New York Times profiles Chateau Marmont from Somewhere

Sofia Coppola has a directorial talent large enought to transform hotels into movie stars. In Lost in Translation, she made the Park Hyatt Tokyo into an international icon. In her upcoming film Somewhere, she throws a spot light on the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles. Janelle Brown’s New York Times article "The Chateau Marmont Is Ready for Its Close-Up.” As Ms. Brown points out, the hotel, while not LA’s most luxe abode, is certainly the most legendary. Brown speaks to Sofia Coppola about why this hotel was so important to her.

"There’s no other place like it,” Ms. Coppola said recently, as she sat on a couch in the lobby with her daughters playing nearby. Her own family history with the hotel goes deep (her father almost bought it at one point), and she recalls using the hotel as a party pad when she was a student at the California Institute of the Arts. The parking attendant, who still works there, would sneak them into the pool. “When I started writing my script I thought of this bad-boy character, and thought, ‘Of course he has to live at the Chateau.’ ”