“Party Monster” the club scene of the 80’s and 90’s, and the murder of Angel Melendez

Party Monster : The Twisted Story of New York 's Club Scene

The mid-1990s was a time of wealth and recreation for the United States , with the combination of economic progress and social liberty producing a new generation of spoiled , unrestrained and often genuinely reckless young `celebutantes ' As many Americans were making their fortune on the Wall Street or in the Silicon Valley , a counterculture of hedonistic abandon emerged not necessarily in response or even contrast to these patterns , but rather oblivious to them . Centered on the club scene in New York City

, the nightlife excesses of this era would closely mirror those of the disco era in the late 1970s . Just as the music drugs , sex and glamour had come to define such hotspots as Paradise Garage and Studio 54 in the 1970s , so too would such locations as the Limelight and the Tunnel become notorious for the bacchanalian events which transpired inside during the 1990s . The early to mid-90s would in fact play witness to a peak in debauchery and mayhem with some of the scene 's most prominent self-made figures devolving from mere hedonists to perpetrators of serious and grotesque criminal extremity . The real-life narrative of Michael Alig and the Club Kid scene to which he was a self-proclaimed icon is at once a cautionary tale remarking upon the extent to which superficiality can breed outright evil and simultaneously projecting itself as a twisted tale of celebrity intrigue . In the novel by former scenester James St . James , Disco Bloodbath , as well as in the 1999 documentary and the 2003 film , both entitled Party Monster , the events surrounding the rise , peak and fall of the New York club scene are suggested as the hazy underside of a cultural mirror . The figures at the center take on mythic proportions for the hugeness of their appetites , their unwillingness to compromise hedonism even for ethical reflection and their suggested parallel to the most extreme impulses in the broader culture

The film , directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato reached limited audiences and fairly consistent acclaim upon its 2003 release . However in research of television footage , documentary material , news articles and interviews , it becomes increasingly clear that the film does a compellingly accurate job at capturing the personas , ethos and destructiveness of its focal characters . In particular , Michael Alig played by Macauley Culkin , and James St . James , portrayed by Seth Green channel the impulsive stupidity that lay at the root of the scene

The New York club scene that is depicted in such vivid and aggressive color by the film at the center of this discussion is one which sprang from the decay of the disco scene . The sexual revolution of the seventies - which opened the door for an unprecedented freedom of expression in the urban gay communities that were so prominent to the club scene - gay way to a more cosmetic interest in gay fashion , gay aesthetics and gay lifestyle excesses during the plastic eighties . This transition gave birth to the new...