Films We Like presents
STUDIO 54
A film by Matt Tyrnauer
Nothing this fabulous could last forever
Opens Friday, October 12, Ted Rogers Hot Docs Cinema, Toronto & Cineplex Odeon Forum Cinemas, Montreal
“Studio 54’s most celebrated characteristics-celebrities, sex, drugs, disco-are smoke screens obscuring the story of its origins, its overwhelming success, and ultimate collapse. STUDIO 54 seeks to set the record straight, focusing on the human story, often distinct from mythic tales that have grown up around a once sacred nightspot occupying an abandoned theater on West 54th Street”
-Matt Tyrnauer, Director
Glamour, greed and thumping tunes put Studio 54 at the epicenter of 70s hedonism --a place that not only redefined the nightclub, but also came to symbolize an entire era. Its co-owners, Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell, two friends from Brooklyn, seemed to come out of nowhere to suddenly preside over a new kind of New York society. Now, 39 years after the velvet rope was first slung across the club’s hallowed threshold, director Matt Tyrnauer’s (Valentino The Last Emperor, Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood, Citizen Jane) feature documentary STUDIO 54 tells the real story behind the greatest club of all time.
For 33 months, from 1977 to 1980, Studio 54 was the place to be seen in Manhattan. A haven of hedonism, tolerance, inclusion and acceptance as well as glitz and glamour. Attracting a steady stream of celebrities including regulars like Andy Warhol, Mick Jagger, Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Jones and more Studio 54 was very hard to gain entrance to and impossible to ignore, with news of who was there filling the gossip columns daily. Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, two college friends from Brooklyn, succeeded in creating the ultimate escapist fantasy in the heart of the theater district. Rubell was the outgoing bon vivant who wanted to be everybody’s friend and was photographed with every celebrity du jour who entered the club and Schrager was the behind-the-scenes creative mastermind who shunned the limelight. Studio 54 was an instant success and a cash cow, but the drug-and-sex-fueled dream soon imploded in financial scandal and the club’s demise.
With unprecedented access to Schrager, who tells the whole unvarnished story for the first time, and a treasure-trove of rare footage, director Matt Tyrnauer’s STUDIO 54 constructs a vivid, glorious Disco Noir portrait of a phenomenon, and tells the story of two friends who stuck together through it all.
FILMS WE LIKE
Founded by award-winning documentary filmmaker Ron Mann (Grass, Comic Book Confidential, Altman) Films We Like is a boutique distributor of documentary, independent and international films in Canada. Recent releases include Nico, 1988, Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood.
Running time: 98 minutes
Media contact: Virginia Kelly
V Kelly & Associates