Go Go Tales (2007) NYT Critics' Pick

[lsanderson]

Willem Dafoe as a club owner in Abel Ferrara’s “Go Go Tales.”
A Bar Where Everybody Knows Your Pole Dance
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: January 6, 2011

Heaven, David Byrne likes to sing, is a bar where the band plays your favorite song and everyone leaves the party at the same time. Mostly, though, “heaven is a place, a place where nothing, nothing ever happens,” which pretty much describes the usual scene at Ray Ruby’s Paradise Lounge. A gorgeously tawdry nirvana set in Manhattan, Paradise Lounge is an old-school strip club run by a soulful dreamer, Ray Ruby (a wonderful Willem Dafoe), who with love and not enough money is struggling to keep his people and parts in play — a beautiful metaphor for the filmmaking hard times faced by the likes of Abel Ferrara. More