Today's Sam Hill strip features my "illustrious" architectural creation--The Cavalier Hotel. I must have
redesigned this thing a thousand times over the passed seven years. My long-projected series has always
begun around the early 1900s, but I could never figure out just how old Frank's hotel should be... if he
had built the place himself (in which case, during the late 1800s, he could have possibly afforded brick or
stone) or if he had only invested a little bit of money in becoming part-owner of the hotel (in which case,
the damn thing could have been built by someone in the late 1700s, who possibly used wood). As to The
Cavalier's location, it was always intended to be in either West Texas, Oklahoma, or Los Angeles--three key
cities in Jim Thompson's own background (the Texan crime novelist who Sam Hill's character is based upon).
Anyway, the thing went through many manifestations: a tall brick structure, a tiny six-room dump, a ranch
style "motel", a wooden barn of a place, a five-story, big-city hotel, equipped with a fancy sign that spelled
out "The Cavalier" in individual, three-dimensional letters (which is actually on the way--this modern city
structure will be Frank's next endeavor in the hotel management business--when he moves his family out
west to Los Angeles in the early thirties). In 2001, when I created this first story, I paused shots and drew
many sketches of a hotel in the 1962 film, Cape Fear to use for The Cavalier. I did the same thing over
and over again in the following years with films like: Sunset Boulevard, The Man Who Wasn't There,
Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, etc...until I decided that it had to come from old photographs--the hotel had
to come from an accurate, trust-worthy source. I couldn't rely on Hollywood set designers who possibly
had limited knowledge of (or took artistic liberty with) these by-gone eras they were re-imagining. But, I
digress... so go check out what I decided would be the first of Frank's many "hotels-to-come"...
Monday, January 18, 2010 at 09:05AM