The Million Dollar Hotel

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A movie for every day of the year – a good one

7 June

Groundbreaking of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 1993

On this day in 1993, the groundbreaking ceremony of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame took place, in Cleveland, Ohio. It was attended by Pete Townshend, Chuck Berry, Sam Moore (of Sam and Dave), Dave Gardner (the Coasters), Billy Joel, Sam Phillips, Ruth Brown and Dave Pirner (Soul Asylum). The hall had been proposed in 1983 by Ahmet Ertegun of Atlantic Records, with a view to capturing an ephemeral art form – or of confirming that rock and roll wasn’t ephemeral at all, take your pick – and the first “exhibits” in the museum had been inducted in 1986.

Originally inductees would belong to one of four categories: performers, non-performers, early influences and lifetime achievement. “Sidemen” were added in 2000. In year one Chuck Berry, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Fats Domino, The Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard and Elvis Presley were inducted. Since then fewer have been admitted – Aretha Franklin arrived in 1987, the Beatles in 1988, John Lee Hooker in 1991, Janis Joplin in 1995, Parliament-Funkadelic in 1997, Michael Jackson in 2001, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five in 2007, Abba in 2010, Donna Summer in 2013. Evidently, the induction committee’s definition of “Rock and Roll” is a broad one.


The Million Dollar Hotel (2000, dir: Wim Wenders)

Now here is a film entirely in thrall to the rock thang. Directed by Wim Wenders, who was born in 1945 – being born during the Second World War makes you the prime rock demographic – it has a story by Bono, of U2 fame, and is entirely fixated with rock’s regular obsessions: madness, freaks, the Man and the idea that the good guys are in fact really the bad guys. It has an issue with authority.

It is in essence an Agatha Christie whodunit with every element bent out of shape, starting with Mel Gibson as a cop investigating a murder at a hotel populated almost entirely by weirdoes. Gibson’s Detective Skinner wears a back and neck brace. Because, we learn, of complications after surgery to remove a third arm growing out of his back. Of course.

Skinner is trying to find who killed a billionaire’s son, played by Tim Roth for the few seconds he’s in the film before he tumbles to his death from the hotel roof. Did he jump or was he pushed? Wenders seems more interested in the characters in the hotel than with getting to the end of any process. But then it’s the Wenders way. So we meet Tom Tom (Jeremy Davies) an ADHD narrator tailing Skinner as he makes his enquiries. We meet Peter Stormare as a Beatles obsessive with a weird Liverpudlian accent. And most importantly we meet Milla Jovovich’s Eloise, a bookworm with a heart – she provides a cool if blank centre around which the film revolves. On the carousel are a group of fringe dwellers, the sort of actors we expect in a film like this – Bud Cort, Amanda Plummer, Jimmy Smits, Richard Edson, Julian Sands, Tom Bower. And the occasional one we really don’t – Gloria Stuart, nudging 90 when this was made and fresh from Titanic.

It sounds terrible, doesn’t it? And it did get a fairly comprehensive pasting by the critics when it came out. But I think there is something more going on here than a middle-aged director making a “like, wow, man, the lunatics have, like, taken over the asylum” flick with a middle age rock star’s money. To some extent this is exactly what it seems, an indulgent celebration of the fringe. But rock wasn’t at the cultural fringe when this was made, except in the wild rock-stadium dreams of Bono, perhaps. It was increasingly an old guy’s game. And here we are in LA, the city without a centre, shot carefully by cinematographer Phedon Papamichael to show the cracks and the degradation, while Wenders adopts the stance and riffs hard on death, decay, anomie and nothingness. A very odd film, that might well need reappraisal.

Why Watch?

  • Shot at the hotel on the roof of which U2 shot the video for “Where the Streets Have No Name”
  • The excellent soundtrack – Jon Hassell, Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno all contributing
  • Phedon Papamichael’s moody cinematography
  • Mel Gibson in a neck brace, in a film he described as “boring as a dog’s ass” – and he part-financed it



The Million Dollar Hotel  – at Amazon

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© Steve Morrissey 2014


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