Fringe! Interview: Travis Mathews "I Want Your Love"

Craig here, with a preview of Travis Mathews’ debut feature I Want Your Love and an interview about the film with the director.

Jesse Metzger stars in the explicit drama about a performance artist leaving San Francisco

This week sees the return of the Fringe! Gay Film Festival to East London. From the 12th to the 15th of April a wide range of films (new features, experimental shorts, premieres) are showing alongside a host of parties, shows and events. This year’s opening film was I Want Your Love, Travis Mathews’ (In Their Bedroom – Berlin) poignantly affecting and intimately explicit debut feature. It stars Jesse Metzger as Jesse, a love-lost San Francisco performance artist about to leave his life and career frets behind for a fresh start in Ohio. We see him hang out with friends, and follow how their lives reflect, and differ from, Jesse’s as they prepare to throw him a leaving party.

Jesse Metzger and Ben Jasper in a flashback to their relationship

There’s an easy charm to the story of this group of amiable guys. Mathews films in a close, intimate way that allows revealing insights into their easy-going personalities. The characters feel real, unaffected by some of the over-familiar clichés that more mainstream gay cinema offers up. The performances – especially Metzger, as Jesse, and Brontez Purnell, as one of his witty friends – are pitched perfectly and entirely natural. The real sex peppered throughout the film acts more as culminations of built-up feeling than a way to shoehorn overt sexuality into the story.

Mathews emphasizes atmosphere throughout. Some segueing shots are delicately composed to establish an evocative sense of place and time of day: the harbour at dawn, hazy afternoons chatting in shops, empty streets at dusk. You get a feeling for a rich, charming San Francisco that chimes with the film’s plot arc: why does Jesse need to leave when what he has here is so close-knit? What is it that he needs to change in his life? I Want Your Love offers up these questions, and plenty more, for its audience to mull over while depicting 21st century gay relationships in an honest, open way. In a small way, I Want Your Love is an affectionate retelling of Maupin’s Tales of the City in microcosm for the now.

 I spoke to Travis last week about I Want Your Love, the Fringe! and his feelings about his work...

Writer/Director Travis Mathews

Craig for The Film Experience:  I Want Your Love is great. A splendid addition to not just gay cinema, but invigorating filmmaking in general; and early word is hugely positive. You must be very proud.

TRAVIS MATHEWS: Aw, that's really nice of you to say. I'm proud to have just survived it, let alone come out with a movie that I'm excited to share with people. Making features - I'm learning - is like running a small business...

[porn alternatives and terrifying Q&As after the jump...]

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Psyched Over "Making of 'Psycho'"?

Jose here. Biopics are always a controversial topic. People get riled over the casting choices, the director, the time period they cover etc. (Anyone still remember when Julia Roberts was interested in playing Kate Hepburn?)

One of the biggest upcoming biopics officially begins production tomorrow. It's none other than Hitchcock (based on Stephen Robello's Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho) which will chronicle the making of one of the greatest movies of all time.  The movie will be directed by Sacha Gervasi (of Anvil! The Story of Anvil semi-fame) and as of now has one of the most fascinating casts assembled in recent history to pay tribute to this legendary movie,

Anthony Hopkins headlines as Hitch and Helen Mirren will play his wife Alma Reville. Scarlett Johansson and James D'arcy are set to play Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins respectively (although the other way around would've been interesting too, where's Todd Haynes when you need him?)

Why don't we just take a look at them with their real life counterparts?

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Django Unchained, Poster Teased.

It's a pity that there are 257 days left until Christmas. Am I right?

Isn't it wonderful when a movie can be sold on the name of their auteur alone? 

Wouldn't it be wonderful if final movie posters were ever as graphically bold as teaser posters?

Madonna from "Truth or Dare" to "MDNA"

It's hard to believe that the be all and end all of celebrity documentaries, Truth or Dare (1991) is already over 20 years old. Actual age aside, Truth or Dare is timeless not just because it captured one of the most famous women who has ever lived at the peak of her popularity, but because of how daringly it performed that capture. I'm sure it's impossible for anyone under 25 to imagine how shocking Madonna's behavior in the early 90s was. Believe it or not there was a time when the demistification of Celebrity was anathema to Hollywood.

You can argue that some of the magic went out of the movies the more access we had to the magicians on and behind the screen, but there was no stopping the intrusiveness of the information age. Madonna's acclaimed film and --  to a lesser extent though no one wants to give it credit -- her often reviled "Sex" book predicted all of it by revealing more and More and MORE (and then some more) of herself. Madonna has never been a great actress but she has given a genius film performance and this was it. (Her performances in Evita and the short film Star! are a distant second.)

If you're interested in influential landmarks in pop culture I urge you to read Rich Juzwiak's exhilarating piece on Truth of Dare (it's out on Blu-Ray for the first time) over at Gawker 

Madonna has rarely had her finger directly on the pulse—it took her years to dabble in electronica and new jack swing and French house—but over 20 years after its release,Truth or Dare is relevant as ever. (It's out on Blu-ray for the first time today.) It's as close to a memoir as Madonna has ever gotten, and it's brilliantly fitting that the music video master stuck with the trusted audio-visual format that catapulted her to success. Why write when you can be? Madonna's life banged the dust out of vérité entertainment, suggesting the documentary didn't have to be stuffy, that it could be wildly entertaining and overwhelmingly trashy... 

 But while we're on the topic of the Queen a few notes on MDNA after the jump...

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HMWYBS: "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs"

In the "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" series we invite everyone to choose their favorite shot from a movie and explain why. This week's film is the impossibly influential Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) which launched Disney's feature animation empire. Given that the Snow White myth is the subject of two new films Mirror Mirror (reviewed) and the upcoming Snow White and the Huntsmen (interview tease) we thought it was time to take a look way back.

So Heigh Ho Heigh Ho, it's off to work we go.

When I think of Snow White these days my first thought is no longer the movie itself but my first trip to Disney World just three years ago with friends. On the last day of the lengthy trip my friends realized I hadn't been to the part of the park that had the oldest rides, the ones that were considered more for children and it turned out to be my favorite part. My absolutely favorite ride was Peter Pan (such gorgeous dioramas) but I remember Snow White best because I was startled by the nightmarish imagery. This is for children?

In my  last two subsequent screenings of Disney's first classic, it all made sense. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) is much more adult in its terror than modern animated films ever dare to be, raising knives and clubs at its heroine, threatening her with non-consensual heart surgery, and throwing her into a haunted forest. It repeatedly threatens her with warped and clawed hands whether they're from trees, shadows, or evil queens disguised as old crones.

So it only seemed right that the iconic shot I'm choosing as best pans diagonally down from gnarled hands to a smoother one, the fairest of them all in point of fact. 

Witch: Don't let the wish grow cold!
Snow: Ohhhh. I feel strange.
Witch: Her breath will still
Her blood congeal...

Though the entire scene is filled with implied terror this shot actually averts its gaze demurely the way the film doesn't in other scenes, unexpectedly making Snow White's poisoning by apple much scarier. Our focus here is entirely on the evil Queen's evil as it were, as her breathing and hand motions and whispering all ecstatically await Snow's demise. It's very creepy and makes Snow's collapse feel not just terrible but inevitable.

But... 

In order to live happily ever after, we close with a happier moment. My favorite shot in the film if not my choice for "best" comes in the film's very first minutes as Snow sings "♪ I'm wishing... (I'm wishing) for the one I love ♫" and listens to her own voice echoing back to her. It's an unexpected image (who thought to shoot from the well's point of view?) and it's also richly prophetic. When I see this shot I think of the movie and character echoing ever after in cinema through every princess, every "I Want" song and every fairy tale fantasy. It started everything and ripples still. 

 Heigh Hoooooooo ♫ It's Off to Blogs You Go...
In honor of Happy, Sleepy, Bashful and the like, we're giving these blogs dwarf names befitting their awesome choices for best shot. Click around to see why I chose these names.

• "Shiny" (Animation Revelation) 
• "Flirty" (Cinesnatch)
• "Fabu" (Awww, the Movies)
• "Slippery" (Antagony & Ecstacy)
• "Dainty" (Okinawa Assault)
• "Juicy" (The Tomas Experience)
• "Bitchy" (Dial P For Popcorn)
• "Dreamy" (Encore Entertainment)
• "Grumpier" (Serious Film)
• "Thirsty" (Film Actually)
• "Moody" (Pussy Goes Grrr)
• "Vanity" (The Film's The Thing)
• "Purity" (Movies Kick Ass)

Next on "Hit Me"...
April 18th Serenity (2005) and/or "Firefly" (2002)
With two Joss Whedon related movies about to hit theaters (The Avengers and Cabin in the Woods) let's look at his feature film directorial debut. If you've never seen Firefly, the series on which this is based you can substitute the tv pilot for the feature if you want (one time only!). Both are available on Instant Watch.
April 25th Raise the Red Lantern (1991)
I've been itching for Gong Li lately and rather shockingly I've never seen this major film in her career. Nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars.
May 2nd Pariah (2011)
I thought we'd do something brand new on DVD (we never do that!). Mostly because I'd like more people to see this moving LGBT indie.