'Down and Dirty Pictures'

this kind of decadence-films should be made like Caligula, not cut it all, but put some more unrated stuff in. To make it real trash-classic.

I recently finished the same book. It was fascinating.

I still remember the great trailers this film has and really looking forward to it back in 1998. "Did you hear of Steve Rubell? The guy was a genius! He took this club in new york and turned it in to the center of the universe!"

Here's a recent interview with Ryan Phillippe about it:

(Q) It’s no secret that filmmaker Mark Christopher clashed with Miramax over the final editing of 54. At Outfest 2008 he held a secret screening of his director’s cut, which featured 45 minutes of unseen footage that explored your character’s bisexuality and included your kiss with costar Breckin Meyer. Do you wish the studio had honored Mark’s original vision?
(RP) I absolutely do. I understand the reasoning from a business standpoint, but artistically I’m against the changes that were made because I feel like there was a better movie there to begin with. We thought we were making something like Boogie Nights because it was about a time of complete sexual abandon, but the studio watered it down. They had Mike Myers from Austin Powers and Neve Campbell from Scream, so they felt they could make a mall movie out of material that was a lot more edgy and honest. I did hear about that secret screening. I don’t know how big of an appetite there is for it, but I would certainly support a DVD release of that version. Breckin and I were a bit sad that nobody got to see us kiss.