Scripted Reality Porn Or Hardcore Indie Film? It's I Want Your Love

In his previous project, filmmaker Travis Mathews worked with several real men to document the intimate moments they experienced while alone in their rooms. Now, that series, In Their Room, has evolved into something completely unique: a scripted indie film with scripted characters having real, hardcore sex.

The feature film is called I Want Your Love, and once you've figured out whether it's porn or art (good luck), the next question you might have is whether it's fiction or non-fiction (again, good luck). Are they actors? How much of the script was improvised? Lines are definitely blurred, and I think that's a great thing. Spontaneous, funny, sincere, and arousing, I Want Your Love is unlike anything I've ever seen.

Below, my interview with director Travis Mathews, and an extended scene from the forthcoming I Want Your Love.

Unzipped: I Want Your Love is unique in that it’s fiction, but it feels incredibly real. How do you compare it to your previous project, In Their Room?
Travis Matthews: With In Their Room, none of that was scripted, and it was all kind of documentary style. I’d ask the guys about their lives, and what intimacy means to them. After shooting thirty guys, I started to catalog these stories, and I began to see this whole community here in San Francisco that I wanted to document in a fictional form. And so with I Want Your Love, it marries natural dialog and natural acting, but it takes things further than In Their Room did, because there’s actual sex.

Is all the dialogue scripted, even during the sex?
It is. But, it’s a little bit fuzzy. I wanted it to feel improvised and natural enough so that people would be questioning if these were real guys having real experiences. It was important to me that we steered clear of bad acting, so we wanted the actors to bring elements of themselves to the roles.

And in the extended scene that’s out now, who are the characters and what is their storyline?
Well, the full feature will have a whole group of different characters, but in the scene we’ve just released, we have Jesse and Brenden. They weren’t partners in real life, but they were having a sexual relationship in real life. In terms of the plot—the fiction—Jesse has been living in San Francisco for a decade, but he has to move back to where he grew up in the Midwest. So the movie takes place in the last 24 hours before he has to leave. There’s introspection, remorse, and tenderness that comes with leaving the place that was formative for him during his 20’s. There are other relationships going on around him, but Jesse’s the main character.

You didn't hire actors though, right?
Right. They’re not actors. But they had to be capable of accessing some really honest and raw parts of themselves. Otherwise, it would’ve come off as forced or cheesy.

So how did you know you had the right guys? What were you looking for, and what weren’t you looking for in your cast?
I wanted to show real guys. That doesn’t mean that they couldn’t be hot, but they’re not hot in a porn star sense. They’re hot like you’re neighbor, or hot like the guy you work with. As far as what I wasn’t looking for, I didn’t want somebody who had such a chiseled, manicured body. It wouldn’t have felt congruent. It’s not that I’m anti-porn, but for what I’m doing, that type of body probably isn’t going to work out.

Tell me about the sex scenes. How explicit do they get?
Well, we have penetration shots, but it’s not like we set the camera down and focused in on someone’s asshole being plowed for five minutes. It’s more than that. There’s lots of kissing. There’s wrestling, there’s blowjobs, there’s rimjobs, there’s actually fucking, and there are cum shots. But you also get to see the guys after they have sex, which is important. It’s here that you see the thoughtful and revealing moments that happen with all of us, when we’re still lying there with someone.

The thing that really interests me is capturing the in-between moments that people share. I think there’s a lot to be gleaned in those moments. It allows you, the viewer, to get a privileged position of seeing these moments that are often erased. They’re small and nuanced, and there’s a level of intimacy in them that I hope people will respond to.

Do you worry that you’re asking too much of your audience? Are they supposed to interpret this as porn or as art? Or both? Or neither?
I’ve shown the cut to people, and the response has been that it doesn’t fit into a bracket. It’s not necessarily porn, and it’s not necessarily an art film. It’s probably going to polarize people, and that’s great. I want people to either really like what I do or really not like what I do. I’m not interested in people having some sort of tepid response.

There’s a dichotomy in that you say you want to explore real intimacy, and yet the film is scripted. So how is that authentically intimate?
We did a lot of work to make it seem spontaneous. We rehearsed, and while I asked the guys to memorize the script, I told them to feel free and be honest with me about what they think their characters would really say and do. Ultimately, I’m not interested in pulling one over on the audience. That’s not my intention. I want people to be invested in these characters.

I hear people complaining about the state of porn. I don’t know if it’s because of X-Tube or Rocket Tube where you can get access to any kind of sex you want instantaneously, but do you care about these people? Is the purpose just to get off? I’m hearing people want more than that, and I know I want more than that. I don’t think it’s ridiculous to think that you can have a feature that shows people as real people and not as bad actors, who are engaged in pretty explicit sex lives. You can show characters who seem real, who exchange dialogue the way real people talk, and who have sex the way real people have sex.

Do you think the guys you filmed would have participated in the project if it hadn’t included sex scenes?
I definitely don’t think it was just about the sex. Before, for example, in the In Their Room project, a lot of them didn’t even get off. I think the guys just thought it was an interesting project. And the BUTT cache (the short films ran on BUTT magazine's site) can’t be dismissed. That’s a really big deal to these guys.

What other things did you learn about them?
One thing I learned is that it’s pretty fair to say that all of the guys I’ve shot really prize creativity and individuality, and all of them have that in spades. But at the same time, there were a lot of things that popped up with striking consistency among them all.

Like?
Apple products. American Apparel underwear. Things like that came up again and again. All of them went off and told their own stories and were unique in their own ways, but there were often these things that tied them together as a group. More than that though, I got the sense that these guys wanna be seen. They want their stories told.

Finally, I don’t know if it’s just me—and everyone who watches will form their own opinions—but there’s this sort of melancholy undertone to it all. Not sad, but kind of reflective and lonely?
Yeah, I’ve heard that before, and I think that’s true. There are two things going on. One, the guys from the original series, In Their Room, were all alone, so there’s something inherently introspective and melancholy with that. And two…that’s just me! I’m not in the movies, obviously, but that’s who I am. So, I Want Your Love is introspective, yet erotic. Playful, yet intimate. Dirty, yet artful. These things that are often at the opposite ends of the spectrum don’t necessarily need to be. I think they’re most interesting when they’re all strung together.

[Watch a 15-minute extended scene from I Want Your Love, featuring Jesse and Brenden (as seen in pics above), here on Naked Sword for free. And stay tuned for the release of the full-length feature.]

Comments

[Mr Mayor]

hot lil video there...
in a way it reminded me of short bus.

[JANORM]

OMG!! I was transfixed and mesmerized by that 15 minute peak. Have to make sure my better half sees it also. This is what I call unique in all methods of filming! Can't wait for the full feature! Who-ah! Who-ah! Whew! NJMJr!

[Warren]

I loved this flick. I hope he does more.