One of the locations we used in Folie has mysteriously burnt down. The Royal Pier Hotel in Weston-super-Mare, which appears at the end of the Chekhov scene, was gutted last night. It also appears in my short film Genius Loci, which was one of the episodes in Super-8 Cities. It's yet another Weston landmark to either be destroyed - as the Grand Pier was last summer, another fire - or let fall into decay - such as the nearby Birnbeck Pier, which is slowly falling into the sea. If Weston had a town council that had an ounce of imagination and moral fibre, these things wouldn't happen.
To go back to the fire at the Royal Pier Hotel, it sounds as though it was burnt down for the insurance, but the owners, who at one point were interested in investing in Folie, claim they don't have any insurance. The waters get murkier and murkier... It'll be interesting to see who they arrest.
The hotel is also part of music history: the gentlemen in the photo stayed at the Royal Pier Hotel when they played a week-long residency at the Odeon in Weston in 1963.
No comments:
Post a Comment