Actor Alexis Gregory interviews cult filmmaker Bruce LaBruce. They talk art, porn, religion, gay culture, firebombs and François Sagat…
Hi Bruce. So you’re in London to launch your new book ‘Bruce(X)ploitation’ – what can we expect from it?
The book is a survey of my image-based work over the past 25 years. It starts with excerpts from my queer punk fanzine J.D.s from the late eighties, and continues with film stills and photographs from both my porn and gallery work, production stills from my theatre work, and some of my fashion work. The two editors of the book have also included essays about my work, in both Italian and English.
Your work is famously provocative, mixing art and porn and covering themes such as sex, politics, social issues and religion. How do you want audiences to respond to your work?
I don’t really think so much about how I want audiences to respond to my work. I just ask that they watch it with an open mind. There is a big double standard in many societies about porn – people seem to be more than willing to watch it and get off on it, but many of them look down their noses and judge those who make porn or appear in it. I don’t make a big distinction between art and pornography. It’s all a creative endeavor. Some art is good, some art is bad. Same with porn. My work is as much about porn and the meaning of porn than it is porn itself.
You work in mediums such as film, theatre and photography amongst others. Do you have a favourite to work in?
Film is always my first love. I am a huge cinephile. I really live and breath cinema. But I also love photography, which is, of course, quite related to cinema. Directing theatre is something relatively new for me, and I really like it, but I find it a bit terrifying!
Is there a difference to how your work is received in Europe and the States?
I think so. My films are very cult-y, and there is always a hardcore audience that watches and appreciates them for similar reasons no matter where they’re from. But in more general terms, I think my films are not taken quite as seriously, shall we say, in the States. But art film in general is a hard sell in the U.S. of A, especially in the last three decades or so. There’s a kind of reverse snobbism in the US and Canada with regard to “underground” or “alternative” or “cult” films or art. Europeans have a much more open attitude, and tend to accept experimental work on its own terms.
Your photo exhibition ‘Obscenity’ has just finished showing in Madrid. How would you describe it?
A clusterfuck? [Laughs]. It was very intense. Obscenity consisted of all new photographic work that I shot last autumn in Madrid, featuring dozens of Spanish performers, singers, artists, designers; some of them very famous in Spain, like Rossy de Palma and Mario and Alaska. The show was about the similarity between religious and sexual ecstasy, referencing classical art and Renaissance paintings that depict religious themes, but configuring it in a modern sexual context. This is how I saw the show, anyway, but many devout Catholics and conservatives – and Franco apologists! – begged to differ! There have been weekly, very vocal protests outside of La Fresh Gallery since the show began, and the gallery has been very supportive of me as an artist and of my freedom of expression. Oh yes, and somebody broke the front window of the gallery and threw an explosive device through it! But it didn’t go off – thank the goddess!
Did this reaction surprise you?
I was surprised by the extent of the protests, but then again, Spain, like many western countries – including Canada, where I’m from – is going through a very conservative phase. For me, the show was totally tamed down! I took some photos for the same series that were far more pornographic in nature, but we decided it would be too much, which is a good thing, because in that case I think the explosive device may have gone off! Of course for me, the point wasn’t really to be blasphemous, but more about the idea that there shouldn’t be a conflict between spirituality and sexuality. A lot of more rational and secular people in Madrid were a bit shocked by the extent of the backlash against the show.
What’s it like for you as an artist when you’re work receives that kind of response?
Well, I wish I could say that I face it all like a brave warrior and don’t let the negativity and hostility effect me, but that isn’t exactly the case. I am a sensitive faggot, so I feel that kind of negative energy very deeply, and I also have some sympathy for (some) of the people I offend. I mean, I like nuns as much as the next guy! [Laughs]. But I also assert my right to make an artistic statement about religion or about sexual representation and taboo in a particular cultural or historical context. So you have to be fearless with your art and not censor yourself, which is what I try to do.
You describe your work as dealing with the territory of the taboo and representing the unrepresentable. What do you consider to be currently taboo and unrepresentable in 2012… in an age when the internet reveals everything, are we still shockable?
I wrote in my Vice column about ‘Obscenity’ that very thing – haven’t any of these people ever Googled “sexy nun”? There are literally thousands of representations of sexy or even porn nuns – nunsploitation is a well developed genre! I think certain conservative elements merely disregard the internet as the work of Satan and avoid it altogether but there’s always a way to shock people, even if only by challenging conventional wisdom or reversing expectation.
“Some art is good, some art is bad. Same with porn.”
What do you feel that you, as a gay artist, want to address in your work and this changed from when you started out in the early 90s?
I was always as alienated by orthodox gay culture as I was by straight culture. My films are often about the problematic of identity politics, and the potential of homosexuality to avoid strict adherence to rules, genders, or the fixity of sexual roles. Quite often my films are about characters who have homosexual sex – hustlers, skinheads, terrorists – but who don’t necessarily identify as gay. I now also make work about transsexuals, whom I think are the new gender terrorists and radicals. I made a short porn film last year featuring two F-M transsexuals and my opera Pierrot Lunaire presented Pierrot as an F-M transsexual. But I’ve always felt estranged from any sort of idea of gay, or even queer community. Some of my best friends are heterosexual!
When you started out did you ever know that your career would develop in this way?
Well, who could have predicted something so insane? It’s been a difficult but rewarding path. For me the trick has always been to develop your own aesthetic and motifs and obsessions and stick with them. Try not to let them get watered down or compromised. I feel like I keep making the same kind of work, but it has slowly gained wider and wider recognition. You have to be patient.
Which new and up and coming directors, musicians and artists influence you?
Well, my friend Mike Feswick has a new sexy erotic publication called UpandComing that just came out with some of my photographs in it. I really appreciate what he’s doing in stodgy old Toronto. There are so many great bands these days, it’s hard to single out any, but I really like Light Asylum and Azari & III and Austra and stuff like that. Beers.Lambert are showing a lot of interesting new artists at their London gallery and I also just had dinner with the Peres Projects people, who represent me, and the American artist Alex Israel. He’s doing some very cool work
Much of your work is considered to be iconic and has cult status. Did you ever have any idea it will go on to be received as such?
When you make a porn movie with a neo-Nazi skinhead jerking off onto a copy of Mein Kampf like in my movie Skin Flick, or an amputee hustler fucking another hustler up the ass with his leg stump like in my movie Hustler White, or an alien zombie fucking a surfer back to life after a car accident by rubbing his big alien dick directly against his heart like in my movie L.A. Zombie, you are pretty much assured cult success!
I’ll bet. So, what is next for you to top the firebomb experience?
Oh gosh, I have a few projects on the go. A have a script called Gerontophilia that will hopefully get financed this year. I also have a script called Santo the Obscene, about a beggar saint who performs miracles and heals people through obscene acts. I’m looking for producers, if anyone’s interested!
What was it like directing François Sagat in ‘LA Zombie’?
I always thought François was hot, and I almost cast him in a fashion shoot once, but didn’t because of his head tattoo! So I always regretted that. Then I saw a YouTube video he did for Halloween as a kind of vampire, so it gave me the idea to write a scenario for him making him into like an alien zombie superhero character. He just seemed like a very creative and sexy performer that I wanted to work with.
What do you think his appeal is to gay men?
Besides his gorgeous face and hot body? [Laughs] Well, he has a sensitivity that really reads on camera. He seems genuine and honest.
On a similar note and again regarding one of your leading men, you got to share a screen kiss with Tony Ward in ‘Hustler White’. How was it? I am asking purely in the name of investigative journalism.
Tony Ward also had those same qualities – someone obviously so handsome and with a great body, but sensitive, and also a very creative person in his own right. The kiss was quite memorable. If you look closely, you will see I am aroused in my tight white pants on the beach.
What are your feelings on the self-destructive nature that some gay men share in terms of sex and drugs?
Well, I’ve been there. For me it was one of those things where you are chasing some kind of ultimate fuck, some intense sexual experience that transcends time and space and just shoots you into a cosmic sexual alternative universe. But, of course, you finally realize that nature is about balance, and that kind of experience can never be sustained for long. Some people damage themselves permanently in that search, and never make it all the way back, and it’s sad. But I definitely understand the impulse.
What are your opinions of London and its position in relation to the rest of the world – gay or straight?
You’re going to get me in trouble. Of course, I always appreciate aspects of big, legendary world capital cities like Paris or London or New York, but the problem is that they are so extraordinary that everyone wants to live there, and they become kind of unlivable in some ways. And I’ve always been suspicious of things that are too popular, and that attract all the popular kids. I prefer off the beaten track. But I love visiting!
What else do you normally get up to when you’re in London?
Fish and Chips!
• ‘Bruce(X)ploitation’ is out now, published by Beers.Lambert. For further information or to view/purchase work by Bruce LaBruce in London, please visit Beers.Lambert Contemporary at www.beerslambert.com or visit the gallery at its new location near Old Street beginning in June 2012 located at 1 Baldwin Street, London, EC1V 9NU.
