plot element, do you think the recent
outpouring of movies on the
epidemic are more responsible and
relevant?
is so good that it’s hard to believe you
did it all on a shoe string.
Thank you. I am a filmmaker that really
cares about image and the camerawork.
It’s a hard subject to tackle. Sometimes it
Whereas a lot of other directors are just
takes a culture a while to process and digest interested in the script and the acting, and
so maybe it’s time for people who
see the camera as a means to an end. I am
experienced the sheer horror of it all and
very much interested in the language of
now have something relevant to say
cinema and I try to write the script and film
creatively.
in that way.
One of your characters in your first
movie in The New Twenty was also
HIV+, and now after this latest
movie, I am wondering how
important that aspect of his character
(Laughing) You say that as if I had the
luxury of being offered studio funding! Both was to you?
of my movies were truly independent.
Although you have much less money and a It’s very important. To any gay man in their
smaller audience as you don’t have enough 30s and up, this was such a critical moment
funds to market it properly, the trade off is in our lives, with the fear and urgency of so
that you have total creative freedom. What much ignorance, fear and paranoia, it just
Kickstarter did give me was connections to left an indelible mark on who we are. Now
an audience in a very personal way as many with recent alarming rises in infection rates
of the donors, whether they were giving $10 today, it’s even more important to
or $500, wrote to tell me why the subject
remember these things.
mattered to them so much.
You had such high production values
in your film that the finished product
AUG / SEPT 2014 | THEGAYUK 27
Images: Peccapics
Did raising the finance thr ough
Kickstarter give you a freer hand
creatively?