Waldorf Diaries--Waiting for Goodman

A friend came to visit me at my Waldorf residency yesterday and noted that it felt like being Los Angeles—a 1950’s hotel in an industrial landscape—the vibe is Chateau Marmont meets The Hotel Earle from the movie Barton Fink—The Waldorf lacks the Marmont’s pool and international celebrities—it doesn’t have the Earle’s peeling wallpaper and Art Deco decay but it does meet the two with a sense of its history and lineage—I feel like I’m visiting this hotel like I would visit a person—

In Sophia Coppola’s movie Somewhere the Chateau Marmont plays the role of purgatory for its main character, an actor who has lost his sense of self—this is also true for Barton Fink, an intellectual playwright, who gets housed in The Earle and suffers from writer’s block trying to write a banal wrestling picture—both characters are trapped within buildings—both struggle with lost identity—both sit in spiritual netherworlds needing a catalyst to force their transition—

So where exactly does this place me?

I keep waiting for John Goodman to show up at my door with a box…