54: The Director’s Cut

Q&A with director Mark Christopher, producer Ira Deutchman, editor Lee Percy, and production designer Kevin Thompson, followed by a dance party with free Stella beer and music by Viva Radio

“A dictatorship at the door and a democracy on the floor” was Andy Warhol’s description of Manhattan’s legendary nightclub Studio 54, where, for a moment in the late 1970s, “the stars are nobody because everybody’s a star.” Writer-director Mark Christopher spent five years researching the disco scene to sketch this authentic portrait of the notoriously outrageous party palace ruled by its founder, unctuous Steve Rubell (Mike Myers, in an acclaimed dramatic turn). When test audiences condemned some of the film’s controversial content (involving Ryan Phillippe’s busboy turned bartender and Breckin Meyer’s husband to club-diva Salma Hayek), Christopher was asked to recut the film and reshoot key scenes, including the finale. Seventeen years later, the filmmaker’s intent, which includes 44 minutes of never-been-seen material, has been restored. “The path of excess leads to the palace of wisdom,” claimed Rubell, and Christopher’s director’s cut honors that Dionysian vision.