Around the Haunted Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel
Between Scientology test centers, crowds of tourists, celebrities and celebrity imitators I spent last weekend on Hollywood Blvd for “HollyWould” the Freewaves Experimental Media Arts Festival. It wasn’t all apparent until the end of my time there but everything I did in Tinsel Town revolved around the pool of the Roosevelt Hotel. It’s a historic hotel across from Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. The very biggest names in Hollywood come here and it’s supposedly haunted, with the ghost of Marilyn Monroe as the headliner.
Things kicked off Thursday night with video projections into the pool and screens around it. The festival is in its eleventh year and is organized by the Freewaves organization, a global independent media and media arts group which will soon celebrate its 20th year. The work of 200 artists was displayed online and 180 artists was on-display all over the street and even in LA Metro buses.
Freewaves Festival Los Angeles – Images by Khari Johnson
When I showed Saturday, within 10 minutes of hitting the Blvd, a few feet from Norm Crosby’s star, someone invited me on a crack binge. No thanks, I said. I’m here for projections.
Laurel Beckman is an associate art professor at University of California Santa Barbara and I found her projecting her video onto a Scientology building of the stars on the Blvd.
Beckman describes her video projecting on to the side of a Scientology building on Hollywood Blvd.
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She said sort of lackadaisically she projected her work on the side of a Scientology building “guerrilla style.” But as our media landscape and technologies evolved, I’ve always wondered how far the projector will come.
Projecting a movie onto the side of the house is one thing but what if it becomes a major means of expression or protest?
It’s a form of expression like graffiti but will projected images done without the consent of a building’s owner of, say, a dead fetus, someday be a chargeable offense?
An article in Mother Jones last June described such a scenario for one Ivan Martinez. Police in Miami pointed a gun at him for projecting things on the side of luxury towers like a running silhouette crying, “Gentrification!!!!” or another showing a man saying, “I love downtown’s revitalization, but where are the poor people?”
A website is being built to display all the work that was at the festival with an archive of past years and resources for those interested in creating new media. Until then, here are some examples of work that was on-display in Mexican restaurants, suit shops, tattoo parlors, souvenir stores and other businesses lining Hollywood.
Andy’s Education, by Brenda Ann Kenneally and Laura Lo Forti; 2007
Brooklyn, NY
Part of The Raw File’s collection of stories. Since 1996, photographer Brenda Ann Kenneally has documented the families in her Brooklyn neighborhood. This is growing up in Brooklyn through Andy’s eyes.
Calle de Los Negro, by Zig Gron; 2007
Los Angeles, CA
An investigation of a long-forgotten alley in downtown Los Angeles reveals connections between the city’s violent past and present. Using video, stills, and appropriated footage, the history of the alley, called Calle de los Negro, is linked to the footage of the LA riots.
The Scalable City, by Sheldon Brown; 2007
Encinitas, CA
Scalable City creates an urban environment via a data visualization pipeline. Each step in this pipeline builds upon the previous, amplifying exaggerations, artifacts and the patterns of algorithmic process in cinematic form.
Another large project at the festival was Remapping LA, organized by Hyper Media Studios and it stitches together images and media taken by participating people using GPS. The projects headed by UCLA professor Fabian Wagmister. Originally from Argentina, he said he still has friends in Buenos Aires that drive around blasting messages from projectors.
The festival ended Monday night at Lucky Strike Lanes, a bowling alley near the Kodak Theatre. The end of alley lanes were lit with projected images taken by volunteers of the project.
Meeting the models
An hour before I planned on heading home from Freewaves, I was stopped by two Swiss guys telling me their friends are looking for a photographer to shoot models wearing clothes they designed. Later that night I met the designer and model around the Roosevelt pool. They told me what they wanted, I told them what I could shoot with the limited equipment I traveled with and agreed to shoot Tuesday.
We would go out and party for a few hours, split up by two in the morning and I would go sleep in my car. By four, one of their friends drowned. So while I camped out across the street from the hotel, he died. The NYPost.com reported that hotel employees were told to be quiet about it. Cause of death? “A heart attack,” said Stephen Brandman, chief operating officer of Roosevelt owner Thompson Hotels. The cover up? An “urban legend.”
Ed Winter of the LA County Coroner’s office said the cause of death was undetermined. An LA cop told the Post there’s no homicide investigation and the death “could be a result of alcohol consumption.”
Marilyn Monroe had one of her first photo shoots for a suntan commercial on the Roosevelt pool diving board. She adored the Roosevelt. And rumor is that hotel staff have seen her ghost in a mirror that was in the room she used to stay in.
I walked out to the pool the next day to see if there was any indication of the death but it was a nice day and people were swarmed around the pool, sunbathing and swimming like nothing happened. I’m taking a few days out the water if someone died in my pool. But I guess they never drained the pool and it made national news.
We scouted locations Monday and Tuesday showed up at a park in Hollywood. The original model split and so a friend of the makeup artist filled in, Colleen, the one with brown hair and blond streaks. It was her first time modeling.
Right after we finished business with the Swiss in that lobby late Tuesday night, I turned to my friend Jason and said “Lets get out of this place. This bitch is haunted.” I didn’t know it really was until I got home and googled “haunted Roosevelt hotel” out of curiosity.
Lindsay Lohan is such a rad girl!