Director Matthew Miele’s Always at The Carlyle Is a Fascinating Look at a New York Landmark

The Carlyle is a New York institution, a New York landmark on the Upper East Side. Class and elegance define it. Matthew Miele reveals some of the secrets of the iconic hotel in his latest documentary, Always at The Carlyle, offering us fantastic and unique insight as he gets staff and guests to tell us what they know for the first time ever.

Miele, of course, is no stranger to taking us behind the scenes of famous New York landmarks, but Always at The Carlyle is one of his most intriguing and most compelling works to date as he gives us a true feeling of experiencing the hotel and appreciating its legacy. I caught up with Miele to learn how the documentary came about.

Matthew, I’ve never been to The Carlyle, but after seeing that, I thought I need to go.

It’s true. I was hoping that was the reaction I’d get. I know the Bergdorf’s documentary I did a few years ago, people saw that and immediately said that they wanted to go shopping. I hope the same happens here, you watch the film and you head straight to The Carlyle.

You take us inside the mysteries of The Carlyle, but take us through how this story started for you?

It started a few decades ago. I used to come to the hotel when I was reaching my early 20s and growing up there and experiencing New York. I always kept coming back to The Carlyle because it was such a singular place and I had never experienced anything quite like it.

A lot of hotels that you walk into, they don’t offer the different world that you can just walk into. They don’t offer a signature experience. It’s a lot of homogenization and it’s a lot of chain hotels and feeling like it’s manufactured. The Carlyle is hard to compete with because of time and legacy. It’s tough to match that. The Wall Street Journal said it’s one of the most glamorous hotels. Glamor is one of those tough words to define, it’s one of those words that you can’t really put a finger on what it means except than to experience it. I’m hoping through the film you got to a place where you feel you got it and you could feel the essence of the hotel without having been there.

That’s exactly it. In terms of taking us inside, you have Elaine Stritch, George Clooney featured talking about the hotel, but your opening is about the secrecy that the hotel is shrouded in, how did you break that and get people to talk?

It happened for the same reason that The Carlyle is famous and has its legacies and time. I didn’t do this as a fly by night production. A lot of the time, people are there for a max of three or four months and you feel, “OK, I have enough.”

I knew it would take a very long time and overall it took about four years. Some films take lot longer. Year one, I didn’t get any real information that was usable or useful. It really was a matter of familiarity and making people know that I was really trying to get a jist of the place and that I wasn’t doing this quickly. I had to ingratiate myself with certain people who were stonewalling me in the beginning. After a few years, it started to feel that they were opening up to me, not just the staff, but the hotel guests and A-Listers who are tough interviews.

They heard a request had been put out and the request was maybe ignored or there was no response at all, a few years passed and they must have thought, “Wow, that film is still going on?” and then another year passes, and they thought, “Wow, they must really be digging in hard.” Suddenly, they turn and they thought they’d do the interview.

When we got Elaine Stritch right before she passed when I mentioned to people that I was celebrating Bobby Short in this. I think where people prize the staff and I was interviewing them and getting to the heart of why this place was special, I feel they all thought that this is something that could be one of a kind and a celebration of the hotel that might not be done again for another century and to be a part of it. Also to give me stories and enough where they give me a story but pull back at the end which I think is great anyway because it gives you the tease and that’s a great part of the film.

How did you get George Clooney, Anjelica Huston and such to talk?

It wasn’t easy. It was just as difficult as if you were chasing them to read your script or to be a part of a film you were casting. They’re very elusive people and they’re in and out of the hotel.

We were filming in the Bemelmans Bar and Wes Anderson dipped his head in and I took note of it. I didn’t know if he’d been there before and I didn’t know his backstory. When you ask the hotel the back story, they didn’t shy away from who the regulars are or who really appreciate this place. They said that Wes had been coming there for years and then I knew he could be willing to do this. A few others like Sofia Coppola came that way and once you start to get a few it becomes easier.

George Clooney was here for three months, he didn’t do it for me, he did it for the hotel and it ultimately meant a lot to him. In the interview, he talks about how he has been coming here a lot and he’d drive around with his aunt. He has a longer history than anyone.

You also get the staff to open up.

That was intimidating. A lot are in their 50s or 60s and will tell you it’s their first job. You know they’ve been there since they were young. It’s so intimidating because they see you as a rookie even if you’ve been around the hotel. No matter what, I had that against me. I also was not someone who they saw as someone from the Times or TV show, so they were hesitant. They weren’t sure where it would end up. There was hesitation too because the guests pride the staff because of discretion and the privacy afforded them is one of the big reasons that people stay here.

They’d say to me, that they’d tell me some things but not others. I told them I wasn’t interested in the story, but more their story. My guess is that they weren’t even the ones people concentrated on at that level, they were just service oriented so no one really focused in on who they were. That’s when Danny, Tommy and the others started opening up. The trust factor started to get built in.

Was anyone from The Carlyle involved in the post-production side?

To their credit, they didn’t want to interfere with the interviews or the edit. They never sat in with me on anything. It was more than if there was a guest that they wanted to meet or say something to. They’d walk in and greet them. Everyone knew it was an independent production, but ultimately I did have to show them the final cut because it is a business and there’s proprietary information that they want to make sure isn’t steeping on anything. To their credit, they didn’t tell me to cut and edit things. It was more about the runtime. If anything, they wanted to get everyone we spoke to in the film. We interviewed over 150 people and they didn’t want to leave anyone on the cutting room floor.

As a director, you’ve taken us to Bergdorf’s, Tiffany’s and now, The Carlyle, what makes you go for those iconic institutions of the city?

It’s based on my own curiosity, that’s first and foremost. When I walk around the city I always look up. If you really look around the city you’ll see so many intriguing things. Then you think, that it’s a short story or ten minutes, but when you think about the layers, those ones you mentioned have a lot to them. The key ingredient is the impact. They’ve impacted pop culture in ways that a store, a bar or a hotel in New York hasn’t. There has to be a ripple effect that because they exist things have had a chain reaction in the culture.

Bergdorf’s had Sex and The City. Breakfast at Tiffany’s was born out of the store. The Carylye had endless amounts of movies shot here.