By Gary M. Kramer–
The excellent character study Sebastian, opening August 2 at the Landmark Opera Plaza, has Max (Ruaridh Mollica), a writer, secretly working as Sebastian, an escort. He is performing sex work as research for a novel he hopes to publish. Of course, his side hustle (no pun intended) distracts from his freelance work for a magazine, and it is only a matter of time before his two worlds collide.
Writer/director Mikko Makela keeps Sebastian interesting because of how Max handles the personal and professional conflicts he faces. Is he being self-destructive and feeling shame about living a double life? As he gets more involved with one particular client, is Max getting too deep into his work? Mollica’s high-wire performance blurs the lines—he is sexy and confident one minute, and full of anxiety the next.
Makela spoke with me for the San Francisco Bay Times about making Sebastian.
Gary M. Kramer: There is an acknowledgement in the film that sex workers are stock characters in queer literature (and film). How did you bring a freshness to Sebastian?
Mikko Makela: It was really important for me to approach the topic of sex work in a completely nonjudgmental way—not bringing any moral question to it. Not thinking that there has to be some kind of trauma behind his decision to do sex work or that it would lead to trauma, either. That was the first important step. Then, I really wanted to look at this phenomenon of sex work facilitated by technology. In my encounters with the queer community in London, so many people I know have been involved in sex work more or less casually or professionally. It is through apps and the internet that has made it so simple for someone to cross that boundary and dip their toes into sex work. I wanted to look at that and how it has become so common for a large swath of young queer men—looking at it perhaps as another option of the gig economy in a modern metropolis. I would hope as well that the film’s other big focus on the creative process and writing is, I hope, something we haven’t really seen in a sex worker story before.
Gary M. Kramer: Max does firsthand research into sex work but lies that he has interviewed sex workers. What did your research entail and what can you say about your actors and how they performed?
Mikko Makela: I know a lot of sex workers whom I have interviewed and had discussions with. I watched documentaries and other films and read articles about it. It was important for me to make it feel very lived in and authentic. I tried to get the details right. Ruaridh, to my understanding, didn’t go through that kind of research process himself because he felt it is so much about this character’s journey as written in the script that to infuse it with information from other sources would dilute it in some way. Of course, the big question that is implicit in the film—relating to the idea of research as well—is whether an audience’s enjoyment of the story or of a film or piece of art is predicated on the knowledge that the author or actor themselves are drawing on their own experiences. Where did they get that
information? That is an interesting question that I am trying to ask with the film as well.
Gary M. Kramer: There is a fantasy, a reality, and a performance in sex work, and Sebastian captures all of that brilliantly, often in a single scene. Can you discuss that layering of emotion in terms of what he has to do, what the client wants, and how he has to process it? He is constantly recalibrating his experiences.
Mikko Makela: That’s so much what I was trying to get at and capture—the idea of looking at himself from the outside as well—that participant/ observer split. You question yourself: Am I doing this as Max or as Sebastian? Will he be willing to go further into a situation because he knows it will potentially lead to further material for his work? But also reversing that question: Would you live your life in a different way in order to be able to write about it, or is there a part in Max/Sebastian choosing a taboo subject in order to have the license to live it because it is for a higher purpose in a way?
Gary M. Kramer: What qualities did you imbue Max with?
Mikko Makela: I think he is full of contradictions, in his own eyes as well. He knows himself less well than he thinks he does. He has to discover things about himself. I think it comes from within him. I wanted to use the character as a way to think about this body/mind split as well, and that is what he needs to work out for himself. He perhaps feels these two sides of himself are maybe incompatible, or he really has trouble forging them into a whole.
Gary M. Kramer: Does Max know why he is doing this? You suggest he knows himself less well. He justifies his sex work as research, but he is also combatting his loneliness and living vicariously through his clients and their experiences.
Mikko Makela: I think he has an inkling of the reasons, but it is about his feelings of shame that he wishes he didn’t feel. The difficulty for him is being able to say he is interested in doing sex work without having to tie it to an artistic pursuit. He is in this constant battle with himself, I suppose.
© 2024 Gary M. Kramer
Gary M. Kramer is the author of “Independent Queer Cinema: Reviews and Interviews,” and the co-editor of “Directory of World Cinema: Argentina.” He teaches Short Attention Span Cinema at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute and is the moderator for Cinema Salon, a weekly film discussion group. Follow him on Twitter @garymkramer
Film
Published on July 25, 2024
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