WORLDLY PLEASURES WITH BRUCE LABRUCE

In this exclusive interview for Buds Digest, the longtime writer, filmmaker and champion of sex-positivty, who’s newest film Saint-Narcisse enjoys a full release mid-July, sets his critical eye on everything from religion, to new age naiveté, to the most dangerous narcotic there is: Netflix. Fellow Torontonian, and our long time Bud, CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN joins LABRUCE for a stroll and photos.

Hi Bruce, we’d love to know what you are working on.

LABRUCE: My newest movie Saint-Narcisse premiered at the Venice Film Festival last September. We were so lucky because the pandemic had waned and we were able to go in person and show it in a theater. It was at this glamorous festival, we were dining al fresco everywhere. You know, Matt Dillon is sitting at the table next to us — it was all very glamorous.

It’s been playing at film festivals since then. It is just having its debut now at the Boston LGBTQI+ festival. It's also playing in Miami at Outshine at the end of the month, which is ahead of its [Film Movement] release in the States; probably mid-July nationwide streaming and some theatrical. 

At the beginning of the pandemic, I started working on a photo book from Baron Booksbooks called Death Book. It was a great opportunity for me to dig into my photo archive and work with the editor Matthew Holroyd and designer Max Siedentopf, which is out now. I also currently have a show up at Culture Edit Gallery/Store, which is also the Tom of Finland Store, for at least another month. If you're in LA, it's an actual gallery space, where you can go in and see the book. We took the prints and shot bullet holes through some of them. So it's a physical show, you can buy prints from the book and online. 

I’m also working on new scripts… 

Tell us about the scripts!  

LABRUCE: I have at least three, maybe four films in development, whether or not any or all of them will get made is another question, but they are in  various stages of development. But, I want to start from scratch with a new one, which is partly based on COVID reality. I was thinking of my producer in Quebec… two of my recent features have been shot in Quebec because they have a great film industry there and they're more open to crazy script ideas. He was saying, “You know, because of the COVID era, people are looking for more simplified scripts, single locations…” My apartment here overlooks a parking lot, and it's crazy. Here in downtown Toronto, all sorts of crazy shit happens in this parking lot. It's a kind of busy intersection and so this kind of Rear Window idea came to me. Because I live alone, I'm kind of fascinated by all these, like, gay historical figures like, Quentin Crisp and Taylor Mead, you know, who are these older men who lived in squalid apartments, quite contentedly. I don't think mine's quite as squalid as theirs were. *glances around apartment* I see these YouTube videos of Quentin Crisp, in his apartment, which he refused to clean or dust. And so he literally had, you know, an inch or more of dust accumulated. He said, “After four years, it reaches a certain plateau where it's just ossified, and you don't have to clean again.” *chuckles* And they both had like, hot plates they cooked on. I mean, Quentin Crisp lived to be 90 in this kind of apartment, and Taylor Mead, I think was 86 years old. So those kinds of characters have been fascinating me, projecting into my future, maybe. But there's a Hustler angle in it too, which I haven't made in quite a while. So, maybe I'll go back to my roots.

In addition to the smaller productions, do you feel like the pandemic and COVID is inspiring new art?

LABRUCE: I think the whole NFT explosion is partly a response to the pandemic and, you know, I'm kind of reluctantly and skeptically participating. I have an NFT now on Foundation and also on OpenSea. This fellow named Toby Mott, who did a couple of books on skinheads and punks that I contributed to, has a company called Cultural Traffic. He sort of curated an NFT show — he invited all the artists he's worked with, to mint NFTs. I think as people are more glued to their computers and doing everything virtually, it’s just part of the new art landscape, it's unavoidable. And how much that's going to revert back to the old model after the pandemic is over, you know, who knows, but it's certainly not going to go back to the way it was.

Do you have a favorite emotion?

LABRUCE: Emotions? What's that? Just kidding. Um, yeah… I tend to be a little Vulcan in that regard. I stopped expressing emotions outwardly 20 years ago to avoid wrinkles. So, it's all just inside. Lately, I'm afraid it's more frustration. Canada's lagging way behind in the world in terms of vaccinating its populace. We're like 50th in the world or something, in terms of percentage of vaccination. There's travel restrictions, we are in a deep lockdown right now, the COVID numbers are worse than they were since the beginning. So, it's very frustrating. 

Do you have a favorite of the five senses? 

LABRUCE: That's an interesting question. One thing, for example, in my movie Saint-Narcisse there's a sex scene between these two twins, which is very tactile, you know, smelling the other person's body, and I find that interesting. I think Western culture is going through an anti-sex moment, or at least, people are either becoming disinterested in it or that it's considered even kind of tacky on a certain level. *laughs* The other thing is, I haven't been using deodorant for the first time in my life, really, since the pandemic started, because I haven't been going out that much. I mean, I have sex. I have a circle of fuck buddies, so yeah, that kind of body odor thing is interesting. All those perfumes can be quite overwhelming. But then again, people who are overly sensitive to [perfumes] are annoying.

What is the first movie you saw that distinctly impacted you?

LABRUCE: There's two that I've been talking about a lot lately. You know, my first feature film was a Super 8 feature called No Skin off my Ass, which was a loose remake of Robert Altman's That Cold Day in the Park. 

In Canadian television, in the 60s and 70s, it wasn't uncommon to have nudity on national television. It was part of the late 60s, 70s, kind of sexual revolution. So I saw this film when I was an early teen and it had a big impact on me. It's based on a book by a gay novelist, Richard Miles. The film is about a woman who sort of picks up a hustler-type in the park and keeps him locked up in her guest bedroom as kind of a sexual fetish. And when I saw that as a kid I thought, “Wow, this must be what pornography is like,” because it was so psycho-sexually twisted and kind of about fetish and, you know, torture, sexual feelings… My new film, Saint-Narcisse is referencing films by the Quebecois director Paul Almond, who was married to Geneviève Bujold. He made a trilogy of films with her, Isabel, Journey and The Act of the Heart, which are amazing. 

Films of that era, and particularly Qubecoise films, were quite often about these taboo subjects; about religious guilt, sexual guilt, fetish and incest, dark family secrets and skeletons in the closet — all that kind of stuff. 

In The Act of the Heart, which was made in 1970, Donald Sutherland plays a priest who falls in love with a young girl, like 18 or 19, played by Geneviève Bujold, and he ends up having sex with her on the altar of the church. And then, at the end of the film, she goes to the park and douses herself with gasoline and sets herself on fire as the credits roll. I saw this when I was 10 or 12 or something, and it had a huge impact on me. I was like, “What is it about religion...it's so dark and Baroque and sexual and perverse.” And it really intrigued me. It set off both my pornographic imagination and now I make a lot of work that has to do with this kind of intersection of religious and sexual ecstasy.

I had a photo exhibit in Madrid in 2012 called Obscenity that was on that theme, and it caused a huge stir and a ruckus. There were protests and the mayor tried to cancel the show. So, it's a very powerful theme. The history of the Catholic saints is full of the most extreme fetish and perversions; self-flagellation, kissing the sores of lepers, all that kind of crazy stuff, which I actually reference in my film Gerontophilia. There is a dream sequence in which the young boy licks the bed sores of an old man.

Do you think society's relationship with religion will ever change?

LABRUCE: You know, if the last 20 years has taught us anything, it's that history isn't a linear progression of enlightenment. *laughs* We're going through an enormous period of regression. There was a sexual revolution in the 60s and 70s, which a lot of people now just can't wrap their minds around, how liberal attitudes towards sex were, and how libertine people were. In the gay liberation movement, gay men lived their lives as if they were porn stars, like a lot of them in the 80s. And there was a rejection of religion that came along with that and our skepticism of religion, which tends to be sexually repressed and moralistic and anti-gay and anti-birth control. The Pope's pronouncements lately… people thought he was being more progressive, but he isn't. He's pretty much toeing the same line of the church. 

My film, Saint-Narcisse, has an abusive priest in it, which is handled, I think, in a kind of complex way. It's this idea [about] people in abusive relationships, priests and boys here, it's tied up with religion and the “Father Figure,” normalizing that kind of abuse. It's complicated, even Oprah pointed out, you know, that sexually abused children feel a certain kind of pleasure, which makes them totally confused and ambivalent about their sexuality. So, in Saint-Narcisse, the boy has gotten older, and he is almost in a domestic relationship with this priest, and he does feel feelings of love and sexual feelings towards him. It's like Stockholm Syndrome, kind of. So, yeah, it doesn't seem like that's going away. In fact, it's almost like in the States when there's a mass killing, and then there's a public outcry, and thoughts and prayers, and then it disappears until the next one, right? It's almost the same with priest abuse. It's like a horrible instance of it is revealed and then everyone is all shocked and horrified and then it goes away.

Wondering how much cultural progress you associate with cannabis and mushroom legalization and decriminalization? 

LABRUCE: I feel kind of ambivalent about it. Because, you know, for me, when I was a teen in the 70s, pot was the rebel drug, the illicit drug, and it wasn't regulated. Recently a friend of mine, who's a total cannabis aficionado… you know, everyone knows about all the strains and which company is the best and which modes of production are the best, which I know nothing about. But she took me to a cannabis store and I was kind of shocked that it was like a Gucci experience, you know? This completely white store with vitrines and all the paraphernalia presented as if it was jewelry. The shop person gave us a kind of tour that was very much along the lines of fashion sales. I bought some edibles but it feels to me, maybe it's just psychosomatic, but that even the product itself is becoming so refined and so directed that it kind of feels like a controlled substance. They're controlling your high even, you know? Like when I used to smoke dope, we just got wasted and it was amazing. I mean, it was so strong that I would hallucinate when I was a teenager. 

And this whole “microdosing” thing drives me crazy as well. My friend Ron, he says, “If you're gonna do it, go all the way — have the full experience.” None of this, you know, trying to retain control — I don't know. It kind of takes all the fun out of it.

Do you think cannabis can influence creativity across mediums?

LABRUCE: I don't see any evidence of that. *laughs* I think it's more of a pacification. It's a pacifier, you know? However, the new narcotic is television. I mean, it’s Netflix. That is the most dangerous narcotic out there. I could go on and on about that. I'm trying not to watch episodic TV at all, or as little as possible. I find that entertainment has become so homogenized, even camera style and movement, it's just become so full of standardized, almost visual cliches. It’s programmatic narratives, it's extremely repetitive and encourages almost passive viewership, to the point where it lulls people into a kind of slavish capitulation to this overwhelming, ubiquitous form of entertainment. So, I don’t even know how people have the time to binge all these series and keep up on everything, but more sinister is I think it's designed to pacify people, to keep them at home to keep them out of trouble.

In the entertainment industry, there's more artists than people. You go on Foundation and [see] the NFT phenomenon. It's like a wasteland of art and artists. It used to be very difficult to be an artist. In the film industry, everyone watched the same movies because there was only a certain amount of product out there, only a certain amount of movies released. So, it was almost a dialogue that everyone had with cinema and now it's just over determined.

Same with social media in terms of pacification...

LABRUCE: Oh, sure, and I'm a victim of it as well. It can be very pleasurable too, just like any narcotic. But, if you step back and look at it as a cultural phenomenon, it's the new reality, the new future. And I think that probably accounts for the new ambivalence towards sex, because people literally don't even touch anymore and feel that there are “micro aggressions” and propriety about the body. I just find it very strange. And digital, in general, I find very cold and kind of… fascist, almost, compared to film and the texture of film. Like, when I do gore and horror, I use analog effects, which is what Death Book is about. It’s so much fun and it's cathartic. It's a sense of play and playing with fake organs and guts. It’s campy and it's visceral, as opposed to these cold, almost merciless digital images that are very alienating.

CGI for example...

LABRUCE: *shudders*

Social media can kind of create a star out of anyone.

LABRUCE: Oh, celebrity, for sure. I mean, you know, you can have a million followers on Instagram, but then you must realize that there's millions of people who have a millions followers on Instagram. *laughs* You have to put it into context. There is a bit of delusion, I think, where people are so wrapped up in this kind of solipsism of “likes” and “followers” and exposure and self promotion, that they don't realize that, in a way, they're just dime-a-dozen on a certain level.

Are there ‘new generation’ stars that you follow on social media that you find exciting?

LABRUCE: Well, Dan Levy is amazing. When Schitt’s Creek was in its first season on CBC, before it went to the States, I was one of the first people tweeting about it, saying how funny it was and promoting it. But you can tell, you know, you can tell when people are sincere and that it's coming from an organic place or that it's personal; that it has a political consciousness, but not ‘woke’ to the point of being humorless. You know, my posts on Instagram sometimes are extremely… I mean, I've always told people, it's a kind of an earmark of my work: If you think I'm being sarcastic, I'm probably being serious and if you think I'm being serious, I'm probably being sarcastic. I've always presented myself with that kind of ambiguity. 

I feel a great ambivalence towards a lot of things. Like, I do porn, which I feel very ambivalent about and I think that shows in the work that I do. There's so many people that just endorse everything. If you go on Clubhouse, or some of these platforms, it's almost like a cult. It's just like this cultish, wide-eyed, bright-eyed idea that the future is going to be better and that this new platform is going to evade all the corporate invasions and takeovers of other platforms. And if you express that kind of negativity or skepticism about certain things, about certain cultural ideas, or certain apps or platforms, you're almost shunned on a certain level. You're like a downer. You're considered part of the problem, not part of the solution. A lot of it is, I think, really naive. 

There's a lot of naivete [in art and on social meda] about sex and about biology, which is a broad topic, but you know, part of what my movies are about is that sex is a very profound kind of drive. The id is very unruly and unregulated and sometimes dangerous. Sex can be very Byzantine and kind of volcanic. There's a new kind of prissy attitude to it… that expresses a certain naivete about what nature is. Nature can be very violent and very unpredictable, you know? That's something that I express in my in my work; very sex positive, but also expressing sexuality as something mysterious and powerful.

I know you're talking about the current lack of sexual revolution. What is your take on something like PrEP?

LABRUCE: Well, it certainly put the condom out of business, which is good. I think because, again, sex can be less inhibited…there was always that anxiety in the AIDS era that went along with having sex, that the condom would break, etc. I went through that whole era of thinking that you could die at any moment, having sex. So there was a kind of pathologization of gay sex, that it was associated with disease, which is probably what my movie LA Zombie is about. This, kind of, gay, alien zombie who finds dead men and fucks them back to life. It's kind of reversing that idea that gay sex equals death. 

There's a weird schizophrenia, both in the gay world and in the world in general, about sex. Porn has become so ubiquitous and available and it's been democratized with Onlyfans. But on the other hand, there's a real new puritanism that I observe. The assimilation movement encouraged this trend back towards gay-conservative values, family values, monogamy, marriage, church, all that kind of stuff. So, that's part of what I consider the regression of the gay liberation movement. Maybe it's overcompensation and it'll find a more balanced place, but, I just find that it's a pity. You know, I'm a libertine. I'm from that era and all those kinds of worldly pleasures are quite central to my psyche. *laughs*

Would love your take on Onlyfans. 

LABRUCE: Well, it's interesting. Everyone's a hooker now. 

We used to think that, now we really think that.

LABRUCE: Yeah, a friend of mine always used to say, “Bruce, we're all prostitutes. We're all hustlers.” But now, even more literally. College girls, for example, back in the 80’s…I knew people who put themselves through university stripping and doing sex trade work, which I find perfectly legitimate and I'm totally pro sex trade workers and identify with them and [also] with pornographers. But, to have just your average person doing it out of necessity, not just to put themselves through college, but to eat or put food on the table, you know, is another dimension. I guess it's the paradox of the gig economy, the shared economy, where people are taking everything into their own hands and becoming their boss and they're creating everything themselves, but at the same time, it is a corporate platform [engaging in]the commodification of sex. It does get rid of all the middle management type stuff, but you have to be working constantly, all the time. You may be totally in control of everything yourself, but you’re also having to do all the work. It's incredibly labor intensive to be doing all your own social media, to be promoting all your own products, to be creating everything by yourself. 

It's just like pure, constant labor that you have to do on your own without any safety net. So, that's kind of weird. But then there's [evidence of] new puritanism too, puritanism against porn. I think in Australia they're trying to regulate porn on the internet. They're kind of trying to eliminate it or make it very difficult to access it, and I think you're going to find more of that. 

We've been fortunate to live through this era where we experienced the internet as something completely free and open and gradually it's getting more and more regulated, more clamped down on. That's something to be aware of. 

I love the graphic merchandise you have been creating.

LABRUCE: Yeah, it's exciting because they're actually very collaborative at Threadless. They help you out with your designs and you give them ideas and they help you realize them. It's so weird. I try to keep up with, you know, modern trends and stuff, and that's why I'm doing NFTs. Even though I'm always skeptical about them, I at least need to investigate and try to gain a vocabulary where I can at least talk about them. So with Threadless, I never would have imagined that I would be selling, like shower curtains and skateboards with my work on them, you know? I mean, duvets and pillows. *laughs* It's just mind blowing, that new kind of economy where they take care of everything basically and you get a decent cut. I'm going to try to continue with that. The first three months, the sales are really good and constant and then it tends to drop off. So, it's like anything else, you have to be constantly engaged with it and you have to be constantly updating new products, adding and subtracting, using different promotional approaches. You have a dashboard where you have quite a bit of control over your own site. But, I find it labor intensive. I mean, it's not lucrative enough that I can actually make a living from it, so, it's totally impractical to spend all my time doing it. 

I think I just need some time management, maybe that's it.

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