As the owner of legendary hotspots like Limelight, Tunnel, Palladium, and Club USA, Peter Gatien was the undisputed king of the 1980s New York City club scene. The eye-patch-sporting Ontario native built and oversaw a Manhattan empire that counted tens of thousands of patrons per night in its peak years, acting as a conduit for a culture that, for many, defined the image of an era in New York. Then years of legal battles and police pressure spearheaded by Mayor Giuliani’s determined crackdown on nightlife in the mid-’90s led to Gatien’s eventual deportation to Canada, and the shuttering of his glitzy kingdom. Featuring insider interviews with famous players in the club scene as well as key informants in Gatien’s high-profile trial, Billy Corben’s (Cocaine Cowboys) exuberant documentary aims to set the record straight about Gatien’s life as it charts his rise and fall against the transformation of New York, offering a wild ride through a now-closed chapter in the history of the city’s nightlife. (Source)
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A portrait of New York nightclub proprietor Peter Gatien who owned the legendary hotspots Limelight, Tunnel, Palladium, and Club USA. Eventually, a legal battle led to his deportation to Canada. Here, we track the rise and fall of Gatien, while witnessing a now-closed chapter in the history of New York City's nightlife. (
A colorful portrait of Miami’s pot smuggling scene of the 1970s, populated with redneck pirates, a ganja-smoking church, and the longest serving marijuana prisoner in American history. (
Named after the bales of marijuana that were often caught in the warm Florida coastal waters by unsuspecting fishermen, this is a portrait of South Florida’s pot smuggling culture in the 1970s. It focuses on three stories from the era: the infamous Black Tuna Gang, a group of savvy smugglers led by Robert Platshorn, the longest serving marijuana prisoner in US History; the Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church, whose members (including children) all smoked marijuana from morning to night and ran a massive pot dealing operation out of Miami Beach’s exclusive Star Island; and Everglades City, a tiny fishing village 80 miles west of Miami with an brazenly outlaw history of smuggling, from endangered animals, to rum to weed. (
A colorful portrait of Miami’s pot smuggling scene of the 1970s, populated with redneck pirates, a ganja-smoking church, and the longest serving marijuana prisoner in American history. (