In his latest film PVT Chat, which debuted at Fantasia Fest, director Ben Hozie examines the intricacies of online relationships. The film begins with Jack (Peter Vack), an online gambler who is in love with camgirl Scarlet (Julia Fox). When she’s online, she is a dominatrix in black latex who Jack pays to humiliate him until he orgasms. He falls in love, thinking she understands him when really she’s playing a game of survival. Then, the film switches to her perspective, showing her daily experiences and how she is routinely taken advantage of by others.
With a lot of nudity but almost zero sexuality, Hozie depicts the absolute coldness and oppressive loneliness of finding love on the Internet. Transactional sex acts are interpreted as intimacy when in reality they are a means to an end. This is not a film about the dangers of sex work, but about our shifting consciousness in a world dominated by being online. It is all an act. Hozie spoke with Film Cred about why he chose this topic, masturbation on screen, and what it’s like to portray a digital relationship.
Film Cred: Why did you want to create a film that exists at the intersection of technology and sex?
Ben Hozie: I’m really interested in romantic relationships. I think all the films I’ve made in some ways deal with them. I wanted to make a movie that’s really about how computers are changing our consciousness. So I thought, “Okay, well, how are computers changing the way dating works? How are computers changing the way intimacy works?” And at some point, I started thinking about making a movie that would be erotic in a more blunt way. I think I was really emboldened when I saw Love, the Gaspar Noe film.
One of the hooks in that movie is that it is a softcore erotic movie, but it’s also, instead of being really edgy, dark and twisted, really sweet. The character in that movie says his ambition is to make the 2001: A Space Odyssey of erotic films. I thought that was brilliant. And in my own way, I wanted to make a movie that was pushing the envelope in narrative cinema.
But instead of it being about sex, [PVT CHAT] is about masturbation, because if stats are any indicator, that’s primarily the main use of the internet. More people are looking at pornography than they are at the New York Times. So I just wanted to deal honestly with that. I feel like masturbation is such a huge part of the human experience and I’ve never seen a movie that deals with it in any even remotely honest way.
FC: I feel like masturbation in movies is used either as a joke or as a shameful act, and it’s natural for people to masturbate. What I loved about this film is that while you have a lot of masturbation, you don’t play it for a joke. You don’t try to make anyone look bad, but you just portray the honesty of the act. So what was it like directing those scenes and trying to make them more blunt than exploitative?
BH: You have to treat it like a documentary. I was the camera person, so with Peter, a lot of time, it could be, “Everybody can leave the set except me,” even the sound person. We could just set up a microphone in the room. And it’s just me and Peter alone in the room. And he’s acting, but in some sense, he’s not, because you actually have to do it. You just treat it as realistically as possible. So Peter and I got really close, and that was pretty brave of him to be willing to do that.
FC: Wow.
BH: I’d just tell him, “I’m almost studying you in this documentary way. I want to just reveal the presence of your body. It’s not really about anything other than that physical reality.” What’s amazing is scenes where he’s actually acting and [he’s masturbating], it becomes so undeniably real. There’s no way you can fake acting at that moment. It has heightened the moment. There’s something really magical about it.
FC: You said you’re the camera person, and I feel like, in watching this film, the camera takes on its own personality. Why did you want to make the viewer more aware of the camera, as opposed to just filming without bringing attention to the apparatus?
BH: I think it might just be a taste thing. I like movies where the camera has a personality of its own. So I was thinking a lot about how I don’t want to make the kind of movie that you see a lot coming out now, where it’s just screen capture of conversations. That could be one way to make a realistic camgirl movie. But I thought the more interesting way is to study the actual computer. I like filming a laptop because it’s almost this weird alien presence that is now revealing itself for the first time to you. We take it for granted, but what is this actual thing? What’s the physical reality of it like? Getting that really almost fisheye wide-angle lens and then gliding up right against it, I want people to really have to think and feel the tactile objects in Jack’s reality, and by extension, all of our reality.
FC: Speaking of filming the laptop, how did you film the scenes with Peter Vack and then Julia Fox through the webcam?
BH: You’re the first person to ask about the logistics of that, which is cool. So in my apartment, there are two rooms and a kitchen in the middle. So what was good was, one half of the apartment became Jack’s set and the other room became Scarlet’s dominatrix room with the pink walls. Then five or six people from the crew are hidden in the kitchen. I would, for the most part, be in Peter’s room with the A camera and there would be a B camera on Scarlet.
But in actuality, they are both also on webcams and they’re actually talking over the internet as well. I was capturing that footage and thought about using some of that. But I ended up not using that. Regardless, they’re actually talking over the internet and each of them has a microphone on them. And then I would go back and forth between both the rooms with the A camera. But there was also a B camera in the other person’s room, just in case we wanted to fake a webcam. And because they’re improvising a lot, you don’t want to miss any of the moments.
FC: When I first started watching PVT Chat I thought, “Okay, it’s going to be all from the guy’s perspective.” But then you switch it to Scarlet’s perspective, which I love so much. So why did you want to tell both sides of the story instead of just one?
BH: The kind of films I like show kind of a cosmic point of view. I love films like Rules of the Game, or something, to give you a classic example, where you get to know everybody and the film isn’t just from one person’s point of view. It’s just a more empathetic way to show a world.
But when I first started the movie, I thought I was making a Taxi Driver style movie where you’re all in one unsavory person’s head and you’re just forced to deal with that. But then I quickly realized that her story in some ways is way more interesting. I feel like that’s when the movie really gets good. You pull the rug out from the audience, and you force them to see, “Oh, this isn’t actually the way the world is. You were just stuck in this guy’s head.”
FC: I had another technical question about the graphics when they’re texting each other. How did you decide to have those texts live on their own like black screen, or over the water? Because I know a lot of times, people do the iPhone thing where the text bubbles pop up next to their heads.
BH: I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this video, but it’s one of my favorite essays online. It’s the guy who does that ‘Every frame of a painting’ video series, where he talks about formal techniques in movies. He has a great essay about how you aestheticize text messages. He shows a bunch of different examples from films.
So I was thinking, “How do I want to do it?” I ended up using that very old school, silent film title card, because for me, that’s actually what it feels like when you get a text. When you’re riding the subway, and you get a text message, you’re no longer in the subway. You’re in the void of your thoughts, and all of a sudden, the thoughts are filling the whole screen. I thought, psychologically, to me, that’s what it actually feels like. It doesn’t feel like I’m still seeing the subway.
FC: What is it like having this movie premiere during COVID? That must be so kind of bizarre, to have your film about love and technology feel more relevant than ever in a kind of sad, messed up way.
BH: I was really looking forward to watching a theater full of people, to kind of feel the awkwardness of everybody. I joked when I first came up with this in 2015. I had this great idea where the first time the movie premiered, we all go into a movie theater and everybody has an iPad or a laptop. Then everybody is watching it alone on their small screen, but altogether in a big room.
FC: That would have been so cool, though.
BH: That would have been cool. Maybe one day, we’ll be able to still do that. I think we always knew this movie plays better on a small screen. It’s not Laurence of Arabia, you know what I mean? It’s weird, but in some ways, I think it’s meant to be seen alone.
PVT Chat has not yet secured distribution and continues to be shown at film festivals.
