Downtown Autopsy
Screening 'Nelson Sullivan's World of Wonder' & 'Party Monster' in a roomful of eyewitnesses
I had such a fun and in some ways triggering night September 4 at the Roxy Hotel's fabulous basement cinema, where the docs Nelson Sullivan's World of Wonder (1994) and Party Monster: The Shockumentary (1998) received rare screenings in tandem — complete with directors Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato and star James St. James in attendance.
The docs present polar-opposite views of the '80s vs. the '90s downtown scenes. In the first, sweet, offbeat Nelson Sullivan's original footage — obsessively and exhaustively obtained by him for years long before filming everything became, well, everything — is edited together to present a portrait of the creative, kind, at times even naive period when NYC's most colorful characters were attempting to find and be themselves to the exclusion of nobody else.
There were drugs and, no doubt, hurt feelings, but there is a ‘60s-throwback vibe to the NYC ‘80s, albeit with a huge dose of irony.
Captured in Sullivan's videos are a host of famous faces, from RuPaul to Keith Haring, George Wayne to Nelson’s close pal Christina. In one clip made famous from a YouTube upload, Nelson almost offhandedly tells loud-and-lovely drag siren Brandy Wine that Christina is dead, throwing her for a loop. The moment is indicative of his deadpan, yet disarming, approach:
Hilariously, he films a July 29, 1984, trip to Woodstock to visit the actress Sylvia Miles, who was performing in a summer stock production of the 1961 play Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad: A Pseudoclassical Tragifarce in a Bastard French Tradition. In that footage, Miles, on the cusp of turning 60, is comically exasperated by being filmed all the time, but later brags that he’s making a movie of her life.
More moving is the last footage he ever shot, shortly before dying suddenly of a heart attack on the Fourth of July at age 41 in 1989. From that epitaph-friendly content, it's hard to believe he consciously knew he was on his way out, but hard to believe he had no idea, either.
Along with that stirring, raw document we had Party Monster, the deliberately ghoulish and garish doc about the murder of drug dealer Angel Melendez by promoter Michael Alig and roommate Freeze. The film unflinchingly freezes in amber the late Alig's anti-charm, and the capitalist culture of the far edgier clubkids, who wanted to be famous even if it meant being notorious. The drugs, the fashion statements and the attitude were all much harder in the ‘90s.
That Bailey and Barbato caught Alig jokingly confessing to murder on film three months before his arrest is more a money shot than any stupid orgasm in a porn movie. Their film is like Truman Capote on a date with Jerry Springer, and a far better approach to keeping you sober than “Just Say No.”
After the screenings, James St. James — on his 100th look and clearly not running out — and the directors chatted with Paper's Mickey Boardman and Linux (a modern-day reincarnation of the clubkids) about the films and the scenes that inspired them. It was free-wheeling, to say the least, with Mickey and Linux rattling off a lightning round of questions that included asking James if he and Alig had ever fucked, and wondering aloud what Rohypnol was? (Hint: Not a tragic drag queen.)
James sold so many signed books to a never-ending stream of admirers, even if he ducked out to avoid seeing himself/his former self in Party Monster. (He called having to talk about the murder and Michael a necessary evil at this point, but I definitely think you can ask him anything.)
Upstairs was an after-party attended by all involved, plus Dianne Brill, Dustin Pittman, Joe Berger, Brendan Daugherty, Nora Burns and a host of others. It felt like a little slice of Studio 54, or the Limelight — depending on your age — even if the doorman was so passive I didn’t realize he was asking if my name was on the list until five minutes into a conversation.
All in all, it was a very NYC evening, an interesting way of looking back and within. If someone were to make a doc of the NYC scene of 2024, I’m not sure what’s scarier — my belief that there is none or the possibility that there is and I’m just completely out of the loop.
So well done!