAT wrapped after eight weeks, "a kind of adult fairy tale witha reluctant hero who, in deciding to fight back, meets a girl, falls in love and winds up saving his own life in the process"(Lawrence Levy, producer).

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