A light snow was falling as my producers and I drove 3 ½ hours to an abandoned hotel in an aging, one-horse town which put me in mind of a 1950's Sears catalogue, miles and miles away from just about everything. When Justin Morales (Co-Executive Producer and President of production company Cool Hand Pictures) first showed me the photos, I was practically beside myself with excitement. This place had everything we wanted and looked exactly like the hotel of my imagination as I was writing "The Calicoon": a decaying four-story, several-hundred-foot-long, white-washed wooden structure set high atop a hill, with a long, tree-lined road which gently wound its way around to a circular drive in front of the building so that, in days gone by, guests would have been wowed as they approached and then easily greeted and tended to by a solicitous, well-trained staff.
Standing there in the freezing cold, looking at the desolation, it was so easy to imagine a bright summer day and a 1950's family stepping out of their Buick and stretching after their long ride from the Bronx, then being set upon by cheerful, brightly-uniformed bellhops with painted-on smiles who would greet them with "Good afternoon, Mr. and Mrs. Goldberg, and welcome to The Hotel Liberty. How was your drive from the city?" Then they'd unload way too much luggage from the truck of the car onto a shiny brass cart and then lead the way indoors.
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