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Film
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Party Monster
Macaulay Culkin and Seth Green star as two 1990s New York club kids in a movie that depicts their tragic real life story.
Friday, September 5, 2003
By Todd Gilchrist
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Homer Simpson, in a moment of astute, no doubt Duff-influenced observation once declared, “I like my beer cold, my TV loud, and my homosexuals flaming!” As such, Homer would have liked Party Monster, a sordid, cathartic tale of misbehavior starring two gay characters about whom the words gregarious and flamboyant would scarcely scratch the surface (not, of course, that there is anything wrong with that).
Cute kid-turned gangly adult Macaulay Culkin stars alongside Dr. Evil progeny Seth Green as Michael Alig and James St. James (respectively), delivering performances that seem derived from the La Cage Aux Folles school of homosexual cliché as two progenitors of the ‘80s New York club scene who tumble into a downward spiral of sex, drugs and decadence. Working from Disco Bloodbath, St. James’ questionably objective real-life account of the events in question, directors Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato turn a cautionary tale into tacky camp for a film that tramples the thin line between grandiose and gauche.
Aside from learning that the San Diego Chicken is evidently gay, little insight is granted into the world Alig and St. James inhabit. Alig, an emigre from a Midwestern town that didn’t know what to do with his unique brand of narcissism, found a home amongst the eccentrics and outcasts of the early ‘90s new York rave scene. Allying himself with the scene’s most famous socialite/trust fund junkie St. James and club owner Peter Gatien (an eye patch-donning Dylan McDermott), Alig quicky ascends the social food chain, employing friends as promoters, pushers, and poster children for the emerging culture of Ecstasy-scarfing androgynies while blazing through a pharmacy’s worth of illegal substances all by his lonesome. Alig’s gift for personal re-invention spreads to his growing army of followers and fans, including his boyfriend-cum-superstar DJ Keoki (Wilder Valderrama), a groupie turned girlfriend named Gitsie (Chloe Sevigny), and a sycophant named Angel (Wilson Cruz) who provides Alig’s parties with their, ahem, kick. Much to the consternation of his friends and colleagues, Alig’s path of excess leads not to the wisdom he frequently prophesied, but the emergency room and then prison, where his oblivious optimism is shackled and his life of decadence and hedonism expurgated.
Culkin’s impulses as an adult actor are almost perfectly wrong. His Alig is fey when he should be forceful, and aggressive when he should acquiesce. Both he and Green play their roles with the cliché-laden curlicues of textbook dandies, arching their phrases towards unholy quasi-English accents but never quite arriving at the natural rhythms of even the most charmingly stereotypical gay speak. Culkin’s last screen role was in 1994's Richie Rich, and he seems prepossessed of the fact he’s still as cute as he was then; leering from beneath blonde man-child bangs like a kid who knows too well the right pout to show his parents when he makes a mistake, the adorable pre-teen mugging he employed to enormous commercial effect as Home Alone’s screaming, brick-throwing Kevin has been replaced only by the honey rather than vinegar with which he solicits our approbation of his impish behavior.
Green’s usually dead-on comic impulses veer wildly between (presumably) unintentional parody and exaggerated pathos, and the actor ultimately comes across as incredulous he’s being subjected to sartorial or comedic indignities without so much as a Mike Myers wannabe for a comic foil. After a respectable performance in this summer’s The Italian Job as the film’s resident wisecracking computer hacker (much less his turns in the Austin Powers franchise and the underrated Can’t Hardly Wait), Green seems poised on the cusp of A-list success; perhaps Party Monster’s limited distribution will keep this clunker from interrupting his rise to the top of the Hollywood food chain.
Party Monster stands among such films as Groove, 24 Hour Party People, Velvet Goldmine and Basquiat as a document of a time, a place, and a person who influenced the evolution of a specific movement - be it fact or fiction, far - reaching or fast forgotten. Bailey and Barbato’s film, however, captures not the zeal or profundity of rave culture’s emergence into the mainstream, but the desperation of one man’s ambition to embrace a culture of hedonism that would only exist if he created it himself.
It’s no question that Alig and St. James were default founders of the rave movement, and fierce proponents of the drug and sex-fueled subculture that propelled it into the American heartland; Bailey and Barbato shot a 1998 documentary covering much the same subject matter (with in fact the same title) and included interviews from many of the actual people. But to even the most casual viewer the incongruence of truth and fiction demonstrated by the film is simply too great to ignore; Michael and James, whether they exist or not, are characters too absurd to be believed, and their story too salacious to sympathize with. Party Monster is like the too-long line in front of an exclusive club, the seemingly endless waiting that precedes the fulfillment of untold pleasure promised just beyond that velvet rope; the party rages on inside without us, offering its wares to those powerful and privileged enough to enjoy them, while we suffer outside, never quite knowing what we’re missing.
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