Last year, after Stanley Bard was ousted by the board as manager of the Hotel Chelsea and replaced with BD Hotels -- who just got ousted themselves, filmmaker Abel Ferrara moved back in to his old digs. The NY Post reports that the move was to help in the making his documentary, Chelsea on the Rocks
"I lived on the floor with the ghosts," Ferrara tells Page Six. "I didn't come in with a point to it, so I just lived there and began filming. The result was the hotel from soup to nuts. It's about the people that lived there, the ghosts, and the people that live there now. These artists need help and support."
The documentary was just accepted in Cannes and includes fictionalized re-creations of events, interviews with former residents (Ethan Hawke, Dennis Hopper, Robert Crumb, Grace Jones and Milos Forman) as well as current residents.
The Hotel Chelsea bloggers were two of the current residents who had a camera crew setting up in their self-described "tiny room". They reported at the time that "when the equipment was all set up and Abel finally swept into the room, the first thing he did was to complement us on, of all things, making our bed—apparently some of the people he had interviewed before us hadn’t bothered!"
Beyond the made beds, the film will delve into the messy truth -- that "New York City has become a different place than what it was." Using the hotel as an example, Ferrara commented on how "it was a place that wasn't run like a machine, it was run with heart. It's still a vital happening place, it's not a museum, although maybe some people would like to turn it into one."
Pictured: Ferrara and Bijou Phillips, playing the role of Nancy Spungen in a scene from "Chelsea on the Rocks," via Hotel Chelsea Blog.
