Audiences can soon revisit the New York club scene of the 1990s, as Netflix has picked up the documentary Glory Daze: The Life and Times of Michael Alig.
Alig’s party heydays—and the murder of Angel Melendez in 1996—were chronicled in the documentary Party Monster—and the subsequent Macaulay Culkin/Seth Green feature film of the same name—but Glory Daze claims to take a deeper look at the crown prince of clubland and the culture he was a part of.
“I wanted to remind the audience of that era, with all of its decay and danger, but also just how fucking fun it was,” says writer-director Ramon Fernandez.
“I framed it through the experience of the one guy who truly personally changed the zeitgeist for a moment, in all of its glory and tragedy.”
Alig, who was released from prison in 2014 after serving a 17-year-sentence for Melendez’s murder, says its an accurate, if uncomfortable, portrayal.
“I think [it’s] fair,” he told Blackbook. “No one is all good or all bad. Everyone is a little of both.”
He admits there are scene that make him cringe.
“I was such a spoiled brat! It’s a wonder I had any friends,” he muses. But, he added, “there are things I am incredibly proud of, too—the way the club-kid scene gave so many disenfranchised people a sense of home, of family.”