Butler's Cinema Scene

“STUDIO 54” My rating: B- 

98 minutes | No MPAA rating

The notorious New York disco Studio 54 was in operation only for 33 months nearly 40 years ago.

Yet its reputation as the ultimate nightspot — a place one former patron describes as “Carefree. Hot. Sexy” — lives on. One comes away from  Matt Tyrnauer’s documentary convinced that there was never another disco to equal it, and that there never will be.

The main claim to fame of this particular doc is the on-screen presence of Ian Schrager, who co-founded Studio 54 along with his college buddy, the late Steve Rubell, and ended up serving prison time with Rubell on tax evasion charges. This is the first time in 40 years that Schrager — who has carved out a post-prison career as a developer of boutique hotels — has submitted to interviews about his experiences, and it provides Tyrnauer’s film with a unique perspective.

Schrader was always the silent partner, the guy largely responsible for designing the club with its elaborate lighting and set elements (a night at Studio 54 was like a Broadway production in which the customers were the cast). He allowed the flamboyant and, initially anyway, closeted Rubell to serve as the club’s host and good will ambassador.

A former customers attest, the essence of the club was celebrity and total freedom.  The owners tried to get famous people into the doors and keep out the ugly and uninteresting (though if you were ugly in an interesting way you had a good shot at  getting in).  A list handed out to employees described who would be comped (Keith Richards and Mick Jagger got in free) and who had to pay (all other members of the Rolling Stones).

But the club was weirdly egalitarian. Along with celebs and millionaires it welcomed drag queens, persons of color (as long as they had something interesting to offer) and folks whose main claim to fame was that they looked good.

Grace Jones, Andy Warhol

The documentary relies on a treasure trove of old photos and films.  Through these we are able to see how an abandoned CBS TV studio (once the home to Captain Kangaroo and “What’s My Line?”) was transformed into a trendy wonderland.  Famous face after famous face flits across the screen.

Amazingly, Studio 54 opened without a liquor license (Shrager and Rubell had forgotten to get one) and relied on a one-night catering pass that had to be renewed each day before the club opened.  The authorities eventually got wise and put an end to that.

The club’s dark balcony was particularly notorious as a hotbed of sexual activity (this was the pre-AIDS era); eventually the owners covered it in rubber so that it could be easily hosed down every morning.

And drugs. Oh, yes, there were lots of drugs. Rubell was big believer in the party atmosphere generated by qualuudes and handed them out like breath mints.

Eventually it all came crashing down in an I.R.S. raid. The  management had been skimming 80 percent of the club’s income, and not even notorious attorney Roy Coen could save Shrager and Rubell when the feds found a second set of books that detailed a cornucopia of criminal activity.

One suspects that “Studio 54” will be most of interest to those who knew the club, for it provides a behind-the-scenes look at an adult Disneyland that deeply impressed everyone who visited it.

For the rest of us it’s an interesting if not particularly overwhelming look at a footnote of American social history.

| Robert W. Butler