An Impish Sweetheart, And a Real Killer, Too
by Dave Kehr
(The New York Times; 12 June 2002) Who's the guy wearing satin, shorts, platform shoes, shoulder pads, a corset and clown make-up? Oddly enough, it's Macaulay Culkin, the impish urchin of the "Home Alone" films, now 21 and making his grown-up movie debut as a nightclub promoter and convicted killer, Michael Alig, in "Party Monster."

Based on the 1998 Documentary of the same title directed and produced by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato--who together worte and directed "Party Monster"-- the film relates Mr. Alig's descent into the drug culture, which ended in the killing of a drug dealer, Angel Menendez (played in the film by Wilson Cruz). Mr. Alig is currently serving a manslaughter sentence of 12 to 20 years at the Southport Correctional Facility in Pine City, N.Y.

The "Party Monster" crew, let by Mr. Bailey and Mr. Barbato, took over Montel Williams's studio on West 55th Street on a recent morning to flim a dramatized, condensed version of Mr. Alig's several television appearances. John Stamos, playing a generic talk show host, introduced a parade of outrageously dressed "club kids" who were Mr. Alig's proteges during his heyday in the early 1990's. Drag would be too limiting a term for their wildly imaginitive costumes, which incorporated everything from Boy Scout uniforms to ostrich feathers.

Mr. Culkin was joined on the studio's stage by Seth Green, who, wearing a green troll suit, was playing James St. James, Mr. Alig's best friend and rival as the leader of the downtown club scene, and by Diana Scarwild, playing Mr. Alig's doting mother. Mr. Culkin clapped and laughed through several takes of the club kids' entrance. Questioned in character by Mr. Stamos, Mr. Culkin said: "We were the kids everyone beat up in high school. Now we're the kids everyone wants to be"- a statement he punctuated with a piercing Woody Woodpecker cackle.

For Mr. Bailey and Mr. Barbato, "Party Monster" is their first feature film after several documentaries, including the widely seen "Eyes of Tammy Faye." "In making a documentary, you're limited by what people say," Mr. Bailey said. "Technically, in making a feature, you're not. But I would say that every line in the script, somebody said at some point. It's letter accurate."

"When we were still writing the script, we knew we wanted Mac," Mr. Bailey said. "He had to play the role."

"He has a childlike quality with mischievous edge," Mr. Barbato added, "and we knew that whoever played Michael had to have incredible charisma, because it's actually quite a horrific story. You need the audience to go on the ride and like this character, because ther are tons of likeable things about Michael. And when the story gets dark and horrible, you have the audience invested in that way. We always felt that Mac could pull that off. It was a very long courting. But the more we met with him, the more we felt he was the only person for the role.

"Party Monster," which also features Marilyn Manson, Dylan McDermott and Chloe Sevigny, is to be released in the first quarter of 2003.