Party Monster (2003)

directed by Fenton Bailey & Randy Barbato

Ciara Farmer

James St. James (played by Seth Green) sits in a lounge chair by the pool. He wears a yellow lounge set, red sunglasses perch atop his head. He turns to the camera and pauses, as if he’s giving a documentary interview and wants to carefully consider his words, and says, “I think it’s so important to begin with a bang. Don’t you?”

I’m not telling you what comes next just yet. I think it’s so important to build up to that bang, to indulge, don’t you? Truthfully, I always forget the movie starts here, with James at the poolside and then abruptly, “the bang.”

I need a moment with the glamour before things get ugly.

I first watched Party Monster when I was 19 and deep in the thicket of party culture. Or what little there was in Alberta in 2011. I wanted to be James St. James. To wrap myself in the absurd and soften the blows of life with couture and sequins. You can don an artificial nose! Shave your eyebrows! Wear assless chaps! You can be an icon if you just believe yourself to be.

Let me tell you where the movie actually starts: Michael Alig (played by Macaulay Culkin) arrives in New York fresh from the Midwest, already high on his signature mix of child-like naivety and manipulative charm. The personification of a sheer pink baby tee worn with nothing underneath, nipples erect, and a red heart-shaped lollipop playfully swirled around the tongue. His sneakers land on the pavement just before the death of Andy Warhol, and during the rise of gritty late 1980s club culture. He’s primed for the glitz promised by New York City. The Club Kid scene is raw, unrefined, just taking its first ragged breaths.

After Michael introduces himself to James in a club bathroom, the two meet in a pink-hued doughnut shop, James in a sequin blazer and with a tin lunchbox, Michael in Barney-colored suspenders and a Keith Haring tee. James opens the lunchbox, inhales a white powder, and defines himself with the line, “I don’t do, I just am…incredibly rich.” Michael nearly pleads with James, “I want you to teach me how to be fabulous.” And, begrudgingly at first, James does. The energy is almost frenetic as enchanted onlookers watch Michael and James march about the shop in a lesson on how to work a room: You and a friend walk in and say “Hi! Hi! Hi!” to everyone, “lose '' one another, walk about the room asking everyone if they’ve seen your friend, and an hour later you bump into one another and squeal with feigned surprise: “We found each other! We found each other!” And Michael and James really did find each other.

Michael’s rise is swift, and he is there, at least in his version of events, to cut the cord as the Club Kid scene is birthed. Under the lone watchful eye of eye-patched Canadian Club Mogul Peter Gatien, he promotes drug-soaked raves at the soon-to-be infamous Limelight. Outrageous themed parties, designer clothes, and the unce, unce, unce, of club music set the stage. 

This is Party Monster!

 I I I need you. Two of hearts. I I I I need you.

Jackie Q’s “Two of Hearts” has entered the chat. Michael dances. Unce, unce, unce. James joins in. Unce, unce, unce. Michael and James dance together. All the bad feelings dissolve in that moment. In that moment, everything and everyone are gorgeous, baby. Just gorgeous. 

Cascades of tension rise and fall. The bang is coming. But the tension is always cut by the party. Unce, unce, unce. Cut by Michael’s charm. Unce, unce, unce. Cut by James’s patience. Unce, unce, unce. 

Let me tell you what the most important line of the movie is. James says it during an appearance on Geraldo: It doesn't matter what you look like! I mean if you have a hunchback, just throw a little glitter on it, honey, and go dancing.

I’m 19. I line up rows of ketamine onto a mirrored platter, slice them into precise lines with a credit card, watch my made-up face—artificially flawless skin, Kate Mossian smudged liner, and mascaraed lashes—inhale lines with precision. At bars, I make a small pile of ketamine on the back of my trembling hand and inhale it that way, just like Michael and James.

James whispers it in my ear: It doesn't matter what you look like! I mean if you have a hunchback, just throw a little glitter on it, honey, and go dancing.

Here’s the bang James promised: a human—Angel Melendez—was murdered with a hammer, his skull bashed in, his body hacked to pieces, stored in a box in Michael’s living room until the stench became unbearable, and then chucked into the river. I have no sympathy for the late Michael Alig, who murdered Angel because Michael was unable, or unwilling, to pay off a drug debt. I have no sympathy for Michael, who was able to cut up—using a series of new kitchen knives—and dispose of the body, in exchange for 10 baggies of heroin from Robert “Freeze” Riggs.

In the real version of events, this murder is what matters. But I do not have my toes planted in reality here because, baby, the floor is rolling (and, babes, this is a movie!).

Here’s the bang I promised: I’m 12. My thighs, hips, and butt betray me, overspilling my low-rise jeans. My face is dotted with acne. I cry looking at myself in the mirror at the mall when I try on clothes and when I do my makeup before school. I eventually grow into my figure and outgrow much of my acne. But my discomfort in myself remains. I hate my body and, forced to reside in it, I hate myself.

And then, abruptly, I’m 19. And I still hate myself. I don’t cry when I look into the mirrored tray, but I don’t like what I see.

I think it’s so important to be honest. Don’t you? I need the floor to stop rolling. The unce, unce, unce has to cease. I have never looked cute in a baby tee. Glitter isn’t a cure for absent self-esteem. I need to sit—lucidly—with the ugliness that resides within myself (and spoiler, it’s not my thighs that are the problem).

Party Monster holds a weak 29% critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s a cinematic abomination, and I still love every minute of it. The difference is that now I can parse the distinction between loving a movie and trying to live within its walls. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Jackie Q is on the line, and I hear a faint unce, unce, unce in the background.

Ciara Farmer is a non-fiction writer. Policy Analyst by day and Story Slam participant by night, she writes at the intersection of oft-lowbrow pop culture and the sometimes-too-personal. She has a forthcoming essay in Sharp Notions: Essays on the Stitching Life from Arsenal Pulp Press.