2015 Oct 7
Although viewed with much pessimism due to the popular Jessica Lange not making her regular appearance on this season, the fifth American Horror story season has been one of the most anticipated TV shows of 2015 ever since Lady Gaga’s choice to partake in it.
The opening credits incorporate the 10 Commandments into the visuals, which is interesting and brings out a darker undertone, paving the way for the horrific images to follow. It appears many of the “Hotel” victims are sinners, And with that comes junkies, criminals and the insane. “Hotel” gets graphic and uncomfortably erotic. Everything about “Hotel” is about excess, and there’s no denying that everyone involved is ready to take it all the way.
This season follows the atypical American Horror Story anthological structure and takes place in downtown Los Angeles at the fictional Hotel Cortez. A reddit thread notes a similarity in stories of The Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles where a woman’s body was found dead in the rooftop water tank. Chilling footage of the woman in the hotel’s elevator was released, causing a panic about how she died. This is just the most recent incident; the hotel has been home to two different serial killers over the years, including the famous Nightstalker (aka Richard Ramirez) of the 1980s. During the show’s TCA panel, Ryan Murphy said that the new season is inspired by some haunting elevator footage. While he didn’t explicitly say it’s the aforementioned tape from the Cecil Hotel, he did say the hotel in the show, called Hotel Cortez, is in downtown Los Angeles which is similar to the location of this Hotel.
Lady Gaga on Hotel
“It’s been so fun,” she told the Associated Press at the Los Angeles premiere of the FX series on Saturday. “Everybody on this cast has been really open and available to me in a very honest way, so I’m able to be myself in a way I feel like I haven’t been in a really long time, so they are just making me feel so alive.”
“I’m just really happy to be a part of it,” she said, praising series co-creator Ryan Murphy. “I like being a part of someone else’s vision — it’s really exhilarating.”
In a new interview with Refinery29, the series’ costume designer, Lou Eyrich, talks about Elizabeth’s addiction to all things designer and how Gaga’s personal style influenced her fashion choices.
“We wanted her to be very elegant, sexy, seductive, mysterious, and unexpected as well. Since she’s so fashion-forward, the first thing I did was look at the most recent runway shows,” she tells the site. “Then, to give her that aura of timelessness, I went through archives of my favorite designers — a lot of Thierry Mugler and Yves Saint Laurent, Vivienne Westwood — and Old Hollywood costumers, like Adrian [Greenberg] from the ’40s. A lot of web surfing, a lot of vintage couture shopping. I didn’t do much research of other vampire movies because I didn’t want to be influenced by them.”
it takes quite a bit of time before Lady Gaga is introduced. She’s “The Countess,” a seductive, eccentric and methodical vampire who owns the Cortez Hotel. Yet, even with the power of Gaga’s performance, Sarah Paulson, who plays Sally, a junkie and friend of The Countess, has the most provocative character of them all.
American Horror Story: Hotel” premieres Wednesday October 7th
