To many, the Chateau Marmont is the hotel where John Belushi died from a drug overdose in 1982. While this tragic event is true, it is only one that define this Sunset Strip monument and the surrounding area.

Author Shawn Levy (Dolce Vita Confidential) recalls and details all these events in The Castle on Sunset: Life, Death, Love, Art, and Scandal at Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont, a chronicle of the hotel from its inception to the current day. It is a history as lively and engaging as that of any movie, TV or music celebrity.

In the late 1920s, Fred Horowitz, a downtown Los Angeles lawyer who had begun to speculate in property and construction, envisioned a structure at the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and the road that led north into Laurel Canyon. Inspired by the Italian Chateau d’Amboise in the Loire valley, Horowitz built a castle-like building to serve as residential apartments. He named it Chateau Marmont after its official city address. Not long after completion, the structure changed to a hotel.

Individuals and couples from the growing movie industry and other creative arts were attracted to the locale, not only because it was close to Hollywood work locations, but also due to the quirky suites and bungalows different from one another. It also developed a reputation for tolerance – where, for example, gay performers could indulge in their sexual preference without fear of unwanted publicity.

Eventually, the location of the hotel became known the world over as the “Sunset Strip,” and the Marmont itself became the short- or long-term home for a seemingly endless array of actors, directors, screenwriters and other Hollywood employees.

At lease one classic movie was developed at the hotel. In his bungalow, director Nicholas Ray enlisted the then little-known actor named James Dean along with co-star Natalie Wood and, with script in hand, conducted readings for what would become Rebel Without a Cause.

Levy traces the Sunset Strip’s changing scene over the years, how the evolving crowd of youngsters who flocked there affected the surrounding area, and how the Chateau Marmont weathered these changes while maintaining its reputation for privacy and tolerance. He focuses on the various hotel owners, but enhances the history with numerous episodes of its residents and their sometimes-outrageous behavior.

Levy’s prose style is lively and engaging. The beginning of each section features a drawing or photograph of the hotel from that period, and includes a section of photos of the various owners, residents and the surrounding areas. Having previously written about such celebrities as Jerry Lewis, Paul Newman, Robert De Niro and the members of the Rat Pack, Levy makes the history of the hotel as dynamic and involving as any of his books’ earlier subjects.

Highly recommended. Not many hotels are worthy of their own biography. But, as The Castle on Sunset so aptly demonstrates, few in the world are like the Chateau Marmont. —Alan Cranis

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I’ve been a fan of Jason Bailey’s work for several years. To tie me over waiting for his next “real” book, I bought both of his self-published books — extended essays, really; physically thin, figuratively meaty — on Richard Pryor and private-eye pictures of the 1970s — sight unseen.

Now, Fun City Cinema: New York City and the Movies That Made It is finally here! Bailey’s such a terrific writer, the book’s magnificence is a foregone conclusion. But upon its arrival, when I opened the book to a random page, only to find my second-favorite film in history, Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, staring back from a dedicated spread, I have to acknowledge this may have been destined in the stars.

Hyperbole? Yes and no. This book couldn’t, wouldn’t exist if NYC were “just” a city; it’s an icon. As Frank Sinatra crooned, if you can make it there, you can make it practically anywhere. When it comes to capturing the city that never sleeps on celluloid, however, you must make it there. (Just ask Rumble in the Bronx, the Jackie Chan actioner actually shot in Vancouver, as the Canadian mountain skyline fails to disguise.)

The movies Fun City Cinema examines and celebrates employ New York City as not merely a setting, but a supporting character. Would Taxi Driver feel as threatening in Dallas? Would the grandeur of Gershwin translate if Manhattan were, say, Boston? Would the suspense of Dog Day Afternoon tick with such piercing intensity if the bank stood in Boise?

All three questions are rhetorical; you didn’t need to be told that. But maybe you don’t know how Bailey goes about managing about 100 years worth of material. Starting with the 1920s, he provides an alarmingly cogent essay of how each decade’s movies reflect the Big Apple at that moment in time — and in grime and in crime, economically, politically, sexually — weaving reality and fiction like an expert tailor.

While he’s picked one film as the encapsulation of the city’s era to front each chapter (not always the title you’d expect), dozens upon dozens of others are recruited to complete the full picture: big and small, commercial and indie, beloved and unknown, Criterion and not Criterion — nary a one is shoehorned in to check a box or fulfill some fan obligations. Not even cult items like Maniac Cop, which other authors would dismiss outright; each serves a purpose.

Like the aforementioned placement of After Hours, a select few films earn end-of-chapter honors for dedicated two-page looks. While this is where you’ll find such top-of-minders as Ghostbusters and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, you’ll also be wowed by some real left-turn choices, from Ramin Bahrani’s Man Push Cart and Claudia Weill’s Girlfriends to Allen Baron’s Blast of Silence. (While I’m slinging plaudits, let me point out if you haven’t heard The Projection Booth podcast’s interview with an irritated and irascible Baron on Blast of Silence, you simply must. It’s all kinds of awkward and hysterical.)

If Bailey’s words alone didn’t already make Fun City Cinema the essential book on New York Movies and the Movies That Made It, the exquisite design work of Eli Mock would push it over the edge. Abrams, the publisher, could have let this project be a “coffee table book,” where the text is secondary to imagery, included to be skimmed if read at all. That’s not the case here; they complement one another to form an irresistible whole. (Intentional or not, Mock’s choice to use sans-serif text for body copy reminds me of the signage for the arterial subway system.) This isn’t one you’ll want to leave on any coffee table, lest it encounters a spilled cup — greatest in the world or otherwise. —Rod Lott

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