‘Queenmaker’ Review: Society Blogger to Self-Made Celebrity

This incessantly startling documentary begins with some pretty banal observations in regards to the nature of a recent illness. In jaded tones, a feminine voice-over says, “After years of worshiping monarchs and majesty, we now worship the celebrity.” What follows for the following 20 minutes or so of “Queenmaker: The Making of an It Girl” constitutes a fast-paced account of the ascendancy of famous-for-being-famous wealthy youngsters — the Hilton sisters, the Miller sisters, Amanda Hearst, Olivia Palermo, Casey Johnson. The publicist Kelly Cutrone, describing New York nightlife within the late ’90s and early aughts, remembers, “People were doing blow and they were hanging out and they were making the world go ’round.” ’Twas ever thus, one supposes.

But the filmmaker Zackary Drucker’s narrative quickly alights on the blogs that lined the social whirl, then one particularly: Park Avenue Peerage, on the time a kinder, gentler various to Socialite Rank and Gawker and one particularly besotted with Tinsley Mortimer. The creator of Peerage is the true middle of this documentary and, to not be glib, however their story is a doozy.

The weblog’s origins had been nowhere close to Park Avenue. James Kurisunkal, the son of South Asian immigrants, began engaged on it from his scholar residence on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was fascinated by Mortimer and her world whereas dwelling on the concept that he was “not attractive, not skinny” and never white. When New York journal supplied him a job within the metropolis, the stage was set for disaster.

And his downfall was dramatic. Our tradition likes to speak about folks reinventing themselves. If you don’t already know this story (heartbreak, drug dependancy, excessive weight reduction, chapter, gender transition) the sleight of hand Drucker makes use of — which features a circle again to the jaded voice on the film’s starting — delivers its particulars with a wallop. And the finale is as compassionate as it’s unhappy and unnerving.

Queenmaker: The Making of an It Girl
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. Watch on Hulu.