Director JT Petty present for a discussion with Jason Zinoman (New York Times, Vanity Fair), along with editor Andy Grieve and subjects Bill Zebub and Eric Marcisak.
JT Petty’s S&Man , pronounced “sandman”, (USA, 2006, 84 minutes, video) is a movie about voyeurism and underground horror, focusing on our balance of sympathy and sadism when we watch death. JT Petty, a filmmaker responsible for his own underground horror films, tracks down and interviews psychologists, scholars, actors, and most importantly—the underground and extreme filmmakers themselves.
Horror, S&MAN posits, is a specific pleasure: the more we suffer in watching it, the better. We want horror movies to hurt us. S&MAN explores and exercises that idea, asking why we are compelled to watch, and more than that, why we like it.
The brains of S&MAN are structured around interviews with a horror scholar, a sexologist, and a forensic psychiatrist, who describe for us the connections between voyeurism, culture, and sadistic watching. The heart of the film, however, comes from the filmmakers who choose horror as their specialty. Through interviews, on-set filming, and home visits, JT and his crew are pulled deeper into the world of underground horror.
The film scrutinizes subjects who are, if not outright liars, at least intent on blurring the line between themselves and the movies they make. Boundaries are crossed: between filmmaker and subject, witness and participant, reality and fiction. The movie hones in on the topic of violence and sadistic watching, boiling it down to a discussion about snuff, about real murder on film, and the audience who’s watching.
JT is a writer and director of movies, videogames, books, and graphic novels. His first feature film, SOFT FOR DIGGING, was shot for $6000 when he was 20 years old. It was selected for the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, and went on to dozens of festivals world-wide. He’s since made a handful of horror films, most recently THE BURROWERS, a monster western released by Lionsgate in 2009. He has been writing for videogames since 1999, and was one of the creators of the game SPLINTER CELL, a best-selling franchise. His screenplay for the first SPLINTER CELL game earned him a Game Developer’s Choice Award (the interactive equivalent of an Oscar.) His most recent videogame work was on the adaptation of John Favreau’s IRON MAN.
JT is the author of the popular series of chapter books for young readers, CLEMENCY POGUE, published by Simon & Schuster. FAIRY KILLER, along with its sequel, THE HOBGOBLIN PROXY, were optioned for film adaptation by the Jim Henson Company.
Posted in: Past Events.
[...] S&Man skitters around a couple of big, interesting questions about our relationship to images of cruelty. But as the film barrels towards its conclusion, it becomes apparent that, instead of knotting the various strands that comprise the film, director JT Petty has indiscriminately tangled them together. Petty is a good storyteller with broad concerns, but S&Man is not structurally precise enough to effectively pull off the game he wants to play. [...]