Welcome back to our queer film retrospective, “A Gay Old Time.” In this week’s column, we’re revisiting the 2003’s Party Monster, a dark true-crime drama from the gays who brought you RuPaul’s Drag Race.This weekend marks the theatrical release of the documentary Studio One Forever, which tells the story of the iconic, eponymous gay club that was the center of West Hollywood nightlife from the 1970s to the ’90s.
To celebrate this much anticipated film, this week we’re covering a movie that looks at that some of that same time period and culture within gay history, though in a much darker light: the 2003 crime drama Party Monster.Party Monster is based on the real life case of Michael Alig, a party promoter and member of the legendary Club Kids of the New York nightlife of the late ’80s and early ’90s, who murdered his drug dealer after an altercation.
Subscribe to our newsletter for your front-row seat to all things entertainment with a sprinkle of everything else queer.The story was first documented in both the 1999 memoir Disco Bloodbath by James St.
James— Alig’s closest friend, mentor and another prime member of the Club Kids—and in the 1998 documentary Party Monster: The Shockumentary, directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, who adapted it into this narrative film.The film is a sensory explosion, with a visual style deeply rooted in Club Kid aesthetics, and a remarkably star-filled ensemble of both established young talent and up-and-comers that would soon take off.