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  • 6 weeks ago
A film about Peter Gatien, the owner of legendary New York nightclubs like Limelight, The Tunnel and the Palladium. The | dG1fTllSREU1LVl0aTg
Transcript
00:00New York and limelight were great.
00:06The limelight was an important part of the culture in New York.
00:09Disco, punk, hip-hop, techno, acid house,
00:12all of these are genres of music that began in nightclips.
00:15Madonna was there, even the Beastie Boys got their start there.
00:18Some of the music I make is definitely the product of
00:21spending way too much time in the limelight.
00:23It was pagan Rome on acid.
00:25It's Caligula with music.
00:27Nobody saw the downside of living on the edge.
00:30This was a global youth culture movement.
00:33They became the new stars of Clubland.
00:36A single cool, watchful eye looks over it all.
00:40It is the eye of Peter Gajan, the lord of late night.
00:43Limelight was very important to Peter because it was his cash cow.
00:47It was a gold mine.
00:48He was pulling in 50,000 customers on a weekend.
00:50There was a magical quality associated to everything he did.
00:53These little parties just kept on getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
00:57Did we own the city's nightlife? We owned it.
00:59DEA started to get involved in ecstasy investigations.
01:04Crime was really out of control.
01:06Giuliani decided to make a change.
01:08That's when the crackdown started.
01:09100, 200 feds.
01:10The motto was get Gajan at all costs.
01:13I never saw that type of scorched earth mentality.
01:16Bringing him down could serve as a lesson to other club owners to behave.
01:20What a better person to choose to make an example of than the one who's on the top.
01:25This is the stuff that's gonna take you there.
01:27They were zombies basically.
01:29We were really obnoxious.
01:31You were the star, you were the entertainment.
01:33An open air drug market.
01:35It was like the ecstasy bandits.
01:37It could have been a movie.
01:38Everybody was high.
01:39They positively identified the body.
01:44They turned out in massive numbers, thousands of people.
01:47The gathering happened.
01:50It wasn't part of the real world.
01:51There were very few rules.
01:52It was degeneracy without consequences.
01:57Everyone's having a good time.
01:58Everyone's having a good time.
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