Skip to main contentOnce upon a time, in the middle of nowhere, there lived a queer little boy named Michael Alig.
Trouble was, Michael didn't like being stuck in the sticks. Like many little fags in the 1980s, he wanted to live in the big city. He wanted to be fabulous. He wanted fortune. And more than that, he wanted to be famous.
With the help of a couple of fairy godfathers--
nightclub impresario Peter Gatien and trust-fund drag queen James St. James--Michael got his wish. He became the king of New York City club kids and wrangled his way all the way up to superstar status and international infamy.
Too bad a messy murder had to get in the way.
That rags-to-riches-to-ruin tale serves as the plot for Party Monster, one of the most highly anticipated films showing at Sensory Perceptions' Portland Lesbian & Gay Film Festival. Monster tells the true tale of how a young Midwestern nobody became the queen of his own creative scene, only to watch it crumble under a massive amount of drugs, debauchery and death.
Here's the tricky part: The movie is based not only on the events and a book by St. James, but on a documentary, also called Party Monster, made by the same people. This film picks up where the documentary leaves off.
The film is a fictionalized morality tale about how drug use can spiral out of control. The driving force behind all of these projects are the movie's co-directors, Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato. These former New York City DJs-turned-filmmakers were there when Alig arrived on the post-Studio 54 club scene. Both watched his meteoric rise and fall from busboy to club king to prison inmate.
"We always wanted to make a movie about Michael and the club-kid scene," Bailey told QW. Talking to the director by phone, I learned of Bailey's fondness for one of New York's most notorious enfants terribles.
"We knew this one was trouble," Bailey says. "That's why we purposely cast Macaulay Culkin as Michael. What Michael did was evil, but he was not an evil person. He was just a brat."
Beyond brattiness, Michael's truly evil act was to kill Angel Melendez, his drug dealer. Not only that, the urban legend goes, but Michael also injected Drano into Angel's dead body, cut up his corpse and threw it into the river. The story's particularly gruesome, especially as depicted in the documentary.
Apparently one version of the Party Monster story wasn't enough. "Once we finished the documentary, we realized there was another story to tell," Bailey says.
Party Monster, the movie, is actually a love-hate story between Michael Alig and James St. James (played by Seth Green), his partner-in-crime. Their story provides the film's twisted soul, unfolding against the backdrop of a club scene full of soulless night zombies (including brilliant, unrecognizable turns by Marilyn Manson and Natasha Lyonne) waiting for their next bump.
It's not a pretty story. But it's a fable for our times. And like all good fables, there's a moral: Be careful about what you wish for, as it just might get stuck up your nose.
7 pm Friday, Oct. 17. Part of Sensory Perceptions' Seventh Annual Lesbian & Gay Film Festival
Cinema 21,
616 NW 21st Ave., 223-4515. Through Oct. 19, $8 general admission. See Screen.
WWeek 2015