Tickled (2016)

Journalist David Farrier stumbles upon a mysterious tickling competition online. As he delves deeper he comes up against fierce resistance, but that doesn't stop him getting to the bottom of a story stranger than fiction.

Directors:

David Farrier, Dylan Reeve

Stars:

David Farrier, Dylan Reeve, Marko Realmonte

1 win & 16 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
David Farrier	...	Himself
Dylan Reeve	...	Himself
Marko Realmonte	...	Himself
Kevin Clarke	...	Himself
Adam	...	Himself
T.J. Gretzner	...	Himself, former tickle competitor (as TJ)
Richard Ivey	...	Himself, tickle fetishist
David Starr	...	Himself (as Dave Starr)
Anne James	...	Herself, radio host, KSEN / K96 (voice) (archive footage)
Alden	...	Himself, former tickle video performer
Hal Karp	...	Himself, journalist 1992-2007
Debbie Scoblionkov	...	Herself, journalist 1981-2006
Jordan Schillaci	...	Himself
Lance Roberts	...	Himself (voice)
David D'Amato	...	Himself, aka Terri Tickle aka Terri DiSisto aka Jane O'Brien aka Jane J. O'Brien aka Debbie Kuhn

Storyline

David Farrier, a New Zealand pop cultural reporter whose story subjects often verge into the bizarre, believes he's found his next story when he stumbles across an online video on the world of competitive endurance tickling, a sport where the participants, with hands and feet tied down, are tickled for as long as they can endure. Participants are flown to Los Angeles first class, paid $1,500, and put up for four nights in a luxury hotel. Suitable participants are deemed to be younger, muscular males. The event is held on a monthly basis. In contacting the organizers, US-based Jane O'Brien Media, via their popular Facebook page to arrange for an interview, David receives a return message from one of their representatives, Debbie J. Kuhn, declining the offer, the message a homophobic rant largely against David. In that message, Debbie asserts that the competition is wholly a heterosexual athletic activity, she who does not appreciate what will be David's assumed gay bent on the story as...

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Plot Keywords:

tickling | hidden camera | investigative journalism | blackmail | legal threat | 

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Taglines:

It's not what you think

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Genres:

Documentary | Mystery

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for language

Details

Official Sites:

Official Facebook Official site

Country:

New Zealand

Language:

English

Release Date:

17 June 2016 (USA)

Also Known As:

Csiklandozás életre-halálra

Filming Locations:

Los Angeles, California, USA

Box Office

Opening Weekend USA:

$21,898, 19 June 2016, Limited Release

Gross USA:

$612,816, 25 September 2016

Company Credits

Production Co:

A Ticklish Tale, Fumes Production, Horseshoe Films

Technical Specs

Runtime:

92 min

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

During a screening at the True/False Film Festival the film had to be stopped for nearly ten minutes while local police escorted two people from the cinema. The two were allegedly private investigators who had been spotted trying to record the film with a device hidden in a coffee cup.

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Quotes

David Farrier: I started this journey curious about a bizarre sport called Competitive Endurance Tickling. But I now think this was never even about tickling... This is about power, control and harassment. It's about one person's twistedness, and how far that can go. One person, who has managed to shelter himself with money to keep his obsession going. But now, it's his life exposed. For once, it's him on camera.

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Connections

Followed by The Tickle King (2017)

User Reviews

dogged investigative journalism stumbles from something innocuously weird to something bizarrely dangerous.

Whether it is drama, comedy or documentary, New Zealand filmmakers punch above their weight. The documentary Tickled (2016) is one of the most unusual films you will see for a long time and a guaranteed conversation starter in the right company. While the film's title suggests comedic titillation, what it reveals is something more sinister that has wrecked many lives. It is also a fine example of how dogged investigative journalism can stumble from something that appears innocuously weird into something bizarrely dangerous.

It is said that movies have plots while documentaries have premises. Pop-culture journalist David Farrier specialises in fringe phenomena and his premise is that if someone spends a fortune to stay anonymous they have something serious to hide. He comes across something described as "competitive professional tickling" that involves the filming of young athletic males being tied down and tickled by one or more other young athletic males, all fully clothed. His initial inquiries to understand more about this activity are so aggressively stonewalled that he turns his investigation into a documentary with most of the filming in the United States. Expecting to find a secretive cult of homoerotic activity, he finds participants who have been subjected to extraordinary legal threats, extortion, and public shaming. The scale of intimidation and the lengths to which perpetrators are prepared to go indicate there is big money involved. The documentary feels like a parallel universe where things go from strange to stranger as the inquiries lead to a prominent and wealthy American lawyer who was a teacher and school principal. Farrier and his team-mate Dylan Reeve use old fashioned stakeouts, doorstop confrontations, and forensic web-based research to turn the study of a fringe fetish into a gripping thriller.

This is a well-produced documentary, especially for a novice filmmaker. Minor criticisms aside, like Ferrier's occasional tendency to tell rather than show and a few scenes that need tighter editing (like the time spent in the car stake-out), the overall pace, direction and content make this a totally engaging film. The hand-held filming technique and the unexpected twists and turns in the investigation impart real-time-discovery effects. A quick Google search will show that both during production and since the film's release Farrier and Reeve have been and still are under serious legal and financial threat. Not only do the filmmakers deserve a bravery award, their work is riveting from the laughter-filled opening scenes to the chilling closing credits.