Party Monster :: essays research papers

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