''54'' is a 1998 American

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-g ...

about Studio 54, a famous nightclub in New York City, written and directed by Mark Christopher. It stars

Ryan Phillippe Matthew Ryan Phillippe (; born September 10, 1974) is an American actor. After appearing as Billy Douglas on the soap opera ''One Life to Live'', he came to fame in the late 1990s with starring roles in films including ''I Know What You Did Las ...

Salma Hayek Salma Hayek Pinault ( , ; born Salma Valgarma Hayek Jiménez; September 2, 1966) is a Mexican and American actress and film producer. She began her career in Mexico with starring roles in the telenovela ''Teresa'' (1989–1991) as well as the ...

Neve Campbell Neve Adrianne Campbell (born October 3, 1973; ) is a Canadian actress. She is known for her work in the drama and horror genres. She has appeared on ''People'' magazine's list of "50 Most Beautiful People" twice. Following a series of minor ...

, and

Mike Myers Michael John Myers OC (born May 25, 1963) is a Canadian actor, comedian, screenwriter, and producer. His accolades include seven MTV Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. In 2002, he was awarded a star on the Hollyw ...

as Steve Rubell, the club's co-founder. Prior to its release in 1998, the film was extensively reshot and recut, and then released to poor critical reaction but a somewhat respectable box office. In 2008, a bootleg version of the director's cut was screened at

Outfest Outfest is an LGBTQ-oriented nonprofit that produces two film festivals, operates a movie streaming platform, and runs educational services for filmmakers in Los Angeles. Outfest is one of the key partners, alongside the Frameline Film Festival ...

, leading to interest for its release. In 2015, Christopher and Miramax premiered a new edit of the film at the

Berlin International Film Festival The Berlin International Film Festival (german: Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin), usually called the Berlinale (), is a major international film festival held annually in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951 and originally run in June, the festi ...

, with 45 minutes of original material restored and 30 minutes of studio re-shoots removed.

Plot

Theatrical version

In the summer of 1979, 19-year-old Irish-American filling station attendant Shane O'Shea lives in

Jersey City, New Jersey Jersey City is the second-most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey, after Newark.Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

, so one night he talks his two friends into going to Studio 54, a disco nightclub. Once inside, Shane is exposed to the flashy,

hedonistic Hedonism refers to a family of theories, all of which have in common that pleasure plays a central role in them. ''Psychological'' or ''motivational hedonism'' claims that human behavior is determined by desires to increase pleasure and to decre ...

world of 54, with unbridled alcohol, drugs, and open sex. Against his father’s wishes, Shane returns to 54 the next night and is hired by Steve as a

busboy In North America, a busser, more commonly known as a busboy or busgirl, is a person who works in the restaurant and catering industry clearing tables, taking dirty dishes to the dishwasher, setting tables, refilling and otherwise assisting the ...

. Shane eventually moves out of his family's house in Jersey City after fighting with his father over his new job, and moves in with Greg and Anita in Manhattan. After a short time bussing tables, Shane gets promoted to bartender with the help of a club regular Billie Auster, a customer who has a

one-night stand A one-night stand or one-night sex is a single sexual encounter in which there is an expectation that there shall be no further relations between the sexual participants. It draws its name from the common practice of a one-night stand, a single ...

with Shane. Shane's promotion causes tension with Greg as Greg feels that he didn't get the job because he wouldn't let Steve perform

oral sex Oral sex, sometimes referred to as oral intercourse, is sexual activity involving the stimulation of the genitalia of a person by another person using the mouth (including the lips, tongue, or teeth) and the throat. Cunnilingus is oral sex p ...

on him. Shane gains status and does an interview article/

beefcake Beefcake is a performance or a form of glamour photography depicting a large and muscular male body. Beefcake is also a publication genre. A role a person plays in a performance may be called ''beefcake''. The term was believed to be first used ...

photo shoot for '' Interview Magazine'', uses drugs, and sleeps with multiple women as he makes a name for himself. After a while, Shane begins to feel as if people only want him for sex. Shane’s fame also affects his relationships with his friends and family. Greg, who now deals drugs on the side for extra money, criticizes Shane for his conceited attitude on Christmas Eve and accuses him of trying to sleep with Anita after catching him making a pass at her once before at their apartment. Shane’s father Harlan, whom he hasn’t seen or spoken to since he moved to New York City, rejects him when he comes home to visit on Christmas Day after a female family friend who got into 54 one night informs Harlan that she saw Shane doing drugs there. However, Shane does experience some brief happiness during the holidays when he strikes up a short-lived romance with his celebrity crush (and fellow New Jerseyan) Julie Black, a soap opera starlet determined to succeed in the film industry. Shane discovers Julie with Roland Sachs, an agent that she plans to sleep with, causing Shane to reject her. In his anger, Shane gets into a fight with Steve. Steve fires Shane and has him thrown out of the club. Simultaneously, the FBI raids 54 and arrests Steve, as he’s been skimming money from the club’s nightly take. As Shane leaves 54 in disgrace, Julie passes by him, and they part ways but agree to remain friends. An epilogue reveals the fates of the main characters. Julie moves to Hollywood and gets a small part in a movie. Anita records a moderately successful album with

Casablanca Records Casablanca Records is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group and operated under Republic Records. Under its founder Neil Bogart, Casablanca was most successful during the disco era of the mid to late 1970s. The label current ...

and Greg gets a job in construction after six months' probation for dealing drugs at 54. Shane works nights as a restaurant manager in

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...

and takes business classes at

NYU New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

during the day. Steve is convicted and sentenced to 18 months in jail, causing 54 to close as a result; upon release, he is forced to sell 54 but remains as a consultant under the new management. Greg and Anita reunite at the newly reopened 54, where Steve is hosting a one-night welcome-back party for all of his old friends and employees after his release from prison. Ultimately, 54 closes permanently in 1986, and Steve dies of AIDS in 1989 at age 45.

Director's cut additions

The director's cut opens with a new narration of the movie's original opening as Shane is seen leaving 54 after being thrown out on New Year’s Eve. Shane’s narration from the theatrical version is eliminated. Shane is openly

bisexual Bisexuality is a romantic or sexual attraction or behavior toward both males and females, or to more than one gender. It may also be defined to include romantic or sexual attraction to people regardless of their sex or gender identity, whi ...

. In a moment of confusion, he kisses Greg in the VIP room on Christmas Eve. Shane then has sex with Anita in the ladies’ room after she and Greg have a fight. Anita sees Steve watching them. She hits Shane in the stomach and runs out of the ladies' room in shame. When Shane runs low on cash due to his numerous debts, Greg lets him in on his drug-dealing operation. Shane steals some of Steve's skimmed cash as capital and repays it on New Year's Eve. Greg eventually agrees to let Steve perform oral sex on him for the bartender job, but Steve says he'd rather watch Greg and Anita have sex instead, as he did on Christmas Eve. Greg goes to the cloakroom to confront Anita and sees her hugging Shane. Greg gets into a fistfight with Shane. Shane freebases cocaine to ease his emotional pain. After Greg and Anita reconcile following her interrupted debut performance, Anita leaves with Billie for a

photo op A photo op (sometimes written as photo opp), short for photograph opportunity (or photo opportunity), is an arranged opportunity to take a photograph of a politician, a celebrity, or a notable event.G-men raiding Steve’s office and runs back upstairs to warn Greg, but Greg ignores him. Greg then runs to get his things from his locker when he sees Shane being thrown out of the club, but discovers that a G-man has already beat him to it and has found his drugs. After Shane is thrown out of 54, he sees Greg running up behind him. Shane offers him his garbage bag cloak, and Greg begrudgingly accepts. Anita runs to them in a fancy fur coat and cloaks Greg in it with her as they both depart. Greg calls for Shane to come along with them, just as Julie pulls up alongside in her limousine and offers Shane a ride. Shane declines and leaves with Greg and Anita, the three of them staying together as a family instead of drifting apart.

Cast

Production

Based on two

short film A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes ...

s Mark Christopher made,

Miramax Films Miramax, LLC, also known as Miramax Films, is an American film and television production and distribution company founded on December 19, 1979, by brothers Harvey Weinstein, Harvey and Bob Weinstein, and based in Los Angeles, California. It was ...

persuaded Christopher to direct the full-length feature about Studio 54. He had spent five years researching the club and the time period while working on a screenplay. Miramax purchased a partial screenplay in 1995 and developed the script with the filmmaker for over a year. Christopher shot the film in

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

over two months in the fall of 1997. However, studio head

Harvey Weinstein Harvey Weinstein (; born March 19, 1952) is an American former film producer and convicted sex offender. He and his brother, Bob Weinstein, co-founded the entertainment company Miramax, which produced several successful independent films includ ...

and Christopher differed on their respective visions of the film. Christopher intended for the film to capture Studio 54’s notoriety as “the epicenter of the gay cultural explosion in New York City,” and wanted the story to be told from the perspective of “Shane, a kid from New Jersey who sleeps his way to the top of the 54 pecking order, which means that he becomes one of the shirtless bartenders for which the club was notorious, golden boys who flexed and preened for the clientele of both sexes, occasionally deigning to grant sexual favors in return for money and drugs”. Conversely, Weinstein wanted a more commercial film in the vein of '' Saturday Night Fever'', with its gay storyline removed. Weinstein screen tested Christopher’s cut of the film on

Long Island Long Island is a densely populated island in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, part of the New York metropolitan area. With over 8 million people, Long Island is the most populous island in the United Sta ...

in early 1998. Audiences at this screening reacted negatively to the lead character's bisexuality, particularly to a scene where Shane and Greg kiss as well as the happy ending for both characters and Anita. Miramax subsequently requested the film remove any suggestions of bisexuality. The post-production process was a troubled one, with Weinstein hiring a second writing team to flesh out new scenes that play up a romance between Shane and Julie. Christopher was not allowed in the editing room, and though he agreed to shoot the new scenes after initial resistance, he did not get to see the final cut.

Reception

''54'' opened at #4 in its opening weekend (August 28–30, 1998) with $6,611,532 behind ''

Blade A blade is the portion of a tool, weapon, or machine with an edge that is designed to puncture, chop, slice or scrape surfaces or materials. Blades are typically made from materials that are harder than those they are to be used on. Historic ...

'', ''

There's Something About Mary ''There's Something About Mary'' is a 1998 American romantic comedy film directed by Peter Farrelly and Bobby Farrelly. It stars Cameron Diaz as the title character with Ben Stiller, Matt Dillon, Lee Evans, and Chris Elliott all playing men w ...

'', and ''

Saving Private Ryan ''Saving Private Ryan'' is a 1998 American epic war film directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Robert Rodat. Set during the Battle of Normandy in World War II, the film is known for its graphic portrayal of war, especially its depicti ...

''.

Studio cut

The studio cut of the film received almost universally poor reviews but was a modest commercial success, grossing $16 million on an estimated budget of $13 million.

, in his first serious dramatic role, garnered some of the film's only positive word-of-mouth. The role was Myers’ only foray into drama until 2009's ''

Inglourious Basterds ''Inglourious Basterds'' is a 2009 war film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, starring Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Michael Fassbender, Eli Roth, Diane Kruger, Daniel Brühl, Til Schweiger and Mélanie Laurent. The film tells an altern ...

'' and 2018's ''

Bohemian Rhapsody "Bohemian Rhapsody" is a song by the British rock band Queen, released as the lead single from their fourth album, '' A Night at the Opera'' (1975). Written by lead singer Freddie Mercury, the song is a six-minute suite, notable for its lack o ...

''. Though some critics noted Christopher manages to “ e-createthe club’s playfully subversive physical details: the glitter confetti and giant silver man-in-the-moon cokehead mobile, the VIP room hidden in the dank basement”, many were particularly disappointed with the film's fictional characters and storyline, believing that Studio 54's notorious, real-life past should have been explored more in detail and with better realism. On

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film holds an approval rating of 15%, based on 67 reviews, and an average rating of 4.10/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Robbed of its integral LGBTQ themes, ''54'' is a compromised and disjointed glance at the glory days of disco". Audiences polled by

CinemaScore CinemaScore is a market research firm based in Las Vegas. It surveys film audiences to rate their viewing experiences with letter grades, reports the results, and forecasts box office receipts based on the data. Background Ed Mintz founded Ci ...

gave the film an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F scale. The 1998 film was nominated for two

Razzie Awards The Golden Raspberry Awards (also known as the Razzies and Razzie Awards) is a parody award show honoring the worst of cinematic under-achievements. Co-founded by UCLA film graduates and film industry veterans John J. B. Wilson and Mo Murphy, ...

, including Worst Actor for

and Worst Supporting Actress for

Ellen Albertini Dow Ellen Rose Albertini Dow (November 16, 1913 – May 4, 2015) was an American film and television character actress and drama coach. She portrayed feisty old ladies and is best known as the rapping grandmother Rosie in ''The Wedding Singer'' ...

was nominated for Worst Supporting Actress (also for '' Wild Things'') at the 1998 Stinkers Bad Movie Awards.

Director’s cut

In the years after the theatrical cut's release, a bootleg VHS version of the two-hour-long rough cut began circulating. Strong word of mouth and support led to New York LGBTQ film festival

screening the rough cut to a sold-out crowd in 2008. Christopher and his co-producer Jonathan King had been lobbying Miramax for years to allow them to remaster the director's cut for DVD. In 2014, the filmmakers received the greenlight to make ''54: The Director's Cut'' from Zanne Devine, Miramax's then-VP of production. They completed the film in time for a screening in the Panorama section at the

65th Berlin International Film Festival The 65th annual Berlin International Film Festival was held from 5 to 15 February 2015, with American film director Darren Aronofsky as the President of the Jury. German film director Wim Wenders was presented with the Honorary Golden Bear. The ...

in February 2015. The 105 minute-long cut included 44 minutes of restored footage, with all but a few seconds of the studio-dictated re-shot footage jettisoned. The director's cut has received a much more positive critical response, and the film has a huge cult following among the

LGBT ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term is a ...

community. Of ''54: The Director's Cut'', critic Louis Jordan wrote, "Driven by character and atmosphere rather than soapy plot, Christopher’s film is permeated by a melancholy that adds depth to the ecstatic party scenes. Mike Myers nails the pathos and charm behind Rubell’s luded-out lechery, while Phillippe’s measured performance, finally given space to breathe, is vulnerable, amoral, and sexy. There are no easy heroes or villains in this ''54'', only people looking for something they’ll likely never find."

Home media

A 2012

Blu-ray The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of sto ...

release features several additional and alternate scenes that were not included in the theatrical release. This extended cut runs 100 minutes, eight minutes of which are not in the studio's 92-minute release. Miramax and

Lionsgate Home Entertainment Lions Gate Entertainment Corporation, doing business as Lionsgate, is a Canadian-American entertainment company. It was formed by Frank Giustra on July 10, 1997, domiciled in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and is currently headquartered in ...

released ''54: The Director's Cut'' in digital HD on streaming video providers on June 2, 2015. A Blu-ray version of this cut was released in 2016.

References

Bibliography

External links

* * * *{{rotten-tomatoes, 54, 54 1998 drama films 1998 LGBT-related films 1998 films American drama films American independent films American LGBT-related films Casual sex in films 1990s English-language films Films about bartenders Films scored by Marco Beltrami Films set in New Jersey Films set in New York City Films set in the 1970s Films set in the 1980s Miramax films Studio 54 1998 directorial debut films 1998 independent films Disco films Films about drugs Films set in 1979 1990s American films