When gay New Zealand pop-culture reporter David Farrier finds a story on “competitive endurance tickling,” he discovers a wormhole so weird and wild, he and his colleague Dylan Reeve had to make a documentary about it.
“Tickled,” opening July 1 at the Ritz at the Bourse, is that fantastic — as in great, as in unreal — film.
The “sport” (if it can be called that) involves guys, ages 18-23, being strapped down on a bed or bench with their hands and feet bound and tickled by other guys for up to 18 minutes. The scenes are filmed and uploaded to the Internet. And, as Farrier discovered, if you investigate or try to leave, you will be harassed.
Farrier gets a homophobic response, as well as a legal notice from a tickling site, Jane O’Brien Media, which only arouses his curiosity. As he ferrets out this tickling fetish subculture, “Tickled” becomes both a serious and funny-strange cautionary tale. The filmmaker spoke with PGN about his amazing documentary.
PGN: Are you ticklish, David?
DF: I am. I didn’t know how ticklish I was before I met Richard [a tickling fetishist featured in “Tickled”]. When we set up the interview, Richard said I had to be tickled first. So I did 10 minutes in his tickling gym. I wanted to see what being tickled by a professional tickler was like.
PGN: What do you think the tickling fetish represents?
DF: It’s a combination of things. I think power comes into it. It’s kind of like BDSM, but brought way down.
PGN: What appealed to you about the Jane O’Brien site?
DF: It was more the competition — this idea that there is a tickling competition and really good money in it. That’s what I found interesting.
PGN: Your investigation took some unusual directions. How do you feel about how things turned out?
DF: We made the film because we saw this online harassment was happening. I was getting harassed. The guys from the videos were getting harassed. We wanted to shine a light on these things. I’m proud of the film. But there have been some defamation lawsuits, which is stressful.
PGN: What was your sense of the people you interviewed, and how their lives were affected by Jane O’Brien Media?
DF: A lot of the people [we interviewed] were drawn into this world because they were offered money and they went for it. There are countless examples of how money is used to gain control over other people. I want people who see the film to think twice about things. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. People who grew up with the Internet think they have seen it all, but there are still ways to be tricked.
PGN: You and your co-director Dylan were very shrewd investigators. Can you talk about how you approached the “mystery”?
DF: I think Dylan and I brought different things to the table. Dylan can dig into websites. We spent time on the phone chasing leads. Some people think that if they don’t get information through Google or Facebook, they give up. We called [folks] again and again, especially when we were doing research to connect dots on the historic aspect of the story.
PGN: Given that you are a gay man, and the tickling sites are pretty homoerotic, can you talk about how you presented the “queer” content in “Tickled”?
DF: From the beginning, when I got the homophobic response, I wanted to know who had said this to me. I saw people were being harassed and had their lives ruined. I think the power of journalism and documentary filmmaking is the opportunity to expose people for the public good. Overall, the film is less about tickling, and more about the mystery. I wanted to treat things fairly objectively. I wasn’t giving my opinion. I don’t see “Tickled” as a “gay” film, but it will be of interest to the gay community. A lot of the reasons these videos were troubling to these young men was because they were from areas of the country where being gay — or being seen as gay — was a problem. The fact that it’s a problem is a problem. Many of the guys weren’t gay. Anyone being called gay shouldn’t be a problem, but Jane O’Brien Media played with that. I hope people think twice before bullying anyone or being homophobic or negative in any way.