Directed By Tyler Measom and Craig A. Williams
Featuring Bruce Springsteen, Ringo Starr, Billy Bob Thornton, Slash, Dave Grohl, Cyndi Lauper, Nile Rodgers, Morrissey, Sheryl Crow
The fight to preserve creative spaces from development should be familiar to any 21st century city. So the fact that the Sunset Marquis, an independent West Hollywood hotel, still stands today is a feat unto itself. In their new documentary, If These Walls Could Rock, directors Tyler Measom and Craig A. Williams (who co-wrote the book the film's based on) makes the case for its place in the larger pop culture landscape.
Built in the early 1960s by George Rosenthal, the Marquis has been a favourite haunt for musicians, actors and other artists for decades. That mix of creative minds, says Rosenthal in the film, is the hotel's claim to fame; the idea that someone like Bruce Springsteen could meet anti-war activist Ron Kovic by the pool and be inspired to write "Born in the USA." Unfortunately the Boss's hit is really the only concrete example of this argument.
Conversely, perhaps the hotel's permissiveness and discretion when it came to its guests' hobbies and behaviour is what actually attracted artists to its rooms in the first place. These duelling identities sit at the core of the film creating an interesting dichotomy, but the filmmakers never really circle the square and make either argument land.
Rosenthal and his son Mark are nominally the film's main characters and their story forms its narrative backbone. George credits the antisemitism he encountered early in life for his tolerance of those who society deems different. But too often they are pushed to the background by superstar talking heads, and it's easy to see why. Springsteen, Nile Rodgers, Dave Grohl, Morrissey, Slash, Sheryl Crow and Cyndi Lauper are just the top-billed interview subjects, stars who have called the Marquis home for a night, week or, in the case of Billy Bob Thornton, six years. All espouse the hotel's glory, a space that lets them be themselves.
Of course "being themselves" often includes sex and drugs, which everyone refers to with a wink and a nudge. That's certainly what narrative audiences have proven willing to indulge, but memories prove selective and their stories short on details. The Sunset Marquis's hallmark discretion becomes the undoing of this frame. The walls may be rocking, but nobody's talking, and photographic evidence is scant — the fictional party shown in Rod Stewart's "Tonight I'm Yours" music video, shot at the hotel, is the closest we ever get to the party. If these are the stories you're looking for, single chapters of Mötley Crüe's The Dirt are more lurid than this entire film.
Is this a movie about the Rosenthals? The guests of the Marquis? The West Hollywood building itself? Measom and Williams apparently can't decide and in trying to let this film be everything to everyone, it misses the mark.
