"With...every idol a let down it gets you down." – Bryan Ferry/Roxy Music

People who run great clubs meet them all. The public sees celebrities in two dimensions: a paparazzi snapshot leaving a boutique, or a couple lines in Page Six. Club people see them in living color. Warts and all. I’ve been impressed with few, bored by many, disappointed often, and sometimes even disgusted. Some became my friends and some still awe me. I met Abel through my friend Nicky D. Frank White's headquarters in King of New York was The World, a club I ran. I've seen the movie a hundred times. The scene on the subway, where he’s almost mugged, the look on Frank White’s face as he leaves the joint, Lawrence Fishburne in Popeye's, are as real as anything I’ve ever seen in film. I'm in awe of Abel Ferrara. Over the years, we’ve met in my neighborhood, or somewhere on the street, and I’ve always been shocked that he recognized me. I was very nervous doing this interview. [See part 2 of the interview as well.]

He looked like a cross between Jason Robards and Marlon Brando --real sharp, real sober, real focused. The peeps at the little coffee and cake place, Oro, on Spring St., off Mulberry St., lowered the music so we could talk real loud into the tape recorder.

We’re here with Jen Gatien [producer of Chelsea on the Rocks], who I’ve known since she was a little kid, and [famed director] Abel Ferrara, who’ve I’d admired. I know him from the neighborhood. AF: What neighborhood?

This neighborhood (Little Italy), and I also know him from the legend, and you’ve been around, and Arthur Weinstein our great friend introduced us a long time ago. And I did a premiere, I don’t think you remember this, but I did a premier party for King of New York. And I think it was the first time I actually talked to you. AF: What club was it at?

It was at the Le Palace de Beaute, where the Petco (in Union Square) is now….and I walk up to Abel who was absolutely drunk, just hammered, which has happened once or twice. And I said, “Abel, look at you. This is your premier party. You’re absolutely drunk and it hasn’t even started yet.” And you said, “You think I’m bad, wait ‘til you meet [Christopher] Walken.” AF: And how was he?

He was worse than you. He came in and he was a mess. It was the first time we really met and you were brilliant and funny and cool, and I was amazed by your candor. And when I meet you on the street you are always friendly and you are always a great guy. Now you are doing this project. Tell me about this project and how you and Abel got involved? Jen Gatien: I was living at the Chelsea Hotel and I knew what was happening with [former owner] Stanley Bard being forced out and I knew there was a movie, a story to be told. So I went to Abel, unrelated. We were doing a retrospect of his work at the Film Society at Lincoln Center. And we started talking on the phone and kind of carried a dialogue, and I never thought it would be possible to work with him. I was thrilled when he accepted to direct the film. AF: Be thrilled when the film is over.

I always thought that [Hotel] Chelsea was a small town. It wasn’t like a building, it was like a small town. And once you belonged to that town you could always go back and you were always treated like you lived there for your life. And I only lived there two years, off and on. AF: Two years is like two centuries in that place.

Ultraviolet used to come up and break into my apartment and go to my roof, I had a roof, and hang her laundry up to dry. Richard Berstein came up one day and took all my flower pots and threw them over the roof. AF: Are you kidding?

No. It was crazy, but at one point it was DeeDee Ramone and all these writers. Who was the beat writer who lived there? Herbert Huncke lived there…Do you know who Herbert Huncke is? You know the whole… AF: Who?

You’ve never heard of Herbert Huncke? AF: We research our movies.

You do research for your movies? AF: Yeah, and we have people play Herbert Huncke.

So when is the movie out? JG: We’ve got a distributor. We haven’t set a date. AF: You’re kidding me. JG: No! AF: (Laughing) That’s a miracle. JG: It’s also been sold in Russia, Germany, India, Argentina, Brazil, New Zealand, Australia. It’s true. AF: I didn’t know.

Why would people be interested in the Chelsea Hotel? AF: Come on, for everything you just said. You just told us two stories. Why don’t we interview you? Those two stories are better than what’s in the movie.

The Chelsea Hotel where, with it’s pending demise, was that important to you? JG: A catalyst for sure. We definitely felt that the new management wanted me out. I was on the top of their list, Abel was number one, I was number two.

Really? JG: Absolutely.

Why was Abel number one? AF: Because we don’t pay the rent. (Laughing). Arthur [Weinstein] talks about paying the rent. And he says, “If I’m paying the rent, then everybody’s paying the rent.”

I asked [Arthur Weinstein], how far behind are you on the rent? And he said, ‘four grand’. And I said, that’s not so bad. And he goes, ‘it’s only February, I didn’t pay all of last year.’ AF: (Laughing) Four grand. He thought that four grand stood for 4,000 days. AF: But in the end [Arthur] was one of the upstanding citizens of that place. And working ‘til the end, man. He was my hero. You know, every day I couldn’t face the morning sun, that cat was… I mean he would go for an operation the way he went for a fucking coffee. He would walk downstairs, get in a cab. I would say, ‘where are you going?’ He’d say, ‘I gotta do an operation.’ I mean, this cat was a monster, man. JG: And the next day he’d be carrying canvases.