Nostalgic and fun to talk about but not that much fun to listen to. At some point the dead will simply rest in peace
Abel Ferrara comes to us highly recommended after a Cannes Golden Palm nomination in 1993 for “Body Snatchers’ and multiple wins and nominations at the Venice Film Festival. But this particular bit of nostalgia comes of as being too simplistic to do him justice. In the end it is all about quirky people doing quirky things that nobody else can relate to. The question of how life in the Chelsea affected their art remains unanswered.
The Chelsea Hotel is located on 23rd Street between 7th and 8th Avenue, about half way between the meat packing district and central bus terminal and just northeast of the Aperture Foundation photographic studio and its building of allied artists. The film includes interviews with residents past and present including Milos Forman, Ethan Hawke, Dennis Hopper and Robert Crumb, vintage music and archival footage. Nastiness is also included courtesy of Nancy Spungen and Sid Vicious and the spirits of the dead represented by Janis Joplin herself.
The hotel was managed by Stanley Bard for many years but was recently booted out in favor of a more upscale approach. The stories included in the film relate to Stanley’s ability to make a deal to any kind of artist as long as there was a quid pro quo of some kind in return. The beauty of the situation is that it is so completely genuine and the hustle is so completely in character with New York. Nostalgia? Yes, but this film covers and important time in the city. The years from the mid-1950s to the 1980s were a time when one did not necessarily want to live in the Chelsea neighborhood with it unique blend of downtown bums, prostitutes and drug addicts. The Chelsea was not the focus of artists because it was trendy (as it is now) but it was the place to go because it was cheap and offered access to the publishers and producers of Times Square and off-Broadway.
The film is mostly interviews and old stories which are of mixed interest and it also contains some dramatizations (Bijou Phillips) which are completely out of place and should have been left out from the get-go.
Many of the stories have been heard before such as the deaths of the famous people who spent their last days in a downward spiral in the Chelsea. Some of the stories are less famously in the press such as the bizarre case of the elderly woman reportedly drowned by the firemen when they over-responded to a report of a fire in the vicinity of her room.
In the end the viewer is not sure what he/she has seen and how it relates to anything. Is this an exploitation film? The interviews are just a little too glib and a little too shallow and the people interviewed a little too unsure of why they are saying what they are saying. It might have been fun stuff to talk about but it is not nearly as much fun to listen to.
For more like this see the film “Chelsea Walls” directed by Ethan Hawke and released by Lions Gate in April 2002. It starred Kris Kristofferson, Uma Thurman, Rosario Dawson, Robert Sean Leonard and others, original score by Jeff Tweedy, and produced by Indigent Productions, Independent Film Channel and Killer Films.
Directed by: Abel Ferrara
Featuring interviews with Chelsea residents past and present
Release: September 25, 2009
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