Hotel Chevalier - Release

Release

"When it was all done, I didn't want to incorporate the short into the movie. But I couldn't decide how I wanted it to go. I wanted to play the short in front of the movie, but not always. Sometimes I preferred to watch the movie without the short. It became a puzzle to me. So in the end I decided that I would like to have the movie open in America without the short, but I would like people to have access to it if they want to see it first."

Hotel Chevalier was screened as part of the program at the world première of The Darjeeling Limited at the 64th Annual Venice Film Festival on September 2, 2007. The short had its own première at Apple Stores in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco and Santa Monica, California, on September 25. Anderson, Schwartzman and Portman appeared at the New York screening in SoHo, after which they held a questions-and-answers session with the audience. The short was made available the following day as a free download from Apple's iTunes Store. On September 28, it preceded the showing of the feature on the opening night of the 2007 New York Film Festival. A press release posted before the première described the short as "the brief coda to a doomed romance and the prologue to The Darjeeling Limited".

The film was withdrawn from iTunes after having been available for download for a month. Although it had been dismissed by USA Today columnist Susan Wloszczyna before its iTunes release as an amuse-bouche that was "destined to be a mere footnote", it was downloaded nearly 500,000 times during its run, and received wide acclaim. Following its withdrawal from iTunes, the short was distributed in theaters as the prologue to the feature-length film. Although The New York Times reported in October 2007 that distributor Fox Searchlight Pictures intended to promote Chevalier as a competitor for the Best Live Action Short Film of the Academy Awards, it was not among that year's nominations. It was included as an extra feature on the Darjeeling 2008 DVD release, and Anderson's screenplay for the short was published in the Winter 2007 issue of the literary magazine Zoetrope: All-Story.