GAYLETTER

My very first full time salaried job in NYC was with a pr firm we basically had two clients, Grace Jones and Peter Gatien who was about to open the Limelight. We even had our offices in the Limelight in a tiny space on the third floor in back of the club we accessed through the vip entrance on W. 20th Street. I say all this to let you know when this riveting documentary Glory Daze:The Life and Times of Michael Alig (the legendary king of the club kids) came by my desk I was beyond intrigued. The film is making it’s debut June 20th as part of the Manhattan Film Festival, don’t miss it.

Michael Alig really set the scene ablaze when he began to host this outrageous Wednesday night party called Disco 2000-drugs,sex,kink and more drugs ruled, and over the course of time the party got darker and descended into the death grip of too many chemicals and k-holes. At the zenith of this mess Alig murdered and dismembered a fellow club kid and drug dealer Andre ‘Angel’ Melendez and went to prison for 17 years once he was finally caught. The film chronicles the time leading up to the murder with interviews with with Alig and some of the major players in  the scene as well as follows Alig after his release from jail in May 2014 as he tries to cope with a new world he is about to become integrated into.

I had long been gone from the pr job at the Limelight by the time the club kids reign took over but I had this feeling Peter Gatien and his club’s story was not going to end well, a club in a church? Between mayor Giuiliani’s crackdown on nightlife and Angel’s murder the NYC super club era was almost immediately brought to a close.

I really had only two questions to ask the talented director Ramon Fernandez, Why did you make the film? Why now? and here is his response: As an artist, I’ve always had a thing for forgotten kings. People who used to run things from another era that time has sort of discarded. I remember going to the clubs of yesteryear, thinking this was just New York, unaware that it was a very specific time and place. And then it all disappeared. The murder of Angel Melendez, combined with the general cleanup of New York City during mayor Giuiliani’s “Quality of Life” campaign led to the end of and era of debauchery we will likely never see in the city again. That had to be properly documented.

I knew Alig was about to be released from prison within a few years and took the chance to start filming early to coincide with that event. I knew there was a story there. Of reintegration into society, a quest for some sort of redemption. Also, what years to have been missed. It’s fascinating to see what is basically a person coming from a time machine in 1997 who has had no contact with the technological revolution of the past seventeen years, adapt to our electronic-laden zeitgeist. The film ends with Michael’s first two weeks as a free man. We get to see our modern selves through his primitive eyes.

After twenty years, it is finally safe to look back nostalgically at the 90s and say “what the hell happened there?” New York is today what it is in part because of these roots. I believe it is a story worthy of being told and of course, hope the audience agrees with me.

June 20, 9:00PM, The Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal St. NY, NY.