The Century Plaza
Eric Lahey

The sense of ambivalence is palpable as Eric Lahey grapples with questions about his non-fiction feature The Century Plaza. It's a portrait of a single room occupancy hotel in his native Portland that's closed down since he completed the film.

Lahey, who went to film school in California, says he's still trying to figure out why he made a documentary. Previously he'd directed fiction shorts and music videos and had no great affinity for non-fiction subjects. He nonetheless takes a stab at explaining what spurred him to move into the Century Plaza for six months and follow the lives of more than a dozen of its residents.

"My father lived in SROs when he could scrape together enough money," he notes. "I saw a lot of them in my teens when I'd visit him. I truly hated them and I'm sure you can understand why."

His father, who's settled in Seattle, has struggled with drug addiction and Lahey had already made a short based on the experience of seeing him go through withdrawal. He never says it in so many words, but his affection for his father and his plight is evident. One senses making the short was an attempt to come to terms with his father's situation and the subsequent documentary provided him with an artistic means of reaching an emotional catharsis.

"Catharis!" he repeats with an indignant laugh. "I don't think so. Something else was pushing this along and it had more to do with me than someone else. People really tried to dissuade me from doing this. It wasn't really so much about their being a physical threat but how much you put yourself in emotional jeopardy."

Lahey points out that people that live in places like the Century generally stay for less than six months. He split his shooting schedule into two three-month periods separated by six weeks of editing and shaping the material. He admits to being surprised when he returned to complete the film that many of the people he was following had already moved on.

Among the people who emerge from the film are a convicted child molester trying to stay on the straight and narrow, a handicapped African American and a young couple on disability with a young child. There's also a cat that wanders the corridors that the filmmaker says emerged from the cutting room as a kind of mute witness to the building's last days.

"The cat is my replacement for voice-over narration," he says. "There was no way I was going to have someone on the soundtrack explaining what should be obvious on screen. The structure is these lives and relationships. I wound up becoming very attached to a lot of these people and I hope that somehow comes across to the audience."

- by Leonard Klady