Hannah Maguire

And that's the reason he let the bankers in, not just the celebrities.

And the studio never had a VIP area, but it did invent the red velvet nightclub rope inspired by cinema crowd control.

That had never happened before.

And as I said at the start, like the 70s, is this specific window of time where if you were going to party.

And that's additionally because the Vietnam War had just sort of petered out and the civil rights movement was ongoing, but most of it was over.

So New York was ready to party after years of protest and upheaval.

Interesting people were everywhere, making new genres of everything.

Punk, hip-hop, pop art all came out of New York at this time.

It was exciting.

It was an exciting place to be, exciting city to live in, full of artists.

And Studio 54 put them all in the same room, dancing on the same mechanical stage.

Pride before a fall, too close to the sun.

Yeah.

How many more have you got?

In the secret books that literally they are hiding in the ceiling.

When they're taking cash out for themselves, they skim about two million.

They write skim in the ledger.

I saw an interview with the IRS agent and he was like, if you're going to skim, skim a couple of hundred here and there.

Steve and Ian were skimming all over the place.

They were skimming millions.