Celebration of the legendary New York hotel and haven for actors, artists and musicians that spills secrets of squalor, celebrity and death
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...
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...
- 10/5/2023
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Any day now the renovated Chelsea Hotel will fully reopen, capping a drawn out process that has seen the grand edifice on the west side of Manhattan shrouded in netting and defaced by scaffolding for over a decade.
Repeated construction delays, legal wrangling between residents and the building owners, as well as a dispute with the city agency devoted to historic properties all contributed to the endless postponements. But the magic of a place that has been home to the artistic and idiosyncratic for over a century seemingly cannot be obscured by clouds of construction dust.
The new documentary Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel invites viewers inside the red brick palace to spend time with long-term residents who contribute to, and perhaps are, the essence of the Chelsea’s charm.
“It’s a film of encounters and the people we met, we love them,” explains Maya Duverdier, who co-directed...
Repeated construction delays, legal wrangling between residents and the building owners, as well as a dispute with the city agency devoted to historic properties all contributed to the endless postponements. But the magic of a place that has been home to the artistic and idiosyncratic for over a century seemingly cannot be obscured by clouds of construction dust.
The new documentary Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel invites viewers inside the red brick palace to spend time with long-term residents who contribute to, and perhaps are, the essence of the Chelsea’s charm.
“It’s a film of encounters and the people we met, we love them,” explains Maya Duverdier, who co-directed...
- 8/5/2022
- by Matthew Carey
- Deadline Film + TV
There are many layers to the mystique of the Chelsea Hotel. Long before it became a hipster hangout, the 12-story, 250-room fortress, built in the 1880s, was home to Mark Twain. In the ’50s, the Chelsea played host to assorted literary figures, the first of whom to lend it a dissolute aura was Dylan Thomas, who was living the lush life in room 205 when he became ill and died in 1953. The beats moved in, and so did Arthur Miller after he divorced Marilyn Monroe and Arthur C. Clarke while he was writing “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
But it was Andy Warhol who put the stamp of underground cachet on the Chelsea when he shot his three-and-a-half-hour multi-screen ramble “The Chelsea Girls” there in 1966. By the time that Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe took up residence in 1969, they already saw themselves as the next generation in the Chelsea tradition of bohemian squalor.
But it was Andy Warhol who put the stamp of underground cachet on the Chelsea when he shot his three-and-a-half-hour multi-screen ramble “The Chelsea Girls” there in 1966. By the time that Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe took up residence in 1969, they already saw themselves as the next generation in the Chelsea tradition of bohemian squalor.
- 7/10/2022
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
In Maya Duverdier and Amélie van Elmbt’s mesmerizing and immersive documentary about the Chelsea Hotel, “Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel,” the filmmakers pay tribute to the last bastion of New York bohemianism and breathe memory into the walls of this iconic building; walls that would speak volumes if they could talk.
The Chelsea Hotel has long loomed large in our collective cultural consciousness, demonstrated in a snippet of archival footage, with which the film opens, of a young Patti Smith describing how the hotel was the first place she landed in New York, declaring “I always wanted to be where the big guys were.”
To underscore the point about the “big guys” that lived within those walls, Duverdier and van Elmbt utilize a hypnotic stylistic motif throughout the film, projecting images of the celebrities who spent time at the Chelsea onto the walls, almost anthropomorphizing the ghosts, or at least the spirits,...
The Chelsea Hotel has long loomed large in our collective cultural consciousness, demonstrated in a snippet of archival footage, with which the film opens, of a young Patti Smith describing how the hotel was the first place she landed in New York, declaring “I always wanted to be where the big guys were.”
To underscore the point about the “big guys” that lived within those walls, Duverdier and van Elmbt utilize a hypnotic stylistic motif throughout the film, projecting images of the celebrities who spent time at the Chelsea onto the walls, almost anthropomorphizing the ghosts, or at least the spirits,...
- 7/7/2022
- by Katie Walsh
- The Wrap
In most major cities, history is the first thing to be obliterated. Whether you live in New York, Los Angeles, or any other metropolis, not a day goes by when an architectural wonder isn’t being razed or otherwise altered, a legacy forever changed in the name of “progress.” Such is the case with the famous Chelsea Hotel in New York City, a haven for poets, musicians, and other raconteurs of the ’60s and ’70s, including Patti Smith, Marilyn Monroe, and Dylan Thomas. What was once a location of creative inspiration is now a literal shell, slowly transforming into a chic hotel, with its long-term residents punted off into quiet corners where they can’t disturb anyone.
“Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel” is less about where the hotel has been and more about where it’s headed. Directors Maya Duverdier and Amélie van Elmbt head into the Chelsea with...
“Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel” is less about where the hotel has been and more about where it’s headed. Directors Maya Duverdier and Amélie van Elmbt head into the Chelsea with...
- 7/7/2022
- by Kristen Lopez
- Indiewire
Stanley Bard, the longtime manager and part-owner of New York’s famously tolerant, actor- and rock-star-friendly Chelsea Hotel, died Tuesday of a stroke in Boca Raton, Fl. He was 82. His death was confirmed by the management of, as it’s officially known, the Hotel Chelsea. Known — and greatly appreciated — among generations of New York’s demimonde, from Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen (who wrote “Chelsea Hotel #2” about his tryst there with Janis Joplin) to later actors such…...
- 2/15/2017
- Deadline TV
Stanley Bard, the longtime manager and part-owner of New York’s famously tolerant, actor- and rock-star-friendly Chelsea Hotel, died Tuesday of a stroke in Boca Raton, Fl. He was 82. His death was confirmed by the management of, as it’s officially known, the Hotel Chelsea. Known — and greatly appreciated — among generations of New York’s demimonde, from Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen (who wrote “Chelsea Hotel #2” about his tryst there with Janis Joplin) to later actors such…...
- 2/15/2017
- Deadline
You know how real-estate moguls are always the bad guys in romantic comedies and children's movies? That's probably because, more often than not, their jobs involve knocking over cool crusty buildings replacing them with condos. Nothing signifies evil in the Disney-verse like condos. Well, it's happening again — the historic Chelsea Hotel in New York stopped accepting guests on Saturday night after being sold to a developer. The hotel is famous as a hangout for artists and musicians, and may be one of New York's most storied buildings. Nancy Spungen was sharing a room with her boyfriend, Sid Vicious, when she was killed in 1978. Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Robert Crumb, and Leonard Cohen once lived in its rooms or hung out in its lobby. In her recent book, Just Kids, Patti Smith describes how hotel owner Stanley Bard would accept artwork from her and her roommate, [...]...
- 8/1/2011
- Nerve
Actor Ethan Hawke was given a free room at New York's famous Chelsea Hotel on the understanding he reconciled with estranged wife Uma Thurman.
Hotel boss Stanley Bard agreed to let his movie star pal stay at his place for a month after Hawke returned to the Big Apple from Europe, where he had been filming Before Sunset - on the understanding he took the time to repair his shattered marriage.
Hawke tells WENN, "I was in Paris and my marriage was completely falling apart and I knew I didn't have a place to live when I finished the movie, so I called Stanley up and he said, 'I thought you might be calling me. Boy, you screwed up that marriage!' I said, 'I know that, but do you think you have a room? I need two rooms because I've got my kids.'
He said, 'Here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna give you a room for free for a month so you could get your wife back. Go get her back, just don't even worry about it.' I'm like, 'Alright Stanley, that's very sweet, but it's probably gonna be more than a month.' He said, 'No charge, you just save your marriage.'"
Hawke, who directed 2001 movie Chelsea Walls which features the famous Manhattan landmark, failed to save his marriage. Hawke appears in Abel Ferrara’s new documentary Chelsea on the Rocks, about the hotel and its famous guests.
Hotel boss Stanley Bard agreed to let his movie star pal stay at his place for a month after Hawke returned to the Big Apple from Europe, where he had been filming Before Sunset - on the understanding he took the time to repair his shattered marriage.
Hawke tells WENN, "I was in Paris and my marriage was completely falling apart and I knew I didn't have a place to live when I finished the movie, so I called Stanley up and he said, 'I thought you might be calling me. Boy, you screwed up that marriage!' I said, 'I know that, but do you think you have a room? I need two rooms because I've got my kids.'
He said, 'Here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna give you a room for free for a month so you could get your wife back. Go get her back, just don't even worry about it.' I'm like, 'Alright Stanley, that's very sweet, but it's probably gonna be more than a month.' He said, 'No charge, you just save your marriage.'"
Hawke, who directed 2001 movie Chelsea Walls which features the famous Manhattan landmark, failed to save his marriage. Hawke appears in Abel Ferrara’s new documentary Chelsea on the Rocks, about the hotel and its famous guests.
- 10/9/2009
- WENN
Release Date: Oct. 2 (limited)
Director: Abel Ferrara
Writers: Abel Ferrara, David Linter, and Christ Zois
Cinematographers: David Hausen and Ken Kelsch
Studio/Run Time: Aliquot Films, 88 mins.
In 2007, the longtime manager of New York’s Chelsea Hotel, Stanley Bard, was forced from his position in an attempt at turning the sometime-bohemian paradise into a corporate edifice earning money from its historic status. It’s an interesting and ongoing story, one that director Abel Ferrara has been capturing on film as it’s been happening by speaking with many of the hotel’s current and past inhabitants about the building’s past and future and how much it’s affected them personally. Too bad that’s only a small portion of the ramshackle Chelsea on the Rocks, which only peripherally explores the current developments and as a result topples under the weight of its unfocused ambition.
Director: Abel Ferrara
Writers: Abel Ferrara, David Linter, and Christ Zois
Cinematographers: David Hausen and Ken Kelsch
Studio/Run Time: Aliquot Films, 88 mins.
In 2007, the longtime manager of New York’s Chelsea Hotel, Stanley Bard, was forced from his position in an attempt at turning the sometime-bohemian paradise into a corporate edifice earning money from its historic status. It’s an interesting and ongoing story, one that director Abel Ferrara has been capturing on film as it’s been happening by speaking with many of the hotel’s current and past inhabitants about the building’s past and future and how much it’s affected them personally. Too bad that’s only a small portion of the ramshackle Chelsea on the Rocks, which only peripherally explores the current developments and as a result topples under the weight of its unfocused ambition.
- 10/2/2009
- Pastemagazine.com
Check the Chelsea Hotel's 125-year-old ledger: The signatures therein constitue a constellation of singular talents. There's Jasper Johns, Patti Smith, Willem de Kooning, the Beats' marquee members (Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs), Stanley Kubrick, Bob Dylan, Frida Kahlo and her main hombre, Diego Rivera, and, of course, Warhol Superstars like Edie Sedgwick and Paul America. In more infamous matters, the 23rd Street institution houses the Welsh lush Dylan Thomas' deathbed (1953) as well as Nancy Spungen's (of Sid Vicious legend) unsolved chalk outline (1978).
Nowadays, the once-implacable flow of legends (and, more importantly, lodgers) has ebbed. With the contentious ouster of long-time manager Stanley Bard two years ago, the future of the iconic establishment is more precarious than ever before. In response, the Anthology Film Archives has programmed a four-day series to stress the institution's artistic, historic, and architectonic presence as a long-standing bastion for unbarred creativity.
Nowadays, the once-implacable flow of legends (and, more importantly, lodgers) has ebbed. With the contentious ouster of long-time manager Stanley Bard two years ago, the future of the iconic establishment is more precarious than ever before. In response, the Anthology Film Archives has programmed a four-day series to stress the institution's artistic, historic, and architectonic presence as a long-standing bastion for unbarred creativity.
- 4/8/2009
- Interview Magazine
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