The Chateau Marmont Hollywood Handbook

Book excerpt: The come-back of the year! Available again for the first time since 1996. This is Hollywood through the prism of its most legendary dormitory. “The story of the Chateau Marmont parallels the story of Hollywood so thoroughly as to be inseparable from it...It’s possible that no hotel in America inspires so much nostalgia, speculation, and sheer devotion.” -- VANITY FAIR As happens in literature, where the hero sooner or later turns up at a hotel, so it happens that seemingly every creative talent in Hollywood eventually checks in at the Chateau. To paraphrase Somerset Maugham, speaking of another illustrious hotel in the Far East, the Chateau stands for all the fables of exotic Hollywood. Call it the vantage from the Citadel of Bohème. The result is not only an extraordinary oeuvre of films, music, and literature created in and about the Chateau, but also an attitude and a perspective of the surrounding culture. THE CHATEAU MARMONT’S HOLLYWOOD HANDBOOK, a classic edited by André Balazs, is now available for the first time since the late 1990s. Between these covers is a collection of facts and fiction about a certain place, throughout nearly a century. It is about the icons of an evolving neighborhood, the ethos of an evolving culture. The result is not only an extraordinary oeuvre of films, music and literature created in and about the Chateau, but also an attitude and a perspective of the surrounding culture. “Checking into the hotel is like stepping into a living history. It’s out of time, suspended from the constraints, the issues, the concerns of the real world…In a city without a center, you could call this spot the epicenter: this is where deals are made – where love is won or lost – sometimes all in one night.” – AM HOLMES LEGENDARY LITERARY CONTRIBUTORS: Blaise Cendrars, William Faulkner, Budd Schulberg, Lillian Ross, Azel Madsen, Gore Vidal, Eve Babitz, Jill Selsman, Anthony Haden-Guest, Jay McInerney, Bertram Fields, Dominick Dunne, Francis Ford Coppola, Harold Brodkey, and Mike Davis, and more! LEGENDARY ART & PHOTOS: Chuck Boyd, Sofia Coppola, Todd Eberle, Robert Gober, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, David Hockney, Dennis Hopper, Jean Howard, Spike Jonze, Martin Kippenberger, Annie Leibovitz, McDermott and McGough, Roddy McDowall, Camilla McGrath, Patrick McMullan, Helmut Newton, Gérard Nicolas, Jack Pierson, Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha, Art Streiber, David Salle, Julian Schnabel, Tim Street-Porter, Wolfgang Tillmans, Ellen von Unwerth, Christopher Walken, & Bruce Weber.