This #TBT is a little more personal. Raw even. However this #TBT isn’t about having a father just outta prison, a mother on the verge of a breakdown and us crying in the bathroom in some hideous gown. No, the reason this one hurts is because it involves travelling back to our spiritual home San Francisco. After visiting in 2012, we fell for the city and looked for ways to stay, but surprisingly there wasn’t a massive demand for freelance writers come barmen. So instead we live vicariously through the people lucky enough to live there. Enter the super talented Travis Mathews. We’ve been fans of Travis since we first saw I Want Your Love in 2012 and then loved his work with James Franco on Interior. Leather Bar. Loverboy’s Catherine A. Ross spoke to Travis about filming butt sex, Don’t Look Now and whether Cruising would be made today.

There’s been a lot of ‘is he, isn’t he?’ about James Franco which personally I think is bollocks, I mean who gives a crap, but…
Thanks for not asking me that…

… But do you feel that celebrities have a responsibility to come out or is it a private matter?
I think it’s a hard question to answer in a very black and white way. If I was in that position I would like to believe that I would see how important it would be for me to come out and I would do it. I want other people who are celebrities to do that as well, but I mean in most cases I think it’s a case by case situation. I wouldn’t jump to condemn somebody who’s a celebrity for not coming out.

I read something with Rupert Everett who is certain that his career choices have been limited by his choice to come out.
He came out in a different time. I think that’s one difference. He came out in a much different social climate where that would affect your career. I’m sure in some ways it still would, but I don’t think that it has the same weight at all than it did even just ten years ago. Also, Rupert Everett’s films were already those are the kinds of films that completely lend themselves to sort of a fay, kind of gay stereotype. I’m sure for a lot of movie people, him coming out was just reinforcing what they already thought about him. Not that I think that’s right, but I think it was a different time and it’s a case-by-case situation. Right now, with some people it could actually help their careers. In this day and age it really could.

Do you think Cruising would get made today?
It would never get made today. Both a star and a director at the top of their game doing a gay subculture film? No way. The sex and the sexual situation that you see in Cruising, that actually made it to the R version, is pretty explicit. I don’t think would make it today or it would certainly be on the margin of censorship.

Interior. Leather Bar has been a regular feature on the festival circuit this year, how has it been for you?
It’s been a bit of a whirlwind. When I initially heard from James Franco and he said he was revisiting Cruising, plus explicit sex, I knew Interior. Leather Bar. was going to polarize audiences before they even saw the film. And that is exactly how the experience has been on the festival circuit.

I presumed you’d heard about these mythical 40 minutes and the project had grown from there. But you actually took Cruising as the starting block and were fortunate enough to find out about this missing footage?
Well, one other thing I should say was James always wanted to do was something that was a little bit of a compare and contrast between 1980 and 2012 in terms of censorship, sexuality, what’s seen in films and what’s not, particularly with gay sexuality. So when we discovered this lost 40 minutes, it seemed like a good entry point to explore that idea.

Had you worked with James Franco before?
No, James and I didn’t even know each other. My first feature, I Want Your Love, was doing the rounds. It’s a film with explicit sex which James was looking to include in his next project as well as some reference to Cruising. He didn’t have much more sorted out before reaching out to me. I was well versed in Cruising, its history, its controversy, its reputation. But one of the things that neither of us knew about was these mythical 40 minutes that were shaved off of the original film. When we heard that we knew that would be an interesting launching point for our film.

I actually thought Interior. Leather Bar would be more explicit. I was waiting for the money shot, the penetrative sex scene and it never came. Why not?
I’ve heard people saying it should’ve been more explicit and those saying it didn’t even need to be explicit, that it missed the point. But, one of the reasons to not include penetrative butt sex was simply down to a matter of practicalities. We really only filmed for two days.
I have filmed explicit butt sex scenes and it takes a lot more care, time and patience. I mean I give it more time than I feel is necessary for, say, blow job scenes or being naked. We also felt that it wasn’t necessary. We wanted to challenge people but we didn’t want to completely isolate them. I think if we had actually shown butt sex, there’s a large part of our audience would have felt isolated, like it was pornographic for pornography’s sake.

When does sex on screen become porn?
I get asked this a lot. I only want to film a scene that has explicit sex in it if there’s some sort of narrative purpose that I can justify. I’ve done a lot of films that have sex in it. I don’t intend to have a career that just involves people having explicit sex.
However, I think that there’s so much to explore in a narrative and character context between two people or more when they’re having sex, when they’re literally and figuratively naked. And also showing sex in the way that more people actually have it. Often so many sex scenes are limited to being super steamy or sultry or ‘we’re married and we have horrible sex’. There’s a lot of in-between ways that people experience sex that are more interesting to me.

Do you have a favourite sex scene?
Don’t Look Now is actually my favourite film and that sex scene is definitely one in this context. The way it’s shot, what’s happening with them at that point in their relationship and also, the way it’s edited. The way that it goes back and forth between the scene of them clothed and getting ready to go out and the sex itself, it’s incredible.

So, what’s next for you?
James and I are going to be doing another project next year and before that I’m going to be doing my next feature over the summer. I’m pretty likely to do an episode of my In Their Room series. The basic premise of In Their Room is I go into the bedrooms of different gay guys and film them like a fly on the wall, very documentary fashion, where they don’t pay any attention to me. I film them doing everyday things and sometimes it’s more erotic, but not always. And then I interview them about sex and intimacy and vulnerability and all sorts of things that are really generally kind of raw and raw in a funny way or sexy way or playful way or melancholy way. That’s the sort of intimacy that I’m interested in.

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