Usually, I dedicate this spot to movies or books I’ve viewed/read in the past and how my experience may have changed as an adult. However, this was my first time viewing the movie 54, but I do recall it being very popular (in magazines, apparently NOT at the box office as it cost $13 million but only made $16.8 million). For the time, it had all the hot young stars with Ryan Phillippe starring as Shane (and single-handedly carrying a movie on the power of his pecs), Neve Campbell, Salma Hayek, Breckin Meyer, Mike Myers, Heather Matarazzo, and Mark Ruffalo. So that’s a pretty solid cast because these were all very recognizable faces and household names in 1998.

As someone who loves dancing and club culture – I don’t know why at the time I didn’t watch this film other than the fact that it came out during the same time Velvet Goldmine did and that film had a chokehold on me that is still going strong today. But I digress. Studio 54, for any of you (basically all of us) born after the 70s, will not know this, but it was a very popular club that many celebrities went to and was iconic for the whole disco dancing wave that overtook the world at the time. Now, you’d think that a film about club culture and dancing would be a fun experience, right? Well, this is where the film starts derailing into some strange no man’s land of “what is this movie actually about?” We follow Shane (Phillippe) who leaves Jersey one night to go party in NYC and he miraculously gets plucked from a crowd of clubgoers to enter the pearly gates of Studio 54 based solely on his good looks (and we can buy this cause of who is the leading star). This sets the motion for Shane to become a busboy at the club and become friends with a married couple played by Breckin Myer and Salma Hayek. I don’t know what I was expecting but I suppose I was expecting a whole lot of music, a lot of dancing (I know Phillippe is no John Travolta but shouldn’t the lead be expected to dance in a movie about club life? Was I wrong to expect this?). Also, this was the 70s and again (maybe Velvet Goldmine, a movie about the glam rock era of the 70s gave me unrealistic expectations along with Pamela Des Barres many memoir books of that time) but I was expecting way more drug consumption than was depicted and a whole lot of kinky sex.

Instead, what we got was tame sex, bland fictional characters, and the only major shock wave thing that happened was when a clubgoer OD’s whilst the IRS is searching for the owner. I was expecting a more magical experience of this era that so many seem to reminisce with nostalgia. I really wanted to feel the biggest FOMO of my life (as I do whenever I see concertgoers in Velvet Goldmine grab their feather boas and run across London). Instead, I was left with this weird feeling of dodging a bullet in a seedy club (maybe the real one was awesome but the way it was depicted in the film, it didn’t seem like anything special?).

Now it’s said that initially, the director had intended for Shane to be bisexual in the film however, the producer Harvey Weinstein was against it, so any undertones of bisexuality were removed from the film and many scenes were reshot. I did watch the missing scenes, and I feel like it could’ve been a more moving movie in regards to the viewer witnessing Shane’s journey, as well as representing bisexuals on film.

Maybe the original director’s idea for the film would’ve been a lot more fun and poignant had he not had to cut out a lot of scenes which then left the second half of the film feeling a bit disjointed from the beginning. It could’ve been an amazing film about club culture, disco music, and how it was a safe place for gays during a time when no other place was safe. Instead, what we got was a movie that mostly exploited the male lead’s body without really giving us viewers the emotional depth needed for us to care about him.

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