Studio 54 Words Brendan Marshall
Studio 54 opened its doors on 26 April 1977 and remained open for just 33 months, but its influence on New York, clubbing culture and indeed popular culture as the symbol of an entire era has secured its place firmly within history. Director Matt Tyrauner, best known for the extravagantly entertaining Valentino: The Last Emperor, chronicles the infamous nightclub through the rise, fall, and rise again of its founders Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager. Studio 54 takes the audience beyond the velvet rope into a haven where, as Schrager put it, “you go to feel good about yourself”.
The documentary plays out like a platonic love story between two ambitious best friends from Brooklyn – one gay, Rubell, and the other straight, Schrager. Together they form a partnership that’s muchmore like a marriage. From the offset, Tyrauner makes clear that Schrager takes a back seat in the relationship. Instead the flamboyant Rubell, an extroverted restaurateur who became the face of Studio 54, is seen befriending celebrities and making sure they all had the drugs and access they needed. Rubell makes numerous appearances on talk shows promoting the club while Schrager, more of an introvert, and the brains behind the club remains in the background. But it was their differences that lead to their success and Studio 54’s prominence, each man’s skills complementing the other.
Closeted to his family, Rubell died from complications resulting from AIDS in 1989 aged just 45. Schrager, now a successful hotelier and real estate developer (even celebrated as the father of the boutique hotel concept) was left with the responsibility of sharing their story, and now gives his first substantial interview on the era, over 40 years later. Schrager offers full access to his archive of personal photos and all the people who orbited his life back then and now. Tyrauner doesn’t shy away from asking uncomfortable questions and gallantly embraces the awkward or sidestepped answers.
A wealth of unseen footage and photographs are perhaps the film’s greatest strength, as they help paint a vivid and varied picture of a now welldocumented moment in history. The pièce de résistance is a collection of neverbeforeseen 16mm footage that was shot by students from NYU Tisch School of the Arts for a documentary that was never completed.
Studio 54 served as the genesis of modernday club culture – from its state of the art lighting rigs, to its theatrical and elaborate sets. The late 70s were postbirth control and preAIDs crisis, and sexual liberation was at its peak.
It’s not hard to find something to love in the documentary, with its tales of celebrity patrons like Truman Capote, Andy Warhol, Diana Ross, Liza Minnelli, Calvin Klein and Bianca Jaer. Archival news footage of Michael Jackson waxing poetically about Rubell and the club is a particular highlight.
Studio 54 is a piece of social history – celebrating the music, style and glamorous excess of one of the most important cultural landmarks of the twentieth century. It was seemingly a time of freedom and joy that one could argue has been lost in the nearly 40 years since it closed its doors. The nightclub, like its owners, burned the candle at both ends. Its flame sadly extinguished by greed and a changing political climate, but Tyrnauer honours the memory of the “greatest club of all time” in his brisk yet poignant film, and shines a new spotlight on the unexpected friendship that ensured the club’s legacy.