Gant. In March 1994, columnist Army Archerd reported in Variety that Bono was still being sought for the role, which would eventually be played by Michael Wincott. In May 1994, a third Academy Award nominee, Juliette Lewis, was cast alongside Fiennes and Bassett. The fact that Lewis was able to sing was important because the producers wanted to avoid lip-synching. Filming Filming of Strange Days was originally announced with a start date of May 12, 1994, but that date was delayed to June 6, 1994 as the cast was finalized. Bigelow said that the O. J. Simpson murder case "[echoed] the film events", adding that Strange Days was filmed during the summer and fall of that year. The film was entirely shot in the greater Los Angeles area over a period of 77 nights. Producer Steven-Charles Jaffe said that the city was generally very cooperative, except for the subway scene as the team only had four hours a night to film it. Jaffe, however, remarked that Bigelow "was so well prepared that what would have taken another director several weeks to do, she did in a matter of days." The production team also received permission from the West Hollywood film commission to film on Sunset Boulevard for a two-day period, which required the shut down of several lanes of traffic. The scene where the crowd celebrates the turn of the new millennium at the end of the film was shot at the corner of the 5th and Flower streets, between the Westin Bonaventure Hotel and the Los Angeles Public Library. Over 50 off-duty police officers were hired to control an assembled crowd of 10,000 people, who had to pay $10 in advance to attend the event. The film-makers also hired rave promoters Moss Jacobs and Philip Blaine to produce performances featuring Aphex Twin, Deee-Lite, as well as "all the cyber-techno bands they could garner". It was reported that a total of $750,000 was spent on the event, which included the production's rental of half of the 1,300 rooms in the Bonaventure. The event started at 9 pm on a Saturday night and ended shortly before its scheduled end at 4 am, as five people were hospitalized for suffering overdoses of the drug ecstasy. The film's SQUID scenes, which offer a point-of-view shot (POV), required multi-faceted cameras and considerable technical preparation. A full year was spent building a specialized camera that