QX: Was there a conscious effort to add that kind of subtext in, in a sense of breaking through the genres? I mean it's not a porn film, it's not a gay film. It's kind of a road movie, a mystery-it's got all of these things going on.
WW: Exactly. We really wanted to do something you couldn't pigeonhole either in terms of sexuality or style.
RG: One of the main characters is Johnny Rebel the porno star, and he's somebody that says he's straight and does gay porn. We never wanted to simplify it and make it, 'Oh he's just somebody who's gay and not coming out of the closet.' These people exist and they're a genuine mystery-that someone could cross their sexual boundary, defy their sexual orientation in order to perform on a daily basis in a porn film. I mean it would have been easy to have Sean and Johnny Rebel running off into the sunset at the end, or to make some sort of cute little gay comedy. But we didn't want to make a ghettoised film. We didn't want to make a film that was safe. We wanted to make a film that surprised people by not going where it seemed to be going.
QX: How do you get a film like this out there? Because each genre is so specific and you can get locked into any one of them.
WW: One simple thing: Everyone wants to know what a fluffer is! You know, it'd get in any newspaper because it's something taboo that hasn't been dealt with. As far as distribution, the film has sent people in opposite directions. In America they're convinced they have to sell the movie to the gay dollar, so they're promoting it with loads of muscle boy pictures. In Spain they pulled it from two lesbian and gay film festivals because they said if it's perceived as a gay film it'll ruin its theatrical run. So they're promoting it as a straight film. But it's not either!
RG: As filmmakers you're always wanting to do something that does cross lines and redefine things. And yet distributors are more comfortable with films they can pigeonhole, because it can present advertising problems. But I think it also offers a great potential for pulling people in from different walks of life. Younger people couldn't care less about those boundaries, and they've been really supportive of our film, which we find really exciting. Because we feel like some of these definitions and categories are tired and should be discarded.