Gay porn and gore films might be what Bruce LaBruce is known for, but the legendary underground photographer and director is not reducible to X-rated material. While his work is voluntarily shocking, it has a political and identity-related aim. Bruce is a disruptive force. He is an anarchist––undisciplined and against all mainstream codes. But by playing with the very conventions of humiliation and authority, he also contributes to the edification of a new New York culture––one that's gay, rebellious, and wild. His work has won him legions of fans, curator Javier Peres among them (as he expressed in our interview with him). Recently, I had the opportunity to talk with Bruce over the phone about everything from his career to zombies. Find out how it went below.
AS: Where did you grow up?
Bruce LaBruce: I grew up on an isolated farm north of Toronto, and I came to Toronto for film school at York University. I intended to be a film critic; I took a couple of years of film production and I got my master's degree in film theory. But I became disillusioned with academia. I finished my degree, but at the same time I started hanging out in the punk alternative art scene in downtown Toronto. That’s when I started making short experimental Super 8 films and queer punk fanzines.
AS: Were these shorts violent?
BLaB: There wasn't really any violence so much as explicit sex. In both my fanzines and shorts, I started using found pornography and appropriating it. But I also started making my own sexual imagery. I didn't make anything explicit, although I did shoot a few explicit scenes in the early Super 8 films.
AS: And in terms of violence per se?
BLaB: Well, you know, growing up on a farm I saw a lot of violence and bloody carnage––animals being slaughtered and castrated, kittens being drowned. My father was a hunter-trapper, so I would go hunting with him. I would never kill anything myself but I watched a lot of animals being shot. In a way, it was idyllic and close to nature––with beautiful gardens and fields––but there was this undercurrent of violence that was kind of normal.
It was also a pretty rough childhood, because I was kind of a sissy. The farm kids were really rough, and I got bullied. My friends and I were always interested in horror films as well. My friend Candy Pauker made an experimental short film, Interview with a Zombie, around the same time that I made my first feature, No Skin off My Ass. In her film, I play a gay zombie who is in love with another zombie, but they devour each other. This was in the early 90s.
AS: On the subject of zombies, I heard that George A. Romero hired Vietnam veterans to work on the set of Night of the Living Dead. They used their war photographs of dead bodies to design the zombie costumes and makeup for the film.
BLaB: Yes, that makes total sense. The imagery is savage in that movie. I mean, the point of Romero's Diary of the Dead is ultimately: is humanity worth saving? The zombie is a monstrous reflection of human nature. There are always images of torture [in Romero's films] and that horrible image at the end, where a ripped-up female body is suspended from a tree or a fence. So it seems to come from that imagination.
I studied with a film critic named Robin Wood at university. He passed away a couple of years ago. He was pretty famous. He edited a book called The American Nightmare about the explosion of underground horror exploitation films in America in the 70s. He attributed it to the American experience in Vietnam.
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AS: Where did you grow up?
Bruce LaBruce: I grew up on an isolated farm north of Toronto, and I came to Toronto for film school at York University. I intended to be a film critic; I took a couple of years of film production and I got my master's degree in film theory. But I became disillusioned with academia. I finished my degree, but at the same time I started hanging out in the punk alternative art scene in downtown Toronto. That’s when I started making short experimental Super 8 films and queer punk fanzines.
AS: Were these shorts violent?
BLaB: There wasn't really any violence so much as explicit sex. In both my fanzines and shorts, I started using found pornography and appropriating it. But I also started making my own sexual imagery. I didn't make anything explicit, although I did shoot a few explicit scenes in the early Super 8 films.
AS: And in terms of violence per se?
BLaB: Well, you know, growing up on a farm I saw a lot of violence and bloody carnage––animals being slaughtered and castrated, kittens being drowned. My father was a hunter-trapper, so I would go hunting with him. I would never kill anything myself but I watched a lot of animals being shot. In a way, it was idyllic and close to nature––with beautiful gardens and fields––but there was this undercurrent of violence that was kind of normal.
It was also a pretty rough childhood, because I was kind of a sissy. The farm kids were really rough, and I got bullied. My friends and I were always interested in horror films as well. My friend Candy Pauker made an experimental short film, Interview with a Zombie, around the same time that I made my first feature, No Skin off My Ass. In her film, I play a gay zombie who is in love with another zombie, but they devour each other. This was in the early 90s.
AS: On the subject of zombies, I heard that George A. Romero hired Vietnam veterans to work on the set of Night of the Living Dead. They used their war photographs of dead bodies to design the zombie costumes and makeup for the film.
BLaB: Yes, that makes total sense. The imagery is savage in that movie. I mean, the point of Romero's Diary of the Dead is ultimately: is humanity worth saving? The zombie is a monstrous reflection of human nature. There are always images of torture [in Romero's films] and that horrible image at the end, where a ripped-up female body is suspended from a tree or a fence. So it seems to come from that imagination.
I studied with a film critic named Robin Wood at university. He passed away a couple of years ago. He was pretty famous. He edited a book called The American Nightmare about the explosion of underground horror exploitation films in America in the 70s. He attributed it to the American experience in Vietnam.
AS: Is this