by MATTHEW HAYS

The New York tabloid press had a field day with Michael Alig in the mid ’90s. Then, the young leader of the “Club Kids,” as he called them, ventured from venue to venue, concocting bizarre parties in odd locations. Sometimes, he’d choose the subway to have a drug-soaked bash; other times, he and his entourage would invade a McDonald’s.

Followers of club culture and the night scene—most notably the Village Voice’s Michael Musto—followed Alig everywhere. Alig, then in his early 20s, wallowed in the media adoration, all the while expressing his penchant for Ecstasy. Not too surprisingly, things ended in disaster. Alig’s fellow Club Kid and drug dealer, a young Puerto Rican named Angel Melendez, was found in pieces, stuffed in a cardboard appliance box in the Hudson River. In a drug-induced haze, Alig had apparently partaken in Melendez’s nasty demise, which involved a hammer, some force-fed Drano and a saw. A trial ensued, and Alig ended up in prison (where he still is now, though he’s eligible for parole in 2006).

Much ado about Macaulay

It’s quite a story, something not lost on L.A.-based filmmaking team Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey. The gay couple already directed and produced a ’98 doc on Alig, titled Party Monster. Now they’ve taken the sensational story and fleshed it out to dramatic feature length.

But the story gets weirder still when one considers their casting. Macaulay Culkin, the troubled child actor who hasn’t made a movie in six years, returns to the big screen to bring Alig to life. And while the documentary version of Party Monster would win an Emmy, the latest dramatic version has elicited polar opposite responses from critics since its January premiere at Sundance, making it one of the most controversial films of the year. While appreciating the oddball casting (the ensemble includes Seth Green, Chloë Sevigny, Marilyn Manson and Diana Scarwid, of Mommie Dearest fame, as Alig’s mother), some have taken issue with Culkin’s performance; Film Threat suggested that the actor seemed to be doing an imitation of Mrs. Howell from Gilligan’s Island, while the LA Weekly’s Ernest Hardy dismissed Culkin as “simply a host of fag clichés draped over a void.”

Understandably, co-director and co-writer Barbato disagrees. “The people who don’t like this movie don’t seem to like it in a very loud way,” Barbato says, on the line from his L.A. office. “Mac’s performance has been very polarizing. But I know Michael Alig. I know the nuances of Mac’s character choices were very brave, considering who Macaulay Culkin is.”

After a series of documentaries and non-fiction work—projects ranged from the excellent feature The Eyes of Tammy Faye to a failed RuPaul talk show to their current doc on the making of the ’70s porn landmark Deep Throat—what led Barbato and Bailey to delve into dramatic work now? “Actually, we took a 20-year short cut to this,” Barbato jokes. “We met at the NYU Film School, and we were both very interested in drama and fiction. But we’ve also really enjoyed the documentary work. This seemed like something we could really make work.”

Rancid reviews

Barbato concedes many of the reviews have been harsh (“I’ve stopped reading them,” he says), but also points to a thumbs up from crucial Chicago critic Roger Ebert. “What has surprised me is the personal nature of many of the attacks,” says Barbato. “They seem to feel the characters in the film don’t deserve a film made about them.”

For Barbato, Alig’s questionable character is precisely what made him so alluring as a film topic. “It seems many of the people who go to movies a lot want to be told how to react to something. Some critics have trouble with moral ambiguity. For us, all we care about is the grey. We’re intrigued by what we don’t yet know, not what we already do know.” (For my money, the feature is a crazy and funny parable about wildly superficial people. Anyone who ever spent lots of time in clubs will relate.)

And for many, not just the filmmakers, that drugged out, lost night of abandon when a drug dealing Club Kid lost his life and was chopped up remains quite mysterious. There are still questions about who was present when Angel was murdered; the film suggests that Daniel Auster, the son of Paul Auster, may well have been there. (Barbato says a New York journalist is currently delving further into where, precisely, Auster was when the crime was committed.)

The filmmakers remain in contact with Alig, who calls them at the office every couple of weeks. They also know Alig’s mother, who has recently put a fur coat her son gave her up for sale on eBay, advertising it as “A gift from Michael Alig!” They took Macaulay Culkin there to visit Alig in a New York maximum security prison, where he’s currently serving out his sentence. “That was very surreal,” Barbato recalls. “It was difficult to gauge what was running through Michael’s mind. I mean, there he was, sitting through the bars talking to Macaulay Culkin. Michael certainly seems remorseful. But it’s hard to judge, and I don’t feel comfortable judging.”

Apparently, Alig was vying for early parole, but has since blown that due to various problems in prison. Three years ago, while corresponding with the Mirror, Alig suggested he was born again, but Barbato says that’s no longer the case. “No, the God thing has been dropped,” he reports.

As for the film’s performance, since opening four weeks ago in New York and L.A., Party Monster parties on in both cities, suggesting stronger than average box office for an independent dramatic feature. “Controversy and word of mouth seem to be working in our favour,” says Barbato. “Really, if even one person sees this film and gets something out of it, I’ll feel we’ve accomplished something.”

PARTY MONSTER WILL HAVE ITS CANADIAN PREMIERE AS PART OF IMAGE&NATION, MONTREAL’S GAY AND LESBIAN FILM FESTIVAL. AT THE PARISIEN, FRIDAY, OCT. 3, 9:30PM AND SUNDAY, OCT. 5, 1PM

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