Elliot Tuttle on Blue Film’s personal inspiration, rejection and taboo: ‘It’s about loneliness’

Blue Film director Elliot Tuttle says he’s “not as concerned” exploring more areas of taboo “right now”, as his controversial gay camboy movie is released.

The movie takes place across one night, with sex worker Alex (or Aaron Eagle) being hired by an older man, Hank, who he soon realises is his old teacher, who was sent to prison for attempting to molest another student.

There’s been a long journey to get to cinemas, after it was deemed too risqué for mainstream film festivals. It was finally released in the US in May, and releases in the UK on 11 September.

Speaking to PinkNews, director Tuttle explains the idea came about through his own personal journaling.

“I was journaling a lot about my own adolescent sexuality, and thinking about teachers that I had fantasised about, teachers I had a crush on when I was probably 12 and first becoming sexually aware of myself,” he says.

It made him question what would have happened “if that infatuation had been reciprocal”, but the film “became about many different things beyond that”.

He says: “That was the starting point, and it really became a film about loneliness or how we negotiate our own loneliness.

“I feel very lucky to have made the film with virtually zero people in my ear being like, ‘This is too much.’ It was just a very pure artistic labour, making it with my team of producers and Reed [Birney, who plays Hank] and Kieron [Moore, who plays Alex].”

Tuttle admits he wasn’t concerned about pushback when making the film, as “it’s not even until the fourth cut of a movie that you start to get a more accurate picture of what the film can be”.

He tells us: “By the time that we finished the majority of post-production and we were submitting to these festivals, we had gotten to a place where we felt we really believed in the quality of the film, so then to experience festival rejections and then hearing through the grapevine about why a film might have been rejected, that was a bit of a demoralising process.”

But, as he says: “I don’t think a filmmaker makes a film for a festival screening committee, they make it for an audience to see it, so I’m happy that an audience can see the film.”

He goes on: “If this was a purely gay coming-of-age story, I think festivals would have been all over us, regardless of the quality of the movie.”

Instead, it focuses on Hank’s attraction to very young boys and Alex’s own relationship with his sexuality and what he feels he can offer to the world.

At times, it feels like you’re witnessing a tennis match of who has the power in the situation, between Alex and Hank, with neither seeming to grasp it for too long.

‘It was a very important part of writing, this ping-pong match between the two of them’

Tuttle tells us: “This is a film about loneliness in many ways, and both of these characters are vulnerable at different points. Both of them are put on their back foot at different points, and that was intentional.

“I feel like a lot of the engine of the film is built on this dissonance, and their true self versus their assumed self. They are both at different points not entirely honest about who they are on the inside, and that is something that gets to be revealed over time … It was a very important part of writing, this ping-pong match between the two of them.”

Throughout the film, Hank accepts that what he did and how he feels are wrong, however at times it’s difficult to view him as evil.

For Tuttle, though, “easy descriptors of redeemable or evil or villainous or sympathetic go out of the window in the process of making the film”.

“It was really trying to take the character and portray him as honestly as possible,” he says.

“Talking about the character a lot with Reed during pre-production and filming, building the world of this character. What did he go through when he was little, or how does he behave now? What was his life like when he was arrested?”

The chemistry between Birney and Moore is exceptional, something Tuttle says was “palpable” at the first read over Zoom.

“They immediately developed a very deep bond and friendship,” he tells us. “We all only knew each other through Zoom until they both flew to LA for filming.”

Birney is based in New York, while Moore is based in the UK. The three of them went for dinner, and “they seemed like best friends”.

“They had clearly been emailing, texting – it was perfect,” Tuttle says. “It’s exactly what I could have wanted. The whole film would have fallen apart if they had no chemistry or had a horrible working relationship. It would have been disastrous for me.”

Given the nature of the film’s subject, there are plenty of uncomfortable scenes. However there are moments when it is visualised on screen, as archived home video footage of a young boy.

Tuttle says of those moments: “It’s a visual reminded of what is being talked around the whole time, but it’s not necessarily being talked about,” adding that as well as feelings of loneliness, the film is about “a loss of innocence”.

“I liked including those little interludes, because it felt like it opened up the world of the film,” Tuttle says.

“A lot of people have talked to me, like, ‘That’s young Aaron,’ or ‘That’s young Hank’. I feel it just enriches the world of the film.”

‘Read into that final scene how you will’

He goes on: “It moved me in the editing room, so that’s why I kept it in.”

The film climaxes in the bedroom, with a strong colour-wash of red. Given the fact both character’s speak of Margaret Atwood novel The Handmaid’s Tale at different points, and red is a prominent colour in that story, my mind immediately drifted to it.

But am I reading too much into it?

Tuttle says: “They are both surrogates for a kind of antidote to their own loneliness with each other. It couldn’t be with the other person [they wanted], but the other person is filling that role for tonight.

“The Handmaid’s Tale was a book that was taught to me when I was in middle school and it had a big impression on me.”

But, Tuttle laughs: “Read into that final scene how you will.”

Blue Film is released in UK cinemas on 11 September.

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