New Rose Hotel
New Rose Hotel (from Weird and Wonderful II: Fifty More Cult Films by George Hughes, available from freefall-productions.com on 02/11/20)
1998 / US / 93 minutes
“Attention to detail- that’s our strong point.”
Director: Abel Ferrara / Screenplay: Abel Ferrara & Christ Zois, based on the short story by William Gibson / Director of Photography: Ken Kelsch / Music: Schoolly D / Production: Edward R. Pressman for Quadra Entertainment / Cast: Christopher Walken (Fox), Willem Dafoe (“X”), Asia Argento (Sandii), Annabella Sciorra (Madame Rosa), Yoshitaka Amano (Hiroshi), Gretchen Mol (Hiroshi’s Wife), Phil Neilson (The Welshman), Ken Kelsch (The Expeditor), Victor Argo (Portuguese Businessman), Echo Danon (Singer #1), Kyrie Tinch (Singer #2).
William Gibson’s short story New Rose Hotel was written in 1984 and is included in the author’s 1986 collection, Burning Chrome. A brief but memorable piece on corporate espionage in the near future, it almost immediately attracted the attention of Hollywood as, like Philip K. Dick, Gibson’s novels were considered too complex film but his smaller works could be expanded into more conventional movies.
In the early ’90’s, Kathryn Bigelow hired Gibson to turn New Rose Hotel into a screenplay, using the story as the foundation for an action film. Unsatisfied with any of his attempts, Bigelow left the project and went on to make her own version of similar ideas with Strange Days (1995). Zoe Lund then wrote a “Very dark” adaptation that focussed mostly on the character of Sandii, who she intended to play herself.
Whilst Lund’s script was rejected for being too long (although it wouldn’t necessarily have made a long film- she left dozens of unproduced screenplays when she died, most of which include extremely detailed stage directions), producer Edward R. Pressman did bring on her Bad Lieutenant co- writer Abel Ferrara.
No longer collaborating with Nicholas St. John, Ferrara worked on a screenplay with Christ Zois that closely followed the short story. Ferrara had lost all interest in making anything even approaching an action film after King of New York (in which Lund was also supposed to star in the role of Jennifer). Having done all he felt he could with shoot- out’s and car chases on that film, he was now all about small scale, character- based drama like Gibson’s original work.
Again casting Christopher Walken, Ferrara teamed him up with Willem Dafoe (such a brilliant double act that you have to wonder why it’s never been repeated) to play Gibson’s characters, Fox and “X”- two “Extraction Specialists” operating in Japan in a world where the mega corporations’ wealth and competitive advantage reside in the human capital of their employees and the intellectual property they produce.
Traditional corporate espionage has become pointless as everything will be obsolete by the time it’s stolen and the best scientific minds are kept happy and guarded by the companies they “Belong“ to. The new version of corporate espionage is grabbing scientists and engineers from rival firms, for which the individual has to completely defect from their previous life. This is what Fox and X do and they’ve selected a genius genetic designer named Hiroshi (Yoshitaka Amano) as their next target.
To tempt Hiroshi away from Maas (the “Ziabatsu” he works for) and his wife (Gretchen Mol) and deliver him to the Hosaka corporation, Fox and X hire Sandii, a “Shinjuku Girl” they see singing in a bar where they’re meeting their contact Madame Rosa (Annabella Sciorra), to seduce him. However, Fox becomes concerned when X develops feelings for Sandii whilst training her for the mission.
Regretfully parting with Sandii when she leaves to make sure Hiroshi relocates to a lab run by Hosaka in Marrakech, X plans on finding her afterwards and leaving the business to begin a new life with her, much to Fox’s dismay. The job appears to go off as planned but Fox and X’s payment disappears when Hiroshi is assassinated along with Hosaka’s other top scientists who have come to meet him.
Suspecting that Sandii was turned by Maas who then used Hiroshi’s defection as an opportunity to take out all their competition with a single strike, X goes on the run, hiding out in the New Rose capsule hotel where he awaits the inevitable attempt on his own life and tries to piece together what happened and when Sandii betrayed him.
Ironically considering the casting of Walken and Dafoe in what are supposed to be the lead roles, New Rose Hotel still ends up being all about Sandii, as Lund had intended. As interesting as she would have been in the role, Ferrara decided that a younger actress was needed (Sandii is even younger in Gibson’s version) and had a great time auditioning “All the best nineteen year old girls in the business” for the part.
Eventually, both he and Dafoe agreed on Asia Argento, then 22 and still best known in Italy for being Dario Argento’s daughter (her 2000 directorial debut Scarlet Diva- one of the first widely released films shot entirely on digital video- is only a slight exaggeration of her own story). Her single- minded determination to get the role saw her beat Virginie Ledoyen and Chloe Sevigny to it.
According to Ferrara, Argento also began simultaneous affairs with both him and Dafoe, manipulating them both much the same way Sandii does the men in the film. She also wrote a lot of her own dialogue, greatly expanding the part to the point that she ends up stealing the whole film (Ferrara and Zois’s script was only used as the basis around which most scenes were improvised by the cast). She also made a short documentary, titled Abel / Asia, about the making of the film and her relationship with Ferrara during shooting.
But in addition to obviously being a stunningly beautiful young woman easily becoming the centre of attention despite the more experienced actors around her, Argento’s performance is also outstanding in it’s own right and is extremely nuanced- we never find out if Sandii was always planning on her apparent double cross or, if it was something she decided to do later, exactly when she changed her mind.
There are even the outside possibilities that she’s actually entirely innocent or that she was a Maas spy all along (the latter being Zois’s interpretation). According to Argento herself, there was a precise moment when her character made the decision. “When Walken was giving the rap about “Turning tricks for small change”, basically calling me a whore, when I was just a karaoke singer” she told Ferrara’s biographer Brad Stevens in 2003, “I thought “OK, you’re going to die for this”!”
There are also several theories surrounding the film itself, including some speculation over the years that there’s a load of missing footage and a potential much longer version out there somewhere. Personally, I’d say everything they had looks to have been used though and considering how many times we see the same events play out again at the end, it seems like they were making the most of it to salvage an abandoned production (Ferrara maintains that neither theory is true and that New Rose Hotel is exactly as it was always intended).
There were certainly problems during the shoot, with Ferrara firing editor Anthony Redman and his long-time composer Joe Delia after years of working together. “It was one film too many with the same people” as he explained in a recent interview (although he’s since reconciled with them both). Ferrara would relocate to Europe shortly afterwards (where he’s considered a great auteur rather than a B movie maniac) and has concentrated on low budget art films since.
With it’s slow pace, long monologues, complex plot (several critics dismissed it as incomprehensible) and frequent flashbacks to events we’ve already seen (or think we have- different takes are used each time to add subtle differences that illustrate the unreliability of memory), New Rose Hotel is not an easy sell. More recent attempts at similar concepts (most obviously Christopher Nolan’s Inception) have had to significantly up the action content to get a crowd but, approached with patience, full attention and an open mind, it’s a puzzle worth having a go at solving.
1998 / US / 93 minutes
“Attention to detail- that’s our strong point.”
Director: Abel Ferrara / Screenplay: Abel Ferrara & Christ Zois, based on the short story by William Gibson / Director of Photography: Ken Kelsch / Music: Schoolly D / Production: Edward R. Pressman for Quadra Entertainment / Cast: Christopher Walken (Fox), Willem Dafoe (“X”), Asia Argento (Sandii), Annabella Sciorra (Madame Rosa), Yoshitaka Amano (Hiroshi), Gretchen Mol (Hiroshi’s Wife), Phil Neilson (The Welshman), Ken Kelsch (The Expeditor), Victor Argo (Portuguese Businessman), Echo Danon (Singer #1), Kyrie Tinch (Singer #2).
William Gibson’s short story New Rose Hotel was written in 1984 and is included in the author’s 1986 collection, Burning Chrome. A brief but memorable piece on corporate espionage in the near future, it almost immediately attracted the attention of Hollywood as, like Philip K. Dick, Gibson’s novels were considered too complex film but his smaller works could be expanded into more conventional movies.
In the early ’90’s, Kathryn Bigelow hired Gibson to turn New Rose Hotel into a screenplay, using the story as the foundation for an action film. Unsatisfied with any of his attempts, Bigelow left the project and went on to make her own version of similar ideas with Strange Days (1995). Zoe Lund then wrote a “Very dark” adaptation that focussed mostly on the character of Sandii, who she intended to play herself.
Whilst Lund’s script was rejected for being too long (although it wouldn’t necessarily have made a long film- she left dozens of unproduced screenplays when she died, most of which include extremely detailed stage directions), producer Edward R. Pressman did bring on her Bad Lieutenant co- writer Abel Ferrara.
No longer collaborating with Nicholas St. John, Ferrara worked on a screenplay with Christ Zois that closely followed the short story. Ferrara had lost all interest in making anything even approaching an action film after King of New York (in which Lund was also supposed to star in the role of Jennifer). Having done all he felt he could with shoot- out’s and car chases on that film, he was now all about small scale, character- based drama like Gibson’s original work.
Again casting Christopher Walken, Ferrara teamed him up with Willem Dafoe (such a brilliant double act that you have to wonder why it’s never been repeated) to play Gibson’s characters, Fox and “X”- two “Extraction Specialists” operating in Japan in a world where the mega corporations’ wealth and competitive advantage reside in the human capital of their employees and the intellectual property they produce.
Traditional corporate espionage has become pointless as everything will be obsolete by the time it’s stolen and the best scientific minds are kept happy and guarded by the companies they “Belong“ to. The new version of corporate espionage is grabbing scientists and engineers from rival firms, for which the individual has to completely defect from their previous life. This is what Fox and X do and they’ve selected a genius genetic designer named Hiroshi (Yoshitaka Amano) as their next target.
To tempt Hiroshi away from Maas (the “Ziabatsu” he works for) and his wife (Gretchen Mol) and deliver him to the Hosaka corporation, Fox and X hire Sandii, a “Shinjuku Girl” they see singing in a bar where they’re meeting their contact Madame Rosa (Annabella Sciorra), to seduce him. However, Fox becomes concerned when X develops feelings for Sandii whilst training her for the mission.
Regretfully parting with Sandii when she leaves to make sure Hiroshi relocates to a lab run by Hosaka in Marrakech, X plans on finding her afterwards and leaving the business to begin a new life with her, much to Fox’s dismay. The job appears to go off as planned but Fox and X’s payment disappears when Hiroshi is assassinated along with Hosaka’s other top scientists who have come to meet him.
Suspecting that Sandii was turned by Maas who then used Hiroshi’s defection as an opportunity to take out all their competition with a single strike, X goes on the run, hiding out in the New Rose capsule hotel where he awaits the inevitable attempt on his own life and tries to piece together what happened and when Sandii betrayed him.
Ironically considering the casting of Walken and Dafoe in what are supposed to be the lead roles, New Rose Hotel still ends up being all about Sandii, as Lund had intended. As interesting as she would have been in the role, Ferrara decided that a younger actress was needed (Sandii is even younger in Gibson’s version) and had a great time auditioning “All the best nineteen year old girls in the business” for the part.
Eventually, both he and Dafoe agreed on Asia Argento, then 22 and still best known in Italy for being Dario Argento’s daughter (her 2000 directorial debut Scarlet Diva- one of the first widely released films shot entirely on digital video- is only a slight exaggeration of her own story). Her single- minded determination to get the role saw her beat Virginie Ledoyen and Chloe Sevigny to it.
According to Ferrara, Argento also began simultaneous affairs with both him and Dafoe, manipulating them both much the same way Sandii does the men in the film. She also wrote a lot of her own dialogue, greatly expanding the part to the point that she ends up stealing the whole film (Ferrara and Zois’s script was only used as the basis around which most scenes were improvised by the cast). She also made a short documentary, titled Abel / Asia, about the making of the film and her relationship with Ferrara during shooting.
But in addition to obviously being a stunningly beautiful young woman easily becoming the centre of attention despite the more experienced actors around her, Argento’s performance is also outstanding in it’s own right and is extremely nuanced- we never find out if Sandii was always planning on her apparent double cross or, if it was something she decided to do later, exactly when she changed her mind.
There are even the outside possibilities that she’s actually entirely innocent or that she was a Maas spy all along (the latter being Zois’s interpretation). According to Argento herself, there was a precise moment when her character made the decision. “When Walken was giving the rap about “Turning tricks for small change”, basically calling me a whore, when I was just a karaoke singer” she told Ferrara’s biographer Brad Stevens in 2003, “I thought “OK, you’re going to die for this”!”
There are also several theories surrounding the film itself, including some speculation over the years that there’s a load of missing footage and a potential much longer version out there somewhere. Personally, I’d say everything they had looks to have been used though and considering how many times we see the same events play out again at the end, it seems like they were making the most of it to salvage an abandoned production (Ferrara maintains that neither theory is true and that New Rose Hotel is exactly as it was always intended).
There were certainly problems during the shoot, with Ferrara firing editor Anthony Redman and his long-time composer Joe Delia after years of working together. “It was one film too many with the same people” as he explained in a recent interview (although he’s since reconciled with them both). Ferrara would relocate to Europe shortly afterwards (where he’s considered a great auteur rather than a B movie maniac) and has concentrated on low budget art films since.
With it’s slow pace, long monologues, complex plot (several critics dismissed it as incomprehensible) and frequent flashbacks to events we’ve already seen (or think we have- different takes are used each time to add subtle differences that illustrate the unreliability of memory), New Rose Hotel is not an easy sell. More recent attempts at similar concepts (most obviously Christopher Nolan’s Inception) have had to significantly up the action content to get a crowd but, approached with patience, full attention and an open mind, it’s a puzzle worth having a go at solving.
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