Studio 54 was a famous nightclub in New York City, famed for its hedonism, drugs, music, and sexual freedom. It was also famous because it's owners manipulated the press and exploited the power of celebrity. That combination - of tabloid mainstay and serious cool - has perhaps not been possible since. Eventually its founders went to prison for tax evasion - when they came out, one reinvented himself as a hotel designer; the other died of A.I.D.S., which has led to some viewing his story as a form of moral parable. Not this documentary, though, which centres on the surviving partner, and is hagiographic at every turn; if there was anything about the club that wasn't just fantastic, we don't get told about it here. Even the fact that the owners' lawyer was Ray Cohn, a famously horrible man who was also lawyer to Donald Trump and half the mafia, goes without explicit comment. Given that it was just one club open for three years, one suspects the number of people who claim to have been regulars at Studio 54 far exceeds its actual capacity; but people, it seems, need myths to justify their lives, and this club has become the central myth of the disco era. This documentary is just a little too obvious in seeking to add to that.
Review of Studio 54
