HAVE FINGERS, WILL TRAVEL
Competitive endurance tickling is not a sport to be laughed at. Actually, it’s more precise to say that you giggle at your own peril. The organizers may have the last laugh at your expense.
This was what started to unfold when New Zealand journalist David Farrier started looking into an unusual practice he found on the Internet. Of course, the Net, as everyone from your mother to Werner Herzog has discovered, is full of weird stuff. But the tickling matches, run by an outfit called Jane O’Brien Media, represented something of an outlier.
Participants — all male — got good money, airfare to Los Angeles and accommodation there. Oh, and Jane O’Brien said there was nothing gay or pornographic about it. It was like a wrestling match, only gentler. It might even be a form of torture being investigated by the military.
Farrier and his co-director Dylan Reeve decided to explore this rabbit hole, only to find a nest of vipers at the bottom. First came emailed threats and insults. Next, legal action. Then a posse of Jane O’Brien stooges (three, as it happens), showed up in New Zealand, having flown first-class from America, to tell the filmmakers: “We’re not going to have a good time if you do this.”
Farrier narrates the story, and more than once admits he wants to back out. But something — maybe repeated use of the words “competitive” and “endurance” — keeps him going. Or more likely it’s people like T.J. Gretzner, a college kid who got into the sport for the money, and found himself subject to threats and an Internet smear campaign when he tried to extricate himself.
It would be a spoiler to say anything about where the trail leads once the filmmakers make it to America. But the twists and oddities pile up in a narratively satisfying yet morally murky mess. As for someone trying to corner the market on competitive tickling videos, let’s just say that there isn’t much of a market. But there’s definitely a corner, and it’s not an easy one to escape.