Former Cecil hotel manager and director talks about Netflix's 'Crime Scene' documentary

Q&A with Joe Berlinger

Credit: The New York Times

1/9

How this documentary series idea came about




"On a practical level, I was brought the idea by Imagine Documentaries, and I thought it was fantastic from a larger, more intellectual standpoint. Over the years I’ve done lots of work in the true crime space, and I’ve mostly been focused on individual crimes and criminals. I’ve always been fascinated by what can make a certain place a nexus of crime. What is it about Seattle that produced Ted Bundy? What is it about South Boston that produced Whitey Bulger and a bunch of mobsters? What is it about West Memphis, Arkansas that led to the case of the child murders at Robin Hood Hills and the wrongful conviction of the West Memphis Three? How can a place become an accomplice to a crime? You think about a person being an accomplice, you don’t necessarily think of a location. That idea felt like an opportunity to turn the genre on its head a little bit." — Joe Berlinger

Credit: NETFLIX

2/9

What about the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles made a compelling setting for the first instalment in this series?





"The Cecil Hotel is a specific place, but there’s a universality to how it’s viewed — everybody knows about that one house at the end of their street where notoriously chilling things have happened, and The Cecil Hotel is that for Los Angeles. It has taken on an urban legend-like quality for having a long history of mysterious happenings and crimes, including housing two notable serial killers: Richard Ramirez and Jack Unterweger. Location offers a very relatable point of entry to tell true crime stories, and to look at those locations from a historical standpoint and deconstruct how they became infamous. The Cecil was a jewel in LA when it was built in 1924, so we wanted to examine how it fell into disrepair, which is directly related to the social and cultural changes that happened in Downtown Los Angeles over the course of nearly a century. And our entry point into that larger story is through Elisa Lam’s case." — Joe Berlinger

Credit: NETFLIX

3/9

How he approached telling Elisa Lam's story




"The idea was to have a central story, in this instance Elisa Lam’s case, that takes viewers from episode to episode, but to also balloon out and give larger context to the crime itself based on the location. Her story is an integral part of the Cecil Hotel’s history, and it was important to us that we not just tell a story about Elisa’s untimely death, but also to highlight the impact that she had on people. I didn’t want to invent dialogue or create speculative situations, so everything she says via voiceover in the show comes directly from her online posts. Those are all her words. She’s not here to speak for herself, but this is the closest thing we could get to that because we’re hearing directly from her about how she was feeling and what she was thinking about. We wanted to make sure we were telling both Elisa’s story and the larger history of the hotel accurately and with care, so we interviewed local historians and experts on the history of Downtown LA, including Skid Row specifically, which is located very close to the Cecil. We also spoke to a number of professional experts who had direct involvement in Elisa Lam’s case — members of the Los Angeles Police Department, former employees of the Cecil Hotel, local journalists, and medical experts. As with any good crime story, you have to be a good steward of the responsibility given to you, because for the people involved, this is not just a story." — Joe Berlinger

Q&A with Amy Price

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4/9

How familiar she was with the notorious history of the Cecil Hotel





"Not at all. There wasn’t even an interview. One of my girlfriend’s husbands needed help at the hotel and I wasn’t working at the time, so I said, “Well, I’ve got the time. I’ll do it.” That’s how it all started. I didn’t even research where it was. All I heard was that it was a hotel that was in Downtown Los Angeles. I walked in completely blind." — Amy Price

Credit: NETFLIX

5/9

Her experience at the Cecil Hotel





"I would say it was a jaw-dropper, for sure. It was really exciting because, in the beginning, my job was really just to furnish rooms, and I’m a pretty creative person — I’m an interior designer and I also design jewellery. But pretty soon after I started, someone in the hotel passed away.

It was just so shocking. I remember asking one of the other employees, “Does this happen a lot?” He said yes. And that was just the first. I saw around 80 deaths over my 10 years there." — Amy Price

Credit: NETFLIX

6/9

How she felt on the rumours about the "dark force lurking at the Cecil" — making it a magnet for strange and tragic occurrences
"Never. I was faced with a lot of ugliness during my time there, but there’s darkness everywhere you go. Of course, a lot of bad things have happened there, but there are so many different elements to the Cecil. I think it’s nice to have a real story told about the hotel’s history, not just, “Richard Ramirez lived here.” The whole time I worked there, I couldn’t even tell you what room he was in. There are so many other things about the Cecil that are way more interesting than that to me." — Amy Price





 

Credit: NETFLIX

7/9

What she likes about the hotel
"I don’t come from a ghost and goblin background. I do believe in ghosts, but that place reminds me of all the people who I got to work and bond with; that we were able to get through all this stuff, and I was able to learn so much from them. Most of the people who worked there came from very different backgrounds than me. I had so much autonomy there, I handled everything. I reported directly to the owners." — Amy Price

Credit: NETFLIX

8/9

How the Elisa Lam case changed the hotel
"After all that happened, the hotel turned into an absolute amusement park. I would be sitting at my desk, and I had a fairly large office off the alley, and I would see people climbing on the fire escape trying to get to the roof. Every time I walked out of the building, there were people with cameras. People were constantly checking in, trying to do their own documentaries. You felt like you couldn’t trust anyone anymore because they just wanted to know what happened to her.
Everyone seems to want to know what happened to her." — Amy Price

 

Credit: NETFLIX

9/9

Why Amy referred to the hotel as a "she"
"I’ve always felt that she’s a woman. Shortly before I was about to leave the hotel, one of the tenants — there were quite a few at one time, and they’re all extremely eccentric in their own ways — approached me and said, “She wants to hear the story. She wants you to tell the story.” I’m like, “She?” And the tenant said, “The hotel. She wants people to know.” It stuck with me. And now I’m writing a book about my time there, too." — Amy Price