IndieFlix

FROM HULU.com

Independent filmmaker Zeke Zelker tackles all things related to sex in his film In Search Of, taking viewers down a winding path of love and betrayal, hope and revenge. Through the actions of each character, from a high-school virgin to a woman looking to fill void in her life, you discover that each action can lead to a lifetime of repercussions. And by touching on abortion, rape, prostitution and AIDS, Zelker has opened up a dialogue about sex, breaking his film to college campuses across the nation. Currently working on a documentary about the Dalai Lama, the writer/director recently spoke to Hulu about In Search Of. You can read the full interview below. — Rebecca Harper, Hulu.com

Hulu: Hi Zeke, can you set up your movie for your audience?

Zelker: In Search Of is a film about the repercussions and consequences of people’s sexual actions. It’s pretty much based around an idea that I had at a Thanksgiving dinner when I wasn’t certain about what was going on in my own family. And so it’s based on those sorts of things, of all the different situations you can get yourself into when you don’t take responsibility for your sexual actions.

It has some pretty dark themes in it — you wouldn’t call it a happy story about sex, would you?
No, I would say it’s not necessarily a happy story about sex. These are the kinds of things that could happen if people took sex lightly. In our society today, where everybody is oversexed for the most part, not many people are actually having conversations about it. And so one the reasons I made the film was for people to actually converse about the issues of sex, not just the act of sex. Because it takes a lot of responsibility. Heck, you know, with sex you could be creating a life, and sex is also why we’re all here — without it, none of us would be here. We do hit on a lot of serious issues with it. It’s about creating a conversation. That’s one thing we see being playing out on Hulu right now, the different sides that are people are taking, which I think is pretty amazing. So we communicate in this forum that Hulu had basically created and I think it’s awesome, I really thank you for giving us that opportunity.

You’re currently touring college campuses with this film, creating conversations about sex among students. Can you tell us a little about this?
We’re at a bunch of colleges this spring: University of Nebraska, University of Florida, University of Texas – Austin, LSU, University of Pennsylvania. It’s very interesting, because we’ve been taking different approaches with the film on the different college campuses. Before, we would actually hand out condoms and things to promote the film, but now we’re actually taking a different approach where we’re letting people decide for themselves which avenue to take. We just don’t want to come across as being preachy or anything, but we do want people to be aware of certain things out there and to take the responsibility for their actions.The overall feel and vibe has been pretty amazing. We were at Penn State and showed the film twice there, we were at Westchester University and Kutztown University. It’s just been very interesting to hear the dialogue that people start having. Some of it’s very intimate, and some of it is thinking that I’m like the Sex Ed teacher — which I am not. [Laughter.] It opens up a lot of doors into conversation and that’s one reason why I leave the film open-ended, so people do have a conversation about the various issues that we bring up.

The film centers on a group of people. Can you tell us about these people and what they’re bringing to this dialogue about sex?
Certainly. For instance, there is the character Jack, who is very nihilistic and self-serving. He treats sex as an object, a power he uses to get his way in different ways. There’s another character who’s very naïve. He is in high-school and basically wears the scarlet letter “A” because he has not had sex yet. He’s actually chastised in high school for not having sex, and he eventually bows to peer pressure and ends up succumbing to it. There is another person in the film that has been searching for love all of her life and finally finds it, and then doesn’t know what to do with it. And because of that, sex for her is a consequence of those feelings. There’s actually a prostitute in the film as well, who basically gets paid to have sex. So we took a lot of different angles, and it’s a matter of all the different powers that sex can actually have over people. And the action itself is very played out in the film. Just because of the evil that is going on in society today with the FDA allowing 17-year-olds to get RU-486 in drugstores, and then with Levi [Johnston] having the whole thing with Sarah Palin’s daughter and everything. This kind of stuff ends up happening in real life, and I just hope that my film allows people to have conversations about sex. A lot of people actually felt that I should show the film as a Sex Ed class, but that wasn’t exactly my intention when I set out to make this film.

As you’ve taken the film around the country, you’ve obviously encouraged dialogue with your audience. What has the conversation been like? Have you had any surprising reactions?
Generally shock at first, quite honestly. People are generally floored because of the magnitude of the film and how we approach the issues. There’s been some lively discussion and lively debate of self-control and conversations about peer pressure; there’s been a lot of conversation about the whole thing about contraception and, you know, why isn’t it more readily available and why is it considered a joke. So there has been a lot of talk about issues. And the whole rape thing is also brought out and just some really horrific things. And so we strike this chord with people. There is definitely reaction, a lot of reaction. A lot of people equate it with Requiem for a Dream. What Requiem for a Dream did with drugs, we’re very much doing with sex, and we also can be compared to Crash, which is another one, too. People are kind of stunned pretty much by the message that we’re trying to convey here.

You also play around with stereotypes a bit. Did you set up to break the idea of these stereotypes?
To a point, yes. You know, the core of the matter is, sex is why we’re all here. Without it, none of us would be here. In our society, I definitely feel that nobody takes it that seriously. You can see p0rn all over the Net, but people don’t actually talk about the real issues. And the issue’s not like RU-486 or stuff like that, but actually the whys and what-ifs. With the film, we tried to not let it be stereotypical, but the thing is, we definitely turn people left and right here. We don’t go down one straight path of the subject matter. And so we definitely try to break down stereotypes. I feel like, especially in cinema today, everything is very stereotypical. I think life is not stereotypical. It’s just better to let people realize that, that everybody’s a being, a person, and everybody has their own ways of looking at things. If everything was Ken and Barbie, then we’d be living in a plastic world — and we don’t thank god.