"Tickled" has more plot twists than your average movie, especially considering it's a documentary that starts off with a lighthearted look at the "sport" of competitive endurance tickling. But the most interesting thing about the movie may be what has happened since the cameras were turned off. Immediately after the first festival screenings at this year's Sundance and True/False, the filmmakers were slapped with a defamation lawsuit by one of the film's subjects.
[SPOILER ALERT: If you don’t want the movie’s surprises ruined, read no further. And even if you don’t plan to see it, proceed with caution. “Tickled” may be crazy, but its off-screen sequel is crazier.]
According to New Zealand filmmaker David Farrier — who directed "Tickled" with fellow Kiwi Dylan Reeve, and who sat for an interview while in Washington for last month's AFI Docs — the lawsuit has been dismissed in Utah and Missouri, where the early screenings took place. Yet Farrier says he's holding his breath, because the suit could be refiled in New York, where the litigant, lawyer David D'Amato, lives. Meanwhile, D'Amato, who was convicted in 2001 of cyber-harassment of a Drexel University student, also has filed another suit, for $40 million, alleging slander by his own stepmother. In "Tickled," Dorothy D'Amato's voice is heard on a phone call with the filmmakers, speculating about whether her stepson has a split personality and saying she is afraid of him.
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But first, a little backstory.
The idea for "Tickled" came about when Farrier, a television reporter and host known for his three-minute bits on quirky subcultures and pop stars, saw an online ad soliciting "lean, muscular, ticklish guys" for a series of videos about tickling. Intrigued by the coyly homoerotic wording — and the admittedly oddball premise — Farrier made an inquiry with the video production company, Jane O'Brien Media. He was promptly rebuffed by O'Brien's attorney, who wrote — in startlingly homophobic terms — that the company did not want to be associated with a known homosexual journalist. Farrier, who is bisexual, says he had no intention of playing up the story's gay angle. For the record, he says the community of tickling fetishists includes men and women and all sexual orientations.
That's about as far as Farrier got in his research before falling into what he calls a "tickling wormhole" that led to D'Amato, the secretive figure behind the Oz-like curtain of "Jane O'Brien," who apparently is not a real person. According to the film, D'Amato has, under that alias, harassed and made death threats against tickling-industry participants — a videographer, a recruiter, a ticklee — who have changed their minds about working with his company. At his right hand is Kevin Clarke, a producer of tickling videos who appears in the film and who has, since the film's opening, engaged in a campaign of public shaming against Farrier, even going so far as to show up at a post-screening Q&A at last month's Los Angeles screening, where he — and D'Amato — harangued the director, on video. An anti-"Tickled" website, www.tickledmovie.info, contains rants against the film, which Farrier says "sound unmistakably like Kevin."
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Here’s what else the 33-year-old filmmaker had to say about the movie and its unsettling aftermath, which he jokingly refers to as “Tickling 2.”
Q: What’s the goal of the Jane O’Brien videos?
A: The endgame of these videos is getting really straight, heterosexual men to tickle each other. That is part of the attraction for the person making them. It's easy to get young gay men to tickle each other, right? Let's come up with a challenge: Let's get heterosexual men. How do we do that? We make it a competition, because then it's not gay. That explains the antipathy behind the gay-journalist comment.
Q: Richard Ivey, the cheerful producer of fetish erotica who appears in the film — and by whom you submitted to being tickled — calls tickling “sadism brought down a notch.” Isn’t that the film’s true subject? And I don’t mean tickling sadism, but the sadism and bullying by people like David D’Amato?
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A: I couldn't agree more. I was tied down in that chair for 10 minutes and experienced what it was like to be completely powerless while someone else has complete dominance. It's sadistic, even though I find Richard to be a really lovely human being. That's what the whole film is about. It's not a film about tickling, but I think tickling offers a really good visual metaphor for the much bigger ideas that we were trying to get at about power and control — by people who have a lot of money — over people without money and who have no power in the relationship.
Q: Were you initially thinking this would be just another one of your little throwaway TV spots?
A: Totally. You could make a feature about the world of tickling. You could include female ticklers and you could find out why people are ticklish, but I don't think it would be a great documentary, when you're spending 90 minutes just finding out about the physiology and psychology of tickling.
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Q: If D’Amato is embarrassed by his connection to the tickling industry, isn’t it odd for him to have shown up at a screening, thereby drawing attention to himself? His comment in L.A. that he hopes the film “has a long and successful run in this country” — which suggests that he’s hoping to ruin you financially — sounded like a threat.
A: Dylan and I had talked about who might show up at Los Angeles. We thought Kevin might, but we did not expect the key player from the film to turn up. I've been analyzing what he said — whether he was being humorous, sarcastic, serious — and I tend to agree with what you said.
Q: The gist of Kevin’s criticisms of the film is that you behaved unethically by not informing all of the film’s subjects — including him — that they were being recorded and that you ambushed D’Amato on the street. Do you feel comfortable with your conduct?
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A: Everything in the film, which was vetted by lawyers, is perfectly legal. I'm not losing any sleep over what I did. Would I have loved to have been able to go through channels to sit down with everyone, with their permission? Yes. When you're doing an investigation of a company that is doing things that they don't want to be found out, and they say, "I don't want to be on tape," you're not suddenly going to step away and say, "Okay, I'm not going to make a film." In New Zealand, we have a one-party disclosure system, where if one of you knows you're being recorded, it's completely fine. It doesn't matter if the other person doesn't know. Look, I'm not breaking new ground by recording people who don't want to be recorded.
Q: What has been the strangest audience reaction so far?
A: A lot of people think this is a mockumentary. They think we've just made this up. The cinematography looks too good, so the whole thing must be fake. Reality TV has ruined people's ability to watch documentary.
Tickled (R, 92 minutes). At Landmark's Atlantic Plumbing Cinema.
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