Trivia
Ryan Phillippe's character is based on Tieg Thomas, who worked at the legendary Studio 54 from 1977 to 1982.
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In the end credits, Mike Myers' name appears next to a photo of Gilda Radner at Studio 54. When Myers was a boy, he played Radner's son in a Canadian television commercial, and both were cast members of "Saturday Night Live" (1975) (at different times).
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Comedian Mike Myers's first dramatic serious role in a theatrical feature film playing nightclub owner Steve Rubell.
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The disco era covered in this movie spans from the summer of 1979 to 1981 while Studio 54 was run by Steve Udell and Ian Schrager.
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Writer-director Mark Christopher spent about five years writing and researching the disco era and Studio 54.
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Production studio Miramax developed a partial screenplay in 1995 and acquired the rights to this movie in 1997.
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Though set in New York, the majority of this film was actually shot in Toronto, Canada in 1997. Principal photography for this movie was filmed during September, October and November 1997. Re-shoots of the picture were filmed in June 1998 only about two months before the film was due to launch in late August 1998. This additional photography was shot in New York and cast were not told the content of the scenes. The additional filming was conducted due to the poor results from early test screenings. Ultimately, 45 minutes of the original film was replaced with 25 minutes of new footage, the running time went from a two hour version to one around an hour and a half.
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This film was released in the same year as another disco movie, The Last Days of Disco. Production of that film was accelerated in order to get it released before 54 which it beat to theaters by about three months.
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In 2008, about a decade after its original theatrical debut, writer-director Mark Christopher assembled a bootleg Director's Cut of the film with 45 minutes of never before seen footage and unofficially screened it at New York's Outfest around July-August 2008. This version reinstated the blatant promiscuity and bisexuality of Ryan Phillippe's character, as well as the film's core love triangle between Phillippe, Salma Hayek and Breckin Meyer which the Miramax studio forced him to cut from the original release.
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The film's promotional '54' film title logo was set in the same font and design typeface as the actual Studio 54 logo.
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