At 34, he was directing Mike Myers, Ryan Phillippe, Selma Hayek and Neve Campbell on location in Toronto, where they’d built a replica of Studio 54 on a sound-stage. “Here I was, this first-time filmmaker, with this huge cast, a couple of movie stars, 400 extras. Once I made it through that first day — that vast insecurity — I really enjoyed the experience, being in charge of all that mayhem.”
"I really enjoyed the experience, being in charge of all that mayhem.”
This original shoot “was all love and kisses,” but as the production progressed, its “cast grew more and more famous”, Phillippe becoming a breakout ‘It Boy’, Myers an A-List star with Austin Powers. This made Miramax more ambitious and, after negative test screenings, they demanded the removal of much of the film’s queerness, and the genuine unlikeability of its characters. Instead, Phillippe needed to be turned into the hero, Campbell the hetero love-interest, 40 minutes of its 106 minutes cut, and 30 new ‘sunnier’ minutes added.
“It was 1998, and it was coming out on 1800 screens. I believe that it wasn’t a moral decision on their part, it was purely a business decision, to try to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. But it turned out horribly. The story was gone. The plot, the theme, the character development, the look, the darkness — all of those things were missing.”
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54 played like a badly-made knockoff of Boogie Nights, opened to savage reviews, and effectively killed Christopher’s budding career — he’s made only one barely-seen micro-budget comedy, 2005’s Pizza, since. But the director had cobbled together something close to an original cut (“very clunky, put together from these different formats”) as a keepsake for cast and crew, which eventually got out into the world as a bootleg. In 2008, US queer film festival Outfest screened the bootleg as a ‘lost gay classic’, beginning 54’s road to rehabilitation. Seventeen years after the original, Christopher was able to unveil his original cut, taking a once-derided flop to the world’s film festivals.
“Most films that get director’s cuts are incredibly successful, or they’re by important directors,” Christopher observes. “And sometimes those director’s cuts aren’t even that different. But this movie is almost a half different, and it was a film that no one liked the first time around. This has been such a unique experience that now, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I feel like I’m the only case of this that exists.”
