54 Directors Cut.m4v

When Mark Christopher’s “54” came out in the summer of 1998, the film had been so heavily reshot, re-edited and retooled that producer Dolly Hall took to calling it “55.”

Now, almost 17 years later, Christopher has finally managed to complete the version of “54” that everyone signed up to make in the first place: the story of three friends — a busboy (Ryan Phillippe), a bartender (Breckin Meyer) and a coat-check girl (Salma Hayek) — and the sordid love triangle that nearly tore them apart, set against the glittery excess of New York’s Studio 54 dance club. That was the version everyone shot, until a set of disastrous test screenings changed the film’s fate forever.

“It was a movie ahead of its time,” Christopher mused, his back to a giant screen on which a shirtless Phillippe stands bathed in blue light.