This week I had the opportunity to interview Travis Mathews, a filmmaker from San Francisco whose short film I Want Your Love was recently featured in a post by Andy.  At first I was skeptical, a film with real sex that could make you think?  It wasn’t until Travis e-mailed Andy and I to thank us for the write up, that I decided to see what the buzz was all about.  Intended to create interest and secure funding for an eventual feature,  the 14 minute I Want Your Love stands on its own as an intimate, compelling reflection of gay men and sex.  Its characters, Jesse and Brendan, are at once relatable and sexy, but also honest in their obvious chemistry and subtle ways of communicating.  There’s talk and there’s explicit sex, but there’s also something much more nuanced happening.

Travis received recognition last year for a series of short films called  In Their Room, which began as a project for Butt Magazine.  In the films, Travis’s camera hovers almost unnoticed in the bedrooms of different gay men, capturing them in their own space doing everything from the most banal to the most erotic.  The feature that Travis intends to unfold from I Want Your Love is still in early pre-production, so exactly when and how it will be released is still being worked out.  For now though,  I Want Your Love is available here (a warning, the site is very NSFW).  Both funny and introspective, Travis chatted with me about filmmaking, intimacy, and how ultimately his films are a reflection of himself.

•

Trev: I was wondering if there was any sort of precedent for I Want Your Love?  Were you inspired by anything?  Because when I finished watching I felt like I’d never seen anything like it before.

Travis Mathews: In some ways I Want Your Love is an evolution of In Their Room.  I had always wanted to do narratives, or fiction movies.  But I was trained in documentary and that’s sort of my experience.  When I did the In Their Room stuff last year, there was a lot of inspiration that was coming from meeting all these different guys, who had these very creative, dynamic lives.  I was meeting a lot of people at a really quick pace, and started to think that it would be interesting to document this in a different way, that was more fictionalized.  I know it gets a little bit of a bad rap for various reasons, but I had been somewhat inspired by several of the mumblecore movies that came out in the last five, ten years, particularly Funny Ha Ha.  I thought Humpday was good too.

Trev: I liked that movie, I saw that recently.

Travis: Yeah, the dialogue was good, it was very naturalistic, and honest.  I think a lot of mumblecore movies fail in their execution, but the spirit of what they are and what they are trying to do is something that I aspired to do.  Basically I want as much as possible to create a movie that delves into interpersonal relationships and intimacy, and honesty and vulnerability.  All these things are apparent as interests of mine when you look at In Their Room.  It’s the same stuff I’m trying to mine, but with I Want Your Love I’m trying to do it through characters that are semi-fictional.  The movie is scripted, the feature is scripted.  At the same time I want to allow my actors, or non-actors to contribute to these characters in a way that seems honest both to them and the character.  I want as much as possible to create something that people can relate to and believe in, and get connected to.  I want to do something that transcends gay content and sex a little bit.  Maybe that’s pretentious or ambitious, but I want to do something that connects to people.  I think a lot of gay movies, their major downfall has been bad acting.   For me, I can’t relate to that.  I don’t feel connected to it, or I don’t believe it.  For so long we were hungry for any representations of us,  so any artistry became an afterthought, or anything like good acting was an afterthought.

Trev: I completely get what you’re saying about wanting to connect.  That’s where our blog comes from.  There are these things out there  that are supposed to be about gay people or about gay men, but you don’t necessarily connect with them.  It’s all you have though, so I guess that’s what the gay community has traditionally rallied around.

Travis: Yeah.

Trev: I was interested because you say you did documentary film.  I was involved with documentary film in New York for a little while.  It was the first time I had really considered the genre.  I still don’t know how I feel about it.  I really do like documentaries, but there always seemed to be some amount of manipulation by the filmmakers.  It was the first time I was seeing raw footage and then seeing how it was edited into a narrative.  With your In Their Room series, did you go into it with any ideas, or about who you wanted to meet and document?  How did what the guys talk about in the pieces come up?

Travis: The first 20 minute episode is the one I’m most proud of.  That came together really quickly and it was largely on the shoulders of the Butt Magazine cache that I was able to get the guys that I got as quickly as I did.  I put out the word among my circle of friends that I was doing something for Butt.  Some of the guys understood what I was trying to do, which was to capture people almost as an ethnographic film, how they lived in their space when no one’s around.  Some of them were interested in that, and that’s what compelled them to be part of it.  But I think for most of the guys it was about, Butt Magazine?  I could be in Butt?  Oh yeah sure!  What do you want me to do?

Trev: (Laughs)

Travis: Of the eight guys in that first 20 minute Butt piece, I didn’t know any of them except one.  The first time I met them was basically when I knocked on their door with my video camera.  I was there for no more than two hours and that was it.  I’ve since become friends with almost all the guys, which is great.  But the only real communication we had prior to it was I sent an e-mail where I just asked them to think about all the interesting things they do in their room.  When I got there we would spend a few minutes talking about a few potential things that I could shoot. Then I would ask them to pretend as much as possible that I wasn’t there, to just go about what they’re doing.  And then I told them I would be asking them some questions about sex and intimacy.  That was pretty much all they knew.  I mean, I’m a pretty disarming guy.  I think that coupled with the fact that these guys are in their own rooms where they presumably feel the most at home, allows them to really open up in terms of the confessional interview content.

Trev: And why do you say that you’re disarming?

Travis: I think my personality is pretty laid back.  I’m a really friendly guy, I don’t seem skeezy or like I have a weird agenda. That kind of thing.

Trev: I read somewhere that you said you like to know people’s secrets, and that you went to grad school to be a psychotherapist.  I thought that was really interesting, because so much of film, especially in documentary, is uncovering people’s secrets, trying to delve deeper and be the ultimate voyeur.  How has your background played into your role as a filmmaker?

Travis: I think it’s been hugely important. I’ve been going back and forth for a number of years, do I want to become a therapist, do I want to be a filmmaker?  Can I do both, is that possible?  I honestly don’t have  the patience to be a therapist.  I think I could have been an okay or a good therapist.  I don’t think I would have ever been a great therapist because I like to work hard and then see results from what I do, and there’s no guarantee in being a therapist that will ever happen.  My graduate training in therapy has been helpful in terms of allowing people the space to breathe and feel comfortable sharing themselves.  When I say I like to know people’s secrets, I mean sure I do.  But it’s not in a way to manipulate them, or deceive them.  It’s more in service of that I’m most interested in seeing people be raw and vulnerable.  In a weird way, it’s really educational for all of us to see other people going there, and it’s also inspiring for me personally when I see people sharing things that I know are difficult.

Trev: It’s a modern reality now that most people’s first encounters with sex are through porn.  And it’s unsettling when you consider that as young people come to terms with being gay, and have to confront whatever their friends, family and even society think about gay sex, they are left to negotiate their feelings through what’s available in gay porn.  When I saw I Want Your Love, even as an adult, I found it really affirming in a way.

Travis: Nice!  That’s great to hear.  And I’ve gotten a lot of e-mails from guys all over that are saying similar things.  I wasn’t really expecting that.  I don’t know what I was expecting on some level, but that’s the stuff that keeps me going, and keeps me excited and feeling like I’m on the right path.

Trev: Beyond the fact that Jesse and Brendan don’t look like porn stars, and that they could be everyday guys, they talk to each other during sex.  I thought that was a really healthy thing to see, that they’re communicating during sex.

Travis: Yeah.  That’s important to me.  When I signed on to do this with Naked Sword [the film's distributor], one of the reasons I’m excited to be working with them is because they get what I’m trying to do and they appreciate it.  Part of their interest is because they feel like there’s an untapped niche here, that will ultimately make them money.  But they also are allowing me the space to deal with sex in an honest way that is usually divorced from porn.  One of the things that I’ve been clear about wanting to do all along, is to show sex as I’ve actually experienced it and I think other people actually experience it.  When you’re fucking, you’re still connected to that person in an interpersonal way.  That’s the problem with so much porn, it just seems so disconnected and ugly.  It serves its purpose, it gets you off for sure.  But  beyond that it just becomes nothing, for me.  One way that I wanted to try and safeguard this movie from seeming like a bunch of little narratives that are a preface, or perfunctory thing for a sex scene, is for these characters to continue living and breathing when they’re having sex.  Like oh right, the narrative is still going, you know what I mean?  Whatever kind of interpersonal things were happening with them maybe just before they were having sex, or things that you know about them, that still exists in the moment when they’re having sex.  Even if it is a hot, heated moment.

Trev: One of my favorite parts of the clip is about halfway, when there’s a moment between Jesse and  Brendan where the camera lingers on Brendan’s eyes.  There’s a fantastic cut and you’re thrown into them kissing.  I thought it was really cinematic, it made that difference between porn and an art film.  I thought it showed your hand as a director in what’s happening on the screen.

Travis: I’m really interested in nuance and in-between moments, and not just big things happening.  What you said about Brendan looking at Jesse, you know the slightest bit of background information about what their relationship is.  Yet you feel like they’re believable, and you’re interested in them.  Then there’s all these different nuanced messages that can be present, even non-verbal things, while they’re having sex.

Trev: Yeah absolutely.  I like at the end when Jesse gets out of bed and talks on the phone, and he says, “I’m just hanging with Brendan.”  The look on Brendan’s face, the way it ends there.  You could read into that however you want.

Travis: We actually shot it that he then turned over on the pillow, and I have a close shot of his face kind of looking up on the ceiling.  It’s a nice shot, and his eyes are beautiful in it, Brendan has beautiful eyes.  But it felt too heavy handed.  Often my first ideas are too far in that direction and I have to reel myself in.  I want there to be an indication of a particular message, but I don’t want it to be like I’m handing the viewer the answer to what’s happening.  That’s why we left it with him, that one single shot, and then cut.

Trev: How does music play a part in I Want Your Love?

Travis: One thing I’m really excited about is getting bands involved.  Do you know Girls?  The band Girls (pictured at right)?

Trev: No, I haven’t heard of them.

Travis: They’re a pretty big indie band that is upcoming.  They’re all over Pitchfork, and written about in Rolling Stone and NME, and all of the music magazines.  They came out with an album last year, it was my favorite album of the year, and they’re from San Francisco.  They agreed to let me use a song of theirs in I Want Your Love.  They’re not gay, and they’re becoming big enough indie stars that it’s odd that they would be, not odd, but it’s a little bit out of the norm that they would be putting themselves out there for something like this.  I think it’s going to further legitimize what I’m doing as something away from porn.

Trev: So the connection with these bands and their music, they’re supporting the film because it’s sort of, for gay rights?  Or, because it’s about…

Travis: I think it’s an appreciation.  I haven’t talked to Girls yet, so I don’t really know why they’re agreeing to it.  But I see a lot of parallels with this particular band that’s also from San Francisco, in what they’re doing through music and what I’m trying to do through filmmaking.  It’s basically this kind of intimate and vulnerable honesty in their music, that is at once wistful and introspective, as it is playful and sexy.

Trev: It’s cool that you’re connecting with other artists on those levels, and it’s not just like, oh, this person’s gay and this band is gay, so therefore we should add them.  You have things in common with other artists that aren’t necessarily along sexual orientation lines.

Travis: Right, yeah.

Trev: There was one quote on Butt Magazine that was really nice, and I wanted to know what you thought of it, because it sums up a lot of what I think as well.  This guy Rob, in the comments section he wrote, “This is the first time that I actually looked at filmed gay sex with a big smile on my face, a hard-on and a soft heart. Beautiful!”

Travis: Aw!  I think that’s fantastic!  How could I not like that? (Laughter)  I mean, it’s not like I have an agenda or things to check, and those being things on my list that I need to be like, that’s my agenda, that’s my agenda, that’s my agenda.  I’m gravitating towards stuff that I’m interested in, that feels as much as possible to be real and intimate, and authentic to me.  The interesting thing is, I’m not in any of this stuff, I’m never going to be in any of this stuff, I don’t want to be in any of it.  I don’t have the guts to do, or talk about half of the things on camera that most of these guys who I’ve worked with have.  But I’m all over it, you know what I mean?  It’s my…what am I trying to say with out sounding like an asshole?

(Laughter)

Travis: I hope that you get a good sense of who I am by looking at what I’m choosing to make.  I think it’s a pretty accurate representation in terms of the type of person I am.  Does that make sense?

Trev: I think so, to me that’s a filmmaker talking.  That’s the job of a filmmaker in some ways.  Or maybe not all filmmakers…

Travis: There were a couple of sites that were calling me “the wistful pervert,” or something like that.  I thought it was kind of funny.  And then when I thought about it I was like, I guess I kind of am!  I can be kind of melancholy and introspective a lot of the time.  It’s not something that I’m apologetic about, it’s just part of who I am.  At the same time, there’s a very playful, sexy part of me.

Trev: But I like that, the wistful pervert.  You could say that about anyone who watches gay porn, or even the bad gay movies with the cheesy dialogue and the bad acting you talked about before.  In those movies there are characters that we don’t act like, that we’re never going to look like, having sex that we’re never going to have.  There’s a wistful aspect that can easily escalate into feelings that are really damaging, in terms of how you consider your own life or body image.  So I think it’s better to be a wistful pervert, than perhaps a delusional one.

Travis: (Laughs) Yeah.  I’m just elated that people are interested in my work and they’re relating to it.  It makes me really happy.

Trev: I’m glad.  Definitely keep us posted, because we’re following what you’re doing and we’d love to continue featuring your work.

Travis: Sure! I appreciate it.

•

For more about Travis’s films, check out his official site, and the companion sites for In Their Room and I Want Your Love.

Image Credits: Travis Mathews photographed by Aurélie Sandrine.  Girls by Bao Nguyen.