Earlier this year saw the release of Dreaming Walls, an interesting if meanderingly vague film about New York’s legendary Hotel Chelsea; the place which is actually an apartment building and artist colony, famous for residents and habitués including Andy Warhol, Sid Vicious, Isadora Duncan, Dylan Thomas and Arthur Miller. That rather downbeat film emphasised the efforts of longterm residents to stay in the building after it was bought by new owners who allegedly wanted to sanitise and gentrify it. Here is a second documentary which is far more celebratory, with far more interviewees, far more sexy name-dropping and more uproarious anecdotes, especially about the friendly ghosts who allegedly roam its corridors.
Again, this film pays tribute to the building’s manager Stanley Bard, who cultivated its reputation as an artists’ hangout and on occasion was supposed to have shrewdly accepted paintings in lieu of rent, although this is one of many unverifiable war stories about the Chelsea. One ex-tenant, Michael Imperioli – the screenwriter and actor in The Sopranos and The White Lotus – recalls the Chelsea’s hilariously scuzzy world, where he lived while he was writing Summer of Sam. Another grimly holds up the original authentic key to Room 100, where Nancy Spungen died.
The parade of names is dizzying, although sometimes the film feels like an animated Wikipedia entry. As with Dreaming Walls, the question arises: are Hotel Chelsea’s best days in the past? Are there no younger poets/musicians/dreamers/degenerates living there now? And if the answers to these questions are respectively yes and no, then where did they all go? Are they all just in their parents’ basements, pumping out content for their YouTube channels? Is that what’s happened to bohemianism and creativity?
• Ghosts of the Chelsea Hotel (and Other Rock & Roll Stories) is released on 6 October in UK cinemas.
