El Quixote and the Chelsea Hotel

Andy Warhol would often have dinner at the El Quixote Restaurant downstairs from the Chelsea Hotel with other factory regulars and he “got the idea to unify all the pieces of these people’s lives by stringing them together as if they lived in different rooms in the same hotel." (POP180) Not all the scenes were shot at the Chelsea - some were filmed at the Velvets apartment on West 3rd and some in other friend's apartments or at the Factory.

Mary Woronov:

“Paul loaded the camera, Andy pointed it and Gerard started the tape recorder - there were always endless amounts of waiting. Of course there were endless amounts of drugs too, which sort of made up for it.” (MW37)

While filming at the Chelsea, the police arrived after the hotel switchboard operators called them, having listened in on Brigid Berlin’s phone calls during the filming. They searched everyone but only came up with two Desoxyn pills. (POP182)

Andy Warhol (via Pat Hackett in Popism): “Brigid Berlin’s father was Richard E. Berlin, the president of the Hearst Corporation, and she’d grown up on Fifth Avenue overhearing phone conversations between her father and U.S. presidents.”

By the time Andy met her, Brigid “was living in two-star hotels, mostly on the West Side, under the name of Brigid Polk.” (POP103)