"Billy Corben’s 2011 documentary Limelight has just arrived on DVD and it proves to be as gripping as any fictional film. Limelight isn’t just Gatien’s story. The movie is about the changing pop culture scene of the last 30 years — particularly, the shift in club music from disco to electronica to hip hop — and the drug culture that went along with the transitions." --Joe Meyers, Connecticut News-Times
The New York Post ran an oral history of the Limelight:
[Today], the documentary “Limelight” arrives on DVD, offering an insider’s look into the heyday of New York’s most notorious ’90s nightclub, run by impresario Peter Gatien. Here, key players look back at the club’s glittering rise and shocking fall, before its glorious Gothicchurch home turned into a mall:
JEN Gatien: “I remember when I was 20, Bruce Springsteen walked up and said, ‘I’ve always wanted to come in here. Do you think I could get a tour?’ So I gave him a tour of the club, and it had this inflatable [Moon Bounce] — you know, one of those things that kids jump inside of. So we both took off our boots and jumped around. I’d regularly see celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Wahlberg, Juliette Lewis, Adrien Brody, Vin Diesel, Chloé Sevigny.”
Frank Owen, former Village Voice night-life reporter, author of “Clubland”: “Limelight had some of the best music I’d ever heard. I saw practically every major techno act at Lord Michael’s Future Shock night — Ultramarine to Prodigy to the Orb. Also, Funkmaster Flex’s hip-hop events were amazing. I first met Michael Alig in the late ’80s. He seemed as harmless as a powder puff.”
Michael Alig, “King of the Club Kids” and Limelight party promoter: “My favorite memory of Limelight was this magical time between 4 and 6 a.m. All the “normals” had gone home, and all that was left was a really fabulous group of club kids, drag queens and transsexuals, and everyone was really drunk and high on the dance floor, and you could see sunlight coming in through the stained glass windows.”Steve Lewis, director of Limelight: One night in March 2006, “Michael asked to borrow my car, and I asked why. He said, ‘Well, I killed Angel [Melendez, his drug dealer], and I’m going to chop up the body, put it in a box, put it in your trunk and dump it.’ I said, ‘Michael, get the f - - k away from me.’ I knew he had gone down a very bad road with drugs, but this was the most absurd thing I’d heard.”
Owen: “Never in a million years could a scene like Limelight’s happen again. These days, club owners [say], You want to make money in the club business? It’s simple: Just throw in a few banquettes, pay a designer, buy a bunch of vodka, and you’ll make money hand over fist selling bottles for $400.’ Think of the culture that came out of nightclubs in the ’80s and ’90s: hip-hop, house music, garage music. But nightclubs today are no longer cultural institutions.”