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WANNA-BE STARS IN A NO-STAR HOTEL

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Required viewing for every Angeleno, whether you’ve been here just a few months or your entire lifetime!  In the early Aughts, aspiring Canadian comic Steve Markle comes to Hollywood with little more than a MiniDV camera and a dream.  He rents a room at the fabled Highland Gardens, a grubby residential hotel where optimists like himself land at what they hope to be a temporary crash pad on their way to the top (fun note: the hotel still exists!).  Previous residents like Errol Flynn, L. Ron Hubbard, Brad Pitt and Janis Joplin give the dusty place its enduring mystery and luster, while its current occupants – some of whom viewers will recognize after recovering from a double-take – seem enamored with its history, hoping that Golden Age magic will transfer onto them.

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Here, just a few blocks away from the Walk of Fame, Markle starts recording this off-kilter collection of chain-smoking creatives, ex-cons, outcasts, poets, addicts and industry-adjacent aspirants during his two-month stay at the Gardens.  First broadcast on Canadian television two decades ago, CAMP HOLLYWOOD is a heartbreaking, continuously fascinating snapshot of a community and what one resident dubs “the myth of people who have the guts to live their dreams.”

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Co-presented by Museum of Home Video (a weekly broadcast of found footage for stoners, seekers, archivists, and drinkers) & L.A. Daze, an occasional stream on MoHV’s network offering transmissions from the city of fallen angels.

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dir. Steve Markle, 2004
Canada, digital projection,
72 min

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7:30 DOORS
8:00 SCREENING