Radical Vertical

Matt Lambert
People
Interview by Holger Homann
Photos by Matt Lambert
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HH In regard to your debut of Flower
within the porn genre, I read that you nearly
adopted a pseudonym to release Flower.
Why is that?
ML I’d considered it as it’s something
done often by directors, editors, etc. when
working on explicit projects. Bruce LaBruce
once told me to never shoot anal penetration
as it’d kill my chances of commercial success.
However, I struggled with the hypocrisy of
making work that celebrated sexuality and
denounced shame, to only go and hide
myself from the work. If I was to practice what
I preached, I needed to be as proud and
celebratory as the characters I portrayed.
HH You once partnered with your
husband Jannis Birsner to create Vitium, an
erotic, sexually-explicit punk zine. In regard to
that project, Flower could almost be seen as a
successor. Is there more to come?
ML Yea, it was the beginning of a
playful and irreverent body of explicit work.
I suppose my film and zine, Butt Muscle,
with Rick Owens, also falls into that camp
as does elements of other projects here
and there. I definitely intend to do more in
the Vitium publishing series with Jannis,
as well as continue to explore explicit
storytelling in film.
HH You once mentioned in an interview
that people, especially now more than ever,
learn about their sexuality through porn.
How do you consider your contributions
different from what you perceive to be
typical gay porn?
ML I shy away from the term ‘porn’
even when I can. For me, it’s something that’s
reductive and treats its characters as objects
rather than subjects. While ‘porn’ is an
impossible word to escape when discussing
‘Flower’, I see it as a short film with explicit sex
scenes. My goal was to capture the lightness,
playfulness, humor, honesty and irreverence
of gay sex when coming-of-age. I wanted
to capture the essence of its characters and
celebrate them as humans, while still making
it something that’s sexy and provocative.
While there’s surely a lot of sex in it, I see
intimacy as the subject more than just sex. That’s
a layer that I often feel is missing from your
typical ‘gay porn’.
HH Considering Helix, the production
company that produced Flower, is a gay porn
studio—what is the difference between Helix
and what the genre offers in general?
ML I worked with Helix because I loved
them as people and felt they had the utmost
respect for their talent. I also really wanted to
work with both Blake and Sean as they had
something different from what I had typically
seen. It was more about the personalities and
relationships behind the scenes that attracted
me, but I think that warmth and playfulness
often comes across in the work they do.
HH What do you suggest needs
to be different to create art rather than
traditional porn?
ML For me it becomes art when it causes
you to question the way you’d perceived the
genre in the past, and when it challenges the
way you relate to your own identity/sexuality.
HH In terms of artistic freedom—to
what extent did Helix allow you to direct and
edit the film the way you wished to pull it off?
ML Total freedom. They were
supportive and collaborative when I needed
it, but they more or less let me make the film I
wanted to make.
HH In terms of authenticity, how much
of what we see in Flower can you claim to be
real, and what is staged?
ML It’s a hard one to answer. I had a
story and knew what I wanted to capture, but
many of the moments are completely genuine
and unscripted. Which ones, I’d rather leave
up for guessing ;)
HH Since Flower has been produced
with full credit to your name—can you talk
about the reaction within the agencies which
represent you for other purposes than doing
porn, and the perception by the actual
audience it was targeting?
ML I had full support from everyone
around me. Part of my journey in finding the
right representation has been finding people
who support me in everything I do and are
able to see the joy and art in all my work,
rather than reducing them to their worst-case
buzzword. The audience it was intended for
reacted better than I could have imagined,
and got love from people I’d never expected
to even see it.
HH In regard to our main topic
of inclusion, do you consider—looking
backwards—projects such as Vitium and
Flower as inclusive pieces of your body of
work, or rather misfits?
ML Almost everything I make is about
intimacy and finding new ways to tell these
stories either in who or how.
LES FLEURS DU MAL