Moose Productions Blog

MORNING

I arrived at 9am to the White House Hotel. I was groggy from a night of little or no sleep. New York was like a dream, the streets empty of cars and people, everyone off to family houses with backyards somewhere outside the city limits. My father dropped me off, driving an Audi, and I felt horrible in the warmth of the leather seats. My father wanted to see the lobby of the White House but when I saw that it was full… Sam, Thompson “T”, Jerome and a toothless old man I hadn’t met yet, I told him that he should probably not come in.

The spirits were high. And some of the men, too. We talked about the cold cold weather outside. Lee Wells showed up and said he’d rather be in Florida, with the moviestars, said there’s nothing special about snow and christmas. “Christmas can be just as special around palm trees,” he said.

The morning was really slow. Todd was at the desk, asked me why I was at the White House and not with family. I told him I was working, that I wanted to be there… but that was only part of it… what I didn’t tell him was that for months prior I felt that Christmas day was going to be important for the film. And it was.

I talked to the toothless old fellow who didn’t live at the White House. He seemed to know all the guys in the lobby. He mumbled and was difficult to understand. He kept telling me about Vietnam, about how all the black fellows were in the front lines dying for the rich fellows. He said he hated the war in Iraq that people always win when they are defending their homes. He was in his seventies, and gave a hearty laugh after every sentence he spoke. “If they attack us, in our country, I’ll be the first one to pull out my gun and whoop some ass.” I believed him.

The reason he was at the White House is that he had gotten a Christmas goodie basket from the Bowery Mission and was selling the contents in the lobby. Preston, the old skinny black custodian of the White House, bought some socks. The toothless old man sold them, $1 per sock. Naturally, Preston bought both socks in the pair but was annoyed that he had to pay per sock.

Tom came down before long. He was a bit awkward with the group of four black men. His interjections always seemed off rhythym, seemed to halt the flow of conversation. Tom’s daughter called to wish him a Merry Christmas. She told him that she had just turned in her mercedes for a bmw because the mercedes was breaking down. Tom was so thrilled to talk to his daughter. He said he hoped to see her soon and said that he loved her before they hung up.

At one point, Tom went out to smoke a cigarette, and Preston happened to be outside, too, sweeping the street. It was so empty and so quiet. The first time I’d ever seen the Bowery in such a state. “It doesn’t feel like Christmas,” Preston said as he swept a straw into a dustpan. Tom nodded in agreement.

AFTERNOON

After a few cups of coffee and lunch at the only diner open in the area, I got back to the lobby. Maria, the vibrant pulse of December at the White House burst glowing into the lobby– as usual. She had spent the night in love with Shadow, squeezed into a small cubicle with a large man. After greeting everyone, she had a quick forbidden (by Shadow) smoke with Tom, then when Eric came out, she left for Chinatown.

After she left, there was a lull– as usual. I talked to a girl named Leisha who had recently gotten a room at the White House. She was nice but clearly lacked confidence. Later I would be told she was removed from the hotel for heroin possession.

Joel was now working the desk. He played Bob Dylan music, and read Bob Dylan’s book “Chronicle.” Both he and I had gotten that same book for Christmas. Joel knows a lot more about Bob Dylan than I do. We talked for an hour, a lot of the discussion about this film.

EVENING

As the skies got dark, Maria returned. The lobby was once again happening. She got her paints out and her paper. Shadow came down, too. Maria began painting. Eric, as always, loomed creepily in the background watching her. The painting was of a mother helping her young son pee. Maria focused, biting her lip and making strange gutteral sounds as the brush scrubbed the paper with color. Shadow, meanwhile was busy dismantling the lobby. He removed the paintings that were on the wall and replaced them with his own. Shadow, being close to 6 ft. 7 in. was rather clumsy. At one point, he smashed a painting of his that was drawn on a glass pane. It was really funny but no one in the lobby even considered laughing. Maria’s painting wasn’t her best. The penis of the little boy was grotesquely large and the green and red colors clashed in a rather unappealing way.

Maria and Shadow left to get some dinner. I went upstairs and found Tom who was alone in his room. Tom was watching TV. The monitor was flickering, the image moving from the bottom of the screen to the top, pausing, then moving up again. After a few minutes, The White House Christmas special came on. President Bush told his dog to take care of another White House pet, I think it was a cat. We saw the dog pull the cat on a little red wagon through the White House. On the trip through the White House there was a huge christmas tree with ornaments, nice wood floors, lots of huge bright colored gifts with tasteful ribbons. They even staged a news conference commending the dog on a job well done. It didn’t make much sense but Tom enjoyed it, though. He sat there, smoking a cigarette and laughing. I couldn’t help but think how different Christmas was at the two White Houses.

Around the world, the tide has changed.

So we go back to the White House Hotel…”the last stop” for the down and out, you might say.

Well, once upon a time, that was true. Now it’s turned into the last stop for last stops. And after a little more than a month of heavy shooting, I suppose I am overdue for a written report.

The problem (aside from laziness and exhaustion) is that, when you spend so much time inside of a place (essentially, inside someone’s home), it’s hard to pull your head high above water and get a good sense of what is around you. So, for the last week, Graham and I have been reviewing footage and thinking aloud about where things stand, how far along we have come, and what we have seen so far.

On this website, you have had a good introduction to some of our main characters (Tom, Shadow, Mike, and Maria). But very little has been said about our process, and about the daily experience of people inside the WHH.

To begin, Graham and I have had very different experiences at the White House. This was made abundantly clear to me when I followed Mr. Meriwether to the Permanent side of the building one night while we were looking for Mike Powell. The sight was overwhelming. The hall was dark and took on an evening musk that was not present during the day. The hallway, usually bookended by half-dimmed windows, was now lit only by a couple of red and blue bulbs that hung from crooked wires. There were sounds of televisions, and grunts coming out of the tops of the cubicles, and I had the distinct sense that, from the moment we stepped on the floor, we were being watched by people we could not see. Every move we made, the rustle of our jackets, the creeks of the floorboard, it all broadcast our presence, and told the residents that we were there. The sense of exposure reminded me of the old notion about how, if you are blind, your other senses become stronger.

My surprise came from the difference between the permanent side and the transient side of the hotel/flop. Graham and I have, in some ways, split our attention - i.e. Graham has focused on the permanent residents, and my primary focus has been the transients. While there is a tremendous amount of overlap, it explains how I had been left unaware of the nocturnal conditions on the flophouse floors.

I have spent several late nights at the WHH. At night, I have usually followed Maria, and watched as lonely-hearts, down-and-outs, middle-aged burnouts, and one sad, French prevaricator clung on to her as if she were a source of salvation. At night, Darren, a British backpacker, raver, and three-week resident of the White House, would come back from some jungle party and laugh with Maria. They would smoke cigarettes on the roof and make up stories about elaborate luxury in some other world. This is how it is with Maria…pure fantasy. Her and Tom could speak for hours about free spirit. Shadow includes her in his uptown visits to galleries and restaurants. Milton feeds off of her late-night visits to the front desk, where they spend hours talking about various, personal ideas. Tom once said that Maria has a litter of puppies, constantly following her around, looking for a pat behind the ear. And for a while, I was one of these pups, looking for some outburst, or some tender mix between Maria and her resident neighbors. Sometimes, waiting around, we would find Sam in the lobby with his cats; on one occasion we were met by a drunk British tourist who rightly described herself as a ‘liability’ when she goes out at night; but always, things appear to Maria as if they were part of a grand, on-stage improv, where characters come and go, and the only thing that matters is your demeanor.

But always Eric. He would find Maria, wherever she was. He would wait outside for her to return, he would pace the hallways and bathrooms if he knew she was on a particular floor; once I caught him spying on her in the basement; and occasionally he would interrupt a conversation by appearing suddenly and bearing down as if his weight and scowl would bring some subservient respect, or at least might wear down his target until she would let him stay and feel accepted.

Eric was the first one to be called a puppy, and Tom’s nickname was appropriate. As might be expected, Eric did not take it well and eventually began to lash out at anyone who did not respect him, leading to a showdown between the desk attendant (who threatened to call the police) and an episode (a week before Christmas) where Eric was reportedly smoking in the basement and was caught by the building’s plumber. The report gave Meyer an excuse to kick Eric out of the building - but as I write this, Eric is still at the White House Hotel, maintaining his story that the French authorities are sending his passport post haste and he will soon be free to return to Paris.

If this is all somewhat vague, then accept my apologies. I submit it only as an example of the kind of drama that can be found at the Hotel, despite the fact that the average demographic among permanents is over 50 year old men. Moreover, I think Eric was in an odd position. He does not realize the unlucky similarities between himself and the permanents - nor does he realize how close he is to becoming one of them (if not for Meyer’s refusal to accept any new residents).

Eric, with his sad proclivities, unending lies, and myriad versions of his history and his future, is a man who only sees the benefit of the next five minutes. Sometimes it seems to me that he is drowning, but the next day I would see him with a tie on and hear reports of wads of cash. I don’t know what to believe. All I know is that, as a person, I do not have a lot of positive things to say about him.

But again, his proximity to the old men…

In truth, we are all close to the men. Anyone of us… sitting next to them, talking on the level, leaving behind any ideas of superiority or class… when you sit there and join them, you form a perfect image. I had this experience the other night when I found Graham sitting quietly alongside one of the residents. The two of them would speak occasionally, and slowly. The two had found a common pace and a similar idea about how to speak, but from behind only to ideas came to me: 1) Graham (or myself) was not so far away from the lives of these men, and that given a certain preference for drink or another habit, we could all end up here; and 2) Graham was probably doing the admirable thing I have seen in a long time, in becoming a friend to a man who appears to me more like a corpse than a human.

The sight of Graham and myself in the lobby has created a bit of a stir inside the hotel.

That night when we went to find Mike, the men knew we were there and who we were looking for. They knew Mike was waiting for us and had gotten dressed for the occasion. The men, by now, knew there was a documentary in the works, and our conversations would never be private.

Living in one space, word spreads. Worse than a knitting circle, or a college dorm, gossip in the White House Hotel takes a vicious, paranoid character. The men, most of them ’street people,’ expect that we are taking advantage of them, somehow exploiting their names and faces and stories for our own profit. It has become a common conversation to explain that we are interested in telling stories, and that the idea of making money off this documentary is tertiary to our goals.

As I’ve said to the residents, many times, our goal is to tell the stories. Graham has addressed this issue in earlier posts, and might update these principles soon, but for now, it is sufficient to remember that we are trying to figure out how these men live, and to show what we find.