HOTEL GRAMERCY PARK
2008
My producer Wendy Ettinger and I followed the brilliant night life impresario and hotel king, Ian Schrager for our Tribeca Film Festival award winning documentary, Hotel Gramercy Park. He dominated the velvet rope disco scene with Studio 54, and then practically invented the boutique hotel.
It was stunning to watch Ian work. He is obsessive and controlling in the best possible way. We documented him as he morphed the beloved Gramercy Park Hotel from a shabby-chic relic of New York’s past, into a state-of-the-art boutique hotel experience. He worried over every single detail, and keeping up with him was near impossible. Once, he called me at 3:00AM to say he was testing the Rose Bar’s sound system.
Regardless, Ian is a genius and I learned so much from him.