It was so entertaining when the boogie started to explode

The closing credits for Studio 54 roll up. Where else could they go? We have all seen this before and we all know how it ends. To believe otherwise is foolish but also central to the romance of the now historical disco. Bob Colacello describes the era between the pill and AIDS as "a window". It was, but perhaps not in the way Bob thinks: less of an opening, more of an unsecured space. Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager planned Studio 54 as a mainstream spectacle. The celebrities-in-a-flashgun moments captured on film and video were a smaller part of it than we thought. Matt Tyrnauer's documentary requires no narration because all participants are talking heads now: in the future, everyone will be an authority for 15 minutes. People we kind of recognise recall others we definitely don't before the virus scythes through. Even the IRS investigators who sent Rubell and Schrager to jail frame Schrager's crimes as the folly of youth. Studio 54 was a moment. The velvet rope was the finishing line.