Disturbing Cinema

Disturbing Cinema: I would like to start off this interview by asking you what your fag awakening was and what  inspired you to combine blatantly pornographic portrayals of sex with more traditional narrative and filming  approaches, as well as an interest in extreme issues that mainstream viewers may disregard as shocking or  disturbing taboos? Bruce LaBruce: My fag awakening started with Dr. Smith from the original “Lost in Space.” He was my fag mother. But that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with a camp gay sensibility. And then collaterally I was turned on sexually as a kid by Dr. Smith’s arch-nemesis, Major Don West, the macho, can-do, single astronaut who was bewildered by Smith’s flamboyant Machiavellian machinations. (In one episode, in which an Amazonian female race tries to take over the universe, Smith refuses to help Don and his other male space mates fight the women, saying “I refuse to participate in this dreary masculine protest!”) In term...