December 1, 2024 • 42 mins
We needed a hotel that was somehow cozy but also grand and preferably built in miniature, so we turned to the king of aesthetics and whimsy, Wes Anderson. His Grand Budapest Hotel delivers on multiple levels for hotel lovers (and great movie lovers). We explore the inspiration, architecture, and fictional history behind the made-up but eerily familiar world of Zubrowka and its famed resort in the mountains, the Grand Budapest Hotel.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hotel history is created for adult audiences.
(00:03):
Content may not be suitable for all listeners.
Discretion is advised.
You're listening to Hotel History.
We take you with us through the sordid history and scandals
of some of the world's most famous and infamous hotels.
I'm D'Etta.
And I'm Yael.
(00:24):
Let's get started.
On this episode, we're doing a fictional hotel,
because we like to do those once in a while.
And we had a little movie night.
And we watched The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Directed by Wes Anderson, in case you haven't seen it.
(00:45):
We thought it was appropriate because, you know,
weather's getting chilly.
It's a chilly movie.
It's a wintery movie.
Yeah.
We had to have apple cider and marshmallows with it.
It's so funny.
It's a...
It feels fall, winter appropriate,
because it's set in Eastern Europe,
(01:05):
and you always have this idea of bitter cold.
But also, the movie itself is really warm
with all the pinks and purples.
So it was like a perfect blend of both.
It warms you up, even though it feels like a cold movie.
Yeah.
Well, it gives a cozy, like it's cold outside,
and then you go inside.
And I think the colors, actually,
(01:27):
that's exactly what he did, like color theory or something.
I don't know.
I'm not a professional film person.
But outside, when you're outside, it's cold.
And the colors reflect that.
And then when you go into the hotel, it's warm.
And the movie was...
It's the second time I've seen it.
(01:47):
I forgot everything.
Same after the first time.
But it's so good.
And I love it.
And my favorite Wes Anderson film,
because the plot is actually good.
The plot's so good.
And a little complicated, but not too complicated to follow.
It is perfectly paced and laid out.
Yeah.
(02:07):
And anything having to do with World War II as the backdrop,
I feel like brings a good story.
Yeah.
It's really interesting.
I was reading a lot of interviews with Wes Anderson.
And he was just talking about this...
(02:27):
It's a made-up place with kind of an alternative history,
but it's still a very similar history.
So you can feel the fascism coming when they're on a train.
That's probably not going to go down well.
Yeah.
Why is the train stopping?
It's like, you're going to find out real soon.
(02:50):
Yeah.
It's set in a made-up country, Zubrowka,
which is supposed to be like Eastern Europe,
a mixture of Hungary and Poland and Czechoslovakia.
It takes place during the 1930s and the late 1960s.
(03:10):
So the aesthetics change a lot.
You see the hotel going from like this old, glamorous hotel
to a worn down, very mustard yellow.
Yeah.
Very Soviet.
Yeah, very Soviet hotel.
I feel like they just did the history of hotels so perfectly.
(03:33):
It's like the booming times, the rich, the famous went there,
and then slowly it's declined.
And you even start to get a sense that the hotel is already entering a period
that is no longer the glamour of what it had, but nobody wants to really accept that yet.
(03:59):
So even in 1932, it's not quite what it was at its height,
but the concierge, the guests, the guests are all older.
They're not willing to accept yet that what they loved so much doesn't quite exist anymore.
Yeah.
And I like that they depict the standard of hospitality
(04:27):
from the 1930s to the 1960s, and they make it known.
Or maybe we were watching the behind the scenes,
but the lobby boy is rushing through the lobby,
and he's taking notes, and he's doing all this stuff,
and everything is amazing, and yes ma'am and no ma'am,
and the concierge is preparing and anticipating everyone's needs.
And then in the 60s, it's like, oops, I didn't get you the right order.
(04:51):
And, oh, and chambermaid available upon request.
It's not automatically given that your room will be cleaned,
and all of the vending machines are broken and out of order signs.
Yeah, the neglect is palpable.
And just the behind the scenes of how the staff live and deal with things.
(05:19):
The meals they eat together, the little quarters they live in,
and even in the mansion when they go into that kitchen,
and you go behind the wall and you see what's happening.
And the story is so good, it's such a well done movie.
And I want to believe that this hotel exists in a different world.
(05:41):
Or like, I wish it did, but it wasn't filmed in a hotel,
it was filmed in a department store in a city called Gorlitz in Germany.
And Gorlitz apparently is half in Germany and half in Poland.
It's a city that's half and half.
Split by a river.
Yeah, that must be confusing.
It's like, I live in Gorlitz, which side?
(06:05):
And they also shot it a little bit in Czech Republic,
and I think in a bunch of other places.
So this hotel is supposed to be a resort,
the type that people would come to enjoy the healing waters sort of resort.
So they're famous for their baths, they have a Turkish bath.
(06:28):
And even the baths that they filmed in, they found in Gorlitz.
They had been scouting all these different locations,
they thought they would have to go to Italy.
And then they saw some old smokestacks and they were like,
oh, what does that lead to?
And somebody told them, oh, it's the old baths that used to be here.
And they were like, perfect.
(06:50):
Wow, lucky.
I'm sure it was an adventure filming and finding locations.
That's so fun.
Yeah, a lot of things referenced in the movie, like the bakery,
my favorite bakery, Mendel's.
Mendel's Bakery in the movie is inspired by a Viennese bakery called Demel.
(07:13):
Oh, so they just rearrange the letters a little bit.
A little bit.
And I guess they've actually like went there.
But I like that that's the real inspiration.
And I'm obsessed with it.
It looks really good.
I know.
I would love to try their, what was it called?
(07:35):
Courtesan au chocolat is the pastry they're known for in the movie.
And it's exactly what, apparently the translation is exactly what you think it is.
And there's a real recipe.
Someone made a video.
I don't know if the movie people themselves, but someone made a video of how to make the pastry,
that specific one.
(07:56):
I love that.
It's like a tower of pastel frosting is what that looks like.
I like that it doesn't look perfect.
It doesn't look like something that's been polished and is camera ready.
It looks like maybe a pastry that would have been from that era when everything was allowed to not be.
(08:22):
Perfect.
Perfect.
Yeah.
But it's so pretty though.
Yeah, it's gorgeous.
Yeah.
And my favorite scene was when she makes the pastries that the shape of the tools.
Yes.
And they were just like, oh, it's just too beautiful.
We can't cut into this.
Yeah, we can check this at the jail.
(08:42):
If you don't know what we're talking about, we highly recommend watching this movie.
Yeah, we're going to try.
We're not going to give away any spoilers, but we're going to talk about as much as we can without
doing so.
A lot happens.
So the main characters in the movie are the author and the director.
(09:08):
And Monsieur Gustav, the concierge, and Zero, the lobby boy, who later becomes you actually meet.
First, you meet him as an old man as the owner of the hotel telling his story.
And then Agatha, the baker's pastry assistant.
(09:31):
But the movie is based on a book.
It's inspired, not based.
It's inspired by a book.
Yeah, it's actually inspired by a lot of the writings of one author in particular
named Stefan Zweig, who was from Vienna.
(09:52):
He was born there in the late 1800s and then had to flee during the rise of Nazism.
He was an insanely famous and popular author in the 20s and 30s.
But then his works were stricken, burned, not allowed to be read anymore.
(10:15):
And so he's one of those authors that kind of got forgotten a little bit because of everything that
happened during the war.
It's so sad.
Yeah, but Wes Anderson read some of his short stories and his memoir on how it was for him
growing up in Vienna, what the Vienna of his youth was like.
(10:39):
"The World of Yesterday", I believe, was the name of the memoir.
And so that inspired him to make this story of this idea of how things used to be,
but also they're changing rapidly.
But the book that he got the most inspiration for the movie is "The Society of Cross Keys?"
(11:03):
No, that's actually a book that Wes Anderson put together.
It's a compilation of Zweig's works.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Wait, can I see it?
Yeah.
So if you look up this book that we use, Society of the Crossed Keys,
The Society of the Crossed Keys, the edition I have has an interview with Wes Anderson
(11:26):
at the front and talking about how Zweig inspired him and then it's stories and excerpts from
his memoir that Wes Anderson chose and compiled in this book.
Oh, okay.
Oh my God, this makes so much more sense than...
Oh, okay.
Wow.
(11:47):
I was confused by that.
Oh, I thought he wrote that book.
Oh, yeah.
Technically, he did.
But he did, but it's not like a whole different...
Yeah, it's not like a whole book.
But the movie itself, the author, character played by Jude Law when he's young
and a different actor when he's older is supposed to be, you know, Stefan Zweig.
(12:12):
It's kind of based on him.
And in the movie, he has actually written a novel called The Grand Budapest Hotel.
And that is what you see in the beginning of this girl holding this novel.
And then you see the author as an old man, narrating about, learning about the story
as a young man, and then you get the story from Zero being told to the young author.
(12:38):
And so it's like a story within a story within a story.
Yeah, it's really fun.
I like when they do that story within a story.
And actually, that's a framing method that Zweig used in a lot of his short stories.
He would be telling a story that somebody else had told his character.
(12:58):
So it all weaves together so nicely.
And also the author's opening monologue in the movie, where he talks about, you know,
people think that authors have to be just constantly coming up with stories to tell
people, but really, they just wait for people to come tell them things and then they relay them.
That's actually lifted straight out of one of Zweig's short stories.
(13:24):
Yeah, that's clever.
Yeah, I want to read his short stories.
It's really crazy.
I would never have heard of him before this.
No, me either.
It's so unfortunate.
So thanks, Wes Anderson.
Yeah.
And I love that he uses he teaches us new words like funicular or I guess, a transportation thing.
(13:49):
It's like a what would how would you describe it?
You see it in the movie.
It's like a little train that goes up the mountain to the hotel, but it's not a train.
It's like it's like one like a single car or carriage that goes up.
Yeah, it's a cable railway system that uses two counterbalanced cars to move up and down a steep slope.
(14:10):
I guess it needs its own word.
That's why.
Yeah.
But it's also very European.
I just feel like it's not common in the US.
So that's why we don't even know it.
I've never seen the funicular.
I'm sure there probably is one at some mountain resort.
But they're not funicular.
What are those called?
Those?
No, the kind that like, yeah, yeah, what is that?
(14:30):
I've been on one of those.
What is that called?
A cable car.
There we go.
My God, both are our brains.
So it's even a song by the fray.
Well, that's why we should know it.
No other reason.
Yeah, it's like it's like a longer, bigger cable car and it's not quite a train and it's not a tram.
(14:56):
So it really is its own.
Yeah, it's its own thing.
But I love it because it's like it takes you back to a time that, you know, doesn't exist anymore.
But what's so nice, I think I've said this before that I think that I'm obsessed with sets
(15:21):
like for movies and TV shows and that a lot of people want to get immersed in it.
And I kind of want to take the set and like place it somewhere like a coffee shop or
a restaurant or whatever.
Like if you don't have a good idea, and instead of doing the ugly industrial look,
just go to Wes Anderson.
Yes.
Look for inspiration because it's so cozy.
(15:43):
The 1930s lobby.
Yes.
Specifically, I'm not into the other one.
Yeah, maybe not the Soviet.
Not the Soviet lobby.
But just like the carpet and the uniforms and the coziness and the plants and like
it's just such a vibe where and the freaking Mendl's packages,
when they fall into the cart of Mendl's.
(16:06):
Oh, my gosh, I was reading that they had to like talk to so many different people to try to design
the box to just fall open like that.
But they ended up having to help it because it will eventually like all fall,
but not fast enough.
So they had to like rig it with some like wire under the table to help it go really fast.
(16:27):
That makes sense.
Yeah.
I mean, it doesn't look realistic.
But it was like a whole research and design thing to get that box to fall open.
Wow.
Wow.
Like I always wonder what they need these huge budgets for on movies.
It's for like things like that.
The set is insane.
And the outside, the exterior, they I think they did a miniature.
(16:50):
They did a lot of miniatures.
And I've read this and seen this in a lot of movies like Lord of the Rings, all miniature.
Yeah.
Like those when you see that forest and the crazy houses, like no one's building those,
which is unfortunate.
And I still think that they should build a Grand Budapest Hotel or a coffee shop dedicated to it.
(17:12):
But that to me is worth the budget.
I would love to work on a miniature.
I'm obsessed with miniatures.
I used to make little dioramas when I was little, so I would love.
I'm not qualified for a real one.
I'm just like, look at this tissue box.
I can make it into a room.
I was the queen of Barbie houses.
Everyone wanted my Barbie houses because I was so creative.
(17:36):
I'm like, you see this cupcake holder?
Just put that on a resume.
There you go.
I tried.
I tried to get into art school with that and they were like, no, like absolutely.
What?
They didn't immediately see your quirky potential, right?
I would hire, I would get, I'm like, you're a gem.
(17:58):
We need you on our team.
You know?
Yeah.
I love stop motion and stuff like that.
Like I, I really, you're going to be the next, you know, weird genius to make it.
If I had a budget, I can do so much.
But yeah, I do love all of the miniatures and I love that he makes sure, you know,
it's a miniature.
He's not trying to like trick anybody.
(18:20):
He's like, look at this eight foot building we made.
Oh yeah.
And he did it with like the mountainscapes.
Yeah.
I mean, it looks fake ish.
Yeah.
It looks Wes Anderson.
Yes.
Like I love that he completely.
They did make a little exterior outside a building.
Or outside the building too, because the actors did have to, it's like a,
(18:42):
Yeah.
In the department store, they made the facade just for the entrance.
Yeah.
And you can even see in the movie that it is not attached to the building.
It's like a little bit in front of it.
Yeah.
And then inside the department store that they found, they built two sets.
They built the 1930s lobby set first, and then they built the 1960s set inside of that.
(19:07):
And so then they shot all of the 60s stuff first, then tore down, tore that down, and then had the 30s set and shot all of that.
Okay.
I forgot which, yeah, which one went first.
There's so much information about this movie and how it was made.
We watch like YouTube's about it.
How can you not?
Yeah, it's fascinating.
Yeah.
(19:27):
The way that they filmed, like there's a ski chase scene and there's a whole thing behind the scenes of how they filmed that.
Like it's so fascinating.
Yeah.
How they do it.
The magic of movies.
So this hotel was actually inspired by the idea of the great hotels and resorts of continental Europe.
(19:48):
There's no, you know, one hotel that brought this story to life.
You can actually go on the Library of Congress website and just Google Library of Congress Photochrome,
and you'll see all of these old photos from continental Europe in like the 18 and early 1900s that Wes Anderson used as inspiration.
(20:10):
Just to name a few, there's the Grand Hotel Pup in Karlovy Vary.
And some of these hotels do still exist.
They're just either not in use as hotels or they are in use, but they're not what they were.
Yeah.
There's the Hotel Bristol Palace in Karlovy Vary, which is situated high in the hills like the Budapest.
(20:33):
The Imperial Hotel, which had a funicular.
The Belvedere.
The Giesbach in Switzerland.
Don't even try.
I don't know.
It has a funicular, which takes you up to the hotel above a lake.
That sounds gorgeous.
And then you'll also notice in the hotel, there's this like mountainous background with a stag on top of the mountain that acts as the backdrop in the dining room ballroom area.
(21:04):
And also that they just kind of show every now and then.
And that's a real place.
It's in Carlo Vivere and it's known as Stag's Leap.
And there's like a stag sculpture up on top.
So they made their own miniature of this for the film, another miniature.
And then across the river from a spa town, there is actually a elevator that runs up along the side of the cliffs and takes you all the way to the top to this village that's up on some cliffs.
(21:37):
And so that inspired the elevator that goes all the way up to the top of the cliffs in the movie.
There's a couple of scenes where there's like an elevator going up.
It's people living in the mountains.
Very interesting.
I didn't know that that's imagine living on or growing up in a mountain village.
(21:58):
That sounds great.
Like also a little isolating, probably.
But I'm not who would be like, I have to go down the elevator to like the rest of the world.
You know, I just think about like, where's the closest CBS?
I am so spoiled.
I don't know how people do it.
(22:18):
You would make a poultice of wild herbs instead.
Oh, God.
You would die.
So I love the architecture of the 1930s version of the hotel.
Oh, my God.
Yeah, not so much the 1960s.
But the 1930s hotel is gorgeous.
(22:40):
First of all, it's that like lovely light pink color.
So it looks like a cake.
Like it looks like it should be made by Mendel.
Yeah.
The whole hotel actually is made out of cake.
Is it cake?
But it has it's it's a chateau like structure and that has this manzard roof and twin turrets.
(23:04):
But then the awning and entryway is like more of an art deco style.
So it's got a you can tell it was, you know, probably built late 1800s turn of the century
1900s and then it's had a little bit of a facelift with this art deco thing that was
probably added in the 20s.
(23:26):
I didn't know what a manzard roof was.
I don't.
So in case you're like us, it's actually a style of roof that was invented by a French
architect who it's named after to skirt some zoning laws, which.
Oh, I love that.
Yeah.
Creativity.
It actually allowed buildings to get like an extra living space, like a little bit of
(23:48):
a hidden top floor because the roof is flat and then gently slopes down instead of having
the steep gables, which is not a great living space.
So.
Oh, that's actually really clever.
Yeah, I love that.
So many inventions are like, well, this law is annoying.
(24:09):
What can we do to get around it?
Yeah, what's that saying?
The mother of invention is necessity.
Necessity is mother of invention or lazy people make the best inventions or something like
there's two different quotes, but they both kind of go together because you have to use
(24:30):
like ingenuity instead of it.
Just it's like, well, I don't want to get up from the couch and reach this.
You know, it'd be a great idea if I just had a really long claw.
And in this case, it's like, I don't want to deal with this zoning laws.
I'm going to do this.
But I love that even back in the day, they were doing that.
(24:51):
Yeah.
So we don't see what happens to the hotel through the 40s and 50s.
So next time we see it is 1968 and it's starkly different, especially, I mean,
both the exterior and the interior, the exterior has been turned into this very
square geometric Soviet building drab, you know, brownish gray brick.
(25:16):
The turrets are still there, but they've been squared off.
They have antennas coming off of them.
And Anderson said that they wanted to represent the architectural impact of communism
and how the hotel has changed parallel to this change in political ideology.
(25:37):
So the hotel has this neglected feeling and beauty is clearly no longer a priority.
Yeah.
God, communism really did a lot of damage.
And then, of course, as we mentioned on the inside, it's all like oranges and
greens and mustard yellows and there's ugly signs everywhere.
(25:57):
But that was the look of the late 60s, which we all hated.
Yeah.
It was a dark time in history for design.
Like the reception desk and the concierge desk were so opulent in the 30s version
and in the 60s version, no, they are as basic as can be.
(26:18):
A couple of hotel references that I didn't expect was that when the author as an old man
is speaking, you're in his study and the patterns on the wallpaper and curtains there
are supposed to be reminiscent of the carpet in the hallway of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining.
(26:43):
Oh, I know. I know what you're talking about.
And then another connection to The Shining is that Milena
Canonaro was the costume designer on both The Shining and The Grand Budapest.
Oh, so she does a lot of hotel movies.
Shout out to her. She did a great job.
She did. She's won Oscars. She's amazing.
(27:06):
Well, I think you have to not have to, but it makes sense that if you're a famous filmmaker
and you're making a film about a hotel, you're going to give a little nod to some other famous
movies and The Shining, as we know, is the biggest one.
Wes Anderson is so great about always giving little nods and homages to the things that have
(27:29):
inspired him. There are so many scenes in here that are clearly from other movies.
Like he was inspired by Hitchcock. There's a whole like not chasing, but like a follow scene
in a museum that's inspired by another movie. He was inspired by like some comedies from the 30s.
(27:55):
Directors like Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder.
So he's always so great about being like wink, wink, nod, nod.
And I feel like that's the fun of making a movie.
Yeah.
Because you get to include everything in that.
There's actually a movie book for the Grand Budapest Hotel for the Wes Anderson collection
(28:17):
that is great. It's got beautiful photographs, interviews with a ton of people who worked on
the movie, like three different interviews with Wes Anderson. And one of the movies it talks about
inspiring this is I think it's called The Grand Hotel. And it's this movie from the early 30s
before like the Hollywood codes came into existence. So I imagine it's probably a little
(28:42):
raunchier than you would expect a movie from the 30s to be, but it's about a hotel in Berlin
and all of these characters that are living, living their lives and going through all of
these things. So that might be a future movie night and fictional hotel that we do.
I definitely want to watch that. But there was another movie I somehow came across. I
(29:05):
don't know if this was an inspiration for him, but it was called, I showed you that preview.
Yeah.
It was called like, what was it called? Oh my God.
The.
The North New Hampshire Hotel.
Yeah, it was something like that. Okay. Okay. Here I found it on his Wikipedia,
(29:29):
but some have said that there's similarities between Anderson's work and the 1984 film,
The Hotel New Hampshire. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. So there are similarities. So it may have,
have played an inspiration, but that is, uh, we only saw the trailer. So we got two movie nights
coming. The trailer for this Hotel New Hampshire looked insane, but it was the eighties and every
(29:55):
movie from the eighties is insane. The eighties was a wild time. It stars a young Rob Lowe. So
I'm not mad. That's enough, but there's like a bear. There's like a girl playing a bear.
Like a name they're like Jodie Foster and blah, blah, and Rob Lowe. And then blah, blah as bear.
It's like, just watch this movies to find out who bear is.
(30:17):
It looks ridiculous, but that's why I like those movies. You know, it's bad, but it's so bad. It's
good. Those are the best movie nights. I love bad movie nights. I still think about the movie Apple
that we watched. If no one knows Apple, please do yourself a favor. Don't watch it. Okay.
Now watch it. If you want to watch ridiculously bad musicals that make no sense whatsoever
(30:48):
and has your favorite old actors that you've forgotten about. Yeah. Watch it. It's a, apparently
it is a cult classic. It is in the gay world. And it was like, it was over edited. So you will have
more questions than answers at the end, but then just do a little Google and it'll tell you about
all the scenes that were deleted that would have made it make sense. Yeah. It's kind of like the
(31:13):
room, but in a musical, I think it got a Razzie award. It must have probably. Yeah. But you,
you will be entertained and you'll be left wondering why someone would do that to your eyeball.
Yeah. It's so good though. The Hotel New Hampshire is definitely on the list of films. I just, I also
(31:40):
can't believe Jodie Foster was in it. Like you think Jodie Foster would be in like really well
made. I mean, you know, she's been in the best and she won an Oscar and I just watched her in,
uh, true detective. Yeah. And you're like, wow, that's Jodie Foster. And then you see this movie.
You're like, Oh wow. Even Jodie Foster fumbles them. She makes mad choices.
(32:08):
So I really appreciated the detail and understanding that Anderson seems to have of
the hospitality industry. The, especially in that, those first scenes where the concierge Gustav
and zero, the lobby boy are interacting together and they're, you know, he's telling him like,
(32:31):
you have to do this and you have to make them feel like this. And it just seemed like he really took
the time to, to understand that side of things. Yeah. And, um, I think also the character, I mean,
it was a different time with different standards, but my favorite thing is that when he goes,
when someone's accuses him, Adrian Brody's like, you sleep with, or I don't know if it was him or
(32:54):
someone else, you sleep with your guests. And he's like, of course, of course, a hundred percent good
service. Um, but yes, he's, he's like all about doing, he's not perfect. He's so entertaining
and he's such an interesting character because he's not a straight laced guy. You think he is
(33:17):
a part of the time. And then he like drops a bomb or just like, okay, we're just going to do this.
And the lobby boy is just so confused. He's like, wait, I guess I'm going around. Like
the concierge decided the lobby boy was going to be his prodigy. Like I don't think the lobby
boy necessarily earned it, even though he was always eager. It's like, he's like, I need someone
(33:39):
to talk to. Come with me, boy. It's like, well, you're all I've got, so we're going to make this
work. I mean, the whole, his, his name is zero. Was his name zero before, or was it zero? Cause
he's like, what's your experience? And he's like, well, I worked here zero experience, zero.
I love that. Uh, actually, yeah. Anderson talks about that in one of the interviews. He did name
(34:03):
him zero first. And he actually, uh, thought a little bit that he was naming him zero as a tribute
to an actor. Uh, I can't remember the actor's full name, but he played Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof
and stuff like that. Like he named him after an actor as kind of an homage. Oh my God. But also
(34:25):
zero, we don't know at the beginning of the movie where zero comes from. Like he's clearly an
immigrant. We find out on the train that he has this like migratory status that is not good enough
for the soldiers taking everybody's papers. So, but we don't find out until later exactly what
his story is. And so he's kind of like starting from zero, this blank slate. He's come here with
(34:49):
nothing, but he's, you know, going to make the best of it and work hard. Yeah. Yeah. I just, I,
I thought his name was zero, but also, yes, it's part of the joke, but he is, he's like, yeah,
oh, I did this zero experience. I also worked here zero experience, but Hey, you can still get a job
at a fancy hotel back then. I just feel like job, like life was so different back then. You can just
(35:15):
walk in and be like, Hey, can you give me a shot? I'm poor and I'm hungry. And they're like,
okay, fine. Yeah. That looks like, Hey, can you give me a shot? I'm really down on my luck. Do you
have 15 years of social media experience? Like ma'am, that didn't exist then. I literally saw a
(35:37):
job that's like, we need this amount of year for Tik Tok. It was like eight years. I'm like,
Tik Tok? What? It was, you did not even know it existed eight years ago. How dare you. Yeah.
It's just, people be crazy. So I appreciate, I appreciate the good old days.
You might've worked for a penny, but at least you can get a job.
(36:01):
Yeah. I also, yeah, I love that. It seems like Gustav and zero would want to work at a, at a
grand old hotel because not only, yeah, like hotels were willing to give people immigrants chances,
(36:23):
like you could work there and have a really good job and advance. But I also love when,
when Gustav asks zero, like, why do you want to work here? And he's like, who wouldn't? It's an
institution. And so that Anderson like has this idea of like historic hotels already have this,
(36:46):
this personality cult to them that people do just want to work at this hotel because of
it's that hotel. But that answer got him the job. Yeah. Like you can see that he's like, oh,
right. He says like, yeah, he's like, yeah. So, but it really, it's so good. It's, it's really,
(37:07):
I just, I love it. I think there should be more movies about the hospitality industry
and shows. I don't know why there isn't because so many people in film have worked in hospitality
and so are they just like, they don't want to work through that trauma. I mean, I have, I made my
short film based on, I have a short film, everyone gonna, I made this short film. I had this idea
(37:31):
because I had like crazy experiences in LA and I'm like, I think this would be such a good idea.
And I made it and it's not the best. It's not the best short film. It's shitty, but it was so fun.
And it is really cathartic. Like you're like, Oh my God, I'm going to say all the jokes.
So that I wanted to say.
(37:54):
So the one of the reasons that the book that Anderson edited is called the society of
crossed keys is because in the movie that is a very elite group of hotel concierges
that Gustav has to call in a favor from. And for one, one reason it's so fun is because it's like
(38:16):
a roll call of great actors that have been in Wes Anderson movies and they're all at different
hotels around Europe, like Bill Murray. And yeah. So that part is great in itself, but also just the
fact that he has in his movie, what it could kind of be considered a concierge mafia that we have
(38:39):
recently learned is kind of a thing. It's definitely a thing. So I really loved, I was like,
did he like just happen to luck into adding that? Or does he like know that there's,
I'm sure he did research. Like he seems to be the kind of person that does thorough research on his
projects and he probably found out and it's been going on for years because there's no way like you,
(39:03):
you don't ask around. I'd be asking old concierges like all the T be like, well, what's going on?
Yeah. Who do you know? Who else can you tell us like knows things? So I think he did. But that was
one of my favorite scenes that and my favorite. Well, what did Adrian Brody's character say to
(39:24):
the concierge? He's like, you're gay or something or he's like, he accused him of sleeping with a
woman and then he's like, you're gay. And he's like, well, which one is it? He's like, you're both.
That's one of the best lines. I don't know. Can I say the story how you didn't notice Adrian Brody
in real life? We, we went to the Beverly Hills Hotel one time to just have brunch and walk around
(39:50):
and just see it. And we have like a video of it. We were walking down the hallway and
Deanna and I are very different people where I was like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like,
I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like,
I'm like, I'm like, I'm not like that. And Deanna and I are very different people where I notice
(40:12):
everything. I notice nothing. But it's like different. Like, I'll know. I won't notice. We
take turns, but basically I notice everything. And I always notice famous people. I don't say
anything, but my eyes right away, I noticed the famous person. Even if they're not super famous,
I don't know why my brain is like this. But I won't bother anyone. I don't like approach anyone.
(40:33):
So we're walking down the hall and first we see Sylvester Stallone and his daughter and his
daughter and bodyguard. And Deanna had no idea. His daughter was wearing a really cute dress.
That's okay. And then Adrian Brody walks down the hall and I'm like, okay, she has to be paying
(40:56):
attention this time. More people are walking. She didn't know. No, no, they don't look the same in
a real life. They were shocked too. They're like, why are you in this hallway? It was an accident.
We were just looking at the leaves on the wallpaper. Yeah, we love the ball people. Yeah.
So, but I was like, oh my God, oh my God, two famous people in one hallway. This is crazy.
(41:18):
Um, I think it was some, something was happening. It was like just after Oscars or something like
that. Yeah. Something or yeah. The, where a lot of celebrities were. Yeah. They were all in town
for some award shows. So we were like, this is a great time to go to the Beverly Hills. I actually
didn't think we would see anyone. I always think, um, whatever I go, you were right. Yeah.
(41:43):
You missed it, but it was fun. I should, um, no one really smiled at us though.
I will say it's not that they're mean or anything. They were probably, I think they were just
shocked. Yeah. They were shocked that you didn't notice them. I think they were like,
what's with your friend? Like, how can you, but it was fun. Um, one day we'll see Wes Anderson.
(42:05):
I won't know. Thanks for listening to Hotel History. You can follow us on most social media
platforms, Patreon and Substack by searching for Hotel History or Hotel History Podcast.
If you like what you hear, please leave us a five star review on Apple podcasts and Spotify so we
(42:27):
can reach more listeners.
Hotel history is created for adult audiences.
(00:03):
Content may not be suitable for all listeners.
Discretion is advised.
You're listening to Hotel History.
We take you with us through the sordid history and scandals
of some of the world's most famous and infamous hotels.
I'm D'Etta.
And I'm Yael.
(00:24):
Let's get started.
On this episode, we're doing a fictional hotel,
because we like to do those once in a while.
And we had a little movie night.
And we watched The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Directed by Wes Anderson, in case you haven't seen it.
(00:45):
We thought it was appropriate because, you know,
weather's getting chilly.
It's a chilly movie.
It's a wintery movie.
Yeah.
We had to have apple cider and marshmallows with it.
It's so funny.
It's a...
It feels fall, winter appropriate,
because it's set in Eastern Europe,
(01:05):
and you always have this idea of bitter cold.
But also, the movie itself is really warm
with all the pinks and purples.
So it was like a perfect blend of both.
It warms you up, even though it feels like a cold movie.
Yeah.
Well, it gives a cozy, like it's cold outside,
and then you go inside.
And I think the colors, actually,
(01:27):
that's exactly what he did, like color theory or something.
I don't know.
I'm not a professional film person.
But outside, when you're outside, it's cold.
And the colors reflect that.
And then when you go into the hotel, it's warm.
And the movie was...
It's the second time I've seen it.
(01:47):
I forgot everything.
Same after the first time.
But it's so good.
And I love it.
And my favorite Wes Anderson film,
because the plot is actually good.
The plot's so good.
And a little complicated, but not too complicated to follow.
It is perfectly paced and laid out.
Yeah.
(02:07):
And anything having to do with World War II as the backdrop,
I feel like brings a good story.
Yeah.
It's really interesting.
I was reading a lot of interviews with Wes Anderson.
And he was just talking about this...
(02:27):
It's a made-up place with kind of an alternative history,
but it's still a very similar history.
So you can feel the fascism coming when they're on a train.
That's probably not going to go down well.
Yeah.
Why is the train stopping?
It's like, you're going to find out real soon.
(02:50):
Yeah.
It's set in a made-up country, Zubrowka,
which is supposed to be like Eastern Europe,
a mixture of Hungary and Poland and Czechoslovakia.
It takes place during the 1930s and the late 1960s.
(03:10):
So the aesthetics change a lot.
You see the hotel going from like this old, glamorous hotel
to a worn down, very mustard yellow.
Yeah.
Very Soviet.
Yeah, very Soviet hotel.
I feel like they just did the history of hotels so perfectly.
(03:33):
It's like the booming times, the rich, the famous went there,
and then slowly it's declined.
And you even start to get a sense that the hotel is already entering a period
that is no longer the glamour of what it had, but nobody wants to really accept that yet.
(03:59):
So even in 1932, it's not quite what it was at its height,
but the concierge, the guests, the guests are all older.
They're not willing to accept yet that what they loved so much doesn't quite exist anymore.
Yeah.
And I like that they depict the standard of hospitality
(04:27):
from the 1930s to the 1960s, and they make it known.
Or maybe we were watching the behind the scenes,
but the lobby boy is rushing through the lobby,
and he's taking notes, and he's doing all this stuff,
and everything is amazing, and yes ma'am and no ma'am,
and the concierge is preparing and anticipating everyone's needs.
And then in the 60s, it's like, oops, I didn't get you the right order.
(04:51):
And, oh, and chambermaid available upon request.
It's not automatically given that your room will be cleaned,
and all of the vending machines are broken and out of order signs.
Yeah, the neglect is palpable.
And just the behind the scenes of how the staff live and deal with things.
(05:19):
The meals they eat together, the little quarters they live in,
and even in the mansion when they go into that kitchen,
and you go behind the wall and you see what's happening.
And the story is so good, it's such a well done movie.
And I want to believe that this hotel exists in a different world.
(05:41):
Or like, I wish it did, but it wasn't filmed in a hotel,
it was filmed in a department store in a city called Gorlitz in Germany.
And Gorlitz apparently is half in Germany and half in Poland.
It's a city that's half and half.
Split by a river.
Yeah, that must be confusing.
It's like, I live in Gorlitz, which side?
(06:05):
And they also shot it a little bit in Czech Republic,
and I think in a bunch of other places.
So this hotel is supposed to be a resort,
the type that people would come to enjoy the healing waters sort of resort.
So they're famous for their baths, they have a Turkish bath.
(06:28):
And even the baths that they filmed in, they found in Gorlitz.
They had been scouting all these different locations,
they thought they would have to go to Italy.
And then they saw some old smokestacks and they were like,
oh, what does that lead to?
And somebody told them, oh, it's the old baths that used to be here.
And they were like, perfect.
(06:50):
Wow, lucky.
I'm sure it was an adventure filming and finding locations.
That's so fun.
Yeah, a lot of things referenced in the movie, like the bakery,
my favorite bakery, Mendel's.
Mendel's Bakery in the movie is inspired by a Viennese bakery called Demel.
(07:13):
Oh, so they just rearrange the letters a little bit.
A little bit.
And I guess they've actually like went there.
But I like that that's the real inspiration.
And I'm obsessed with it.
It looks really good.
I know.
I would love to try their, what was it called?
(07:35):
Courtesan au chocolat is the pastry they're known for in the movie.
And it's exactly what, apparently the translation is exactly what you think it is.
And there's a real recipe.
Someone made a video.
I don't know if the movie people themselves, but someone made a video of how to make the pastry,
that specific one.
(07:56):
I love that.
It's like a tower of pastel frosting is what that looks like.
I like that it doesn't look perfect.
It doesn't look like something that's been polished and is camera ready.
It looks like maybe a pastry that would have been from that era when everything was allowed to not be.
(08:22):
Perfect.
Perfect.
Yeah.
But it's so pretty though.
Yeah, it's gorgeous.
Yeah.
And my favorite scene was when she makes the pastries that the shape of the tools.
Yes.
And they were just like, oh, it's just too beautiful.
We can't cut into this.
Yeah, we can check this at the jail.
(08:42):
If you don't know what we're talking about, we highly recommend watching this movie.
Yeah, we're going to try.
We're not going to give away any spoilers, but we're going to talk about as much as we can without
doing so.
A lot happens.
So the main characters in the movie are the author and the director.
(09:08):
And Monsieur Gustav, the concierge, and Zero, the lobby boy, who later becomes you actually meet.
First, you meet him as an old man as the owner of the hotel telling his story.
And then Agatha, the baker's pastry assistant.
(09:31):
But the movie is based on a book.
It's inspired, not based.
It's inspired by a book.
Yeah, it's actually inspired by a lot of the writings of one author in particular
named Stefan Zweig, who was from Vienna.
(09:52):
He was born there in the late 1800s and then had to flee during the rise of Nazism.
He was an insanely famous and popular author in the 20s and 30s.
But then his works were stricken, burned, not allowed to be read anymore.
(10:15):
And so he's one of those authors that kind of got forgotten a little bit because of everything that
happened during the war.
It's so sad.
Yeah, but Wes Anderson read some of his short stories and his memoir on how it was for him
growing up in Vienna, what the Vienna of his youth was like.
(10:39):
"The World of Yesterday", I believe, was the name of the memoir.
And so that inspired him to make this story of this idea of how things used to be,
but also they're changing rapidly.
But the book that he got the most inspiration for the movie is "The Society of Cross Keys?"
(11:03):
No, that's actually a book that Wes Anderson put together.
It's a compilation of Zweig's works.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Wait, can I see it?
Yeah.
So if you look up this book that we use, Society of the Crossed Keys,
The Society of the Crossed Keys, the edition I have has an interview with Wes Anderson
(11:26):
at the front and talking about how Zweig inspired him and then it's stories and excerpts from
his memoir that Wes Anderson chose and compiled in this book.
Oh, okay.
Oh my God, this makes so much more sense than...
Oh, okay.
Wow.
(11:47):
I was confused by that.
Oh, I thought he wrote that book.
Oh, yeah.
Technically, he did.
But he did, but it's not like a whole different...
Yeah, it's not like a whole book.
But the movie itself, the author, character played by Jude Law when he's young
and a different actor when he's older is supposed to be, you know, Stefan Zweig.
(12:12):
It's kind of based on him.
And in the movie, he has actually written a novel called The Grand Budapest Hotel.
And that is what you see in the beginning of this girl holding this novel.
And then you see the author as an old man, narrating about, learning about the story
as a young man, and then you get the story from Zero being told to the young author.
(12:38):
And so it's like a story within a story within a story.
Yeah, it's really fun.
I like when they do that story within a story.
And actually, that's a framing method that Zweig used in a lot of his short stories.
He would be telling a story that somebody else had told his character.
(12:58):
So it all weaves together so nicely.
And also the author's opening monologue in the movie, where he talks about, you know,
people think that authors have to be just constantly coming up with stories to tell
people, but really, they just wait for people to come tell them things and then they relay them.
That's actually lifted straight out of one of Zweig's short stories.
(13:24):
Yeah, that's clever.
Yeah, I want to read his short stories.
It's really crazy.
I would never have heard of him before this.
No, me either.
It's so unfortunate.
So thanks, Wes Anderson.
Yeah.
And I love that he uses he teaches us new words like funicular or I guess, a transportation thing.
(13:49):
It's like a what would how would you describe it?
You see it in the movie.
It's like a little train that goes up the mountain to the hotel, but it's not a train.
It's like it's like one like a single car or carriage that goes up.
Yeah, it's a cable railway system that uses two counterbalanced cars to move up and down a steep slope.
(14:10):
I guess it needs its own word.
That's why.
Yeah.
But it's also very European.
I just feel like it's not common in the US.
So that's why we don't even know it.
I've never seen the funicular.
I'm sure there probably is one at some mountain resort.
But they're not funicular.
What are those called?
Those?
No, the kind that like, yeah, yeah, what is that?
(14:30):
I've been on one of those.
What is that called?
A cable car.
There we go.
My God, both are our brains.
So it's even a song by the fray.
Well, that's why we should know it.
No other reason.
Yeah, it's like it's like a longer, bigger cable car and it's not quite a train and it's not a tram.
(14:56):
So it really is its own.
Yeah, it's its own thing.
But I love it because it's like it takes you back to a time that, you know, doesn't exist anymore.
But what's so nice, I think I've said this before that I think that I'm obsessed with sets
(15:21):
like for movies and TV shows and that a lot of people want to get immersed in it.
And I kind of want to take the set and like place it somewhere like a coffee shop or
a restaurant or whatever.
Like if you don't have a good idea, and instead of doing the ugly industrial look,
just go to Wes Anderson.
Yes.
Look for inspiration because it's so cozy.
(15:43):
The 1930s lobby.
Yes.
Specifically, I'm not into the other one.
Yeah, maybe not the Soviet.
Not the Soviet lobby.
But just like the carpet and the uniforms and the coziness and the plants and like
it's just such a vibe where and the freaking Mendl's packages,
when they fall into the cart of Mendl's.
(16:06):
Oh, my gosh, I was reading that they had to like talk to so many different people to try to design
the box to just fall open like that.
But they ended up having to help it because it will eventually like all fall,
but not fast enough.
So they had to like rig it with some like wire under the table to help it go really fast.
(16:27):
That makes sense.
Yeah.
I mean, it doesn't look realistic.
But it was like a whole research and design thing to get that box to fall open.
Wow.
Wow.
Like I always wonder what they need these huge budgets for on movies.
It's for like things like that.
The set is insane.
And the outside, the exterior, they I think they did a miniature.
(16:50):
They did a lot of miniatures.
And I've read this and seen this in a lot of movies like Lord of the Rings, all miniature.
Yeah.
Like those when you see that forest and the crazy houses, like no one's building those,
which is unfortunate.
And I still think that they should build a Grand Budapest Hotel or a coffee shop dedicated to it.
(17:12):
But that to me is worth the budget.
I would love to work on a miniature.
I'm obsessed with miniatures.
I used to make little dioramas when I was little, so I would love.
I'm not qualified for a real one.
I'm just like, look at this tissue box.
I can make it into a room.
I was the queen of Barbie houses.
Everyone wanted my Barbie houses because I was so creative.
(17:36):
I'm like, you see this cupcake holder?
Just put that on a resume.
There you go.
I tried.
I tried to get into art school with that and they were like, no, like absolutely.
What?
They didn't immediately see your quirky potential, right?
I would hire, I would get, I'm like, you're a gem.
(17:58):
We need you on our team.
You know?
Yeah.
I love stop motion and stuff like that.
Like I, I really, you're going to be the next, you know, weird genius to make it.
If I had a budget, I can do so much.
But yeah, I do love all of the miniatures and I love that he makes sure, you know,
it's a miniature.
He's not trying to like trick anybody.
(18:20):
He's like, look at this eight foot building we made.
Oh yeah.
And he did it with like the mountainscapes.
Yeah.
I mean, it looks fake ish.
Yeah.
It looks Wes Anderson.
Yes.
Like I love that he completely.
They did make a little exterior outside a building.
Or outside the building too, because the actors did have to, it's like a,
(18:42):
Yeah.
In the department store, they made the facade just for the entrance.
Yeah.
And you can even see in the movie that it is not attached to the building.
It's like a little bit in front of it.
Yeah.
And then inside the department store that they found, they built two sets.
They built the 1930s lobby set first, and then they built the 1960s set inside of that.
(19:07):
And so then they shot all of the 60s stuff first, then tore down, tore that down, and then had the 30s set and shot all of that.
Okay.
I forgot which, yeah, which one went first.
There's so much information about this movie and how it was made.
We watch like YouTube's about it.
How can you not?
Yeah, it's fascinating.
Yeah.
(19:27):
The way that they filmed, like there's a ski chase scene and there's a whole thing behind the scenes of how they filmed that.
Like it's so fascinating.
Yeah.
How they do it.
The magic of movies.
So this hotel was actually inspired by the idea of the great hotels and resorts of continental Europe.
(19:48):
There's no, you know, one hotel that brought this story to life.
You can actually go on the Library of Congress website and just Google Library of Congress Photochrome,
and you'll see all of these old photos from continental Europe in like the 18 and early 1900s that Wes Anderson used as inspiration.
(20:10):
Just to name a few, there's the Grand Hotel Pup in Karlovy Vary.
And some of these hotels do still exist.
They're just either not in use as hotels or they are in use, but they're not what they were.
Yeah.
There's the Hotel Bristol Palace in Karlovy Vary, which is situated high in the hills like the Budapest.
(20:33):
The Imperial Hotel, which had a funicular.
The Belvedere.
The Giesbach in Switzerland.
Don't even try.
I don't know.
It has a funicular, which takes you up to the hotel above a lake.
That sounds gorgeous.
And then you'll also notice in the hotel, there's this like mountainous background with a stag on top of the mountain that acts as the backdrop in the dining room ballroom area.
(21:04):
And also that they just kind of show every now and then.
And that's a real place.
It's in Carlo Vivere and it's known as Stag's Leap.
And there's like a stag sculpture up on top.
So they made their own miniature of this for the film, another miniature.
And then across the river from a spa town, there is actually a elevator that runs up along the side of the cliffs and takes you all the way to the top to this village that's up on some cliffs.
(21:37):
And so that inspired the elevator that goes all the way up to the top of the cliffs in the movie.
There's a couple of scenes where there's like an elevator going up.
It's people living in the mountains.
Very interesting.
I didn't know that that's imagine living on or growing up in a mountain village.
(21:58):
That sounds great.
Like also a little isolating, probably.
But I'm not who would be like, I have to go down the elevator to like the rest of the world.
You know, I just think about like, where's the closest CBS?
I am so spoiled.
I don't know how people do it.
(22:18):
You would make a poultice of wild herbs instead.
Oh, God.
You would die.
So I love the architecture of the 1930s version of the hotel.
Oh, my God.
Yeah, not so much the 1960s.
But the 1930s hotel is gorgeous.
(22:40):
First of all, it's that like lovely light pink color.
So it looks like a cake.
Like it looks like it should be made by Mendel.
Yeah.
The whole hotel actually is made out of cake.
Is it cake?
But it has it's it's a chateau like structure and that has this manzard roof and twin turrets.
(23:04):
But then the awning and entryway is like more of an art deco style.
So it's got a you can tell it was, you know, probably built late 1800s turn of the century
1900s and then it's had a little bit of a facelift with this art deco thing that was
probably added in the 20s.
(23:26):
I didn't know what a manzard roof was.
I don't.
So in case you're like us, it's actually a style of roof that was invented by a French
architect who it's named after to skirt some zoning laws, which.
Oh, I love that.
Yeah.
Creativity.
It actually allowed buildings to get like an extra living space, like a little bit of
(23:48):
a hidden top floor because the roof is flat and then gently slopes down instead of having
the steep gables, which is not a great living space.
So.
Oh, that's actually really clever.
Yeah, I love that.
So many inventions are like, well, this law is annoying.
(24:09):
What can we do to get around it?
Yeah, what's that saying?
The mother of invention is necessity.
Necessity is mother of invention or lazy people make the best inventions or something like
there's two different quotes, but they both kind of go together because you have to use
(24:30):
like ingenuity instead of it.
Just it's like, well, I don't want to get up from the couch and reach this.
You know, it'd be a great idea if I just had a really long claw.
And in this case, it's like, I don't want to deal with this zoning laws.
I'm going to do this.
But I love that even back in the day, they were doing that.
(24:51):
Yeah.
So we don't see what happens to the hotel through the 40s and 50s.
So next time we see it is 1968 and it's starkly different, especially, I mean,
both the exterior and the interior, the exterior has been turned into this very
square geometric Soviet building drab, you know, brownish gray brick.
(25:16):
The turrets are still there, but they've been squared off.
They have antennas coming off of them.
And Anderson said that they wanted to represent the architectural impact of communism
and how the hotel has changed parallel to this change in political ideology.
(25:37):
So the hotel has this neglected feeling and beauty is clearly no longer a priority.
Yeah.
God, communism really did a lot of damage.
And then, of course, as we mentioned on the inside, it's all like oranges and
greens and mustard yellows and there's ugly signs everywhere.
(25:57):
But that was the look of the late 60s, which we all hated.
Yeah.
It was a dark time in history for design.
Like the reception desk and the concierge desk were so opulent in the 30s version
and in the 60s version, no, they are as basic as can be.
(26:18):
A couple of hotel references that I didn't expect was that when the author as an old man
is speaking, you're in his study and the patterns on the wallpaper and curtains there
are supposed to be reminiscent of the carpet in the hallway of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining.
(26:43):
Oh, I know. I know what you're talking about.
And then another connection to The Shining is that Milena
Canonaro was the costume designer on both The Shining and The Grand Budapest.
Oh, so she does a lot of hotel movies.
Shout out to her. She did a great job.
She did. She's won Oscars. She's amazing.
(27:06):
Well, I think you have to not have to, but it makes sense that if you're a famous filmmaker
and you're making a film about a hotel, you're going to give a little nod to some other famous
movies and The Shining, as we know, is the biggest one.
Wes Anderson is so great about always giving little nods and homages to the things that have
(27:29):
inspired him. There are so many scenes in here that are clearly from other movies.
Like he was inspired by Hitchcock. There's a whole like not chasing, but like a follow scene
in a museum that's inspired by another movie. He was inspired by like some comedies from the 30s.
(27:55):
Directors like Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder.
So he's always so great about being like wink, wink, nod, nod.
And I feel like that's the fun of making a movie.
Yeah.
Because you get to include everything in that.
There's actually a movie book for the Grand Budapest Hotel for the Wes Anderson collection
(28:17):
that is great. It's got beautiful photographs, interviews with a ton of people who worked on
the movie, like three different interviews with Wes Anderson. And one of the movies it talks about
inspiring this is I think it's called The Grand Hotel. And it's this movie from the early 30s
before like the Hollywood codes came into existence. So I imagine it's probably a little
(28:42):
raunchier than you would expect a movie from the 30s to be, but it's about a hotel in Berlin
and all of these characters that are living, living their lives and going through all of
these things. So that might be a future movie night and fictional hotel that we do.
I definitely want to watch that. But there was another movie I somehow came across. I
(29:05):
don't know if this was an inspiration for him, but it was called, I showed you that preview.
Yeah.
It was called like, what was it called? Oh my God.
The.
The North New Hampshire Hotel.
Yeah, it was something like that. Okay. Okay. Here I found it on his Wikipedia,
(29:29):
but some have said that there's similarities between Anderson's work and the 1984 film,
The Hotel New Hampshire. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. So there are similarities. So it may have,
have played an inspiration, but that is, uh, we only saw the trailer. So we got two movie nights
coming. The trailer for this Hotel New Hampshire looked insane, but it was the eighties and every
(29:55):
movie from the eighties is insane. The eighties was a wild time. It stars a young Rob Lowe. So
I'm not mad. That's enough, but there's like a bear. There's like a girl playing a bear.
Like a name they're like Jodie Foster and blah, blah, and Rob Lowe. And then blah, blah as bear.
It's like, just watch this movies to find out who bear is.
(30:17):
It looks ridiculous, but that's why I like those movies. You know, it's bad, but it's so bad. It's
good. Those are the best movie nights. I love bad movie nights. I still think about the movie Apple
that we watched. If no one knows Apple, please do yourself a favor. Don't watch it. Okay.
Now watch it. If you want to watch ridiculously bad musicals that make no sense whatsoever
(30:48):
and has your favorite old actors that you've forgotten about. Yeah. Watch it. It's a, apparently
it is a cult classic. It is in the gay world. And it was like, it was over edited. So you will have
more questions than answers at the end, but then just do a little Google and it'll tell you about
all the scenes that were deleted that would have made it make sense. Yeah. It's kind of like the
(31:13):
room, but in a musical, I think it got a Razzie award. It must have probably. Yeah. But you,
you will be entertained and you'll be left wondering why someone would do that to your eyeball.
Yeah. It's so good though. The Hotel New Hampshire is definitely on the list of films. I just, I also
(31:40):
can't believe Jodie Foster was in it. Like you think Jodie Foster would be in like really well
made. I mean, you know, she's been in the best and she won an Oscar and I just watched her in,
uh, true detective. Yeah. And you're like, wow, that's Jodie Foster. And then you see this movie.
You're like, Oh wow. Even Jodie Foster fumbles them. She makes mad choices.
(32:08):
So I really appreciated the detail and understanding that Anderson seems to have of
the hospitality industry. The, especially in that, those first scenes where the concierge Gustav
and zero, the lobby boy are interacting together and they're, you know, he's telling him like,
(32:31):
you have to do this and you have to make them feel like this. And it just seemed like he really took
the time to, to understand that side of things. Yeah. And, um, I think also the character, I mean,
it was a different time with different standards, but my favorite thing is that when he goes,
when someone's accuses him, Adrian Brody's like, you sleep with, or I don't know if it was him or
(32:54):
someone else, you sleep with your guests. And he's like, of course, of course, a hundred percent good
service. Um, but yes, he's, he's like all about doing, he's not perfect. He's so entertaining
and he's such an interesting character because he's not a straight laced guy. You think he is
(33:17):
a part of the time. And then he like drops a bomb or just like, okay, we're just going to do this.
And the lobby boy is just so confused. He's like, wait, I guess I'm going around. Like
the concierge decided the lobby boy was going to be his prodigy. Like I don't think the lobby
boy necessarily earned it, even though he was always eager. It's like, he's like, I need someone
(33:39):
to talk to. Come with me, boy. It's like, well, you're all I've got, so we're going to make this
work. I mean, the whole, his, his name is zero. Was his name zero before, or was it zero? Cause
he's like, what's your experience? And he's like, well, I worked here zero experience, zero.
I love that. Uh, actually, yeah. Anderson talks about that in one of the interviews. He did name
(34:03):
him zero first. And he actually, uh, thought a little bit that he was naming him zero as a tribute
to an actor. Uh, I can't remember the actor's full name, but he played Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof
and stuff like that. Like he named him after an actor as kind of an homage. Oh my God. But also
(34:25):
zero, we don't know at the beginning of the movie where zero comes from. Like he's clearly an
immigrant. We find out on the train that he has this like migratory status that is not good enough
for the soldiers taking everybody's papers. So, but we don't find out until later exactly what
his story is. And so he's kind of like starting from zero, this blank slate. He's come here with
(34:49):
nothing, but he's, you know, going to make the best of it and work hard. Yeah. Yeah. I just, I,
I thought his name was zero, but also, yes, it's part of the joke, but he is, he's like, yeah,
oh, I did this zero experience. I also worked here zero experience, but Hey, you can still get a job
at a fancy hotel back then. I just feel like job, like life was so different back then. You can just
(35:15):
walk in and be like, Hey, can you give me a shot? I'm poor and I'm hungry. And they're like,
okay, fine. Yeah. That looks like, Hey, can you give me a shot? I'm really down on my luck. Do you
have 15 years of social media experience? Like ma'am, that didn't exist then. I literally saw a
(35:37):
job that's like, we need this amount of year for Tik Tok. It was like eight years. I'm like,
Tik Tok? What? It was, you did not even know it existed eight years ago. How dare you. Yeah.
It's just, people be crazy. So I appreciate, I appreciate the good old days.
You might've worked for a penny, but at least you can get a job.
(36:01):
Yeah. I also, yeah, I love that. It seems like Gustav and zero would want to work at a, at a
grand old hotel because not only, yeah, like hotels were willing to give people immigrants chances,
(36:23):
like you could work there and have a really good job and advance. But I also love when,
when Gustav asks zero, like, why do you want to work here? And he's like, who wouldn't? It's an
institution. And so that Anderson like has this idea of like historic hotels already have this,
(36:46):
this personality cult to them that people do just want to work at this hotel because of
it's that hotel. But that answer got him the job. Yeah. Like you can see that he's like, oh,
right. He says like, yeah, he's like, yeah. So, but it really, it's so good. It's, it's really,
(37:07):
I just, I love it. I think there should be more movies about the hospitality industry
and shows. I don't know why there isn't because so many people in film have worked in hospitality
and so are they just like, they don't want to work through that trauma. I mean, I have, I made my
short film based on, I have a short film, everyone gonna, I made this short film. I had this idea
(37:31):
because I had like crazy experiences in LA and I'm like, I think this would be such a good idea.
And I made it and it's not the best. It's not the best short film. It's shitty, but it was so fun.
And it is really cathartic. Like you're like, Oh my God, I'm going to say all the jokes.
So that I wanted to say.
(37:54):
So the one of the reasons that the book that Anderson edited is called the society of
crossed keys is because in the movie that is a very elite group of hotel concierges
that Gustav has to call in a favor from. And for one, one reason it's so fun is because it's like
(38:16):
a roll call of great actors that have been in Wes Anderson movies and they're all at different
hotels around Europe, like Bill Murray. And yeah. So that part is great in itself, but also just the
fact that he has in his movie, what it could kind of be considered a concierge mafia that we have
(38:39):
recently learned is kind of a thing. It's definitely a thing. So I really loved, I was like,
did he like just happen to luck into adding that? Or does he like know that there's,
I'm sure he did research. Like he seems to be the kind of person that does thorough research on his
projects and he probably found out and it's been going on for years because there's no way like you,
(39:03):
you don't ask around. I'd be asking old concierges like all the T be like, well, what's going on?
Yeah. Who do you know? Who else can you tell us like knows things? So I think he did. But that was
one of my favorite scenes that and my favorite. Well, what did Adrian Brody's character say to
(39:24):
the concierge? He's like, you're gay or something or he's like, he accused him of sleeping with a
woman and then he's like, you're gay. And he's like, well, which one is it? He's like, you're both.
That's one of the best lines. I don't know. Can I say the story how you didn't notice Adrian Brody
in real life? We, we went to the Beverly Hills Hotel one time to just have brunch and walk around
(39:50):
and just see it. And we have like a video of it. We were walking down the hallway and
Deanna and I are very different people where I was like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like,
I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like,
I'm like, I'm like, I'm not like that. And Deanna and I are very different people where I notice
(40:12):
everything. I notice nothing. But it's like different. Like, I'll know. I won't notice. We
take turns, but basically I notice everything. And I always notice famous people. I don't say
anything, but my eyes right away, I noticed the famous person. Even if they're not super famous,
I don't know why my brain is like this. But I won't bother anyone. I don't like approach anyone.
(40:33):
So we're walking down the hall and first we see Sylvester Stallone and his daughter and his
daughter and bodyguard. And Deanna had no idea. His daughter was wearing a really cute dress.
That's okay. And then Adrian Brody walks down the hall and I'm like, okay, she has to be paying
(40:56):
attention this time. More people are walking. She didn't know. No, no, they don't look the same in
a real life. They were shocked too. They're like, why are you in this hallway? It was an accident.
We were just looking at the leaves on the wallpaper. Yeah, we love the ball people. Yeah.
So, but I was like, oh my God, oh my God, two famous people in one hallway. This is crazy.
(41:18):
Um, I think it was some, something was happening. It was like just after Oscars or something like
that. Yeah. Something or yeah. The, where a lot of celebrities were. Yeah. They were all in town
for some award shows. So we were like, this is a great time to go to the Beverly Hills. I actually
didn't think we would see anyone. I always think, um, whatever I go, you were right. Yeah.
(41:43):
You missed it, but it was fun. I should, um, no one really smiled at us though.
I will say it's not that they're mean or anything. They were probably, I think they were just
shocked. Yeah. They were shocked that you didn't notice them. I think they were like,
what's with your friend? Like, how can you, but it was fun. Um, one day we'll see Wes Anderson.
(42:05):
I won't know. Thanks for listening to Hotel History. You can follow us on most social media
platforms, Patreon and Substack by searching for Hotel History or Hotel History Podcast.
If you like what you hear, please leave us a five star review on Apple podcasts and Spotify so we
(42:27):
can reach more listeners.
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