August
1
Outfest Uncovers 54 Uncut - NY Screenings to Follow
[Posted by Peter Debruge]
These days, I'm feeling guiltier than usual about one of my all-time guilty pleasures. The movie is Mark Christopher's 54, which is back from the dead via a bootleg director's cut that screened below the radar at Outfest a couple weeks back (GOOD NEWS: Landmark will revive it for two more screenings later this month, tentatively midnight on Aug. 15 and 16 in NYC at the Sunshine Cinema).
54, for those who don't remember, was Christopher's glittery not-quite-cautionary tale of Gotham club life. When the film came out in August '98, I was a junior in college, every bit as starry-eyed about the prospect of such a place as Studio 54 as Jersey-boy hero Ryan Phillippe was onscreen, so it didn't take much for me to fall into the film's glittery disco swoon (I moved to New York after graduating, so revisiting the film now puts me in Christopher's position, looking back with a sort of finger-wagging nostalgia).
Writing for my college paper, The Daily Texan, I gave 54 one of its only raves (its current Rotten Tomatoes score is a dismal 13%). My friends still tease me about it. But I'd read about Christopher's clash with the studio over which cut to release, had heard that Miramax was snipping a male-male kiss from the film, and I believed with my generous, closeted soul that a work of art was lurking somewhere on the editing room floor.
Now I know...
The film Christopher screened at Outfest,
with 45 minutes of never-before-seen footage, couldn't have been more different from the neutered theatrical cut. That gay
kiss I'd heard about? Turns out Phillippe's character, Shane, was
conceived as an overtly bisexual bartender, one of those erotic beings
(like Terrence Stamp in Pasolini's Teorema) who flits from one source of attention to the next, seducing each in turn: He woos club owner Mike Myers, makes it with record exec Sela Ward, kisses out-of-reach soap
star Neve Campbell, gets frisky with best friend Breckin Meyer and then
bangs his friend's wife Salma Hayek in a bathroom stall (not counting
the montage of nameless boys and girls whose beds he shares in a
mid-movie montage).
I haven't seen the original in ages, so you'll forgive my memory here, but most of those hookups are new and suggest a different kind of lead character entirely. Shane is ambivalent about sex, leveraging his good looks to get ahead without understanding the consequences of his carelessness. Before the screening, Christopher explained that even between the theatrical release (which petered out under $17 million) and DVD, Harvey started putting material back into the film (Shane's betrayal in sleeping with Salma evidently made the DVD), and European versions were treated to even more footage.
Now, Christopher has outlived the regime that forced him to compromise his film, but he clung to the digital tapes and assembled this cut in an effort to recreate his original vision. The print he showed at Outfest is rough, faded and too low-grade to master to DVD (then again, Harvey bumped up the brightness on many of those club scenes for the theatrical version so audiences could see those things more alluring when left to one's imagination and the dark), but it could serve as a blueprint for a proper re-edit.
To Harvey's credit: He knew he had gold in Mike Myers' crash-and-burn
turn, cutting very little of the performance from the film. A decade later, his take
on Steve Rubell (a character soon to be revived for Showtime) remains the best work of the Love Guru's career. Phillippe, too, is at his peak, and the movie leverages his shortcomings as an actor (that dumb, oblivious quality he does so well) to the role's ultimate advantage.
It remains to be seen whether anyone agrees to foot the bill for a proper recut and restoration -- surely there's money to be made putting this thing out on Blu-ray. My only regret: That awesome disco cover of Gordon Lightfoot's "If You Could Read My Mind" doesn't exist in Christopher's version. Then again, neither do STDs, last calls or the real world -- but it's a pretty good party all the same.
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I've been waiting for this for years, I would love Christopers original vision on DVD, please!!!!! someone make it happen. I live in Europe and haven't seen these screenings of his cut. But I'm sure the movie is so much better now than the butchered version that the Miramax execs put out.
Posted by: pocat | August 02, 2008 at 05:59 AM
54 was a terrible film. I can't see 20 extra minutes helping it at all.
Posted by: Mark | August 02, 2008 at 08:06 AM
I saw it at Outfest, and I have to admit it was kind of brilliant. I kept thinking it was made in the 70's. And Ryan Phillipe was actually good! Why did they cut it?? The one 10 years ago had great music, but no story. Two totally different animals.
Posted by: Swerdlow10 | August 02, 2008 at 11:11 PM
I hope they re-release the dvd with the director's version of the film. I haven't seen the director's cut but from what I've heard and been reading, it delivers in spades.
Posted by: Alex H | August 04, 2008 at 05:10 PM