INTERVIEW: BRUCE LaBRUCE talks to FILEP MOTWARY
Dear iDEALS. I am starting this interview with no introduction. If you don't know who Bruce LaBruce is then you must live on another planet. Sorry for being so cruel, but Bruce is one of the people who helped my generation be special and optimistic.
FilepMotwary: Bruce, first of all thank you for accepting this interview. Did you think I was some kind of “lunatic” when I first contacted you? Bruce LaBruce: I hoped that you were some kind of lunatic, because I only trust people who are lunatics in this day and age. The world is such a mess right now that I totally mistrust people who are well-adjusted and optimistic all the time for no reason. I mean, you seem optimistic, and I’m optimistic. Optimism is good, but not all the goddamn time. I like lunatics because they are influenced by the moon, and I much prefer night-trippers to sun-worshippers. I find the sun a little too harsh and overbearing.FilepMotwaryYou come from a country that’s being constantly accused for it’s prejudice, political scandals, the filth in the White House etc.Where does an American artist like you stand in a place like America?
Bruce LaBruce: Oh gosh. I’m so glad that you mistook me for an American. Actually, I’m Canadian, but a lot of people think I’m American because I spent a year in LA making my movie Hustler White and because I try not to talk with a Canadian accent or talk about beavers and moose and the tundra all the time. But Canadians are cool because they can easily infiltrate America and be impostors and spy on the Yanks and report back to other Canadians about how insane they are. Unfortunately, in Canada at the moment we have a really gross conservative government that’s in the pocket of the Bush Administration. It’s so typically Canadian for us to wait until the whole world hates America to jump on the US imperialist bandwagon. But it has more to do with the slow, creaky machinery of the political system. The Liberal Party was in power for so long that they got lazy and corrupt, so they had to give the Conservatives a chance at bat. But I think all mainstream party politics is a sham anyway, and Hillary will be just as big a war monger as Bush/Cheney. Or Obama will have to prove he isn’t a pussy and he’ll wage war on Togo or something. Honestly, some of my best friends are American, but they really need to go to India and sit on a mountain top for a while or something.
FilepMotwary:Your biography is “packed” with achievements that are worldwide accepted and at the same time your work reflects the responsibility you feel for the Gay rights. Am I correct here? Bruce LaBruce: Well I do try to strike a balance (pose?) between legitimate art practice informed by a political consciousness on the one side and quasi-glamorous international jet-setting for its own sake on the other. But of course I’m a Marxist jet-setter, which means you travel lightly and in virtual poverty but as stylishly as possible within reason. My achievements are modest because I have very little ambition and I’m on the lazy side plus I’m pretty much anti-materialistic. I have this crazy notion that material possessions prevent you from achieving spiritual enlightenment. My favourite movie is The Razor’s Edge with Ty Power, Gene Tierney, and Annex Baxter. The W. Somerset Maugham book its based on is good too. Skip the Bill Murray version, although Theresa Russell is good in it, as per usual.
FilepMotwary: How was your upbringing? Bruce LaBruce: I had an idyllic, if lonely, childhood. I was raised on a 200 acre farm in Ontario, Canada. I was the middle child, with a five year gap on both sides, so I spent a lot of time by myself. I had two imaginary friends, Ghosty and Valentine. I was a sickly child and I almost died a couple of times, so my parents became overprotective and helped turn me into a fag. When I was two I had a dog named Tippy, but Tippy was jealous of all the attention I got and started getting nippy with me, so my Dad took Tippy out behind the barn and shot him. I didn’t find out until I was 18! But it was just par for the course on the cruel farm. I grew up in a very rough rural environment with a lot of tough, violent farm kids so I was terrorized a lot. What little motivation I have as an adult is based largely on a revenge motif. When I was a little older I had long orange curly hair and I looked like a girl, which was humiliating. I was also a Danny Partridge lookalike, but better looking. FilepMotwary: The only work of yours that I “added” in my personal DVD collection is “Skin Flick”. I have just found out that there is a hardcore version of it, with another title. What is hidden behind your desire to release the same film twice?
Bruce La Bruce: I just did the same thing with The Raspberry Reich. There’s a hardcore version out now called The Revolution is my Boyfriend. I don’t know, I guess I’m just torn between wanting to be more underground and inaccessible and more overground and accessible. Also I like having an all ages version for the kids, because I like the tween audience too. It’s mostly a matter of marketing. My movies are so low budget that you have to come up with creative ways of making your money back. FilepMotwary: What is your relation to Tony Ward? In Hustler White I was quite shocked to discover how much depth he has as a personality. All I knew until then was Madonna’s “Justify my Love” and his modeling years. Bruce LaBruce:I only spent a few weeks with him while shooting Hustler White, and then I toured with him a little bit with the movie. I always found him to be a perfect gentleman. He’s sort of like Marilyn Monroe – much, much smarter than he lets on. I was always more attracted to his brain than his body for some reason.FilepMotwary: How do you manage to be involved in so many different projects at the same time: from directing films to shooting fashion, from writing your column in the Gay Times to working for porn magazines.
Bruce LaBruce: It’s hard to do all that and also still do drugs. As I get old, it takes longer to recover from the effects of drugs and alcohol. When I was young, I could fit everything in. Now it’s tough. My approach is to treat everything as coming from the same creative pool. It’s just like Madonna says, express yourself. I have mixed feelings about Madonna, because she is, after all, counterrevolutionary, but you have to admit she is a great motivational speaker.FilepMotwary: Your fashion models are always people with tattooed bodies, piercing and generally have a “vulgar” image in terms of what most people, the mass consider beautiful. How is that? .Bruce LaBruce Do I? Well I was a punk rocker yes I was in the eighties. (In Canada they use that song Punkrocker Yes I Am by the Teddybears and Iggy Pop for a Cadillac Commercial on TV! It’s so crass and wrong! Down with all systems that have made and sustained capitalism and the capitalistic class system that has oppressed all the people of our histories! FilepMotwary: You have the tendency of picturing “fluids” of all kinds, especially blood, which you always combine with lust and passion. Of course, RED is passion, but really, could you please give us an explanation for your view on it?
Bruce LaBruce Somebody told me I use blood a lot because I’m always on the rag! Which is very old school gay. I just think blood always livens things up a little. Also it freaks me out that all those pints and pints of red blood are contained by such a thin, delicate membrane of skin. It’s so hidden, but so accessible! Just a slice away!FilepMotwary:How do you cast the people you work with? Describe a pragmatic day at your studio. Bruce LaBruce.I generally cast people I already know, or who I get to know first. I haven’t worked with that many professional actors. I find them a little de trop. I don’t really have a studio anymore. It’s a miracle that I produce anything.FilepMotwary:Who was the fist person you ever fell in love with and what impact did he/she have to the years that followed in your life? I am asking this because it is something I have experienced as well…
Bruce LaBruce What a question! I guess the first person I fell in love with was my sixth grade teacher Mr. Fischer. He was this hot short masculine young man with a moustache who came from the big city to teach the rural kids. He was always clashing with our Christian fundamentalist Principal. Mr. Fischer read us O’Henry stories out loud and I dunno he was just so butch when he rolled up his sleeves and quoted Shakespeare. Outside of television, of which we only got two channels, he was my first glimpse of a more sophisticated world out there somewhere. He also had a sadistic streak. FilepMotwary: What’s it like when you work for Honcho or Inches? This is a question that I am simply asking because I owned two or three copies as a teenager. Bruce LaBruce I don’t work for them anymore. I worked for them for about five years because there was an editor there who liked to do more creative stuff and also it was just this freaky time when they were paying a lot more money than they do know. Plus the Canadian dollar was weak so I was making a tidy profit. It was fun. I’m a reluctant pornographer, so I always had moral issues to contend with, like I didn’t want to exploit anyone or send them on a shame spiral. It was embarrassing sometimes. Mostly I look back upon it fondly. 
FilepMotwary: What does Bruce LaBRUCE want for 2007 and for the years coming? Bruce LaBruce Oh dear. Well, I don’t want world peace because honestly that would be dull. But it could be a little more peaceful than it is now. I’m happily married to a Cuban Santeria Priest, so that’s all good. I want to become smarter, but I don’t think it works that way. I would like to make better movies, but it’s such a mysterious process, I don’t know what will happen. It’s a crap shoot. Maybe I should quote Theresa Russell from Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession by Nicholas Roeg: “I’m not ambitious. I’m not a fucking artist. Or a poet. Or a philosopher. Or a goddamn revolutionary. I don’t want to have to pretend I am for anybody. I just want to be allowed to give where I can. How I can. To who I can.” FilepMotwary: Thank you Bruce, it was a great honor and pleassure talking with you.
FilepMotwary: Bruce, first of all thank you for accepting this interview. Did you think I was some kind of “lunatic” when I first contacted you? Bruce LaBruce: I hoped that you were some kind of lunatic, because I only trust people who are lunatics in this day and age. The world is such a mess right now that I totally mistrust people who are well-adjusted and optimistic all the time for no reason. I mean, you seem optimistic, and I’m optimistic. Optimism is good, but not all the goddamn time. I like lunatics because they are influenced by the moon, and I much prefer night-trippers to sun-worshippers. I find the sun a little too harsh and overbearing.FilepMotwaryYou come from a country that’s being constantly accused for it’s prejudice, political scandals, the filth in the White House etc.Where does an American artist like you stand in a place like America?Bruce LaBruce: Oh gosh. I’m so glad that you mistook me for an American. Actually, I’m Canadian, but a lot of people think I’m American because I spent a year in LA making my movie Hustler White and because I try not to talk with a Canadian accent or talk about beavers and moose and the tundra all the time. But Canadians are cool because they can easily infiltrate America and be impostors and spy on the Yanks and report back to other Canadians about how insane they are. Unfortunately, in Canada at the moment we have a really gross conservative government that’s in the pocket of the Bush Administration. It’s so typically Canadian for us to wait until the whole world hates America to jump on the US imperialist bandwagon. But it has more to do with the slow, creaky machinery of the political system. The Liberal Party was in power for so long that they got lazy and corrupt, so they had to give the Conservatives a chance at bat. But I think all mainstream party politics is a sham anyway, and Hillary will be just as big a war monger as Bush/Cheney. Or Obama will have to prove he isn’t a pussy and he’ll wage war on Togo or something. Honestly, some of my best friends are American, but they really need to go to India and sit on a mountain top for a while or something.FilepMotwary:Your biography is “packed” with achievements that are worldwide accepted and at the same time your work reflects the responsibility you feel for the Gay rights. Am I correct here? Bruce LaBruce: Well I do try to strike a balance (pose?) between legitimate art practice informed by a political consciousness on the one side and quasi-glamorous international jet-setting for its own sake on the other. But of course I’m a Marxist jet-setter, which means you travel lightly and in virtual poverty but as stylishly as possible within reason. My achievements are modest because I have very little ambition and I’m on the lazy side plus I’m pretty much anti-materialistic. I have this crazy notion that material possessions prevent you from achieving spiritual enlightenment. My favourite movie is The Razor’s Edge with Ty Power, Gene Tierney, and Annex Baxter. The W. Somerset Maugham book its based on is good too. Skip the Bill Murray version, although Theresa Russell is good in it, as per usual.FilepMotwary: How was your upbringing? Bruce LaBruce: I had an idyllic, if lonely, childhood. I was raised on a 200 acre farm in Ontario, Canada. I was the middle child, with a five year gap on both sides, so I spent a lot of time by myself. I had two imaginary friends, Ghosty and Valentine. I was a sickly child and I almost died a couple of times, so my parents became overprotective and helped turn me into a fag. When I was two I had a dog named Tippy, but Tippy was jealous of all the attention I got and started getting nippy with me, so my Dad took Tippy out behind the barn and shot him. I didn’t find out until I was 18! But it was just par for the course on the cruel farm. I grew up in a very rough rural environment with a lot of tough, violent farm kids so I was terrorized a lot. What little motivation I have as an adult is based largely on a revenge motif. When I was a little older I had long orange curly hair and I looked like a girl, which was humiliating. I was also a Danny Partridge lookalike, but better looking. FilepMotwary: The only work of yours that I “added” in my personal DVD collection is “Skin Flick”. I have just found out that there is a hardcore version of it, with another title. What is hidden behind your desire to release the same film twice?Bruce La Bruce: I just did the same thing with The Raspberry Reich. There’s a hardcore version out now called The Revolution is my Boyfriend. I don’t know, I guess I’m just torn between wanting to be more underground and inaccessible and more overground and accessible. Also I like having an all ages version for the kids, because I like the tween audience too. It’s mostly a matter of marketing. My movies are so low budget that you have to come up with creative ways of making your money back. FilepMotwary: What is your relation to Tony Ward? In Hustler White I was quite shocked to discover how much depth he has as a personality. All I knew until then was Madonna’s “Justify my Love” and his modeling years. Bruce LaBruce:I only spent a few weeks with him while shooting Hustler White, and then I toured with him a little bit with the movie. I always found him to be a perfect gentleman. He’s sort of like Marilyn Monroe – much, much smarter than he lets on. I was always more attracted to his brain than his body for some reason.FilepMotwary: How do you manage to be involved in so many different projects at the same time: from directing films to shooting fashion, from writing your column in the Gay Times to working for porn magazines.Bruce LaBruce: It’s hard to do all that and also still do drugs. As I get old, it takes longer to recover from the effects of drugs and alcohol. When I was young, I could fit everything in. Now it’s tough. My approach is to treat everything as coming from the same creative pool. It’s just like Madonna says, express yourself. I have mixed feelings about Madonna, because she is, after all, counterrevolutionary, but you have to admit she is a great motivational speaker.FilepMotwary: Your fashion models are always people with tattooed bodies, piercing and generally have a “vulgar” image in terms of what most people, the mass consider beautiful. How is that? .Bruce LaBruce Do I? Well I was a punk rocker yes I was in the eighties. (In Canada they use that song Punkrocker Yes I Am by the Teddybears and Iggy Pop for a Cadillac Commercial on TV! It’s so crass and wrong! Down with all systems that have made and sustained capitalism and the capitalistic class system that has oppressed all the people of our histories! FilepMotwary: You have the tendency of picturing “fluids” of all kinds, especially blood, which you always combine with lust and passion. Of course, RED is passion, but really, could you please give us an explanation for your view on it? Bruce LaBruce Somebody told me I use blood a lot because I’m always on the rag! Which is very old school gay. I just think blood always livens things up a little. Also it freaks me out that all those pints and pints of red blood are contained by such a thin, delicate membrane of skin. It’s so hidden, but so accessible! Just a slice away!FilepMotwary:How do you cast the people you work with? Describe a pragmatic day at your studio. Bruce LaBruce.I generally cast people I already know, or who I get to know first. I haven’t worked with that many professional actors. I find them a little de trop. I don’t really have a studio anymore. It’s a miracle that I produce anything.FilepMotwary:Who was the fist person you ever fell in love with and what impact did he/she have to the years that followed in your life? I am asking this because it is something I have experienced as well…Bruce LaBruce What a question! I guess the first person I fell in love with was my sixth grade teacher Mr. Fischer. He was this hot short masculine young man with a moustache who came from the big city to teach the rural kids. He was always clashing with our Christian fundamentalist Principal. Mr. Fischer read us O’Henry stories out loud and I dunno he was just so butch when he rolled up his sleeves and quoted Shakespeare. Outside of television, of which we only got two channels, he was my first glimpse of a more sophisticated world out there somewhere. He also had a sadistic streak. FilepMotwary: What’s it like when you work for Honcho or Inches? This is a question that I am simply asking because I owned two or three copies as a teenager. Bruce LaBruce I don’t work for them anymore. I worked for them for about five years because there was an editor there who liked to do more creative stuff and also it was just this freaky time when they were paying a lot more money than they do know. Plus the Canadian dollar was weak so I was making a tidy profit. It was fun. I’m a reluctant pornographer, so I always had moral issues to contend with, like I didn’t want to exploit anyone or send them on a shame spiral. It was embarrassing sometimes. Mostly I look back upon it fondly. FilepMotwary: What does Bruce LaBRUCE want for 2007 and for the years coming? Bruce LaBruce Oh dear. Well, I don’t want world peace because honestly that would be dull. But it could be a little more peaceful than it is now. I’m happily married to a Cuban Santeria Priest, so that’s all good. I want to become smarter, but I don’t think it works that way. I would like to make better movies, but it’s such a mysterious process, I don’t know what will happen. It’s a crap shoot. Maybe I should quote Theresa Russell from Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession by Nicholas Roeg: “I’m not ambitious. I’m not a fucking artist. Or a poet. Or a philosopher. Or a goddamn revolutionary. I don’t want to have to pretend I am for anybody. I just want to be allowed to give where I can. How I can. To who I can.” FilepMotwary: Thank you Bruce, it was a great honor and pleassure talking with you. 
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