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Reply to "Party Monster - Michael Alig"

I saw it today. I don't know what to think. It definitely wasn't bad, but I can't say it was good either. I thought MacAuley Culkin was irritating, if it was just Seth Green it would've been a much better movie. For those who know the story (or lived it), the only reason to see the movie was for the recreations of the club scene "back in the day", but as Z&S pointed out above those scenes are pretty much quick camera pans across a dark room with an indistinguishable glimpse at a few faces. I know it's difficult to do full recreations on a limited budget, but instead of the chop shots they did for the parties, they should've just shown archival footage of the actual parties (which they did once in the movie for the subway invasion party). But if the movie is a string of archival footage, they should've just called it Party Monster - The Documentary. Oh, wait, they already did that five years ago....

My main "issues" with the movie are the same as with the HBO biopic of Gia. I really liked Gia before the Angelina Jolie movie was aired, and I had read "Thing Of Beauty" three times. The movie glossed over a lot of the backstory and omitted important details that would've taken a few minutes of screen time to explain, as well as combining several real people from her life into one person in the movie (two people were rolled into one "girlfriend" character in the movie, and her brother, a photographer key to her career and her high school boyfriend were combined into the "early boyfriend" character). The same thing inexplicably happens in the transition from "Disco Bloodbath" to the movie "Party Monster". While some elements in the movie correspond with James St. James' account of what happened, a lot of it didn't make any sense. They could've followed the book more closely in order to get a more accurate movie with probably the same budget and resources it took to just invent illogical scenes. The most obvious fudging in the movie was Chloe Sevigny's "Gitsy" character. I can't remember (the book is back in CA in storage), but according to the book I think Gitsy was a random club kid Alig hung out with, there was a drug dealer that came from the East Coast with Freeze (can't remember her name), and Jenny Taglia that Sevigny's character is based on. Mostly on Jenny Taglia (anyone know what happened to her???), so why not just have another person play Jenny in the movie? And Gitsy wasn't "discovered" in Dallas like the movie portrayed, although I think she was a friend of Brooke's (who is from Texas). The movie also gives a few minutes of screen time to Gatien's wife, who wasn't even mentioned in the book as far as I recall. While some scenes were true to the book --- looking for the non-existent rock of cocaine behind the radiator, the skrinkle language, the murder itself, etc., some things were a little ridiculous in the movie. Like the scene where a rat tells St. James how Angel was killed, when supposedly Alig told St. James while they were doing bumps in Alig's bed. What was that all about? And they didn't really explain why Alig was given a deal in order to get Gatien in the movie, which was kind of important to Alig's murder conviction in the first place. They could've done a much better, more cohesive movie. But then again, they could've done a much worse movie, too.....

Richie Rich is in two scenes (the fake Geraldo scene and the news report scene), as well as Amanda LePore and I think that was Nita next to Richie in the news report scene. The DVD of Party Monster - The Documentary is finally being released next month.

The movie did make me want to be more creative when I dress up to go out at least, so there's one good thing. I don't think I'll wear a pork chop, but I did have to remind myself how creative the club kids were back in the heyday, and it made me want to try and bring back a piece of the outrageousness into my look. I should've moved to NYC right after gradiating from high school, from what long-time residents tell me it was a great time for nightlife. I have heard some grumbling about what a terrible person Alig was, etc., but there were a lot of people who didn't live in NYC in bumblefuck places across the country who subscribed to Project X (including me) and were fascinated by the whole thing. People also grumble about how dead nightlife in NYC is right now. I think it's like the supermodel mania of the early '90s. It happened once with a small group of amazing models, and once they faded away it hasn't been recreated since. After Alig, the club kids faded away and haven't been recreated since. OK, am I rambling here? I'll stop now.

You're too old, you're somebody's mom, that outfit you wearin' is not the bomb.
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