A confused and confusing mismash of newspaper headlines (many from this newspaper), old TV news clips and talking heads, Billy Corben’s schlockumentary tries — and fails miserably — to rehabilitate the reputation of Peter Gatien, the oft-described “nightclub king” of Manhattan in the waning years of the 20th century.
At his peak in the mid-’80s, the one-eyed Gatien raked in millions from Limelight — the notorious former church at the corner of Sixth Avenue and 20th Street — the Palladium and Club USA, vast, dimly lit venues the media often described as “drug supermarkets.” They were finally shut down as public nuisances as part of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s anti-crime campaign, and Gatien was unsuccessfully put on trial for complicity in the rampant drug trafficking.
The feds did get Gatien to plead guilty to tax evasion, and the by-now bankrupt mogul was deported back to his native Canada. Moby, along with Gatien’s lawyer Benjamin Brafman (who more recently defended Dominique Strauss-Kahn) argues that Gatien was a benevolent cultural figure who was unfairly made an example of by the former mayor.
Over and over, “Limelight” insists that no one was harmed at Gatien’s nightclubs. This is contradicted by the presence of Limelight party organizer Michael Alig, currently serving a lengthy jail sentence for killing and dismembering his boyfriend in a drug-induced haze. Even if Corben hadn’t photographed Gatien with lighting that makes him look like a horror-movie villain, he’d hardly come off as innocent.