With a disgust for how Sex and the City changed the way many think about New York, combined with the lack of horror films set in the city — or any city really — Eli Morgan Gesner set out to make Condemned. In his writing and directorial debut, the director, well known for founding skate brand Zoo York, introduces us to the most horrific squat in New York’s Lower East Side, where an eclectic combination of the city’s characters reside.
When Maya (Dylan Penn, in her film debut), a young and privileged woman moves into the squat with her boyfriend, the place goes sour fast when the residents of the condemned building — the junkie Tess (Lydia Hearst), the aged Hasidic and his prostitute transvestite girlfriend, among many others — are exposed to the vile waste of their decrepit building. There is vomit, there is pus, and without giving anything else away, there is blood.
Eli Morgan Gesner, Dylan Penn and Lydia Hearst talk about the making of the film and its allegorical representation of New York City’s decline.
The Worst Building In New York
Eli Morgan Gesner: I got obsessed, about 15 years ago, with making a horror movie in New York because no one really makes horror movies in New York. That was the challenge… Horror movies really only operate well as a convention usually in isolated locations where no one can get help. If someone takes out a machete and starts chasing someone in New York City there’s going to be people screaming to stop, the police will be there in two minutes. You’re safe in the city. It’s safe amongst crowds. Once you assess that then it was like, okay, we need to isolate our victims… You put them in a subway system, or tunnels, or put them in a building and you lock the building up. So it turned to people are trapped in a building and they can’t get out and everyone tries to kill each other and who can you trust?
Dylan Penn: It felt very clever to use a horror film to see a metaphor for how New York was is as it was. And then after speaking to Eli and getting into this deep conversation about people and the idea of helping out your neighbors or being a community is so not part of our world anymore. I found that really interesting.
Gesner: Growing up in New York City and being in apartment buildings, I would go walk up and down the stairs or go through hallways in my building or buildings I use to live in or visiting people and it’s just a natural thing in any kind of urban setting. If you can hear other people crying, screaming, laughing, arguing, having sex behind closed doors, you can hear them echoing in the hallway. And I always sort of liked that as a way that people could connect with one another and also liked it as a device for telling a story.
Penn: I don’t think I’ve ever been in a condemned building or one where people were really squatting. That building that we shot in was on the Upper East Side. They really just decked it out to look as gnarly as possible. It was a vacant building but it didn’t look half as bad as it does in the film. So I don’t think it’s that hard to find but it’s definitely getting harder now that people are just taking these buildings and flipping them and selling units for crazy amounts of money.
Lydia Hearst: I don’t think I’ve encountered most of those people that you would find in [the film’s] building but I think it’s very true to Manhattan, where there are a lot of condemned buildings. And I’m sure there probably are many squatters and different residents and characters that you might not see everyday when you’re walking down the street. But I’m pretty sure they’re there, just regular society might turn a blind eye. And it’s fascinating that these characters have their own community and their own lives and you get to go inside that.
Gesner: Look, I’m a graffiti writer. I’ve been into ass, shithole, terrible, worse buildings than that… Abandoned death traps with junkies and crack heads. And had some of the best times of my life climbing around on roofs. Believe it or not Rosario Dawson, good friend of mine, she grew up on a squat on the Lower East Side but her squat was the best possible situation for a squat. It was like everybody who lived in there had a very communal attitude toward the building, took care of it. It was a run down piece of shit but well maintained, far better than the building in my movie. This is like Rosario’s building, but gone wrong, terribly wrong. [Laughs.]
All Walks Of Life
Gesner: Dylan and Lydia, and believe it or not Loki [Honor Titus], the black punk rocker kid, his dad is Dres from Black Sheep the rap group. So there was a bit of a concern of, oh these people have some sort of ability to get eyes on your work or eyes on your idea more than somebody who’s got no name. But there’s also, quite frankly for me, a subversive aspect to it that I could find people of this ilk who would become my co-conspirators, who agreed with what I have to say and say, “You know what, I want to support this idea.” And the fact that they would do that is just magical to me and is the greatest honor possible that I could get all these people essentially in my dugout to go to war with me with this idea.
Penn: Acting, it just happened very naturally. I kind of just fell into it and Condemned was the one to bring me in. I was surprised that the first thing I was doing was a horror film but it just felt right and to work with someone like Eli — who I felt comfortable with — I thought was important for my first thing. I kind of thought I would do it and that would be it, just get a taste of what that was like and I don’t like to admit it but it really grabbed me and I found it fulfilling.
Hearst: When I was sent the script I sort of gravitated towards Tess because she was so sad and lost and I kind of envisioned her just how I looked in the movie, which was pretty grotesque. And I loved that because she was a true character piece. And it excited me to be able to breathe life into a character like that because it’s not your typical pretty girl.
Penn: I resisted it for so long because that was just something my parents did. And I always wanted to separate myself from that. I felt like people would think, oh, she got the part because of who her parents are, that’s something that really terrifies me and I want people to know that I work on my own merit. I felt like if I was behind the scenes with writing, directing or producing, which is something I’m really interested in, that’s something that nobody can really take away from you.
Gesner: It’s intended that the richest person in the building is the hero, Maya. And then everyone else is poor and suffering. Because she essentially lived in a massive house that could probably easily handle everybody who is living in this building. The haves are moving themselves into where the have-nots are for whatever reason.
Penn: All the characters are so out there and so layered and I feel like the character of Maya can be looked at like this young little rich girl who runs away and is caught in this awful scene of chaos. I found it interesting that she starts out as this young naive girl and she has to—once this chaos ensues and the building she’s locked in—she has to grow up really fast and take control.
Gesner: One story, specifically the Roxy [Kevin Smith Kirkwood] and Big Foot [Jordan Gelber] character, the Jewish guy and his black transvestite girlfriend, I’ve seen that couple multiple times in different guises or different incarnations. But where that comes from is a couple different stories that I’ve seen in my life, in my neighborhood. When I did Zoo back in the ’90s, my studio was in the meatpacking district by the High Line in New York, which is now quite nice. So the meatpacking district could be a shit-hole. It was terrible. There was meat and guts hanging everywhere during the day, and at least early dawn to early day there would be transvestite hookers all over the place.
In the middle of a heat wave in the summertime I’m on my way to work at 10 a.m. and nobody’s around, it’s completely deserted and I don’t even think about the transvestite prostitutes. They’re just there all the time. Usually there were no cars ever parked around down on the West Side, so I’m walking up and there’s a minivan parked right in front of me and and the minivan is filled with about six Hasidic Jews boys, from 13 to 17, just hitting puberty. They’re all huddled around the front seat counting money and I’m walking looking at them thinking, what are these fucking kids up to? How weird are these Hasidic kids who got all this money together. They’re all looking in the sideview mirror to look behind them and then I look and who’s behind them but the transvestite prostitutes. I’m like, holy shit, these 13-year-old Hasidic kids are about to go have sex or get blow jobs from these transvestite hookers. You know what, I don’t think they know that these are guys.
Penn: I liked that you could see this arch also against this backdrop of these crazy characters that are very entertaining but also have a painful backstory.
Hearst: I loved [my character Tess] and I had fun playing with her interesting dynamic of being in love with Vince [Jon Abrahams] and wanting to help him but then fighting with the rest of the residents where they know they can’t really call the police because they’ll all be out on the streets and that’s their life, that’s their home. It’s the only that they really know, that condemned building. But at the same time the only home they know is going to be their end.
Penn: At first I was a little averse to the idea of shooting a horror film. But as I was reading it one part that really grabbed me was the Lydia Hearst character. She plays the junkie. Her whole monologue — when I stab her in the face — about New York City, how it’s gone downhill and all of the artists aren’t able to live in the city any more because of some sort of financial reason, I felt rang very true.
Hearst: I’m very grateful for the fact that my mom, at a young age, brought me to set with her and had me see how everything worked. I’m grateful for my parents everyday for being parents, not friends. For actually guiding me and giving me advice and having rules because you do see a lot of people wind up, maybe not as severe as Tess, but along that path, which is extremely unfortunate.
The Horrific World Of Post-Sex In The City NYC
Gesner: There’s a little bit of me in all the characters and when Lydia gives her monologue about how fucked up New York is I swear to you that goes through my mind at least three times a day when I walk around New York City nowadays. It’s not the New York City that made me. In a lot of ways, in a multitude of ways, the world that I live in now in New York City is far safer but it’s also far dumber and I have a real problem with that.
Penn: I definitely am lucky to have a little help from my parents financially when I lived [in New York] for a little bit. As long as I was in school they would help me out with me rent. [After school] I really got a taste of what it would be like if I was financially independent and it was really hard. That’s what drove me out of New York City and back to L.A. to go to school. I think it’s a completely different city when you have money and I think it’s sad that real artists can’t live here because rent is $3,300 dollars for a fucking shoebox in a semi-safe area. It’s ridiculous.
Gesner: I also happen to live on the same street as the exterior of the main character’s house in Sex and the City, so my street is inundated with tour buses and dumb fucking white women who want pictures taken of themselves in front of that fucking house, clogging the sidewalks. [Laughs.] It’s a personal gripe I have. And what I say in the film I believe: Sex and the City ruined New York because it conveyed this fantasy world of affluent white women without a care in the world dancing through the streets and having appletinis and shit like that. They only show diamonds, jewels, martinis, fancy dinner, snarky dialogue. There’s an entire generation of women who have this idea of oh, this is how New York is.
Hearst: The city really has changed from the streets being closed off and more pedestrian-filled. And I’ll admit, I’m not a fan of the Citi Bikes. I think they’re great in theory but in a city that’s trafficky and crowded, a very bad idea.
Gesner: Whether it’s an ad or a t-Shirt or a skateboard graphic of a graffiti tag, there’s the art itself and then there’s also what the art represents or how much information you can convey effectively through the medium that you’re working under. When I was in my early twenties and we first started doing Zoo York and we had enough money to take advertising space out in Thrasher magazine, at first you and your friends are like, oh, we gotta get people to buy our shit and get the word out there about the company. But after a few ads it became really clear to me that there was an opportunity that, oh I’m putting this ad out and skateboarders all over the world are reading it. Maybe there’s a way to convey more information than just “We’re a skateboard company and buy our skateboard!” My ads always had subtle sociopolitical statements, sometimes overt. We added jokes and information on the side and that became a thing with Zoo York.
So as soon as I was like, alright I’m going to make the horror movie in New York City, it’s like, I’m the guy who made Zoo York and I’ve got something to say. And I love, love, love horror movies as allegory. I think that horror movies are super well suited to express things like that. When I was a kid I saw The Blob, the 1950s color horror movie, and my dad was like, “So you know what that movie’s about, right?” And I’m like, “It’s about a blob. Right dad?” And he’s like, “No, that movie is American paranoia about communism.” That was mind blowing to me, that’s what the fucking movie is about. So that’s what I aspired to do.
The Necessity Of Vomit, Pus, And Other Skin Deformities
Gesner: I really don’t have a problem with gross things because I’ve just grown up around gross things and was exposed artistically to many vile and offensive things as a child. Everything from John Waters movies to fringe theatre, going to school on the subway and seeing dying rats and homeless people with gangrene around you.
Hearst: [The level of gore] depends on the story, If it doesn’t add to the story then there’s no point. But if there’s a reason for it to be there I say go for it.
Gesner: I was horrified in auditions of what I wrote and what I was witnessing. But it’s too late to go back now. I had to go through with it all. So the movie is disgusting. My rationale for that is the subtext of what the film is about, which is essentially the discrepancy between the haves and the have-nots of humanity is disgusting. Far more disgusting than puking or throwing up.
This Film Has Been Sean Peen Approved
Gesner: [For the premiere] I’m in Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard at Grauman’s Theatre watching my movie. There are strangers that have paid money to come see my movie and everyone is laughing. That’s cool, I did it. And then this person starts punching me [Laughs.] on the shoulder and I turn around and it’s Sean Penn and he’s like, “Fucking great movie! You did a really good job. I was worried about my daughter, but it was so fun. What a good, fun movie. I’m so happy!” I was so happy, I was like, “Dude, do you know who the fuck you are? This is the first time I’ve made a movie and you’re the first person to congratulate me. You’re awesome!” [Laughs.] It was great.
