944 Magazine profiles Clubland

MIDNIGHT MARAUDERS: AN INSIDE LOOK AT THE MAKING OF A NIGHTCLUB

By Brett O’Bourke
April 26, 2007

In a city as incestuous — on so many levels — as Miami, there is no more convoluted business than South Beach nightclubs. Twenty-three blocks makes for an awfully small town and those who stay in the game long enough will inevitably work together, screw each other over, work together again and screw each other over some more. Short fuses, short memories (the blow will do that to you) and short shelf lives for nightclubs, where three successful years is considered a good run, make for strange bedfellows and, often, great drama.

Few people understand that better than filmmakers Alfred Spellman and Billy Corben, whose latest documentary Clubland, a behind the scenes look at the making of the Mokai lounge, is soon to be released.

When ownership relationships went sour at Mynt in 2005, and Nicola Siervo, Rony Seikaly, Linley Edwards and Karim Masri decided to jump ship — taking key members of Mynt’s staff with them — and open their own club, the filmmakers were in the perfect position to capture it all.

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Meanwhile, the duo has plenty on their plate. Their last documentary, the critically acclaimed Cocaine Cowboys, is on the verge of becoming a full-fledged, straight-to-DVD franchise with Cowboys II due to hit shelves later this year. And work has begun on the middle part of Rakontur’s Miami trilogy, Rise and Fall, documenting the emergence of South Beach nightlife in the early ’90s and featuring the first post-jail time interview with former mafia henchman and club kingpin, Chris Paciello.

Score some action for yourself at www.rakontur.com