CineVegas Film Festival 2008

It is 12 stories and 250 rooms. It is artists, writers, musicians, and filmmakers. It is sex, drugs, suicides, and ghosts. The Chelsea Hotel was Manhattan’s first cooperative apartment building and became a bastion for creativity and excess. Dylan, Hendrix and Joplin made music there. William Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch there. Nancy Spungeon died there…and Sid Vicious basically died at the Chelsea Hotel as well.

The Chelsea hotel’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy (even with its rent) is now in danger. A new management company has taken over and forced out stalwart manager Stanley Bard, showing disregard for his history and pointing to big changes to come. Before something happens, legendary filmmaker Abel Ferrara takes us through the hotel room by room, story by story, pulling open all the closet doors, profiling its past and admonishing its future. As a turbulent, trustworthy soul and then resident at the Hotel, people feel free to open up to him about everything. A few recreations and gritty archival footage build upon the legends.

The Chelsea is more than a building; it is a reflection of our nation's greatest talents. To lose it would mean losing our inspiration.