New Zealand journalist and director David Farrier‘s debut feature documentary, 2016’s “Tickled,” was a look at the underground world of competitive tickling and the bizarre cast of characters behind the subsequent fetish videos. Farrier has followed “Tickled” with “Mister Organ,” a profile of a litigious man living in the shadows. In this case, it’s New Zealand’s Michael Organ, whom Farrier first stumbles upon as an overzealous parking lot attendant at an antiques store, before discovering more strange details about his life. Before the film’s Oct. 6 theatrical debut, Farrier spoke with PvNew about “Mister Organ” for our Doc Dreams series, where he detailed some of the safety issues he faced while shooting the movie, his frustrations with his subject and if Organ has seen the film himself.
At what point in the process of learning about Michael Organ did you determine this had the potential to be a feature-length documentary?
Much like “Tickled,” I had written about the story first. This was based on a series of about five articles I’d written for a local website, The Spinoff. And much like “Tickled,” at a certain point, words just can’t do it justice. I knew I wanted to push in and meet the people and dig deeper, and that’s where, in my brain, a documentary seemed to be the right approach. I wanted it to be a visual story. I thought the characters involved were really interesting, so it just seemed like a sensible time to pick up a camera and start.
This film is as much about your creative process as it is about Michael Organ. There are several moments in the middle of the film that seemed like you were ready to quit. Can you tell me about a point when it felt like it might not work out and how you got through it?
There was a period of about two years where I just got lost in Michael Organ, and I knew I was making a documentary about someone who sucked people into this vortex of nothingness. I thought I would be invincible to that. “Tickled” was stressful, but I had this little crew around me and I felt sort of invincible. But with “Mister Organ,” he’s incredibly smart and complicated, and he just gets under your skin. I hadn’t realized he had done that, and once I did, I was so far into the documentary. I’d talked to so many of his victims who I’d promised I would be able to tell their story and hopefully create some sort of meaningful change.
So there was that pressure, but on a personal level, I just wanted to get out of there. But there was this crushing realization that I’d already put too much of myself and my resources and my friends’ resources into this. So that just felt like a horrible trap to be in, and knowing that I would have to spend more time with this particular man… it was just an awful feeling. Usually, if something bad happens, you can kind of run away from it in a physical or emotional way. But with this, you couldn’t.
Is Michael Organ still contacting you?
Today, things are calm. about a year ago, when the film started playing at festivals and we showed it in New Zealand, he involved me in a variety of court cases that had nothing to do with me, and so I got sucked into this drama. I was in L.A. having to dial into court in New Zealand and sit for days, dealing with Mr. Organ’s fictitious bullshit that he had come up with.
This documentary is not about someone who’s in prison or dead. He’s alive and functioning in the world in this really disturbing way, and he’s still out there doing things. He’s moved on from me at the moment, which is great, but also he’s the sort of guy that will pop back into my life at some point in the future. I have very little doubt.
Do you know if Michael Organ has seen the film?
Yeah, he’s seen the film. A lot of the documentary takes place in this bank building that he lives in that he’s moved all these antiques into. That’s in this little town in New Zealand called Whanganui, and directly opposite that bank is the local cinema and they played “Mister Organ.” He went most nights. He sat in the back and the few people I talked to who clocked that it was him said he talked through the whole thing. I had this dream of sneaking a microphone in and having him record a director’s commentary track of just him mumbling about what he thought of the film.
Did he send you his thoughts on the movie?
No, I made a very specific decision that once the film was wrapped I would not communicate with him again. It’s a weird thing to talk about, but he did really mess me up mentally. A big reason I’m talking to you from L.A. right now is I left New Zealand to get away from him. New Zealand is such a small place. If you make a documentary that puts a spotlight on someone, you are going to be bumping into them on the street at some point, so physically removing myself from New Zealand was really important. Changed addresses, changed numbers, blocked all my emails from any way he could contact me there, and so I made a really hard effort to cut him off completely, just for my own well-being.
“Tickled” came out in a pre-Trump world, and this film is being released in a world where classifying the truth as “fake news” is common. Do you look at Michael Organ in a different way as the world wrestles with people who can lie their way to the top and move around society in a different reality?
I spent so many hours in the edit with Dan Kircher, who was cutting this thing, and we would turn to Trump at various times. He was president during a great deal of us cutting this film, and we both remarked that Michael is living in the perfect age if you are a confidence man. If you can confidently say your own version of reality and deeply believe in yourself and march through life like that, not caring about other people, you can get far. That was Michael’s entire M.O.: Creating a version of reality and just running with it. He has more money than I have. Financially, he’s better off. It has worked for him what he does, and I think a certain sort of person in today’s world gets by very well if you just confidently carry on with whatever your bullshit is. I don’t think Michael could have done this in a different age.
While shooting this film, there were times when it seemed like you were in physical peril, as there were keys to your apartment being passed around, with potentially someone creeping around the property. Did you ever worry about your well-being?
There were times when I did think about bailing just for safety reasons once I knew that he had been around to the house. By this point, I knew that he liked sneaking and creeping around houses. I was living with three other flatmates and I didn’t want to bring my shit into their lives, so I had to have conversations with them: “This possibly psychotic man that I’m working with has a key to the house. This is why I’m changing the locks today.”
In saying that, I had really supportive friends around me, and a really supportive team. We talked a lot about safety and managing things throughout. I put up security cameras at one point during the filming, just little safety things that I wouldn’t normally be thinking about in my everyday life: Checking in with family and friends, checking that he wasn’t messing with other people in my life, and we just slowly got through it.
Would you want to embark on another feature documentary anytime soon?
Right now, I want to avoid anyone even remotely like Michael Organ. I like stories that I stumble on and I develop from the beginning. I don’t have a big interest in optioning other stories. I want to look into something that I’m currently curious about. At some point, I’ll do something else. I have an idea of making three of these films about these specific types of humans, but at the moment, I don’t want to do that.
I write an investigative pop culture newsletter called Webworm, which I spend a lot of time on, and I do a weekly podcast about American culture. Probably in about a year’s time I’ll stumble down another rabbit hole, and then four years after that I’ll have my third doc. That’s how I assume things will play out.
