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Even Annie Lennox hung out at the Strack Club: The Eurythmics singers is pictured here, circa the mid-80s, at the notorious Dallas nightspot.
For a long time many of us have been waiting for a movie that captured the boom-boom opulence and excess of 1980s Dallas -- and now it looks as if that movie might finally be on its way. Actually, two documentaries and a feature film, all about the very same nightclub, might soon be on the way.
Earlier this month at the USA Film Festival, Joe Alexandre and David McDonald premiered nineteen minutes of a work-in-progress documentary called Warriors of the Discotheque, a chronicle of the notorious Dallas hotspot The Starck Club. Known for its ultra-modern design (it was the first major effort by designer Philippe Starck) and rampant ecstasy use, the McKinney Ave. club lasted five years, from 1984 to 1989. McDonald used to be a waiter there.
Almost immediately after that screening, though, the club's owner Blake Woodall -- who is not cooperating with the Warriors of the Discoteque project -- announced that he's inked a deal with AFI Dallas Film Festival director and filmmaker Michael Cain (his TV Junkie premiered at Sundance in 2006 and went on to play on HBO) to make a documentary about the club. Cain will take a two month leave of absense from his AFI duties to work on the film, with hopes that it will be finished in time for Sundance 2010.
Meanwhile, Cain also says that he's trying to develop a feature film about The Starck Club -- a project he's apparently wanted to tackle for more than a decade. (Might I suggest my favorite whack-job French actor to play Starck?)
All of this sounds like an embarrassment of riches -- it will be interesting to see if there's enough material for one good movie, much less three -- but hey, it's Dallas in the 1980s, and it's all about excess, right?
