Michael Alig longed for the larger-than-life. He was a "nobody" from "nowhere" (the Midwest), who had arrived in New York with no discernible skills -- but no end of animal cunning. Hooking up with another self-styled scenemaker called James St. James (author of Disco Bloodbath), Alig made a minor name for himself as a party promoter at the "Limelight" -- a low-rent disco that sought to capture some of the ersatz glitz that made "Studio 54" a name to conjure with (however undeservedly) whenever the cutting edge of hip gay scenes of yore is mentioned. When the Club Kids arrived, the era of Andy, Liza, and Halston had passed. AIDS was raging, and so was the popularity of a new school of designer drugs that kept the kids speeding through the night -- self-destructing as they went.
There's little in the way of glamour here, or camaraderie, but much in the way of sub-Warhol squalor, especially as the Club Kids' sole claim to fame was their overweening desire for it. In Alig's case, he was more than happy to settle for infamy instead -- killing his drug dealer, cutting up the body, and tossing it into the Hudson river. Consequently, it makes perfect poetic sense for this deadly wannabe to be played by Macaulay Culkin, a former child star whose friendship with Michael Jackson is as weird as any Club Kid hallucination. The cute kid of Home Alone is now a very distant memory: Culkin (who hasn't been onscreen since Richie Rich back in 1994) captures the amphibious creepiness of Alig in much the same way that Craig Chester nailed Nathan Leopold in Swoon. His efforts are well complemented by Wilmer Valderrama (Fez on That '70s Show) as his erstwhile lover, Keoki; Chloë Sevigny (amusingly distracted as ever) as his fag-hag amour, Gitsie; and Wilson Cruz as the doomed dealer, Angel. But the film belongs to Seth Green, in the role of James St. James.
From the very first moments, in which he's seen arguing with the leading man over whose story Party Monster really is, Green inhabits his role with an effortless thoroughness. Whether he's chattering about how to make an entrance at a party or sitting in a doughnut shop, scribbling down what he claims to be the literary masterpiece that will ensure his immortality, you can't take your eyes off him. This isn't to say that Culkin doesn't have his "big scene" -- chattering away in drug-encrusted frenzy to his former lover, Keoki, as if their relationship were still ongoing. But it's topped by Green in the scene where Culkin confesses the murder. The dawning awareness that his friend and social rival isn't joking, coupled with the fact that the drugs he's just imbibed are about to hit, is uncanny. It's difficult to recall an acting moment even remotely like it, and it's more than reason enough to go to see this unashamedly giddy, deliciously rancid travelogue through a nominally gay scene, where drugs have replaced sex and narcissism is indistinguishable from self-loathing. You wouldn't ever want to go there in real life. But then, isn't that what movies are for?
