A new film about tickling is set for its New Zealand premiere tomorrow night.
Tickled may sound like a bit of a laugh, but it's far from it.
Tickling is harmless enough, you might think. You will think very differently after you watch Tickled.
Chances are you will have seen David Farrier on Newshub -- an entertainment reporter specialising in the weird, the wonderful, the quirky. Competitive endurance tickling? That was right up his alley.
"I found out about this tickling competition, where young men were being flown to LA to be tickled, on camera, like a tickling contest," says Farrier. "It was pretty much the funniest and lightest thing I'd ever encountered. So I thought I'd like to do a story.
"I emailed the organiser, and the response I got back was so aggressive and so crazy, I just thought, 'There's got to be something more here.'"
So there was -- so, so much more. The plot didn't just thicken, it clotted and congealed and very suddenly. Tickling was no laughing matter.
"The more we looked into it, the more we found out it wasn't just about tickling; it was about bullying, and there were lots of people besides me out there being bullied."
Farrier and his co-director, Dylan Reeve, flew to the United States chasing the story, joining the tickling dots and filming their journey, all the while under threat of constant legal action from those they were chasing. Tickled is their story.
The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January to excellent reviews, but their Tickled journey was far from over.
"After Sundance, it has definitely amped up since then. There are some lawsuits with my name in them, and we are dealing with them accordingly.
"At another festival at Missouri, we had to stop a screening, and the police came and had to physically escort two people out. There were two private investigators sent from New York to Missouri to try and pirate the film. The police in America take all this stuff very seriously. We had bomb dogs at each screening."
The film will screen in cinemas across the US from June, and then on HBO. Farrier says his weapon of choice has caught the tickling bullies off-guard.
"It sounds really cheesy but using film and documentary as a weapon to stop something, they haven't had this before."
Tickled has its New Zealand premiere at Auckland's Civic Theatre tomorrow night. It goes nationwide at the end of May.
Newshub.
