Director Allan Brocka’s 2006 film Boy Culture has blazed a trail through queer and independent film festivals around the world despite a miserly budget. An official selection at TRIBECA film festival and winner of a swag of awards worldwide, Boy Culture sold out all its shows at both this year’s Melbourne and Sydney’s queer film festivals and will be available to Perth audiences on DVD from the 9th of June.
The film was based on a critically acclaimed novel by Matthew Rettenmund and is the candid confession of highly successful male escort, X, on a journey of emotional education. When his new, reclusive elderly client begins telling a story of a love affair spanning fifty years, X unwittingly drifts from his devotedly emotionless existence, and considers allowing himself to love for the first time.
Boy Culture initially attracted Brocka for its unashamedly male perspective. Rather than pointing to queer films, Brocka cited films like Fight Club and Trainspotting – ‘fun and playful’ films with ‘cool shots’ as influences. He said, ‘What I’ve seen a lot of in gay films is gay versions of stories, they’re the films we grew up with just with gay characters in them, but I hadn’t seen something that was really a gay experience with romance. This film I wanted to be about gay issues. Stereotypically, it’s guys who can’t commit, when you put two men in a film you get these issues times two.’ He pointed to the living situation of X and his housemates Andrew and Joey as an example of a uniquely gay dilemma, saying ‘Those boundaries between friendship and sex are blurred because there’s not that clear line drawn down gender lines.’
Author of the novel, Matthew Rettenmund, in the production phase of the film, said ‘Now I finally have the unique opportunity to watch a film adapted from my work, which is like being a parent and getting the chance to see how your neighbours would raise your child if given the chance.’
Given the difficulty of adapting another writer’s work, I asked Allan Brocka how he worked with an adaptation of a novel. ‘It was pretty nice to work with a book. I really could relate to it. I could just enter someone’s world, but I could shape it and interpret it, I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted.’ One such interpretation was Brocka’s decision to change the character Andrew from white to black, a revision that scared Rettenmund originally, but one the author ended up thinking was a good choice.
Another interpretation came in the film’s poignant relationship between X and his elderly client Gregory. In the book, Gregory was one of X’s many clients, but for Brocka, he stood out due to the difference in their ages, and so in the film he becomes one of the pivotal characters. Gregory’s story of his lost love slowly pries X out of the emotional bunker he’s been hiding in, and he eventually convinces X to risk giving feeling a shot.
In the wake of his emotional education at the hands of Gregory, X slowly but surely finds himself giving in to his feelings for his housemate, Andrew.
For Brocka, the future for queer films is ‘looking amazing! Over here [America] there’s two gay networks, there’s over 200 film festivals worldwide, so there’s all of these outlets…. And it’s still profitable to make films on a low budget.’ Brocka also said, while low budgets were still an issue for independent film makers, new technology such as high definition makes high quality images increasingly affordable. While he attributed the (refreshingly) high quality of the photography in Boy Culture to the talent of director of photography, Joshua Hess, new technology also played an integral role.
According to Brocka, the current combination of new technology and distribution opportunities mean that for queer film ‘It’s the perfect time because there’s lots that hasn’t been done yet. The huge success of Bareback Mountain means that there’s even studio interest in gay films, so that’s a huge barrier we’ve got through. The future is wonderful!’
