“What’s up, faggots?” asks Alex in the opening line of Blue Film, a new feature written and directed by Elliot Tuttle. It’s a jarring opener—but it sets the tone for the film which deals in subject matter that many people may find shocking. We’ll take this moment to issue a content warning: Blue Film and this interview with Tuttle, deal with sensitive subject matter including sexual abuse—if that’s something you don’t want to read about, tap out now.

Tuttle’s film centers around just two characters. Alex (Kieron Moore), who goes by Aaron, is a muscley camboy who receives an irresistible offer from a client: one night for $50,000. When he meets up with the john, Alex discovers that the man is actually Hank (Reed Birney), a now-disgraced former middle-school teacher of Alex’s who was fired and convicted after he attempted to assault another student. Now, after finding God, Hank has met up with Alex to help him disentangle his deviancy, his identity, and his soul. 

The movie takes place over the course of a single night spent together wherein both characters struggle to understand how to think about Hanks past, how he can live with himself, and how either of them can move forward.

In an interview with Tuttle which has been edited and condensed for clarity, we spoke about why Tuttle chose such sensitive subject matter, how he hopes audiences respond, and how sex is an undercurrent in so many part of our lives.

A lot of people are writing about this movie, calling it a “camboy film,” or “camboy indie.” It feels like Alex’s camboy status is secondary, if not tertiary, to the plot. What do you think of that kind of reception?

The process of putting the film out has been kind of a learning curve. You really cannot control how other people want to write about or perceive the film. There are lots of ways I would write about the film differently, as a journalist. I love that people are at least critically engaging with it. 

To me the film is not entirely a queer film. It has one queer character in it, and the other is, you know, a convicted pedophile. And I'd say half of the film, then, by that nature, is a queer character study, and the other is this greater, more extrapolated discourse on sex.

What would you say to people that would say this subject matter is absolutely out of bounds, off limits, inappropriate?

Cinema has always been a place for kind of our greatest fears or joy is to be rendered on screen. Cinema is a place for people to confront everything that they're scared or excited about with a complete abandon or a lack of judgment, because it's just you and the screen of actors who aren't looking back at you. And so in that way, this felt like the perfect medium to kind of tell a story that really interrogated such a sensitive subjects of sex and how it transforms our lives. 

It feels like people are taking the film on its own merit, but to any to a critic, I welcome criticism about the quality of the film, or how the film made you feel, or anything like that.

How has the reaction been in screenings so far?

I love being in the theater for at least parts of the film that that people are watching. For the first 10 minutes, you hear people laughing, and the film opens in a very confrontational way. You get 5 to 10 minutes of people giggling at the discomfort, and then you get then another 70, 80 minutes of nobody really saying anything or moving.

I have been able to feel the room change in every screening that I've sat through.

Tell us about the development process for Blue Film? How did the story come together?

The development process was pretty quick. I mean, this is a story that had been in some way kind of marinating for a long time in me. The story is about is how sex affects the way that we live our lives.

I was really tired of in contemporary cinema, sex feeling so conceptual when it's not. I had this feeling that in contemporary cinema sex is often a means to something else. I wanted to talk about how sex itself is laced with danger, and how it completely molds the way we live our lives.

I did a lot of research, and a lot of it was—the only research that one could do is anecdotal. It was listening to a lot of personal testimonies. It felt like taking on the onus of writing a pedophile character, it needed to be done in a thoughtful way. And it's obviously lightning rod subject matter. I wanted it to be as thoughtful as as possible, but I also was not writing with the intention of absolving him of his sins. 

What’s one thing you’d tell someone before they see Blue Film for the first time?

I really hope for anyone walking into the theater that they are willing to meet the film halfway. I hope they're willing to engage in good faith with the movie. I think this film is rewarding if one does that.