Glory Daze: The Life and Times of Michael Alig (2015) Movie Script

(silence)
(electrical buzzing,
then a chime)
- When Michael woke up that day,
he had no intention of killing
anybody.
- [Voiceover] You know,
it was real biblical,
it was Shakespearian in
scope of what happened.
- [Voiceover] In the heaven
of nightlife, and at the
pinnacle of power in New York
City during a certain era,
and then sinking to the
greatest depths of hell.
Where is Michael now?
- [Voiceover] There
was the club kid story.
This is the story of something
good
turning into something bad.
There's the innocence lost
story.
This horrific crime, the gore
element,
the drug element, the decadence.
It's like when you put them all
together
into one story, it makes
it almost like overload.
- When people speak about New
York City
or anywhere in the world, they
say
"the city that never sleeps."
At that time, that was true.
It never slept.
(somber piano music)
- Westside of Manhattan was a
cesspool.
Anybody who's in real estate
will tell you that waterfront
property can be hugely valuable,
and the fact that it was lying
fallow
shows how poorly the city was
run.
- New York was really run down.
It was 1984.
The subways were an absolute
mess,
there was graffiti everywhere,
the city was dirty, and it
was kind of lawless and scary.
- It was more like Sodom
and Gomorrah back then.
- But it was creative and
this was New York when
New York was still scary and you
had
very rich and you had very poor.
- Lot more crime, lot more
drugs.
- It was still a gritty,
gritty place to be.
And it was fabulous.
In the East Village, there was
the art
scene that was happening
with Jean-Michel Basquiat,
Keith Haring, and there
were still long stretches
of alphabet city that were
bombed out.
- Most of the buildings
on Rivington and Staten,
they were all abandoned.
They were stripped of all the
plumbing
and all the wiring by the
junkies to sell the copper,
whatever they could get
for money for drugs.
- [Voiceover] It was a
time of rising violence,
rising street gangs.
- It was a city that a lot of
people thought was unfixable.
- Drive-by shootings that we
never saw
in the history of New York.
- [Voiceover] I mean,
you'd walk down the street
and you'd have crack vials
crushing beneath your feet.
- If you went beyond
8th Avenue, forget it.
It was like a war zone.
There were no lights.
It was insane!
- It still had that seedy
element.
Times Square hadn't been
Disney-fied.
- Times Square was still
kind of raunchy back then.
You didn't really go to Times
Square.
- Prostitutes everywhere,
wearing outrageous outfits,
or walking around half-naked.
- Tramps or drug dealers
and people getting robbed
and stabbed, peepshows
everywhere, strip clubs.
- Just neighborhoods today where
you
can't even imagine that that
would go on.
- So it was a dangerous city,
but it was
also an amazingly creative city.
It was a city of subcultures.
It was a city where street
culture and fashion and music
were literally bursting
through the sidewalks.
- We were not enslaved by rent.
We had time to be creative,
and do other things
much more important than work.
- It was real.
It was the feeling that
anything could happen.
It was the feeling that you
were living on the edge.
- it was a dangerous time in New
York.
It was the height of the AIDS
epidemic.
- Painters, poets, and
performance artists,
all these people who basically
couldn't get arrested
in the legitimate mainstream.
- You would see someone
and they'd be fabulous,
and the next month they'd be
dead.
It gave an energy and a focus, I
think,
to New York that isn't there
now.
- Gallery openings and
events and fashion shows.
It was just sort of ferment of
creativity.
It really was very exciting.
- New York was still New York.
- You basically had an open
city,
but then again there really
weren't many night clubs.
There were underground places
where people used to go to.
Nothing large, always hidden.
- You could not find five
place in the entire city
that were serving a decent
cappuccino.
It didn't happen.
It was only American coffee.
But, on the other hand,
they had maybe 20 or 30 S&M
clubs
of the weirdest kind.
- Weird warehouses in the East
Village,
or I don't know what they were,
but there were a lot of them.
- I had read Andy Warhol's
POPism.
I'd read Edie.
- He in a way had created
the first, this idea of
a court of superstars.
That weren't Hollywood movie
stars, that weren't necessarily
rock stars, they were
these alternative people.
- That let me know that there
were people like me out there,
people who thought differently,
who dressed differently,
who acted differently.
- With his factory and his
superstars,
he had created this whole kind
of alternative celebrity
culture.
- I certainly remember
seeing Andy Warhol in clubs,
because he used to go out a lot.
- At midnight, everyone in the
world
who was anyone and wanted to get
out,
get photographed, get high or
get laid,
was at the back bar of Studio
It was the apex.
It was the center of
the world at that time.
- Parties with so many of not
just New York celebrities,
but the wealthy of New
York, the socialites.
- Halston and Liza
Minelli and Baryshnikov,
and Elizabeth Taylor and Truman
Capote.
- Salvadore Dali used to come
there
with his five drag queens and
two madams.
- But you couldn't compete
with something like that.
And it had a very short life.
People think it went on forever.
It only lasted 11 months or so.
By the time Rubell and
Schrager went to jail,
it was already on the downturn.
Michael came from Indiana,
just a naive, nice kid,
charming, nice kid.
- He came from South Bend,
Indiana,
which is not a gay-friendly
or creatively-friendly place.
- Midwestern, um...
- South Bend is the smallest of
the
small cities that you can ever
imagine.
And it's all Notre Dame and
nothing else.
- Boring.
It's horrible.
It's everything that people who
live in
New York don't want to be part
of.
- And for somebody like Alig,
gay,
to grow up in South Bend was,
you couldn't be more out of
place
than he was in South Bend,
Indiana.
- I spent a year there one
night.
- I heard that he was being
picked on by kids in school.
Where was I?
I was gone, I should have been
there
for my brother, but I wasn't.
- I knew why he ran out of that
town as quickly as he could.
And he loved the lights and came
to New York and off he went.
- It just seemed to be common
knowledge
for people outside of New York.
- If you were gay or different
or artistically inclined,
came to New York because that
was just the thing to do.
I mean it was either New York or
L.A.
- When I got to the city
and my first trip down,
I guess it was to St. Mark's
place,
I just stumbled upon
Patricia Field's store.
- I mean, it's possible I met
him
when he first came into my store
- Something was just unreal,
unbelievable to me that
actually met Patricia Field that
day,
she was my salesperson (laughs).
Down by Cooper all the people
selling all
the stuff in the street,
it was very carnivalesque
and kind of a little bit
dilapidated and decadent.
At that moment I thought
whatever college is closest
to this neighborhood is the one
that I'm going to decide to go
to.
I got a scholarship to Fordham,
so I went to Fordham.
- It was a good thing.
He was going to get an
education,
and Michael was a straight-A
student all through school.
- Well, the first time I met
Michael was at Club Aria,
second time I'd been there,
and it was 157 Hudson.
- The most fabulous club ever
in the history of the world.
- And they had themes.
So it might be sadomasochism,
it might be art.
- And then it'd be fashion,
then it would be the Stone Age,
and then it would be futurism.
- At first MIchael was a very
well-behaved, nicely dressed,
kind of just sort of almost
preppy.
He was this sweet little kid.
And he worked as a busboy at
Danceteria.
- 'Cause I remember seeing
him and Keoki, his boyfriend,
holding those big bins that
you would use to collect
glasses in the club,
which was so unfabulous.
- But I nearly got fired,
'cause the manager, Jorge,
was like you're not doing a
very good job being a busboy.
You better think of something
else to do
or you're gonna have to go.
I remember telling him,
"Oh, I want to be the DJ."
And he was like "Yeah, right,
sure.
"You're going to be the DJ.
"Go pick up some cups."
- And I met Michael through
someone named Steven Lewis.
Steven Lewis was really very,
very much into the scene.
Moreso than I was.
He lived the scene.
- I first noticed him, I was
in a meeting with Rudolph,
who was an impresario at a place
called Danceteria, fabulous
place.
- In my office at Danceteria,
I basically received
all kinds of people
that were there to show
me some acts, bands, weird acts.
Lady Hennessy Brown that
squirted milk
out of her tits as a show.
The people from Missing
Foundation,
which were a band of weirdos
into S&M
that rolled naked over
barbed wire on stage,
things like that.
- My first impression of Michael
Alig wasn't an impression,
I couldn't figure him.
I didn't know if he was smart or
crazy.
- I think it was in 1985 that
Michael Alig was go-go dancing
in a talent contest at a
club called Danceteria,
and I was one of the judges
and he played right up to me,
and he said, "Oh I'll give you
sex, drugs,
"and rock and roll if you let me
win."
He was terrible, he had no
talent.
People were doing elaborate
lip sync and musicianship,
and he just got up there and
kind of,
danced in his undies.
I was like "there's no way he
could win,
"even if he bribed me."
- Twinky little twit.
Very gay, very full of ideas,
very imaginative, lively.
- When I first started noticing
Michael,
he was on the periphery of the
club scene,
and he was watching everybody,
and sort of taking
everything in and learning.
- If somebody insists for long
enough that
he has a great, new
idea, well, maybe he has
a great, new idea, so
let's give him a chance.
By giving him a chance I
got rid of the problem,
because if it was a success,
great, we had a success.
If the idea sucked, well,
then I got rid of the guy,
and we moved on to the next one.
And MIchael Alig was one of
them.
- And as I was coming in,
Rudolph was praising
some idea that he had.
- The filthy mouth contest,
if I'm not mistaken.
- And I asked Rudolph if he
was throwing a party, he goes
"yeah, I have some idea,"
and I can't remember
what the party was, but
it was kind of cute.
- And rich people would go on
stage
and insult people in the
audience.
And I thought that was a good
idea.
- After that he threw a lot more
parties.
Eventually, we became best
friends.
- After his shooting in 1968,
he developed a great fear of
hospitals.
It's said that he would cross
the street
if he was near a hospital.
And he went in for what was
supposed to be
a relatively routine
gallbladder operation,
and because of some mistake, he
died.
It was very much unexpected.
- When Andy died, there
was this incredible
loss among the creative forces.
- There was a sense of a
sort of, that that generation
or that era had finally come to
a close.
- That was the end for them,
and they stopped going out.
And there became a vacuum in
nightlife.
- It was kind of a low period,
very dry culturally,
(laughs) artistically.
- And I even wrote a cover
story in the Village Voice
called "The Death of Downtown."
- It'd be a kind of signal of
this end to the Warhol era.
- It seemed like the
whole big, gigantic dance
club craziness of the
'80s had come to an end.
And the scene that I was at the
center of
was giving way to this whole new
club kid scene that was bubbling
up.
- It wasn't a lull
because Andy Warhol died
and people were mourning.
It was just one of those
cyclical changes.
- I even made a party for it,
downtown is death, long live
downtown!
- We were all talking and
just sort of wondering
who is going to be the
patron saint of the freaks
now that Warhol had passed.
- As Schumpeter said,
"Innovation is recombination."
Taking different bits
and pieces of what has
come before and reworking
them in different ways.
- And I just picture in my own
mind,
here's a guy trying to
go to Fordham University,
he's a busboy and he's looking
at these party promoters
and he probably said to
himself, "I could do that.
"And I can probably do
it better than they can."
- Michael started out as
kind of a fun, rebellious
person who wanted to
shake up the bourgeois
and just not bring on the
boredom,
and kind of spin the face of
mass culture
because it was so tedious and
bourgeois.
- He tries to fill the vacuum
gradually,
starting with various small
parties and then eventually
kind of building this domain of
nightlife.
- Suddenly he was everywhere.
Everywhere I turned
there was Michael Alig.
And the next thing I knew he
was handing out invitations,
and I was like "Oh, he's a
promoter now."
- So he went crazy.
He went all over town and
distributed 10,000 invitations,
those days you had flyers or
invitations,
there was no internet,
and he went bananas.
- Michael never listened to
music.
He just listened to the messages
on his answering machine.
- There was a lot of
change in the air ripe
that everyone could still get a
sense of
that included technology, you
know,
lighting and sound and lasers.
- Meanwhile percolating
underground was Michael Alig
who was organizing all
these crazy club kids
like a kind of pied piper
character in charge of
all these fractured fairy tale
characters
who were going to be the
next wave in nightlife.
- And I think at first Michael
wanted
to part of the celebutante
scene, he wanted to be
part of these die-hard New York
club
people who'd been around for
years,
but they wanted nothing
to do with Michael.
- We clicked when we talked,
but he made me uncomfortable
because I knew that my
time was coming to an end,
this was my celebutante era,
and I was over, I was out, I was
done.
21, I was a has-been.
And this little kid was coming
up,
and it bothered me to no end.
- And so Michael, rather
than being put off,
just decided to go and
create his own scene.
- It was just something about
him,
people were just drawn to him,
he just had this certain gift.
- He was extremely intelligent.
- You could clearly see he was a
very
charismatic fellow, he was very
charming,
so I could see why people would
follow him
and did.
- He had a crew of people that
would
literally follow him like ducks.
- His children, you know,
that would follow him
and he was always the one to
say,
"Now we're going here" or
"Now we're going there."
- Oh, he has a charisma,
he had the leadership,
yes, this one could see, sure.
- I really was not impressed.
I didn't see it.
To me he was just irritating.
- Everywhere I turned, people
were yelling "Michael, Michael."
And I would turn my head and
it's like,
they weren't calling for me,
they were calling for him.
- Michael had this magic
wand that, almost literally,
he was a fairy prince.
And, like Andy, he created
his own superstars.
- When I think back on
it, it kind of reminds me
of an old Hollywood
studio boss or something.
You felt like he was kind of
grooming you.
- He basically would gather
people who dressed up
into his circle and make
sure they got into places,
that was really what Michael
did.
You could never really get
to know him very closely.
I felt very sort of, you know...
- Michael as a leader
of people, it was just,
you would think he would be
satanic, slick, smooth operator.
That wasn't Michael at all.
You would speak to him and you'd
think
"what a weird guy."
- And combined with my
talent and my ability
to sell concepts to
owners, people with money,
we were a pretty formidable
team.
- And it was right around
that time when Michael
was throwing good parties at
good clubs
that the Tunnel opened.
- Rudolph was an
incredibly creative person.
And he just made a very
interesting club.
- Rudolph made this fabulous
bathroom
with 50 stalls long with a DJ at
each end.
- So it was this cavernous
place, with these chandeliers,
it was this fabulous decor.
Some joker even mentioned that
it
was like Auschwitz in Las Vegas.
This was the decor of this club
- It became a much more
expensive deal to open a club.
You couldn't open it for
$150,000 anymore,
now it was millions.
- So of all of this
sort of interplayed into
setting up for a really
good decade in New York.
- The true "club kid"
phenomenon started just
as the '80s were coming to an
end
and coming into the '90s.
- Rudolph was having trouble
filling the basement,
which was the VIP room.
- And that's when Michael
approached them and said,
"Look, I can fill the basement.
"I know I can do that,
"and it's going to be really
fabulous."
The death of downtown was
when Michael swooped in
and started throwing
parties in the basement.
- The drinking age had just
risen to 21,
and everybody thought this was
the end of young people going
out,
but in fact, it was the
beginning
of young people going out.
i don't know how that happened.
- People really liked
kids at clubs back then.
- At one point, the Tunnel
basement
was just filled with teenagers.
- They're underage, let's face
it,
they were there!
Amazingly, nothing ever
happened.
- He was really sought after to
get
15-16-year-old kids to the club.
- I started to get concerned
about this, although New York
was a different kind
of town in those days,
there was no war on drugs.
- I said, "Oh, well can I play
the music at your parties."
And sure enough, that worked.
He was going to do the music
himself.
He was going to DJ and do party,
and I was like "Let me do the
music."
- Originally, they weren't
called the club kids.
It was just Michael and his
little merry band of misfits.
- For about a week or two,
they were known as the
"funtouchables,"
like the untouchables.
- And I said "somebody's
going to come and inspect,
think there's anything happened,
no.
And this went for years,
it went on for years.
- And Rudolph actually called
this
those club kids, because
that's a kind of German.
And it just stuck.
- To indoctrinate the youth of
America
towards a more liberal way of
life,
towards debauchery and
sex and drugs, why not?
- Out of nowhere, the club
kid movement kind of exploded.
it was all these underage
kids in crazy costumes
that you couldn't even imagine.
- Most people tried to go with
the flow,
or change it just a little bit.
but Michael tried to change
everything.
- They did not play what
I was playing upstairs.
He wanted to separate himself.
- By promoting a particularly
theatrical mode of expression.
- These kids started to
show up, all dressed up
as ballerinas or clowns or
pygmies
or a chicken or whatever.
- Michael went off on this sort
of tangent
and created this look that was
- Such a cartoon in its
delivery.
- It wasn't fashionable, it
was actually anti-fashion.
- And it was anti-posing,
it was in your face,
it was loud.
- Clowny.
- Juvenile.
- Character.
- Almost cyber-like.
- Bold.
- Slash retarded.
Sort of deliberately
foolish, deliberately uncool.
- If it didn't work, that's
fabulous.
Just go with it and run with it.
- Be creative, paint yourself.
It was no longer, it was a new
glamor.
- It was glamorous in a
very dysfunctional way.
- And he would have, you know,
like women's underwear on,
and makeup that was sort of like
a
gender-fuck kind of a thing.
- We were all sort of the
outcasts and the losers
and the people who never would
have
made in the previous scene.
- Some of the most crazy
people you can even imagine.
Like, really over the top.
- They didn't go to Fiorucci,
they weren't dong any of
that brand label stuff.
They were just putting a stupid
thing on
their head, and walking out with
it.
- Why can't you just wear this
with that
with that with this.
- Kind of putting a club
kid spin on it, as you said.
With particular reference,
obviously, to Warhol
and his superstars, but
also to Leigh Bowery.
- All those looks, the
polka dots on the face,
the light bulbs attached
to the side of the head,
all that stuff was ripped off
directly from Leigh Bowery.
- But it was definitely
the whole idea of turning
things on its end.
- This kind of outr way of
dressing,
making it kind of a joke.
- With all these made-up
names for themselves,
like Jenny Talia or Walt Paper.
- These are people like
Michael Alig, James St. James,
Julie Jewel, Ernie Glam, Larry
Tee--
- And Reuben Sandwich,
and the It Twins and--
- Lahoma Van Zant, of
course there was RuPaul.
- Sebastien Jr., Reuben
Sandwich, Oliver Twisted,
wow, why do I remember this?
- They were the club
kids to me, Kenny Kenny.
- So anything that the press
would say,
"those pesky club kids" or
"those annoying club kids"
any attention's better than
nothing.
- Michael himself did
not adopt a stage name,
aside perhaps from the moniker
"king of the club kids."
- But we were the alternative
in the gay community.
- Personally, I just thought
they were irritating.
To me, they were just
like flies buzzing around,
and I just wanted to swat 'em.
- They acted in infantile
ways that older nightclubbers
would have found extremely
objectionable or obnoxious.
- We were just like "ugh, God."
- They had class, and
as to where we came in,
we were kind of like the clowns.
- But they were in your
face, they were very forward.
They were going after their
dream,
which was to become a kind of
Warhol-esque
famous for being famous person.
- And by Jackie 60, we
didn't even let them in.
There was a no-lunch pail
policy.
- And also to have the
best time of their lives
night after night, whether
it involved drugs, alcohol,
flesh and body parts, whatever
it took.
- They made all their own
outfits
and they constructed their own
personas,
it was very Warholian.
- I began to embrace media
and kids and all those things
and use the clubs to make money.
- Even if the name "club kids"
hadn't really caught on--
- Amy Virshup wrote a cover
story for New York Magazine
that put Michael on the cover,
and it said "CLUB KIDS."
- Those kids got press, then
eventually some of those
kids were on television.
- And I was watching MTV,
they were interviewing MIchael!
He's on there talking about how
he's running these clubs,
and college kids going to clubs
at night,
and sleeping all day, so it was
great!
- It also fueled the
fantasy for kids that were
growing up at that time,
that they could break
out of their shells.
And Michael was very aware of
that.
That was very much the
objective.
It was like, let's recruit
everyone.
- Mom would tell me, you know,
"Hey, MIchael's going to be on
this show"
or he's on Donahue or Joan
Rivers.
- And that's what the
goal of Michael Alig was
with the club kids, to
perpetrate a national hoax.
- This started to create a
phenomenon
that took over the country.
- As fabulous and extreme as
everyone was,
you felt that they were suburban
kids.
- We first began to dress
up back in the early,
I want to say '90s.
- No, it was like the mid-'80s.
- You will probably see
this throughout the filming,
we kind of disagree a lot.
- A lot, we're always fighting.
Anyways, go on.
- Michael embraced fat people,
ugly people, weird people.
- You know, the kind of
outcasts and being harassed
like they were gay or just
didn't fit in.
- And they'd been picked
on at school or bullied
or treated as fags, or whatever
it was.
- There were outcasts
in every little town.
- Leaving home, escaping
from their parents,
from middle America and just
come
by hook or by crook to New York
to be part of this scene.
- That was the sort of sales
pitch,
this is what your kids are doing
at night.
You know, your kids
sneak out of their house
and they become these night
creatures.
- On national TV,
including some talk shows,
- When you walk down
34th Street in Manhattan,
everybody has this miserable
look on their face,
like I hate my life and
I hate what I'm doing,
I hate being here, and it's
because they're not doing
what they want to do--
- They're doing what somebody
else wants.
- And, plus, we've been
doing this when we were
growing up, I mean most of
us when we were growing up,
we found ourselves in different
scenes,
but we were still the weird
ones,
we were still the freaks,
we were still the ones that
stood out.
It's just now we're being paid
to do
what people were originally
joking us for.
- But, yeah, if you were
living in Enid, Iowa,
and you just were unhappy,
you would watch MIchael on TV,
or read about him in a magazine,
and you would run away from
home,
and join us in New York.
- Are you Michael Alig?
- Yes, I am.
- The man with the drink
tickets.
- When we were growing up,
it was a whole different ball
game.
- Most of us went through
pretty tough times.
- They would come to
New York for acceptance.
- That, initially, was
what was so magical about
coming to New York and
meeting these people.
- It made its mark, because
it screamed loud and clear,
and everybody heard it.
- And it was young, and it
was sexy, and it was crazy.
- We got to New York and all of
a sudden--
- We are the ring leaders.
- We're like the big insiders.
- Because they were free
to express themselves
any way they want want, and
nobody's going to ridicule
them, nobody's going to
say anything about it,
because in New York, at that
time,
who cared what you were doing?
- The further you pushed your
expression,
the more you were included.
And that was kind of a
new experience for me.
- You were inspired.
- The allure is the same.
The flashing lights, the
community, the sense of--
- Family, and we all really
came to care for each other.
- It was an act of defiance.
- I remember him arguing with
me,
telling me that it was
important to do this
because he was fighting the
establishment.
- They should just be very, very
silly.
It was like they were
walking around with their
mum's underwear on their head.
- And that act of defiance was
saying,
"you may judge us, you may
hate us because we're gay
"or because we're effeminate
or because we're interested
"in fame, but we're not
going to apologize for that.
"That's who we are."
- You promote and then maybe
you'd get a gig go-go dancing.
- And then I ended up doing the
door,
you know they realized
that I was good at it,
I could be really bossy.
(laughs)
- There was a lot of people
that really fawned over Michael.
He obviously had a lot
of power at that time.
- If you wanted to send us
tickets to (mumbles) New York,
we went to New York.
- He had access to money,
he had access to drinks,
he had access to jobs.
- Maybe 50 kids turned
into hundreds of kids,
and then it turned into
thousands of kids.
- The club kids hadn't the
slightest grasp of reality.
They were the most
narcissistic, amoral group
of people that you could ever
conceive of.
- Surprise!
Michael was given the club Mars.
Rudolph had given it to
him before it opened,
and said, "This is going to be
your baby.
"Whatever you want."
And then the week before it
opened,
Rudolph fired Michael.
- He was very upset about this,
but it was a not only a business
decision,
not only a decision to stick
with the new.
But also, I was afraid
really of this entire scene
going wrong one day, as it
did later with Peter Gatien.
- When Rudolph closed, then
Michael gravitated to me.
And from there, Michael
gravitated to Peter Gatien,
and the rest is history.
- You know he built his
world, and he built it quickly
in the Limelight, it was his
platform.
- And that's when Peter Gatien
said,
"Why don't you come to
Limelight, and do a party?"
- It was different.
No one ever thought about
putting a club in a church.
- I never liked the Limelight.
It always creeped me out.
- When Michael first took over
Limelight,
nobody believed that it could be
done,
because the Limelight had
been around for 10 years,
and it had never been cool.
- When we met Peter Gatien,
the Limelight was called "the
Slimelight."
I remember Michael and I walking
in there,
and I'm telling Micael,
"Are you sure you want
to go to a party here?"
- We all just rolled our eyes
and said,
"This is the end of Michael."
- Gatien was around before,
he was just very quiet about it.
- I think Peter made it a real
"business."
- The lighting rig moved up and
down
and it had 360 degree lasers.
- The new music, and it
just all kind of worked
with what was happening
in Europe with raves
and all that, you know,
Day-Glo poppy stuff.
- Keoki became a very
good DJ legitimately.
- Michael was an explosion of
creativity.
Michael was a gem, you know.
Mr. Gatien was just a man who
had a room.
- Oh, I heard of this new
promoter, totally outrageous,
spontaneous, great ideas,
but he could be his own worst
enemy.
- He was playing out
his fantasy of himself.
- Michael was pretty
obnoxious from the get-go.
- The most narcissistic
person I've ever met.
- Visual, energetic.
- Michael never used to drink
or take drugs when I met him.
- There's no way you could
predict that
Michael Alig would do
what he eventually did.
I mean, they didn't even do
drugs, these kids at that point.
- If anybody was doing drugs,
it was not in the open.
- He would find where we were,
and he would grab it and he
would flush it down the toilet.
- He was squeaky clean, he
was irritating and humorous,
and he would pretend to be
fucked up.
- The second we would enter
Limelight,
he would pretend he was drunk
and fall.
- It was just all a game.
- Michael hated drugs.
- The club kid era, I mean it
was like
an energy that was sweeping,
a fun energy that was sweeping.
- It really did seem
to be a global village.
It really did seem like there
was almost
a tribal culture that
existed on the street.
- I mean going to raves
starting on a Friday night
at the Tunnel and ending on
Monday.
And they would do 18-hour sets.
- It was big dance
halls all over New York.
- We had the Vault, we
had Save the Robots,
we had all these other
places that, Mars, Quick.
- Probably 15 different rooms,
one was house music, techno,
goth, rock,
the gays, but we all came
together as one.
- Everybody got along.
I never saw any fighting
or anything like that.
It was very, like, a
peaceful kind of a scene.
- And that's also when the rave
scene
kind of integrated with
nightlife.
- It could be like a midget,
a tranny, a Hasidic Jew,
a Chelsea gay, a club kid, a
raver,
a gothic, and we all got along.
- it just took off.
- Positive chaos.
- It was fab-u-lous.
(throbbing techno music)
- So the Limelight became
the hot place to go.
That's where the energy was.
That's where the excitement was.
That's where the sex was.
That's where the drugs were.
It didn't matter if you
were underage or not.
But if you were cute, all doors
open.
- It had a lot of energy,
and it was just exciting.
It was something I'd never seen
before.
I couldn't believe it.
- [Astro Earl] Gaultier did
a room, Mugler did a room.
So it was all about ambience
and decor and visuals.
- I wasn't really impressed till
he started doing Disco 2000.
- Disco 2000 was supposed to be
the apex of the club kid scene
It was what everything
had been building for.
- And the show every night,
every Wednesday night,
was called "Unnatural Acts."
- It was depraved, I thought.
The idea of having somebody
drink their pee on stage
for entertainment I thought
was--
- A little questionable,
but the amazing thing is
his night was on a Wednesday,
and it was probably the most
successful night out of the
whole week.
- He was very much in tune with
something that was happening.
- Disco 2000 proper was amazing.
I mean, you'd have a club
in the middle of the week
on a Wednesday filled, the
entire club,
it wasn't like just one room,
every week
until 5:00 in the morning.
And the crowd was classic New
York.
- It was like Disneyland on
crack,
it was awesome.
- Club kids were dancing on
their shoes,
and the people that were
normal customers there
were just like "What the
hell is going on down here?
"The music is so weird."
So that's what Michael lived
for.
- it was just an over-the-top,
exaggerated performance.
I thought they were
like living art pieces.
- You met in the club a lot of
people.
- But it was an era of
promiscuity,
it was an era of bisexuality,
homosexuality, any sexuality
you could dream of.
- People were having sex in the
open,
people snorting coke in the
open,
you would have really things
that we'd just never see now.
- You'd get school teachers
coming in with wedding dresses,
see-through wedding dresses.
It was just, anything
went, it was just crazy.
- And that was when everybody
was
just in the bloom of their
youth,
and everybody was just fabulous,
and the outfits got a little
crazier,
and the makeup got a little
wilder.
- And of course Gatien had go-go
boys and girls on the altar
and coming down from the ceiling
in cages.
- The drugs started
escalating and everything
sort of just coalesced at Disco
and it became Michael's
signature.
- People came to, he
was like a attraction,
like people come to see
the Empire State Building,
the Statue of Liberty, they
would come
to see the club kids at the
Limelight.
- He stole these costumes
from a costume store
and decided that I would
wear this chicken suit.
- When they went out and got
Clara
the Carefree Chicken and there
was a bear.
- I see the bear, and what was
the dog?
There was a dog.
- I would spend hours
at Disco 2000 wearing
the costume on the stage,
vogueing, flapping my wings,
and at one point they built this
giant--
- Swing in the middle of the
dance floor.
And this big chicken
was just in the swing.
- The chicken had its own
drink ticket, you know?
- I saw it quite often when
I went to look at these clubs
in the '90s where you'd
see people coming in
in wild costumes, it was
a thing in these clubs,
and drug use was prevalent.
- You'd stick $15 through
a hole, and they'd give you
a rocks glass of vodka,
champagne, and crushed
mushrooms.
- To get in the club, you had to
have something, something
special.
- You had to be cool or
you had to wait for hours
and never get in, whether
it was any of those clubs.
- You wouldn't let anyone into
the room
unless they were doing
something for the room.
I worked there, and I
still got the butterflies,
because I wanted to make
sure that I looked good.
- There was sort of tiers.
- There was like an A crowd, a B
crowd,
a C crowd, and a D crowd.
- You just can't have a scene
with 50 fabulous people.
You got to have some paying
customers.
- First of all, there was the
old school
that were the VIP.
- There was a lot of
racism in those clubs too.
- Ravers came next, maybe.
- You know, even when you get to
your bridge and tunnel people,
those were the boys that
everybody wanted to sleep with.
- And then you had the Jersey
Shore.
- People from New Jersey which
were
always barred from coming in
anywhere.
They were discriminated against,
except the chicks.
New Jersey chicks are hot!
- The thing about Peter
Gatien, genius man,
very just business oriented,
very smart.
Never really hung out, he
was always in his office.
- Next week it'll look
completely different.
- He had three clubs going
with basically the same crowds.
- It was fresh week-in and
week-out.
Nobody was doing that at the
time.
- The scene was very organized.
They used to have style
summits and tours where
the club kids would go
and tour different cities.
- And it was "King of New
York" and "Queen of New York"
and the "Best Promoter at
Night," and the "Best Dressed."
- It was amazing, it really was
incredible
and the Outlaw parties--
- The Outlaw parties
in New York were crazy.
Sometimes we ended up
at the wrong location.
- Sometimes, nothing
happened, nothing clicked,
we weren't going to fill the
room.
So what we would do was
throw an outlaw party.
- You create all these
invites, usually with a xerox,
and then you pass them
out, this was the day--
- Pre-cell phone, pre-internet--
so you would actually have
to photocopy something.
- And you would give it out.
- This is a tradition in
nightlife, where you organize
everyone on the sly to show
up at some public event,
whether its a subway station
or a sanitation dump.
- And then he would have
them in a supermarket,
he would have them in a Dairy
Queen,
or he'd have them at McDonalds.
- We could do it anywhere.
- They'd go to a deserted bank,
and he'd draw thousands of
people.
- We all pile in.
- And you'd have a
really concentrated party
for like 10 or 15 minutes till
the cops
find out about it, show
up, and break it up.
- The '80s version of a
flashmob.
It's just alcohol and a boombox
with a pre-mixed Keoki tape,
and we'd break in, bolt cutters.
- And all of a sudden, there
would be
hundreds and hundreds of
these crazy club kids.
- And they would converge on
this place,
annihilate it, if you will.
- They'd party at McDonalds.
- Which was famous, fast
food will never be the same.
- He took a party again the
following
week at a train station.
By the time police came, they
all ran.
- By getting on the train and
leaving.
It was hysterical.
- Instead of 10-20 people in the
club,
it's just all of a sudden
there's this energy.
- It would just get crazy
and the police would come.
It would be a whole scene.
- And Richie Wood says,
"Handcuffs do not go with my
outfit."
- It was a remarkable scene in
the clubs,
Limelight, whatever.
And then he would do his
tours of Times Square,
march 30 or 40 club
kids into a Burger King,
just totally freak out
everybody in the place.
- Ah, the memories.
- People lived to talk about
what
awful thing Michael Alig had
done.
- Never seen anybody with that
kind of influence and power.
- There's so many outrageous
stunts that,
I mean it just runs the gamut.
- I remember Michael
stealing a city bus one time.
- I would be like, "You
can't go out like that.
"You're going to be naked
at the end of the night.
"You can't just wear feathers.
"You'll be naked by the end of
the night.
"Please don't wear that outfit
out."
He'd say, "Ok, fine."
- Completely amoral.
- Sure enough, I'd see him out
Times Square, just feathers.
- Michael Alig is an absolute
genius.
- Infantile.
- Going to another party and
stealing their attention.
- The day he put his
mother in a shopping cart
and rolled her around the
dance floor, my, my... (laughs)
- He was really sloppy,
and he was really intrusive of
space.
- I remember he did a party at
Red Zone,
he had a ferris wheel outside.
And people would go on the
ferris wheel
right outside the club.
- Bales of hay, and live
chickens
and goats running around.
- These are the things that he
did.
- So I don't think he's a
genius, but he's brilliant.
People say he's a genius.
- I want to say genius.
- I still don't know how he
got there, because I never
saw him read books, I never saw
him,
there was not internet then,
so I don't know how he got
these ideas, osmosis or what.
- Let's bring a club kid from
East Berlin.
- Let's do a water slide inside.
They'll come and slide into a
pool.
And economically Michael never
cared.
He didn't care how much money he
spent
he was only interested in doing
a party.
- You never knew when you
were going to end up in jail,
whatever when you were with him.
So there was all that sense of
danger.
- Combined with a worldly
amount of charisma.
- We used to do these
Outlaw fashion shows.
- At a given up location.
- The post office on
the night of tax time,
when the whole post office is
lit up.
- He had a fashion show on the
subway.
- The number one train
on the 7th Avenue line,
where there was a fashion show
involved,
I remember bottles that we
dressed up
were walking up and down.
And as you come down the stairs,
they would announce your name,
so that was pretty fabulous.
- Just at that time to
catch the both crowds,
it was fun.
- It was insane.
- And the police got there,
so we had to, like, flee.
- This kid who couldn't
find a way to get in
found his way in.
- Are you Michael Alig?
- Uh-huh.
- That's good.
All right, we're off to a good
start.
- [Voiceover] Alig represented
the
zenith of a city out of control.
- We were joking about Clara
the chicken, and I said,
"Oh, I wonder whatever
happened to that costume."
And then Michael said to me,
"Oh, I cut it into pieces
"and threw it in the river."
(creepy bursts of laughter)
- I'm going to be very honest
with you:
you cannot have a club with
the club kids without drugs.
It can't exist.
- Drugs are everywhere.
And if you're a star in the
scene,
everybody wants to give it to
you.
- Creative movements take
to mood and mental elevators
like lettuce takes to olive oil.
It tastes good with the olive
oil better.
- I mean, let's face it,
people don't do drugs
because they're not enjoyable,
you know, drugs are fun.
- God.
Forgive me, mom, for knowing all
this.
- Occasionally, he did a little
ecstasy,
Little bit of ecstasy, he liked
that.
And then it was a little more
ecstasy,
and then he started
throwing ecstasy parties.
- There were corridors
filled with drug dealers,
selling everything from ecstasy,
cocaine, weed, special K.
- Dust, GHB.
- Ketamine, and then came
in crystal meth, and LSD.
- A six-inch line off an
eight-inch dick.
- Rohypnols, heroin.
- Everything crystal, ecstasy,
cocaine.
- There was always like a punch
with acid,
mushrooms, and ecstasy in it.
- There'd be like a hundred
balloons
and 20 of them would have
ecstasy in it,
so we'd throw the balloons over.
- You can take one or two, or
they would double dip them,
whatever that meant.
- Mitsubishi was a good pill.
- Ecstasy, heroin, crystal
meth,
and I'm talking about all at
once.
- These drug concoctions,
they were all mixed up.
- XECK, which was Xanax,
ecstasy, crystal, and K.
They were all my favorite.
My drug of choice was more of
everything.
- We were all aware that we were
sort of
in this petri dish, testing
things about.
- Granted, to some degree,
the city was out of control.
- What changed the city,
Giuilani started it,
a mini fascist, tyrant, bully.
- Went on a mission to "clean up
New York"
and one of his targets was
nightlife,
and within the nightlife,
I think the Limelight Club
was his top priority.
- He had that mentality.
He was very good at what he did.
He was very tough, he was very
honest.
You couldn't get to him,
you couldn't bribe him.
- All of a sudden in New York,
you started hearing "quality of
life."
"Quality of life campaign"
became this catchphrase.
- And I always thought that
the city that would elect
a major asshole like Giuliani
was not a city worth living in
and so it was time to move.
- It was an adversarial
relationship between
the nightclubs and the
administration.
Nightlife was always a
big piece of New York,
and it was growing.
The Giuliani administration
and the police department
were trying to figure out how to
basically
go into these clubs and
either close them down,
or certainly try to restrict the
drug use that was taking place.
- You'd be in the middle
of having your experience
and there's like six or seven
cops in the middle of the room
and they weren't leaving.
- If you look suspicious, take
him in,
and we'll ask questions later.
That's how he did it.
He totally swept the streets.
- Everything from
squeegee people, the mafia
people large and small,
politicians.
It was not longer that it's
not that we can't eliminate it.
That changed, the whole thing
changed.
- Peter was like the king
of New York at that time.
He had four major clubs.
- He was the big fish that
if you could go after him
you'd be sending a message
to all the other club owners
that we're going after you.
- He became a target, he became
a target,
and that was the end of him.
Once that happens, it's over.
You cannot fight these people.
- It was more of like a witch
hunt.
- For all of the ills
of New York nightlife,
because what went on at the
Limelight was
not just confined to the
Limelight.
- Even though there were drugs
in the club and there were
drug dealers, there wasn't
like a major system.
- There were these gangs
from Brooklyn and the Bronx,
and one of them was called TF,
I think they were called
Together Forever.
- I mean, you basically
had access to everything
as long as you had the money.
- Reality of the situation
is there's no way
to stop a pill from
getting into a nightclub.
- Once the gangs saw
that there's money there,
they started moving in.
- Well, what happened then was,
the club owners would have to go
in court,
they'd have to hire their
lawyers,
they'd have to pay hefty fines.
- That was kind of what brought
people to New York at that time
was nightlife, it was an
industry.
The government decided that
they didn't want it anymore.
- Sent a message to everyone.
Either you straighten out your
ship
or we're just going to lock you
up.
- Started getting tickets
people for jaywalking,
I mean to an extreme.
- I think that really
he chose the nightclubs
not necessarily because they
were such
quality of life infractors,
but because it was a good way
of getting publicity for
himself,
and he, like all mayors, is a
media whore,
so I believe that's why he did
it.
- It was the mayor's task force
that
would go visit these clubs,
and they would go in and
they would shut them down.
And again, this was
something that occurred
more and more as the '90s rolled
on.
- The mentor of us all, the
Marquis de Sade, established,
he said that even in a limitless
way, one has to set limit.
- Michael pushed boundaries,
Michael was outrageous to begin
with.
And as he did more and more
drugs,
he got more and more outrageous.
- It's not just the drugs,
it's the fact that there were
no boundaries, there were no
limits.
There was no sense of
right and wrong anymore.
Michael wanted anything to get a
reaction.
The club kid movement, which
had started off as something
wonderful and beautiful
and fun, had turned evil.
- It was a gradual
progression into darkness.
- Everybody was sort of
falling apart at that point.
- Too much power, too much
excess, too many drugs.
- I just think that it
snowballed into bad things,
I could say it's dark.
- It got druggier and druggier
and darker and darker,
and the center wasn't holding.
- And it went from
these crazy rave parties
where everybody is on E
and hands are in the air
to a lot more people lying on
the floors
and the corners in K-holes.
- Gitsy died in my
apartment, for God's sake.
- It seemed like every week
somebody was dying for a while.
- [James] The scene
went from day to night.
It never went back.
- At one point, it just didn't
feel like it's a party anymore.
- Maybe at first you smoke
something
or you took a pill, and then you
started
snorting things, and then
eventually
you started injecting things.
- Ketamine wasn't enough,
ecstasy wasn't enough,
and so you just found,
discovered heroin,
and of course, once you
do heroin, you're done.
- His behavior started
becoming really erratic.
- But there was quite sinister
drug-related stuff going on.
- It seemed like there
were no consequences.
- Dressing up, the power
trips, the thinking you're
something you're not, and
respect, and morality,
all those things, you kind
of throw them up in the air.
You're saying there's no
such thing as being civil,
there's no such thing as
respect,
there's no such thing as love
and hate.
You're playing with all those
things.
- I did get a call from
him one day, and he says,
"Hi David, this is your
junkie brother Michael."
I hadn't talked to him in a long
time,
and I was just so happy to hear
from him.
- He overdid it, and
then, well, he got fucked,
what can I say?
Shit happens.
- It became less about
kind of good natured,
crazy, rebellious fun, and
more about just sickness.
- Michael had always
been obsessed with death.
He was always obsessed with
gore.
- I think he always had a dark
side.
There was definitely some dark
theme parties at Limelight.
- This was a turning
point in the club scene.
- He had a blood feast party at
Limelight,
which dabbled almost as a
foreshadowing
in severed body parts and
blood and body fluids,
and it seemed like he
was almost fantasizing
about wanting to dismember a
body,
which he ended up doing.
- [Voiceover] We did this whole
theme
about a club kid serial killer.
It was just amazing to think
that probably a year later
or something, it actually
happened.
- Michael started putting
drug dealers onto the budget.
And people were being hired
not because they were fabulous,
but because Michael wanted X
amount
of drugs to be available for the
party.
- And what their job
was was to distribute,
give everybody a bump here and
there,
and da-da-da.
- And that was symptomatic of
the fact
that the scene had gone
over-the-top
in a way that was going to end
tragically.
- When you throw drugs into the
mix,
people die, people get killed,
people get arrested, people go
to jail.
It's just part of the turf.
- Angel was what they call a
"pier queen."
Angel was part of that rough gay
crowd
that hung around the West
Village piers.
He was a street guy.
- Angel had this really dark
side to him,
like a really dark, violent
side.
- He was very nice,
I never got an evil vibe from
him.
- Michael basically had three
drug dealers living with him.
Angel was one of them.
- And when Angel asked for the
money,
Michael didn't have it,
one thing led to the other,
and Angel ended up dead in a
bathtub.
- Angel.
Didn't like Angel very much.
- That's one of the
tragedies of this whole case,
is that the victim is always
forgotten,
it's all about Michael Alig
and sometimes about Freeze.
It's never about Angel.
- No, I didn't really
care for Angel too much.
I avoided him, as much as
possible,
especially if I owed him money.
- You couldn't miss him with
those wings.
- He wore those often, but he
seemed like a pretty cool guy.
We would seem him every
Wednesday or Saturday.
- He was a nice guy.
- Angel was one of our
kids at Jackie's 60.
He was there every Tuesday night
with his angel wings,
and everybody loved him.
- He was a kid that used to go
to CBGB's.
He was sort of like a punk,
hardcore kid.
But he was not really A list.
- Drug dealer nonetheless.
- If Angel didn't have drugs,
they would
not have allowed him to hang
around.
- I have this great picture
I was able to take of him.
- I didn't like Angel.
I thought he was a piece
of shit first, personally.
If you could just line up
the people that should die
in this world, he would be near
the front.
- But that all being
said, I loved the guy,
he was awesome.
Very sweet, very nice.
- I always felt like he
came in from the side,
but then tried to be a part of
them.
- These people who
maybe couldn't penetrate
this upper level with
their creativity or with
their looks or with their
expression,
a lot of times they would do
it by becoming drug dealers.
- He was accurately portrayed in
Hollywood
where he wasn't quite
accepted on the level
of Michael's complete inner
circle.
- He was a poser.
He was basically a poser.
- Michael's follower.
As much as he tried to pretend,
again,
it was the illusion of the
drugs.
- As far I understand it, that
was the core of the conflict.
- Angel always had this paranoia
that
people were making fun of him
or that people secretly didn't
like him
or that we were all laughing
about him behind his back.
- Michael came up to me, and he
was like,
"God, Astro, I just wish he was
dead."
- But I didn't think in
any way, shape, or form
that he deserved to die.
- [Michael] I guess it was
around 10:00 in the morning,
and I think it was a Sunday
morning,
and we had been up probably
since Thursday night.
The concierge called up
and said that somebody,
that Angel was downstairs
and should he come up.
- He demanded getting paid for
the drugs
that he was dealing at
Limelight.
- He was a little bit
belligerent.
It's not the time to be
showing up at Peter's house
with a drug dealer, or hire
drugs looking for money,
10:00 on a Sunday morning.
I said, "Come in, take a nap,
and we'll go
"to the club that afternoon
and get your money."
Some argument broke out between
them about
about the argument between us,
about the argument over the
money,
and Freeze said something to him
like,
- "This is why nobody ever likes
you.
"If you weren't a drug pusher,
"you wouldn't have any friends."
- Ooh, that was, you know,
Freeze was
probably a little bit right,
which is why it hit so hard.
It was a low blow, hit below the
belt,
and I think that's why it
probably affected Angel so much,
because I think he
subconsciously knew this.
Angel was asking me something
like,
"Are you going to let him
talk to me like that?"
or "Is that true?" or
something to that effect.
- And he grabbed Michael by the
throat.
- We went flying through my
china cabinet,
which had a big glass front on
it,
and this big piece of
glass went into my back,
and blood was spurting all over
the place.
Now Feeze says this was a
pillow,
I remember it being a
sweatshirt.
I remember taking a sweatshirt
and wrapping it around my hand,
because I had it was smashing
his face,
and trying to push him off,
and he was biting my
hand, biting my chest,
and Freeze was trying to pull
him back,
and I was trying to push him
off,
and he just reached around
for whatever he could grab.
- Grabbed a hammer, clubbed
Angel.
- Two or three times, and he
finally did stop biting me,
and he fell back, and at
this point me and Daniel
were all on top of him on his
stomach.
- They both finished him off
with a pillow
and shooting him up with Drano.
- We had no way of
thinking, there's nothing
in our frame of mind that he was
dead.
I mean, it wasn't even
something we were thinking
could have been, it's just
unconscious.
And it was kind of a normal
situation
to have unconscious
people around the house.
- Terrible thing.
He did try and kill him,
but the guy was dead.
- We had done everything we
could think of to revive him,
short of putting him underwater,
which is what we did.
He didn't gasp for air.
It took us a moment to realize
what exactly that meant.
And I know that right now,
probably anybody watching this
would think "well, why
didn't you call a lawyer?"
But, first of all, Angel
had probably 50 half-gram
vials of Special K, and
almost two ounces of cocaine,
and rohypnol, and all
kinds of drugs on him
that we just started using.
- And killing this guy was
just a goof, a total goof.
You know, they wanted his drugs
and money,
but it was an afterthought.
I guarantee you that Alig
thought, "Hmm, I wonder
"what it's like to
actually kill somebody."
- We were afraid of police
coming over
and questioning our drug
use, and are you drug addicts
and, you know, everything
being kind of exposed
to the real world, and, perhaps,
everything coming to a halt.
How were we going to
survive without heroin?
You know, we need another
bag in three hours.
So, we never called anybody.
And in fact, we went to
Olympia's house instead.
Took Angel into the bathtub.
We put him on ice and we poured
baking soda and Drano over.
- And then after he does it,
hmm-hm-hmm,
so let's leave him in
the bathtub for a while
and get high for a week.
Then the body starts to stink
and you put Drano on
it, whatever, whatever.
- What are we going to do,
are you going to go back to the
apartment?
And he said he didn't want to go
back,
and I said, "Well, I don't
want to go back either,
"but what are we going to do?
"You have to come back."
I said, "Maybe he won't even be
there."
We walked in the apartment,
everything seemed
completely normal, didn't look
like
any fight had gone on or
anything.
The china cabinet was broken,
and there was glass and a little
bit
of blood on the couch.
- When we went in the bathroom,
I mean, I knew that he
was going to be there,
but I was really hoping
that he wouldn't be,
and he was, you know, so...
We are going to be caught
with a dead body in our house,
and not only a dead body,
but a dead body that had been in
our house
for what, eight, nine, 10 days?
We'll never be able to explain
that.
- People are coming to
the party at his house,
but they can't go in to this
bathroom.
- When we finally moved him,
we started smelling,
the body was decomposing
underneath only.
The top was not.
- I remember Michael
said, "Oh, that smell,
"that's plumbing," or something
like that.
And I just, whoop, never
even thought about it.
Ok, lets do another line.
- So they decide, well, we're
going
to have to get rid of this body.
- We couldn't move the
arms or legs or anything.
And there was no way of fitting
the body into this box.
Freeze did go out and
went to Macy's and bought
some large kitchen knives.
At that point we said
we'll either do so much
heroin that we die, we
were fine with that too,
because we were feeling so
guilty.
- Michael started doing heroin
and drugs
to put him another planet,
and then started hacking up his
body.
- He cut the body to make it
fit.
- I'm remembering this whole
thing lasting less than a
minute.
We both just went like this kind
of thing
and just cut very quickly,
I cut so fast just to get it
over with,
and Freeze was spraying
Calvin Klein Eternity,
which was very, we didn't see
the
symbolism in that until much
later.
- i remember being at Michael's
at setting a cocktail down on
this box
and Michael was wearing Angel's
boots
like I am with my legs crossed
and sitting in front of me
and wearing Angels' boots
saying, "Astro, who's missing?
Who's missing, Astro?"
And I was like, "I don't know,
Michael,
"but what is that stench in this
house?"
And the box that my cocktail
was sitting on was Angel's body.
- I asked Michael when
I who did it, I said,
"How could you chop his legs
off?
"How could you cut his legs
off?"
And he told me, "Well, I
just did 17 bags of heroin,
"and it was like I was in
a Foghorn Leghorn cartoon."
- It was right about
here that Michael Alig
told me that he killed Angel.
He asked me if he could borrow
my car.
I said, "What do you want
to borrow my car for?"
He said, "I just murdered Angel"
and needed my car to get rid of
the body.
i told him to get the fuck away
from me,
and he scampered off.
- They came up and they took the
box
down on the luggage trolley.
They took it to the service
elevator,
we went through the regular
elevator,
but we were thinking the whole
time,
I could smell it, Freeze could
smell it,
and I cannot imagine that the
concierge
could not smell it.
- Put it in a big TV
box and put it in a cab.
- We went to Tunnel for
some strange reason,
and just stopped right in front
of Tunnel,
and asked the cab driver to help
us
take the box out of the
trunk, which he did,
and then we asked him to help us
lift it.
We walked across the Westside
Highway
to the river, and to
throw it in the river.
And he asked us why we were
doing that
and what was in the box,
and we told him that it
was dishes and things
that we didn't want, and he
didn't say
anything about it.
The box did not sink, like we
had
imagined it would from seeing
movies.
It floated up down the river.
- Because they forgot the
crucial thing:
you're supposed to puncture
a hole in the box so it'll sink.
- Freeze wanted to jump
in the river after it.
We gave him a $20 tip
and he drove us back to
our building, which again was
just outrageously idiotic,
because the cab driver would
have
known exactly where we lived.
- He was smart, but he let his
brains
go out on a coffee break at that
point.
- Just a bunch of bad decisions,
one bad decision after another.
And we went back to the
apartment.
(ominous music)
- That particular time, we
were in a tropical storm.
So for all intents and purposes,
this body
should have went out to sea,
but because of the storm
blowing everything in,
it washed up on Staten Island.
- He was on this escalator,
in that he had to
keep on being more and more
outrageous,
and so you could say, sooner or
later,
he was going to go too far.
I don't think anybody thought
sooner or later he was
going to murder anyone.
- I still struggle with
it, it's still hard for me
to think about when i heard,
'cause I heard it from Michael,
really.
- I remember the first sign
that I got that something
was really weird was I
actually called Angel
to buy drugs from him,
and Michael called back on his
phone.
- Around that time, he
was 86ed from the clubs.
- He was fired and then
I didn't see him anymore.
'cause I guess he knew I
wouldn't
lent him any money
'cause he wasn't working
there anymore and wouldn't
be able to pay me back.
- We knew that we weren't seeing
Angel around, and we knew that
Michael was
no longer allowed into the
clubs.
- When I first heard about
Angel's disappearance,
was through gossip.
- And there were rumors--
- That he had gone
missing, there were rumors
that he had been killed,
there were rumors that
he had been chopped up.
- And they were saying things
like,
"Oh, have you heard about
Angel?"
- Where's Angel, where's Angel?
- It was kind of like a family
thing,
like everybody saw everybody,
and then after awhile, he
just wan't there anymore.
- When I asked Michael what
happened,
he gave me some really flip
answer
suggesting that something
terrible had happened to Angel.
- I couldn't face my
friends without telling them
what had happened,
because I felt like every
minute I'm spending with
them, I'm lying to them.
- We knew he couldn't have
possibly
have killed Angel,
because anyone who's going
to murder someone isn't going
to go around admitting to it.
- When people asked them at
Limelight,
"Have you seen Angel?"
he made a joke, he says,
"Yeah, I killed him, I chopped
him up
"put his body in a trunk, and
threw him in the East River."
- His relationship with
Peter had deteriorated.
- Peter wanted to understandably
cut his relationship off with me
before I brought down his entire
empire.
- And also Michael at the time,
he was really bruised up.
He had bruises on the back
of his neck, like wounds.
- His life as a creative
person and as a power
in New York ended very abruptly.
- We went to work that day,
normal day,
case comes in over the radio.
- And I got a call that there
was a body on the beach,
and this is by Miller
Fields in Staten Island,
and my partner and I
responded, who was Ralph Gengo.
- And it was discovered by some
mutes
that were along the beach.
- And they had gotten a stick
and they started probing
and poking, opening it up,
thinking they'd
find some kind of treasure
or something spectacular.
- And they poked holes
in it and seen enough.
- I knew that people were
looking for him,
and I knew that there was
kind of something going on,
but it really wasn't till his
brother
came one night looking for him.
- I thought it was weird
that he had Angel's phone
and that he had had all of
Angel's drugs.
- And he would say it all with
the same
crazy look on his face,
so he might've said
something bad happened to Angel,
but I didn't know if it was true
or not.
- Multiple people had OD'ed, had
died,
had committed suicide.
That kind of language
and that kind of event
was not that shocking.
- I thought that it was a
publicity stunt,
and that angel would appear.
- Just seemed like another
prank,
he was just trying to get press
by staging this kind of fake
murder.
- So as a detective
investigator,
I'm looking for some clues
and where am I gonna go with
this?
I have a body in a box.
- We were at his house,
and he chopped up the lines
and got me real high, and then
told me
the whole story from beginning
to end.
- And he created the image
that he got rid of Angel
and thrived on that,
little did we all know,
that yes, he did in fact get rid
of Angel.
- You know when I started
to believe it was true,
was when I met Angel's family.
- We started to think "all
right, this is serious.
"His brother is really
concerned,
"and really does not
think that this is good."
- They were crying, and I was
thinking
"you know what?
"There's no way Angel is going
to take
"part in this scam, this prank,
"and put his family through
this."
- And then we opened up the box,
and we stripped down the torso,
'cause we didn't have any legs,
the body was cut in half.
- There were plots being hatched
about how to get Michael
out of the country,
and he was quite convinced,
no body, no crime,
and he was going to get away
with it.
- We weren't getting away with
it,
and Freeze was having a
difficult time as well,
up on the roof of the building,
imagining every helicopter
that's coming by
and every ambulance they're
coming to arrest us,
and just doing drugs and drugs
and drugs
to not have to think about it,
not have to face what we had
done.
- Three hits in the back of the
head.
If you ever hit a piece
of wood with a hammer
or like a 2x4, and you
don't quite hit it flush,
you hit it on an angle,
you get that half-moon.
- I said to Musto, "You
should investigate it, right."
Because if it is true,
this is a huge story.
- Where it came from, at
that time we didn't know.
But it did land on Oakland
Beach,
and that is what they call
an "unidentified floater."
- Most of us felt that this
was an unsolvable case,
that this was going to be a cold
case.
'Cause if you think of the
possibilities
of where this body could have
come from,
my first thought was this is
maybe
something that happened on a
freighter.
- Articles in the Village
Voice started happening.
- I went with a blind
item as the lead item,
because by this point the
chatter had grown really loud,
and someone told me, "It's
really true."
- I had known from the very
beginning.
I felt that this was
someone from South America,
Mexico, Guatemala, something
like that.
They went with the premise
that it was an Asian.
So we spent nearly three or four
months
within the Asian community
trying to
identify a body.
- Looking for Angel in the
Village Voice,
that was the story that really
broke the case wide open.
- And then Michael Musto started
to write things about it.
- So I ran, here's exactly
what people think happened,
And I put the details of the
Drano,
the pillow, the chopping the
body,
the throwing it into the Hudson.
- Very bone-chilling,
and scary, you know...
- That was then picked up by
Page 6,
which is the big column
in the New York Post,
and that's when it blew up as a
story.
- Months later on, I'm
reading a newspaper.
- In the Post was a body that
came up on the Hudson River.
- That torso, it fit it to a T,
legs cut off, hit in the head
with a hammer three times.
I'm saying, "This is it."
- It was at a club whose name I
forgot
where Michael came up to me and
asked
me if I would represent him,
and I said, "Michael, you know,
"It's a little late right now."
And we had an honest
conversation.
I asked him point blank,
did he kill Angel,
and he said, "No."
- "No, no, no, I didn't.
"I don't know what that is all
about.
"I didn't do it."
- He could barely walk.
His hands were swollen
like baseball mitts.
He was completely covered in
marks.
He was like a homeless person,
walking around with a blanket,
that's how he would show up to
the club,
like a blanket on.
- Everyone knew something.
This story got spread out so far
that we could not make a
connection
that Michael Alig told one
person.
They had always heard it from
someone else
or heard it from someone else.
- One of the club kids told me,
"Oh, yeah,
"but there's also the thing
that he killed somebody."
And then he added, "Don't
tell Michael I told you,"
which to me showed the really
sad hold
that Michael had over these
kids,
even after killing someone,
the kids wanted to stay in his
good favor.
- And that's what took a lot of
time,
was we had to find that
evidence,
who Michael actually told this
to.
- And that detective
says, "It's not the body
"that you are looking
for, we're associating
"with our body, but there is
a detective in the DA squad
"in Manhattan that is looking
for a body."
- I told everybody in my office
that I've got it, this is it.
- Once those dental records
matched Angel Melendez,
we knew we had the right body.
So it was, "Tommy, read the
paper."
- Peter sent me some money
to leave town if I wanted.
- I think it was just like this
slowly
building case against him.
- We no longer had suspicion.
We had probable cause that he
did it.
- We had rumors that he
was in Jersey somewhere
with intentions to go to
Colorado.
- And we thought we had enough
at that point to make the
arrest.
- We got information from that
hotel
that he was staying at, we
called in Jersey police.
Somewhere around the middle of
the night,
we knocked on the door,
said it was maintenance--
- And when we entered the hotel
room,
Michael was stoned.
- We had an arrest
warrant already secured,
and Michael was arrested.
- He barely knew what was going
on.
I practically had to stand him
up.
- I'll never forget that ride
back.
I was with the Brooklyn
DA's office supervisor,
and Michael was lying down in
the back,
getting sicker, and sicker, and
sicker.
I actually felt pity, because
the horrors
of addiction are well-known,
and I did about 90 miles an
hour in the unmarked car.
Thank God a state trooper
didn't pull me over.
- So I also went to
Manhattan in another car,
and went to pick up Robert
Riggs.
He was on, I think, 43rd Street,
he was going to work.
He was just about to
walk into his building,
and I put my hand on his
shoulder,
and he told me everything.
He says, "I'm glad it's over,
I'm glad you guys got me,
"I can't live with this
anymore."
- We would have never been able
to live with ourselves at all,
and it was a relief in
fact when we were arrested.
- And that confession
letter is very accurate.
And you can also see my
signatures on the bottom of it.
And that's what happened.
What anyone else tells
you, this is a true story.
Robert Riggs was there, I think
he was
more sober than Alig at the
time.
- If it wasn't Angel, it
would've been something else.
It would have been his
suicide, it would have been,
something was going to
happen along the way.
- Keoki asked me to represent
him.
Michael was in federal custody
when I started representing him.
- When Michael woke up that
morning,
he had no intention of killing
anybody.
- And if you think about it,
it seems that he was the victim
and Melendez was the aggressor.
- The circumstances of
the violence that occurred
that led up to Angel's
death could have been
washed away with a phone
call to the police.
"I have a man on the
floor, he's been hurt,
"Freeze hit him with a hammer."
- [Det. Tom] Had he left it
alone at
that point and called the
police--
- It was a legitimate
self defense argument.
- I guess Riggs would have
went to jail for assault.
Michael was still a victim at
that point.
- That went out the drain
when they walked out the room.
When they smothered him with a
pillow.
- I never even went to the
arraignment,
that's how fast Michael Alig
and Riggs were put in jail.
- She started telling me
something about Michael,
and she kept saying "Murder."
But she was saying it in German,
and I did not understand her,
so finally she came out and
she told me what had happened.
- I had a phone call from
somebody within
that gave me a heads-up that
they were
doing a press conference on
the arrest of Michael Alig.
So the NYPD was excluded.
- I was just wondering how this
person
really so uniquely
unprepared for life in prison
was gonna handle that, or even
survive it.
- After we were put on methadone
and kind of leveled out,
I mean it's very bleak.
It was comforting having Freeze
next to me
because we were both thrust
into this wild environment,
we just stuck out like sore
thumbs,
we didn't walk like the rest of
them,
we didn't talk like the rest of
them,
we didn't have the same
background.
- When Michael first got
arrested,
it was, it was painful.
He was raped, he was beat up,
you know this is someone I had
been with for like 11 years.
- And I was in disbelief.
I was like, "Mom, are you sure
that this really happened?"
This is a shock.
- I said, "Michael, you're
really sick.
"You really, really got to get
help.
"I don't know how you're
going to get out of this."
- As more and more evidence
comes out,
Michael left fewer and
fewer defenses available.
- Can you plea bargain,
can you do something
to get out of these things, I
don't know.
They want me to turn in
people and this and that.
- It was not uncommon for
prosecutors to turn people
and say, "You cooperate and
testify,
"you're going to get a better
deal."
Now one of the issues
and problems with that is
the credibility of these people.
- Once they knew that he had
committed
a murder, plus his drug dealing,
he just wasn't that attractive
to them as a witness.
- The DA's behavior in this
whole, they knew damn well
what Michael had done,
and they protected him,
you know, they protected him.
And as long as there was no
body,
they would have protected,
'cause he was scheduled to be
the chief witness against
Gatien.
- They didn't care about
the drug case on Michael.
All they cared about was that
they
got Michael to testify against
Gatien.
- The problem with that was
that they wanted me to lie.
And I mean just like blatant
lies,
and I couldn't do it,
and I wouldn't do it.
And they became frustrated.
- At a certain point in time,
a very dramatic development
occurred,
which sort of forced our hand on
a plea
and that's what ultimately
led to a plea in the case,
which is that there was another
person in the apartment that
weekend.
- A witness that'd seen what
happened in the apartment.
There was somebody else in there
that,
they hid from us.
- And the other person
told the District Attorney
that Freeze and Alig robbed
Angel,
which made it a murder during
the commission of a robbery,
which all of a sudden
under New York state law
made Alig eligible for the death
penalty.
- After that, I was sort of
disgusted.
I just did my job and
went on to the next case.
- And I said, "You know,
you don't want to roll
"the dice and talk yourself
into being on death row."
Even though New York wasn't very
receptive
to the death penalty, it was on
the books.
- One of those parties
depicted a horror show with a
poster of a hammer, which was
how he was hit over the head,
with the legs cut off,
right on the poster.
So premeditation may
have came into factor.
Michael could have got 25
to life, if not no parole.
- At that point in time,
I was frankly happy
to get the plea offer that we
did get,
which I thought was 10 to 20
concurrent
with any federal sentence, was
in my view
when you're talking about
possible death penalty
eligibility
was a damn good deal.
- And that's why his lawyer
advised him
to plead guilty to manslaughter.
- He agreed that that was
clearly what he wanted to do.
He jumped at it, and Rigg,
Freeze jumped at it as well.
- I'm impartial.
If that's what the courts
decide, that's what I live with.
My job is done.
- Literally, it was a steal.
- And half the people just
didn't care.
And the other half were truly
horrified.
And some of the ones that
were horrified were people
that loved Michael Alig
when he started out,
and just felt he had
tumbled into such an abyss
that they couldn't imagine
how it had happened.
- I couldn't believe it.
These two guys, these two
harmless kids that just
laughed and danced and put
makeup on
their face and costumes killing
someone?
- It was a great party until
drugs.
- If he killed Angel, and
that's against the law,
and the law caught him, well...
- This was all drug-related.
I don't think Michael has the
capability
of going out and attacking
someone.
But on the drugs...
- I knew that all the
things that had gone down
were about the drugs.
It wasn't about Michael as a
person.
- So I think that's what killed
Angel,
was not Michael himself.
He would never have done that
in his right frame of mind.
- I never liked that excuse at
all.
"I was so fucked up, I'm so
sorry,"
it seems like a cop-out to me.
- Michael was very into horror
movies and very into blood.
- We'd still watch horror movies
together,
he'd think it was funny.
- I know a lot of people
who were on drugs.
I knew a lot of people, you
know,
when do you, this sounds like a
judgment,
but when do you hit somebody
that's strangling you
and then decide to pour
Drano down their mouth
and then cut off their legs?
I mean, there's something
a little bit more going on.
- You have to have that in you
beforehand
regardless of the drugs.
- The drugs might have made
it easier to bring it out,
but I don't think it was the
drugs
that made Michael do that.
And that's, I've never
said that before really,
but I really feel that's
what I've come to conclusion.
- I don't think it's just an
accident that
you end up cutting somebody up,
I don't.
- Somewhere deep inside
his head, he was thinking
what would it be like to be a
murderer.
- Most of the people that I
investigated and interviewed
always stated that
Michael was over-the-top.
There's nothing halfway about
him.
He's either all-in or he's not
in at all.
So when this went down with
Angel,
I had a feeling that he went all
the way.
- Without Michael being a focal
point,
without the scape goat,
without the Party Monster,
there was nothing to hold it
together.
The murder abhorred everyone.
There was no way to justify
the lifestyle anymore.
The straights ran from it.
- It was numbing in the
beginning
when it first went down.
I didn't know how to act.
People would ask me how
I feel about Michael.
- He validated all the
misgivings
that anybody had about the club
kids.
They were freaks, they were
assholes, they were losers.
All the bad parts became
obviously true.
- Now of course I know how to
answer.
Michael was the most incredible
person I had ever met.
And is the most incredible
person I ever met.
He just did the most fucked up
things
that I could ever even imagine.
- The scene was
self-imploding from its own
lack of boundaries,
restrictions, morality,
and behavioral modifications.
- It seemed like the fall of
Rome.
- It was, there was a
lot of people employed,
a lot of creative people lost
their
jobs when the crackdown took
place.
- (sighs deeply) Ok,
so this is how it ends.
I knew immediately that it was
over,
that everything was over,
that the scene was dead and
gone,
that it was time to move on,
that my life would never be the
same.
- And sometimes they'd go in
at 12, 1:00 in the morning,
2:00, empty out the
clubs, padlock the clubs,
and under the nuisance abatement
law, shut down the clubs.
- They would keep attacking
until they found something,
until they found a reason to
revoke your liquor license
and that's how they started
closing the clubs down.
They did one by one.
- I think one of the issues
that the city should have done
was try to work hand-in-hand
with these clubs
rather than coming in with
hammers,
when I say hammer, coming
down with a steel hammer
and basically saying, "We're
not going to work with you.
"If you don't obey the law,
"if there's drug use in these
clubs,
"we're going to come in and
we're gonna shut you down."
- He's just an entrepreneur.
He had nothing to do
with the sale of drugs.
Did he do drugs?
There was rumors that he did
cocaine,
who didn't in the '90s?
- We know that there could be
drug use
in Madison Square Garden
or Yankee Stadium,
they're not going to come down
and shut those places down.
- He never ended up getting
Peter Gatien
on anything more than tax
evasion.
Peter is deported in Canada
right now
as a result of that.
- My feeling is that
Peter was a marked man.
- They flagged the case.
Peter Gatien was a big number.
- And one way or another,
he was going down.
- In fact, Peter Gatien was
taken down by the DA's own,
financially and other ways
through legal fees and
everything.
Peter Gatien should be
given the money back.
- And Steve Lewis went to jail,
I think almost as a fall guy or
something.
- I was found guilty of
something I didn't do.
But to say that anybody running
a club
is innocent would be ludicrous.
- Peter Gatien got deported
and now you lost everything.
You lost Palladium, Limelight,
Tunnel, Club USA, all gone.
Gatien was brought down,
everybody was getting
turned against each other,
all fucking bullshit.
I'm going down the street to
Twilo.
- What was going on around
me was collapsing so hard.
- It was the fall of a world
that I
believed I would belong to
forever.
- It was the end of an era by
that point.
- The culture of
criminality, small and large,
which was viewed as "there's
nothing we can do about it,"
gone.
- A lot of people moved away.
They wanted nothing to do with
Michael.
They didn't want to believe it.
None of us could find work,
because we were affiliated
with a murderer.
- I was pretty much tarred
with the same brush as he was.
I was persona non grata at all
the clubs that he was running.
- So the scene was kind
of collapsing in on itself
and only the very few at
the top were surviving.
- I remember Kenny Kenny turning
me away
from Save the Robots, where I
worked!
- There's no more food coming
in,
so they started eating each
other.
People saw the destruction of
their
own lives and wanted to get out.
- Most of the club kids who had
any sense,
the second it happened,
just pulled out and said,
"I'm going to really
rethink what I'm doing,
"because any association
with this is awful."
- I left New York.
I got rid of all my nightlife,
all my club kid attire.
I was just done.
- Those are the years you
don't want to remember.
- If I didn't leave I
would be 40-50 years old,
lying in a K-hole, lying in a
puddle of my
own vomit in the corner of a
club
or I could get out and go on
with my life
and have a second act.
- Big nightclubs, balls-out
decadence,
that whole thing that Michael
personified,
that was the end of it!
- The whole end of the Limelight
era
affected me was that that
Sushi and Amanda Lepore
came on my doorstep and wanted a
job.
I said, "Come on in."
- What happened after that, of
course,
is that club owners got wise.
They saw what happened to
Gatien,
and that's when the whole
lounge thing happened.
And then it became about small
venues,
$500 bottles of champagne,
models,
'cause that was all legal.
- It was the difference
between skinny junkies then
and skinny models now.
- They'd rather we weren't
there.
They didn't see the point.
Clubs started being run by
different types of people as
well.
Clubs started being run by
people who were in hedge funds.
- Why pay club kids to come to
your club,
who never pay for a thing,
right?
Who did all these drugs and
attracted
all this law enforcement and
such.
- The economics of New
York improved dramatically.
Crime decreased dramatically.
And now I think the scale has
gone too much the other way,
which is why we have Occupy
Wall Street and Zuccotti.
- Quite disgusting, even
though I love it dearly,
and it's where I was born.
It's gotten so one-sided.
- I think at one time it was
lopsided on the club side.
I think now its lopsided on
the quality-of-life side.
- There's nothing wrong with
that side,
but I think the most
important thing is a balance,
Mr. Mayor.
- I never imagined that
there would be a time when
there was not like five
major clubs in New York,
let alone any major clubs in New
York.
It was just unimaginable.
It was so much a part of
the New York experience,
and it was such a big industry
that
supported so many different
people.
It seemed blasphemous that
anybody
would try to destroy it or shut
it down.
It was completely unbelievable.
- And, really, New York kind
of never recovered from that.
- People with money started
to get more aggressive.
You used to see a lot of Puerto
Ricans
on the streets of New York.
You know, people were bought
out,
they were pushed out.
- In this decade, compared
to where it was in the
'80s or '90s, basically
we're in a different world.
- Now everybody's a
fucking promoter or host,
and they get a bottle and
they invite their 20 friends.
- The club scene today
is adult, it's clean,
at least no one's getting
murdered,
but you know what?
It's boring.
- Now days, you don't
have to make a decision.
All you gotta do is pay.
You buy a bottle.
- So, it's changed.
In a weird way, New York has
become like all those other
cities.
It used to be that New York was
New York,
and nobody could stand up to New
York.
- After that, we became pen pals
in a way,
but then he tried to
manipulate me to write
a letter of recommendation
to shorten his sentence,
and I felt a little bit
used, just like he used to
manipulate me before the murder.
- I heard of Michael Alig when
I saw the movie Party Monster.
I would send him pictures of
the kitties, things like that,
figure anything to brighten up
that
grey place there would help.
- In the first few years
Michael was in jail,
sending postcards out
with bloody axes on it.
I didn't want anything to know
about.
But as time went on, and
Michael wrote me letters
saying that he felt bad,
he showed true remorse,
I started to write him back.
- Just getting letters helps
him.
- As Michael accepted what he
had done,
and understood the path
that he had to go down
to be my friend, we became
friends again.
- I see him as a genius,
a creative genius.
I see him as an insane drug
addict.
It all depends on how
I want to look at him,
he had two sides.
And let's hope that when he gets
out
that the good side prevails
and not the bad side.
- At the root of all the stuff
that happened with Michael,
he's a drug addict.
- That means Alig didn't behave
himself,
and he wound up doing 17.
Riggs has been out a long time.
- How much longer is he going
to be in there pulling stunts?
I'm sure he made the most of it.
- He was completely out of
touch with what's going on.
- I don't really know what's out
there.
I know that there's a
war going on (laughs)
and I know that there's
something called the internet,
I actually know what it is,
but I mean I haven't been on it.
- He doesn't know how evil
people can be.
- Some people will never
ever change their mind
no matter how many good things
he does.
Some people will forgive
him without question,
that's just as bad.
- People who just see the
glamor of the club kids
and see the fun and the
kookiness and the craziness
and they haven't learned the
lessons of Party Monster.
- The few that either never used
drugs
or stopped using drugs,
and I'll say Richie Rich,
RuPaul, Moby, Chloe Sevigny,
all the ones who stopped
or never used drugs
are the ones who became super
millionaire
movie stars and designers and
whatever.
So that in it of itself should,
you know, it speaks volumes.
But, that said, I think even
a lot of their inspiration
came from our drug use, you
know,
came from the rest of the
drug use from the scene.
So I think it kind of goes hand
in hand,
and one could not really have
survived without the other.
- You have celebrities that, you
know,
get chased down the
street just for a photo,
let alone they didn't kill
anybody.
- The dreams I have now are
of hanging out with Angel
at times before we killed
him and before the drugs
and everything, the good times.
In the beginning, the dreams
were repeating the crime
over and over, and I think
as I've learned to forgive
myself, I haven't completely
forgiven myself yet,
but the closer I get to
forgiving myself,
the better the dreams get.
- I remain very loyal to him.
I'll support him in whatever he
does,
but I fear for him.
You know, I fear that he is not
gonna have
the skills to be able to
navigate everyday life.
- I think Michael still
would want to make his mark.
I have a feeling that
that's so strong in him.
- Go to Siberia, be a watch
repair-maker,
and live in obscurity.
- It's really hard to
reintegrate into society
if you're just a normal
criminal.
But Michael Alig is no normal
criminal.
I'd just say he had an accident.
- I actually always maintained
that Michael Alig was innocent.
He imagined this whole thing.
He didn't do nothing, he was
innocent,
I spearheaded the movement,
Michael Alig is innocent,
free Michael Alig.
- He wrote to me from jail a
couple times,
and I just never answered him
back.
- The few friends that have
disappeared,
am I disappointed?
Of course I am, but I also
understand why they would
disappear.
- I think a lot of people
are going to think twice
about welcome Michael
Alig back with open arms.
I still think there's something
dangerous about Michael.
- I didn't want to accept it.
It's really hard to
explain, but I just kind of
blocked that time, the whole
time,
the whole 17 years from
when it all started.
- When I see footage
of myself on talk shows
and just at parties,
I can't even believe that was
me.
It's a wonder I had any friends,
really,
when I see stuff like that.
I was just, like, a nightmare.
- The man who went inside
needed to be there.
He needed to be locked up
and taken away from society
because he didn't care
about anybody but himself.
- It really does take a long
time
for the enormity to really, you
know...
- Use your experience to help
the others.
There's a lot of them out there,
just ready to fall off the
cliff.
Help 'em out.
- By doing things like that
slowly,
I can work in the direction
of repaying my debt,
but I may, I probably
will never reach the point
where I've repaid my debt.
- I hope he has a little
spunk left in him,
but I'm expecting a very humble
person,
but then again even 16 years in
jail
probably won't change Michael.
- I'll give him a hug.
That's the first thing I'm going
to do.
And then sit down and talk to
him.
I'm sure we'll have a laugh,
because Michael always makes me
laugh,
and in the first couple minutes
I see him,
he'll say something funny.
- My Spanish is limited,
"loca, give me a drink ticket."
(laughs)
- He has a tough act to follow.
There's a lot of expectations
around him.
- The positive in him is
going to be he's had his 15
minutes of fame, as Andy Warhol
said.
Everyone's going to want to talk
to him.
- And then he has to watch
out for those bitchy queens
that are going to be complaining
all the time about what he does.
- I just wonder how strong
Michael is.
When you're locked up
and you're controlled
for so long, when you get out,
do you just want to get drunk?
Do you want to get high?
Do you want to get laid?
- He has to watch out for the
politically correct people.
- The man who went
inside didn't give a damn
what anybody thought of him.
The guy who's walking out cares
what everyone thinks about him.
- I took a life and he is not
around,
and I am going home,
and I will have a chance
to restart my life,
and Angel won't.
- It could be total car crash
(laughs)
and he could end up back in jail
again,
or maybe, who knows--
- Michael just might have a
third act.
- Who is coming out?
Is it the Party Monster?
Or the nice gay kid that
they all fell in love with.
- Who knows what he'll invent,
he invented the club kid,
so who knows will be next.
- The club kids is not all
that stuff that we've gone
through and everything we talk
about, blah-blah-blah-blah.
It's the fact that Michael has
been in prison for 17 years.
He's never been on a cell phone,
he's never gotten an e-mail,
he's never Googled himself,
he's never been on the internet,
there's so much that
Michael hasn't experienced,
and that to me is where
his story picks up.
(ominous music)
- An open letter to me
from James St. James
on the World of Wonder Blog, I
guess.
"Technology develops at light
speed now,
"you don't want to get left
behind.
"You need a smartphone, a
computer, a GPR,
"and a tablet, there are
no two ways around it.
"Things we don't need
anymore: phone books,
"dictionaries, maps, and
encyclopedias.
"They're all in your phone, it's
crazy!
"It's very sad, the scene has
changed.
"Clubs aren't the subversive
pleasure palaces of yore.
"Now it's just the thousand
shrieking girls taking selfies
"and dancing to Wake Me Up by
Avicii?"
I was really intimidated
by New York back then,
and I'm imitated by it again
because it's different now.
It's more intimidating.
Oh, the new World Trade Center
- [Woman] Yeah.
- There's only one of them.
(pensive piano music)
- A little nervous, a little
apprehensive,
it's been 17 years since
the last time I saw him,
it's a little strange.
- It was surprisingly not good.
It wasn't like "oh great, I'm
free."
It was more like,
it was more like...
You know, who am I to
have all these people here
to be recording this, and
it felt kind of obscene,
it felt kind of wrong.
It felt, it felt very much like
I'm afraid
people are going to think
that we're celebrating.
The first night I come
home, I can really be myself
for the first time with a bunch
of people
who aren't going to judge me,
aren't going to take advantage
of me,
aren't going to do whatever,
yeah, I was giddy.
- It was the initial like, "oh
my God, you're old, I'm fat."
We were different people the
last time we saw each other.
So, it was very, it was like
once you get past his hair cut,
Hah!
- And it just wasn't the
serious tone that I felt
and that people who had been
visiting Michael for years
and remember James St. James
never visited Michael in jail.
We did, we drove six hours
there and six hours back,
and talked to him and really
tried to get his life in order,
and spent a lot of energy
and time teaching him
about the world that he was
going to enter
and what he had to be.
And immediately he gets out,
and they make it a circus.
- No.
You shower in your clothes?
- in your clothes.
- Everywhere, every prison in
New York?
- Every prison in New York.
(laughs) Oh, James.
- I know I told you boys
are cuter now, aren't they?
- Yeah.
- Over here is where RuPaul and
Larry
and Lahoma and Lady Bunny live.
I think it's that building
there!
- I'll show you where it is.
Oh, and look it's the
same door and everything.
- It is!
That's where RuPaul used to
sleep.
James, there's something wrong
with this.
- It's called yogurt, now.
- Oh, is that what it is.
I thought it was whipped cream!
I thought it was whipped cream.
I went "Well, if it's supposed
to
"taste that way, then I like
it."
- We're waiting for Michael to
have his first parole meeting
with his parole office I guess.
He seems to think it'll
be about 10 minutes,
I have a feeling it's going
to be about three hours.
- I have to be in at
8:00, and from 8 p.m. till
seven in the morning--
- Besides the backlash, living
with Michael has been great
because it kind of takes
me back to the old days
before we were all using a lot
of drugs.
- I want him to experience
people freaking out over him.
- I watch all of your makeover
stuff.
- Well, wait a minute, don't you
watch all of my makeover stuff?
- I should be, shouldn't I?
- Oh, you should be, yes.
If it wasn't for me,
he wouldn't be anybody.
- Welcome back, kiddo,
- [Michael] Yep, thank you.
- Stay on the straight
- Finally home!
- Yup, 17 long years.
- He was lost in time and now
he's back.
He's back, Michael is back.
- I cannot believe you just
ate my fucking sandwich!
- That used to be an after-hours
club called the Cooler.
- Tomorrow, I believe, we're
going to try
and watch Party Monster, the
shockumentary and the movie.
I don't know if Michael has the
attention span to watch two
movies.
I have a feeling that he's
going to be more caught up in,
"I never would have
said that," or you know,
"I never wore that outfit to
that party."
- That never happened.
I was expecting not to like it,
and everybody told me
that I wouldn't like it.
They all said that Macauley
didn't do a very good job,
and that the acting was really
terrible.
And in the beginning when
the movie first started,
I was like, "This looks
like a Lifetime movie,
"the acting is really terrible."
This is what everyone's
perception of you is.
95% of people who have
heard of Michael Alig
know Michael Alig from this.
Why do you think I'm
feeling vaguely suicidal?
Now I know why Keoki
walked out of this movie.
And Macauley's like this accent,
this weird British accent,
and he's like, "I'm going
to watch the movie now!"
I was thinking am I going to
have to start
imitating Macauley imitating me
in order
for people to believe that it's
really me,
because that's not how I am at
all.
But, James said that his
character would grow on me
by the end of the movie,
and you know what, it did.
- [Voice from tv] "Very
Pirates of the Caribbean"
- Argh!
- [Michael] Rargh!
- Oh! (laughs)
James and I never did
the two of hearts dance,
I'll tell you that right now.
(laughs)
I'd give it a B.
On that billboard, when it was
the Calvin Klein billboard,
and who had the after-hour club
where
we all went climbing up
on the sign from behind?
- I don't remember.
- Richard Vasquez, the
California Club.
- In spite of what a lot, not a
lot,
a few people talk bad about him,
but me and my friends
have always liked him,
always thought he was
a warm, sincere person.
- Well, I used to DJ with Keoki.
And Michael hooked me up as
first time as a DJ at a major
clubs.
Put it this way, what happened
with him is inexcusable.
But you know what, the guy
to me is still a friend,
still a friend to me.
- What did you tell the cab
driver?
Why did you tell him you were
doing it?
- We didn't tell him anything.
- You said, "Will you help us
throw
this box into the water?"
- [Michael] Mmhmm.
- And he said, "Ok."
- Mmhmm.
He said he wanted $20.
Did you think you were
going to get caught?
- Hmm.
We felt guilty just lying to
everybody,
just you and Jenny and
everybody that knew Angel.
We could not go out with you
every night
and say, "Oh, we don't know
where he is."
- It's funny, I remember the
night that you told Jenny
at Limelight, and she ran
out crying, remember that?
- It was too much for me, so I'm
going
to tell everybody else and now
it's
everybody's problem.
- [James] Our problem too.
- Right, and none of you had
anything to do with this,
so it was extremely selfish,
but that's kind of like
that junkie mentality of drag
everyone, "if I'm going down,
"you're all coming down with
me."
But I mean, I'm not blaming the
drugs.
It was my decision to
use the drugs initially,
but I mean, yeah,
the symptoms of drug addiction
almost mirror exactly
the symptoms of being a
sociopath.
I mean it's like the
selfishness, the narcissism,
lying, manipulative,
self-centered, self-indulgent,
they're all very similar.
The only difference is that a
sociopath
will be that way whether
they're a drug addict or not.
- First time I ever saw Andy
Warhol,
he was coming down those stairs.
Wait! Was this the bathroom?
- Yes, this was the bathrooms
right here.
- How weird, how many nights
did we spend in this bathroom?
- That's where James used to
hold court, right over there.
- It's true!
- That bathroom stall.
- This was my office.
My office was Christopher and
Walt and Richie and everybody.
After I left, I think
everything fell apart. (laughs)
James and I actually had
this conversation today
on the way to the parole office,
when the cameras were off, of
course,
and he said, "You know, I'm
going to
"have to be the devil's
advocate.
"I have to bring the devil out
of you,
"and it's your job to fight
that."
- I do like her style though,
look how fabulous she is.
- Anita Sarko? (laughs)
- No, that's like
deconstructed like Margiela,
that's fabulous.
- And what happened was
World of Wonder came in,
with James St. James,
their representative,
and they started to make
Michael look like a fool.
In my opinion, they were
manipulating him.
- What a nice place to dump,
dispose a body. (laughs)
- Oh, a great spot!
We should come back every year,
scenic--
- We should throw another body,
we can throw a body over
here, right (both laugh).
Lovely spot for body
throwing, little body tossing.
- When Michael and I
are laughing and joking
and stuff like that,
people don't realize that
it has been 20 years, and
that any emotion we've had
over everything that's happened
has long since been dealt with.
- I was feeling like I need
to take stock in my life,
like what am I doing,
are we really glamorizing this?
We had to have that
conversation, you know?
And just know also that
it's kind of in poor taste.
- Wait a minute, you're telling
me that I'm in poor taste
when you're--
- I'm saying that I've said
things that are in poor taste.
Think that's Angel?
- [James] Hmm, yeah.
- It's an arms race.
When you say something to be
shocking,
then I feel like I have to top
it,
and then you have to top that,
and it comes to a point
where, World War III.
- He's a funny guy.
He can't be funny right now,
because he has to be remorseful.
- I don't know about that, like
I said,
I don't think he's wired for
that.
It's not that he doesn't
feel bad about it,
it's just that he seems to
be a happy guy all the time.
He doesn't seem to be
like a down side to him.
- it was another lifetime ago,
so we
aren't being callous
or anything like that,
but life does go on and life
does move on.
- I told Michael what was
happening,
'cause Michael didn't know,
he was just out, he was elated,
prancing,
having a great time, he was out.
- I'm not allowed to use the
words
"whirlwind" or "head is
spinning" anymore, Astro says.
Those words I have to
retire from my vocabulary.
So I don't know another
way to describe it.
- How have you changed?
How are you going to change?
How are you going to be better?
- i think it's sort of
like a work in progress.
I don't think I could ever
say that "Oh, I'm changed,
"I'm different, I'm better now."
I don't think I will ever be
better now.
I don't think anybody that was
involved
in this will ever be better now.
I think there is a getting
better, there's a going in
the direction of getting
better, hopefully.
But I don't think there's ever
"Well, it's over now, I'm done."
I don't think it'll ever be that
way.
- I think he'll always have to
prove
himself at this point.
I don't think there's
ever going to be a point
where someone will be like,
"Ok, you know, you're good."
- He didn't understand how it
was being played in the media.
- There's a lot of intense
interest that I sort of,
for some reason, wasn't prepared
for.
- People at Vanity
Fair, the New York Post,
and the New York Times, Inside
Edition,
of course the Daily Beast,
Huffington Post is Monday,
and Rolling Stone is Monday.
I didn't want to give the wrong
impression
that you can commit a horrible
crime
and because of that you'll be on
the cover
of the New York Post, and
you'll be in People Magazine
and Vanity Fair and
documentaries and whatever.
I don't think I'll feel
completely free
until all of this is over,
and I can just wake up
one morning and not have
to go do like an interview
or have a film crew follow me
around.
Then I think I'll feel free.
It's still the city that I
left, only in hyperdrive.
It's like a hundred times more.
- [Voiceover] He described
something like
walking into Blade Runner.
- I remember those times
when we could walk through
Times Square and we might
be the only people there.
And now you go and there's
100,000 there
and 50,000 signs and there's
these new kind of lights,
these LED lights that look
bright,
these Day-Glo colors even in the
daytime.
And it's like this hyperkinetic
version of Times Square,
and it feels like they've
stolen it from me,
it's theirs now.
But again, we must be
doing something right.
Times Square, the whole city is
filled
with beautiful, rich tourists
from all over the world,
spending all of their money
here,
so we must be doing something
right.
- To be taught everything.
He doesn't know how to, he was
sort of asking about cursors
on computer screens and things
like that.
- I need an address book.
Actually, people don't have
address books anymore, do they?
- You got a cell phone,
you need to buy service,
and he's like "what am I,
"I don't know where to
get laundry detergent,"
you know, things like that.
- Somebody has to turn on Skype
for me.
- He made a comment on
Twitter or something that
"I can see people on this
little black box machine."
He called it a machine,
like computers are machines.
He couldn't open up a door the
other day
with a key so easily.
He had never done it for 17
years.
There are basic things
that he has to learn,
stuff that you take for
granted, like wearing a watch.
- I'm just used to not having
sex now,
you just grow used to it, you
know.
- Every time he used
a cell phone recently,
he would literally turn it off
rather than just end the call.
- Hello?
Well, um, yeah, we just figured,
I'm with Ramon and Lisa right
now,
and we figured out that
the ringer on my phone
has been turned off for two
days,
and I didn't know how to turn it
on,
so they turned it on for me
and I had all these missed,
and then, and then whenever
I tried to call you
over the past two days,
your mailbox is full
and it wouldn't accept any new
messages.
Text?
Ramon, he says you have
to teach me how to text.
I'm being bombarded by
Facebook and Twitter and all
this kind of really scary,
depressing internet stuff.
- There's all these comments.
There's the extreme negative
comments,
which I knew was going
to happen, you know,
that people saying they
think Michael should be dead
or that he should overdose and
die,
that he shouldn't be out of
prison.
- The only thing you can own
is what you yourself feel.
You don't really have anything
to
do with what other people think,
and it's kind of on them, so
you just have to let it go.
- He's a fame-hungry sociopath,
and all this bullshit about
him, sorry for what he did,
he's not sorry.
He's not sorry in the slightest.
He's only sorry he got caught.
- And I wish the haters
would please let it go.
Michael has done his time.
Michael is free,
and everybody should understand
that,
and leave him be.
- I mean not one negative thing
in there.
And the Inside Edition
thing is 100% positive too.
- It's like a train wreck
or a car crash on a highway.
We all have to see what happens
next.
- I feel sort of like I'm
connected with a hundred
times as many people, but
the connections are probably
one-hundredth of the depth
that they would have been
had there not been the internet,
so it's a give and take.
- But then there's also the
extreme positive comments
of people writing on his
Twitter and on blogs,
that he's their idol, and they
want to go partying with him,
and stuff like that, and I think
that's equally as screwed up.
- I believe him to a
point, I'm not an idiot.
I'm not naive.
If he fucks up, I am going to be
there
the second it happens,
and I'm going to be the
first one to scream from
the highest mountain
that this mother fucker is a
fuck-up,
and I'll fucking bury the mother
fucker.
- I think if you're going
to be an interesting person,
you're going to be one or the
other,
I don't think you're going to be
sort of
"well yeah, he's all right," you
know?
I really don't have any
opinion about him whatsoever.
If you're going to have
an opinion about somebody,
I guess, have a strong one.
- When I wrote Disco Bloodbath,
it was meant as a cautionary
tale.
- My name is Andrew Barret Cox,
and I'm 22 years old, and I
am the writer of Club Land,
a pop musical about the life
and times of Michael Alig
and the club scene of the '80s
and '90s.
- It was not meant for people to
look to
Michael or me and make us into
heroes.
- It's finally going to
happen, I'm finally going
to meet the person I wrote
this entire show about,
so, see how it goes.
- I'm optimistic about
the future of clubs,
and I think that there will
always be
fresh new looks out there
and fabulous new people,
and new people who will take up
the mantle
and lead us forward.
- I think today it's even
a little bit more extreme
than it was back in the day,
'cause everybody's
trying to outdo everybody
and every look like it's been
done,
and they're just doing
more and more and more.
- Today, we are fortunate
that we have so many rights
for different people,
different walks of life,
for gays, bisexuals, or
transgendered,
and I think with the internet
that
it's definitely created more
tolerance.
- It's interesting because
a lot of the people
who I knew about in the scene
prior to moving to New
York City are people
I now hang out with on a regular
basis.
I can text Amanda and go
over and hang out with her,
and talk about nails and
whatever.
It's interesting, it's a little
surreal.
- The legacy of the club kids,
is widespread and worldwide.
- They were very prescient
in terms of fashion,
Lady Gaga has taken their visual
wardrobe,
lock, stock, and barrel.
- I think it's exactly the same
thing.
She's done it a little
bit better than we did.
- And this kind of whole Lower
East Side, Rivington Street
subculture that Gaga came out
of,
and that left a real imprint on
her career
and on her love of
theatricality.
- It was about spectacle
and grabbing headlines,
getting coverage, and, let's
face it,
that is exactly the way
celebrity culture operates
today.
- Because we don't live in our
own skins very well anymore.
We live vicariously through
idiots,
and we have to feel superior
to them or inferior to them.
- This narcissism that we
were kind of making fun of,
but I never thought it would get
this bad.
This is exactly what were
kind of warning against.
I love the decadence.
It's just so extremely decadent.
Championing and warning
against at the same time,
and lo and behold here
it has come to pass,
and I'm disgusted by it.
The reality now is a parody
of what we were parodying,
so I mean, you can't even
make fun of it anymore.
- You know, I think he's
going to exist as this
kind of celebrity of the
demimonde,
always famous for this one
thing,
which is a shame in a way,
'cause there was a time
when Michael actually
represented something positive.
- You know, in the very
beginning, what we were doing
with this whole club kid thing,
there was a lot of positivity to
it,
the message that we were getting
out, that's love yourself
and be yourself, and who
cares what other people think.
- it wasn't until I saw it
starting to crumble around me
that I knew it was something
that was really special,
and that it was a moment in
time.
- America has always been
founded upon this notion
of uniqueness and selling
yourself, creative powers,
and all that kind of thing, so I
mean
it really is kind of an American
concept.
- There's a message of
self-expression in,
that is about fearlessness,
about not
caring what other people think,
about not editing
yourself to please others.
- I get all this mail
from these kids in Kansas
and Iowa and Nevada and
whatever, even to this day.
They're like 16, 17 years old
and they feel like outcasts,
they're bullied at school.
- I found one of the invites
from a Disco 2000 sticker.
- And it's really a powerful
message.
In a lot of ways, it's life
changing for these kids.
- It's like a treasure to me,
but it's
not a treasure to anyone else,
so,
and then this is one of the
original cards
that they used to hand
out for the promotions
of each of the club kids.
They're a treasure form a
time that's not going to
happen ever again, that was
amazing.
- EDM has really exploded, like
huge.
And it all traces back to these
roots.
- There's no more chaos in
Manhattan.
There's just no more chaos here.
Michael was chaos.
- It's a quieter time in New
York.
- Back then, it was like an
event.
You'd go out, you didn't
even think there'd
be an ending to the night,
you would just go, it'd be like
going to a concert or something,
or going to a one-time event.
- Know what you get when
you're leaving your house.
And then you didn't, he had no
fucking
idea what was going to happen,
so.
- If someone would've told me in
that I'd be paying $350
to get into a nightclub
and buying a bottle of
vodka, I would've laughed!
- I know fully well in a
half-hour,
I'm going to be pissing it out.
- Back in the '90s, you could
pick up a piece of trash,
a piece of plastic, put if on
your head, and look fabulous.
Today if you do that,
somebody will be like,
"Girl, you have a piece
of trash up on your head!"
- Art openings for Jean-Michele
Basquiat, Andy Warhol,
Roy Lichtenstein, Cindy Sherman,
Peter Max, Keith Haring.
- People used to dance at night
clubs,
now you're basically going
to a venue and just looking
at the DJ like it's a concert
venue,
and that's more boring.
It was more lively, it was
more colorful back then.
- Nina Hagen, New Order, Duran
Duran.
- Everybody remembers the
murder and the demise,
the end of the club kids,
the Disco Bloodbath,
and all that sensational
stuff, but man you had
the Ramones play here, you
had Guns 'N Roses play here.
You had a lot of great
things, fashion and art.
- Imagine a club that
presents this kind of event
and entertainment in the
space of a few months,
in the space of a year.
Madonna had her first show
there,
first two or three shows
there and paid $250.
It doesn't exist anymore.
You cannot get this talent
to perform in a club.
There's no money that can pay
for it.
Amazingly, this is not
remembered by almost anybody.
- And then, it all fell apart.
It's the weight of its own
excess.
- There were a lot of negatives
to it.
From the people, maybe the
mothers and the fathers
whose sons were devastated
by drugs during that era,
they died, maybe in car
crashes, maybe they overdosed,
they'll have a different
perspective.
- Long after the last record was
dropped,
they're still talking
about the shit we did.
They're legendary things.
It didn't happen by
accident, it happened because
we sat in meetings every day.
People think Michael's job was
running
around like a clown in a great
outfit.
Michael was there during
the day contributing
to every meeting about
money, DJs, staffing,
he was involved in every
aspect of this club
and the other clubs that we ran.
- There weren't enough hours in
the night
to visit all these clubs, so the
clubs had
to start expanding their hours.
Tunnel was open till 2:00 in
the afternoon at that point
because nobody was getting
there until 5:00 in the morning.
- This is Tunnel.
- How insane.
It's the same! The same bricks.
I feel vaguely like these people
are
invading upon my nightclub.
- What that era was, was
the era of the big clubs.
And you need a lot of
people to find one or two
you might want to talk
to, let alone sleep with.
- These days any nerd can go up
and have a Facebook account and
make it.
When I started, I didn't
have any of that shit,
I had a fucking Rolodex.
- Basically all anyone does
is just take each other's
pictures, you know "this
is me having a good time,"
"this is me having a good time,"
and nobody's having a good time.
- A momentary kismet that
happened a million times,
thousands, thousands, thousand
times
of a punk chick fucking
some old business guy.
And that doesn't happen anymore.
There's nothing like that
happening.
The yuppy goes into a bar in
Williamsburg
or East Village thinking
he's a pariah now,
what are you doing here, and he
feels it.
Back then, he was accepted.
He had a role, he was the guy
with money
that I could fuck and do coke
with.
I need a couple of those.
- I feel it's time for dancing
again.
It's healthy, you don't have
to go the gym on a treadmill.
You could be in the clubs
dancing and having a good time.
I don't like treadmills.
Of any kind.
- The media age, the internet is
made
for a person like Michael Alig.
Michael could get 2,000 people
to show up
at a subway platform in one
hour's notice,
without internet, without cell
phones.
Do you understand what
a mind like this can be?
What's in, what's out
What it's all about
I know what the kids all like
What's good, what's bad
- I want to paint, I want to
write,
I have a couple of business
ideas.
- He has a hundred of
these ideas, literally
things that are just
unbelievable,
that you have not thought of,
nobody's thought of.
And if you want to keep
defining him as the
axe-murderer club kid with
dots on his face, go ahead,
but I don't think he's
ever going to wear dots
on his face again, and I don't
think
he's going to kill anybody
anymore.
- He's obviously a very creative
person,
and I think we can do an
incredible event here at the
gallery.
I like what he's doing,
I like the artwork,
and I think it would be
more than just an art show,
I think it'll be an event,
I think it'll be incredible.
So I asked them to come and meet
me
and see if we could do a show
together.
- I have a couple of movie
ideas and TV show ideas
that I'd like to try and
sell to somebody, so,
those are the kinds of things
that
give me the kind of rush
now that I used to get
from promoting a party or
directing a nightclub or
whatever.
- Prior to 9/11, the country was
embracing
all different types of ideas and
people.
But post-9/11 we became really
attached to what we understood,
safe.
- I happen to be a fan of
Giuliani,
and I'm unusual in nightlife to
say that.
I think he was a very good
mayor in a lot of ways.
I think he cleaned up the
city in many, many ways.
And as a New Yorker,
I'm grateful for that.
- The city is such, a much
better place.
Whatever he did, man, he made me
feel a lot safer down on the
street.
- Frankly, I think it's a time
gone by.
I don't think we'll see it
again,
and in reality it's probably for
the best.
- i do like the change.
I just want to be a part of it,
I don't want to be left in the
lurches.
- It may be something different,
but it's never all gone,
absolutely.
- People like to go out and
be seen, get dressed up.
It's sort of a universal thing
that's all around the world.
- Only in New York.
- It's not just, it's
Miami, it's anywhere youth
has an opportunity to have
pleasure.
Just keep it clean ladies
and gentlemen, that's it.
- The city has its own, own
energy.
I live here in Florida.
I have to go to New York
two, three times a year
just to get that energy back.
There is nothing like it.
The air is static, it
just makes you feel alive.
And that's New York City no
matter what.
- I was very codependent
before I came to prison.
I needed to be in a
relationship,
I needed people to pay attention
to me,
and watch movies with me
and not leave me alone
and whatever, and spending five
years in
solitary confinement will
definitely teach a person how
to be comfortable being with
themselves alone in a room.
And teach you patience, I've
definitely learned patience.
- Someone is dead because of
Michael,
and I think it is hard to know
what an
appropriate amount of time is in
prison.
- There was a point, the first
five, six,
seven years of my sentence,
where I sort of thought
"Well you know what, I've done
something that's so terrible,
"nothing I can ever do is
ever going to make up for it,
"so fuck it, I might as well
just continue using drugs
"and go off the rails,
because there's no point
"in even trying to make up for
it."
And yet, there is a point,
and I think that's a
really powerful message
that no matter what you've done,
you can do the most
horrendous crime in the world,
and it is never too late
to say, "You know what,
"I'm going to leave all that
behind.
"i'm going to turn over a new
leaf.
"I'm going to do something
else, and I'm going
"to do something positive
with the rest of my life."
Angel was like the rest
of us, he was a misfit
from New Jersey who came to the
Big City
to be celebrated, to be
accepted.
The bottom line is that Angel
was loved,
he was loved as one of us,
he was accepted as one of us,
and in spite of the way it
ended, if that would make his
family feel any kind of comfort,
then that's what I'd like them
to know.
I'm going to carry it with
me for the rest of my life.
Now, to what degree I don't
know.
Maybe it will lessen in
severity.
(crying noises)
- I do have faith in Michael.
I do believe that he is
remorseful,
and that he paid his dues and
that
he's going to try to do
something good with his life,
and try to do something to
help people now he's out.
- He cannot afford to be a
little bit short anymore.
He must excel.
He must be better than
what is expected of him.
- I'm not sure how I'm
going to reinvent myself,
but I've done it before,
and I mean, if they can
reinvent Times Square
the way they've done, I
certainly
should be able to reinvent
myself.
(pensive piano music)
(techno music)