Marmont Monday: Franco illustrated

Actor/Director/Artist James Franco published a book in 2014 titled Hollywood Dreaming: Stories, Pictures, and Poems. It contains a piece titled “Chateau Dreams,” which takes place at the Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. If you’ve read my blog, you know it’s pretty much favorite place. And Willis loves it, too. The above shots were taken by Mona Kuhn for the debut issue of MisterMuse magazine. I immediately recognized the headboard from the Chateau:



The below Mona Kuhn polaroids of Franco were also taken at the Chateau and have circulated on eBay for awhile.



Some have sold, some have not.



I decided to pair some of my Chateau shots taken over the years with the appropriate prose from Franco’s piece:

Chateau Dreams

I picture them all, in different positions,
And the same positions,
And I, like a sculptor, would position them, and mold them.
Or like a choreographer put them through the same paces,
Again and again.



There is an area off the main hotel building
Where the bungalows are.
At the center of the arrangement of chalk bungalows
There is an oval pool like a blue pill,
Huddled by ferns, palms, and banana trees
Tended to be wild,
Webbed by a nexus of stone walkways.



In the day, in summer,
Mermaids and hairy mermen drape the brickwork.
At night the underwater lights electrify the pool zinc blue;
The surface cradles the oven-red reflection of the neon Chateau sign



Above Sunset, above the paparazzi and miniskirts.

There is a painting of a blond sailor,
Dressed in blue and red and white,
A stoic version of myself.
For nine months in ’06, while fixing my house,
I stayed in the bungalows,



First in 82, next to the little Buddha in the long fountain
Trickling.



Lindsay Lohan was about.
The Chateau was her home and the staff were her servants.
She got my room key with ease;
She came in at 3 a.m.;
I woke on the couch, trying not to look surprised.
Instead of f***ing her.
I read her a short story about a neglected daughter.
Every night Lindsay looked for me.
My Russian friend Drew was always around like a wraith—He, like the blond painting,
was my doppelganger—
Writing scripts about rape and murder.
A Hollywood Dostoevsky, he gambled his money away.



We played a ton of Ping-Pong.



In ’82, John Belushi died from a speedball in Bungalow 3;
In ’54, forty-three-year-old Natalie Wood in Bungalow 2;



In 2005, Lindsay Lohan lived in Room 19 for two years
Because she “didn’t want to be alone.”
Ambulance calls were a regular antidote to her demon rights.



Midway through my stay,
I changed to Bungalow 89.
In that room,
I read a bunch of Jacobean plays
About revenge, seduction, and lust.



In Bungalow 89 there was the sailor on the wall,
Glass-eyed and pale,
My stoic self.



The room was on the second level,
The exterior walls hugged by vines.

Every night Lindsay looked for me and I hid.
Out the window was Hollywood.

See more Chateau Marmont cottage/bungalow photos at my main website.