In 1998, the director Mark Christopher released 54, a fictionalized film about the late, great 1970s New York City disco Studio 54. And now a documentary, Matt Tyrnauer’s savvy, stylish Studio 54, is here to correct the record.
What was Matt Tyrnauer’s perspective when creating this documentary?
Tyrnauer focuses less on the frothy glamour of Studio and more on
an odd couple of outer-borough kids could launch a massively successful
operation following none of the rules like a liquor license and a cultural
moment in which a mecca for
sexual liberation, performative eccentricity, and queerness
of all camps captured the weary, post-Watergate national imagination.
Why did Studio 54 become such a hit?
“Celebrities, sex, and drugs hold people’s attention,” says Tyrnauer,
when we speak by phone about why Studio still looms so large, especially given
its relatively short tenure under Rubell and Schrager’s aegis—just 33
months before the two were carted off to federal prison on a tax
evasion conviction. “The more interesting, less obvious reason, is that it
was, I believe, the last volcanic explosion of the sexual revolution,
and the denouement of an age of innocence and freedom before the dawn
of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which redefined all of our lives.”
How did Studio 54 start?
Studio 54 was another safe, private-in-public space for people who lived
in ways that were out of tune with mainstream expectations. Rubell was 33 when
it opened, Schrager only 30—and destroyed by youthful indiscretion. The club
was built in just six weeks—“the speed of a theater production”—on a
shoestring budget With Schrager and Rubell’s combined talents for creating
spectacular, over-the-top experiences and curating a magnetic stew of
celebrities, creatives, characters, and beautiful people (“the only thing it’s
not based on is money,” said Rubell of his famously unpredictable and
harsh door policy)
Why did Studio 54 shut down?
Studio was a major hit, and a cash cow from the outset. Then, it was
raided by the IRS, and its owners’ outrageous, barely concealed
skim operation
was revealed. Despite the efforts of their lawyer, Roy Cohn, Rubell and
Schrager were convicted and sent in 1980 to federal lockup—first in Manhattan,
then in Alabama—where they remained for 13 months. They sold the club while in
prison, and, after many incarnations, it was officially shuttered in the ’90s.
Rubell accused Jimmy Carter’s chief of staff of snorting cocaine in Studio’s
basement, and another in which they squealed on other crooked nightclub owners
in order to save on their own jail time.
What made Studio 54 different than other clubs?
Schrager calls it a social experiment, an attempt to harness the
melting pot culture and freewheeling energy of underground gay clubs and “take
it up a notch.” But if Studio fancied itself some kind of utopia—a place where
Schrager says “everybody felt protected and safe”—its overlords were
immature and irresponsible stewards of their creation. I was struck by one
archival interview: A cameraman asks a pair of drag queens if New York is
really as open as the club makes it appear. “No, only at Studio,” they reply.
“We truly feel at home here. We pay rent. Fourteen dollars”—presumably the
cost of admission—“is rent.”
Why did Ian Schrager change his mind about his silence on Studio 54?
“Ian avoided talking about Studio for 40 years. He was ashamed of
it and no one really could quite figure out why. But he went to prison. So, of
course, if you really think about it, that’s understandable. What ultimately
motivated him to begin talking was this very human phenomenon of having kids
who were curious. I think when he began to have conversations with them, he
perceived that they had no difficulty accepting both the great and the
terrible aspects of the story.
Why did Ian Schrager trust Matt Tyrnauer about the documentary?
“We’ve known each other a while. I met him writing about the opening of
the Delano [hotel in Miami]. We have a mutual design obsession. Although I
think I was in the third grade when Studio happened, I got to witness his
creation of a masterpiece with Phillippe Starck. I think he had a
comfort level with me. It was a discussion. We sketched out what it
would be, and reached a critical moment, when he asked:
“What about jail?”
And I said, “If there’s no jail, there’s no movie.”
And he paused, contemplated for a second, and said, “Let’s do it.”