Halston shows Minnelli partying consistently, indulging in drugs, and even overdosing inside Studio 54 one night before deciding to go to rehab. Celebrities such as Diana Ross, Bianca Jagger, Grace Jones, Michael Jackson, Brooke Shields, Liz Taylor, and many, many more were regulars at the fashionable club.įashion royalty Halston was a regular, of course, along with his best friend and muse Liza Minnelli. Club regular Andy Warhol once said that Studio 54 “was a dictatorship on the door but a democracy on the dance floor.” Halston's depiction of Studio 54 co-founder Steve Rubell swiftly denying patrons at the door on the basis of their shirt or their hat not being to his liking is, according to footage from the documentary, accurate. The Rolling Stones, for example, were split into two of the categories-Mick Jagger and Keith Richards got in for free, but the other band members had to pay to enter. The doc explains that the guest list was split into four categories: “No Goods” were people who should never be let in, then those who had to pay to get in, followed by those who got in for free, and finally “No Fuck Ups,” who were VIPs who were let in swiftly and easily. According to Schrager, this level of desperation was commonplace the club frequently had people climbing over fences and allegedly even pulling guns on doormen. I met a quarterback.In Studio 54, a 2018 documentary that featured the club’s surviving co-founder Ian Schrager, he revealed that someone really was found dead after getting stuck in an air vent and suffocating after trying to enter the club illegally-but unlike in the show, it was a man dressed in black-tie attire. Diana Vreeland was there, and people were being brought over to Liz-she was the queen.
From The Andy Warhol Diaries: “Liz looked like a-bellybutton. “The dancing and fun continued until the early hours, the atmosphere heavy with the stench of poppers and Elizabeth bebopping with a bevvy of gay porn stars, until Warner put his foot down and said that they were leaving.”Īndy Warhol also wrote a less-than-flattering recap of the shindig in his journal. “A dozen well-endowed hunks, naked but for sequined posing-pouches, and some with joints dangling from the corners of their mouths, scattered gardenia petals in the couple’s path as they entered,” wrote Taylor biographer David Bret in The Lady, The Lover, The Legend. As Taylor gamely cut a good luck slice from the buttercream bosom, Warner fled the paparazzi.”
Liza minelli on halston movie#
Writing for Vanity Fair, Studio 54 regular Bob Colacello declared Taylor’s 1978 birthday the club’s “most amazing party of all…The Rockettes performed and then presented the movie star, who was standing on a float of gardenias between Halston and her then husband, Senator John Warner of Virginia, with a cake that was a full-size portrait of her.
“Hey,” he said after my stunned pause, “you asked.” (It involved bodily fluids expelled competitively in the Studio 54 basement.
Liza minelli on halston full#
And sweaty attendees engaged in anonymous intercourse on the balcony-which was famously covered in rubber so that it could be easily hosed down at the end of each evening.Īnything went-so much so that, when I asked Halston biographer and Studio 54 regular Steven Gaines for his craziest story about the club, he offered an anecdote so risqué that we cannot print it in full here. Club founders Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager provided premium guests with premium cocaine and spent up to $100,000 on a single night’s party decor.
Scantily clad dancers gyrated on an automated bridge that moved back and forth over the dance floor. Halston, Andy Warhol, Liza Minnelli, Mick Jagger, Cher, David Geffen, Jack Nicholson, and Michael Jackson regularly packed the banquettes. But the real-life nightclub-with its glamorous VIP guests, plentiful drugs, and balcony sex-was somehow more outrageous in actuality than could ever be conveyed onscreen. As Netflix’s Halston reminds us, Studio 54 was a fever dream of excess.
0 kommentar(er)
