Party Monster :: essays research papers

Were two peas in a pod," says 80s club kid Michael Alig (Macaulay Culkin) to his friend James St. James (Seth Green), as they sit in their squalid-but-fabulous Manhattan apartment. "Pity the pod," says James. No, pity the audience. Filmmakers Fenton Bailey and ruttish Barbato (who made the sweet, sympathetic documentary "Eyes of Tammy Faye") originally made a documentary version of "Party Monster," which tells the true story of Aligs downfall, from top-of-the-world party boy to killer now serving jail time. It probably makes far more compelling viewing than this feature version, which answers none of the questions Aligs story raises. Instead, it poses one of its own How could anyone admit to spend any time in the same room with this guy? Culkin, returning to movies after a long absence, plays Alig in a painfully arch and affected manner, pursing his curly lips and perpetually posing. Alig was a small-town boy who arrived in New York to reinvent himsel f, drawing an ever-increasing circle of happy misfits around him, but we never construe the magnetism that attracted these people just an actor toying with stereotypes. Likewise, Green (who delivers every line as if hes in the throes of a bad cold) cant find any impartiality in this twisted buddy movie to be fair, hes not helped by lines like "Michael was growing on me, like a fungus." And Fenton and Barbato give the movie a wiggly, pseudo-documentary framing device, in which Green, in a deck chair, addresses the camera. Nothing wrong with blending genres ("American Splendor" did it splendidly), but it feels too self-conscious here, we dont yet fuck who Green is, nor are given a reason to care. "Party Monster" has some wonderfully colorful sequences, aptly re-creating the glitter and fashion excesses of its era.