If These Walls Could Rock

If These Walls Could Rock, 2026, 3 ¼ stars

Beer and Loafing in Los Angeles

Photo taken in a drunken haze, in 2015.

Exclusive to MeierMovies, April 15, 2026

We were somewhere around Beverly, on the edge of Hollywood, when the drugs began to take hold.

Not really. (Sorry, Hunter.) We were drunk on only alcohol. My friend, Chester, and I had just watched the 2015 Academy Awards at the Roosevelt Hotel, across the street from the actual ceremony, and were now on the prowl for the perfect Oscar party.

Rejected from the Elton John shindig, we hailed a cab to anywhere and were soon on the Strip. Before I knew what was happening, the taxi door had flown open and Chester was half outside the moving car. I pulled him back in with one hand and slammed the door shut with the other, and it was smooth cruising once again, all the way to a West Hollywood hotel bar that Chester, an L.A. expert, said was historic and might provide celebrity sightings.

The building seemed ordinary at first, but, once inside, the charm was evident and L.A. but a memory. This was an oasis, a respite from Tinsel Town traffic and big-city bravado. Richard Linklater, whose Boyhood had been up for Oscars earlier in the evening, strolled by. But except for him, the pad was strangely empty, perhaps waiting for a post-post-Oscar party, or perhaps stuck in time.

This low-rise hotel was highbrow, but without the pretension. It was self-assured, confident it was better than the glitzier places that had popped up around it in recent years. And it had tales to tell, if you knew how to ask.

“What is this?” I asked my friend.

“The Sunset Marquis,” he responded.

This is coffee-table book that inspired the film.

I hadn’t thought about the Marquis for 11 years until I saw If These Walls Could Rock on April 13 at the Florida Film Festival. At first, I wasn’t even sure it was the same place I had visited more than a decade prior. But as the documentary rolled, it all came flooding back.

Directors Craig Williams and Tyler Measom, and writer Caroline Kessler, in 93 minutes, have fashioned nearly a complete history of the iconic Marquis, from its construction in 1963, to its ‘70s rock-and-roll heyday, to its seedy decline in the ‘80s, to its rebirth as home of the celebrity-packed Whiskey Bar in the ‘90s and ultimately to its classy rebirth as a luxury hotel.

And it’s all told by the people who lived it, such as founder George Rosenthal, his son Mark and the countless A-list music legends who either crashed or lived here: Ringo Starr, Bruce Springsteen, Dave Grohl, Slash, Sheryl Crow, Cyndi Lauper, Morrissey, Richard Marx, Roger Daltry, Gloria Estefan, Sharon and Kelly Osbourne, Sheila E., Billy Gibbsons, Gene Simmons, Julian Lennon, Darius Rucker, Nancy Wilson and the “mayor” of the Marquis, Billy Bob Thornton. And the interviews themselves are fascinating, especially because most are conducted at the hotel.

Billy Bob Thornton is the “mayor” of the Sunset Marquis.

The doc does eventually settle into a rather numbing cacophony of talking heads. After all, stars do love to talk about the wonderful adventures of their distant youth. But the retro animated sequences and the touching story of the Rosenthals themselves ground the documentary, making it more than just another music-history retrospective.

I’m sorry you didn’t get to drink with Chester and me that one night in Hollywood. But at least you can experience a little Marquis magic by watching the doc. It’s a scene, man.