Limelight | Review

With TV production values and a made-for-cable-sales attitude, Billy Corben’s Limelight is more ‘E! True Story’ than work of cinema. The conspicuously one-sided documentary focuses on Peter Gatien, the ‘90s downtown New York club king, eye-patched owner of legendary hot spots Tunnel, Palladium, and the infamous Limelight, which was housed in a former church, and home to trendy denizens of sin. Presented as a one-sidedly sympathetic portrait of the embattled nightlife impresario and his attempts to keep his business afloat amidst fickle fashions, drug crazes, and police crackdowns, visually, Corben lazily relies on crappy 3D animation transitions and stock photo/B footage filler; superficial name-dropping of celebrities who dropped by the scene — Madonna, etc. — is relied on to convince the audience that the subject matter is relevant and urgent. A better doc might have focused more on the democratic microcosm and cultural incubator aspect of the clubs, which Corben only glancingly touches on.

Afraid to adulate Gatien as an outlaw willfully skirting the edges of criminality and social mores, the doc instead takes the defense lawyer approach (sleazy attorney Benjamin Brafman is treated here as a selfless hero of the downtrodden), and sanctimoniously depicts Gatien as just another hard-working dad and loving husband trying to pay the mortgage and put food on the table. This take may or may not hold some truth; to some extent, Gatien was clearly the undeserving target of political power plays and government infringements. But Corben makes it impossible to know where the reality starts and the spin ends.

In his current-day interview clips, Gatien comes across as a twitchy, blunted burn out. Despite this, nothing he says is unguarded or out of left field. Instead, each statement is precisely calibrated to fit the overall agenda of establishing his victimhood.

Parts are amusing enough, especially the whirlwind recap of Giuliani-era ‘90s Manhattan, where the residue of ‘80s grime and permissiveness locked horns with comically overzealous law-and-ordering. But this time-capsule history lesson is the doc equivalent of a wikipedia article: glib, skirting the surface, never outright lying but also never telling the whole truth. Meanwhile, an unnecessary digression to a sequence charting the rise in popularity of the drug Ecstasy is only there to give the audience a quick contact high of transgression.

The doc’s breezy glibness produces some callow moments, as when AIDS is abruptly referred to, only to be typed as a stock villain because it “slumps business” at the clubs. It’s as if “AIDS” were just a club that opened across the street and started to lure away some of the trendsetters. Even more morally dubious is the casual inclusion of talking head commentary from Michael Alig, the notorious club promoter turned murdering butcher. Alig chats bubbly from prison as if he were merely critiquing someone’s outfit on ‘What Not To Wear’; Corben never puts any real pressure on his reliability as an expert witness, or as a human being.

Even those ‘90s New Yorkers who kept their distance from the club scene might remember journalist Frank Owen’s seemingly weekly exposés in the Village Voice on Gatien and the nightlife world at large. Owen was a great read then, and he’s by far the most engaging talking head in Limelight, handy with an outrageous anecdote, eager to burst the bubble of a ludicrous lie, bereft of an agenda. If only Corben’s movie had emulated Owen’s admirable mixture of candor and circumspection.

Rating 1.5 stars