Studio 54 review: The glory days of disco remembered

This is a vivid enough story but Schrager himself might have made a better subject for the documentary than the club he helped set up

Matt Tyrnauer, 99 mins, featuring: Steve Rubell, Ian Schrager,

The glory days of disco are remembered in Matt Tyrnauer’s new feature documentary about New York’s Studio 54. This was the nightclub that launched in 1977, stayed open for less than three years and yet is still regarded as one of the great cultural landmarks of its era.

Studio 54’s founders were two Brooklyn hustlers, the extrovert Steve Rubell and his introverted business partner, Ian Schrager. Timing was everything. As interviewees make clear, the club opened at the perfect moment, between “the invention of the pill and the advent of Aids” – and just as the age of celebrity was about to begin.

It fulfilled a longing for hedonism and escape after the squalor, violence and political scandal of the early Seventies. Everyone who was anyone went to the club: Truman Capote, Bianca Jagger, the young Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor, Andy Warhol, Jack Nicholson, Mick Jagger etc etc.

The celebrities were joined by assorted other beautiful people and plenty of bizarre characters as well. Those who visited the club talk about the tolerance and cosmopolitanism that characterised it. No one was judged on the basis of their sexuality or music tastes.

At first, the New York media fawned over Studio 54. Then, the backlash began. Those who couldn’t get past the notoriously picky bouncers and doormen deeply resented being kept out. “It’s like the damned looking into paradise,” is how writer Anthony Haden-Guest remembers the plight of those on the outside.

The IRS busted the club. Rubell and Schrager ended up in prison for not paying their taxes and for skimming the profits. By the early Eighties, the disco era was over anyway.

Strangely, the second half of the documentary, the “paradise lost” section, is far more compelling than the part devoted to evoking Studio 54 in its prime.

Tyrnauer’s key interview is with Schrager, who looks like Robert De Niro in his Goodfellas days and sounds like a character from a Damon Runyon story. Schrager is remarkably honest in his account of the rise and fall of the club, the time he and Rubell spent in prison, their move into the boutique hotel business and the untimely death of Rubell.

This is a vivid enough story but Schrager himself might have made a better subject for the documentary than the club he helped set up.

Studio 54 hits UK cinemas 15 June.