GQ presents yet another Atlanta strip club doc

? We know this story well. In fact, we’ve lived it for more than a decade and a half now. But with each passing summer, the outsider fascination with Atlanta strip club culture, and its intrinsic ties to the city’s commercial hip-hop scene, seem further renewed.
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? GQ has now entered the fray with Magic City, a web film named for the iconic club that serves as the focus.
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? As producer of this film, GQ is a bit of a latecomer to the documentation-cum-celebration genre of strip club docs. One of the best in recent history was released a few years ago by independent Atlanta-based filmmaker Artemus Jenkins. He profiled several of Magic City’s well-known dancers with revealing locker-room interviews that highlighted honest conversation more than the overhyped angle. Noisey’s 2014 docu-series covered a wider expanse and actually wasn’t bad, once it got past the hipster safari feel that tends to lace so much of Vice’s hip-hop-related coverage. None have explored the rash of class action dancer lawsuits that have hit just about every strip club in Atlanta in recent years.
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? GQ’s film will be released to stream on the gentleman quarterly’s website this Friday. In the meantime, two clips are (one of which is embedded here) are live. Magic City features interviews with rappers Future and Cool Amerika, Future’s tour DJ and Magic City’s DJ Esco, club owner/artist manager Lil Magic, artist manager Kingpin, and Stuey Rock from Atlanta’s Hot 107.9FM, among others.
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? It’s directed by documentary filmmaker and photographer Lauren Greenfield. Her past work, according to Wikipedia, includes the exploration of a residential treatment facility in Florida for women with eating disorders in the 2006 HBO doc THIN. But she’s best known for directing the 2012 theatrically-released doc The Queen of Versailles, about the financial crisis a timeshare magnate and his spendthrift wife endure in the midst of building one the most expensive single-family homes in the nation as the housing market begins to crash around them.
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? The Queen of Versailles was full of all the imaginable irony and absurdity. It’s hard to get a sense from the clips currently available what the unique angle is to GQ’s Magic City. From the synopsis, at least, it reads like the same old story:
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? ?? Magic City is more than just a strip club. The ATL hot spot is where aspiring rappers try to break into the game by using the club’s strong influence in the hip hop industry. It’s where Future first earned his big break, and it’s where ambitious dancers seek out fame and fortune beyond the pole. Watch a preview of the new documentary, MAGIC CITY, a film by Lauren Greenfield ??
? I’ll be sure to update the post on Friday with a link to the full-length, uncensored version.