SCOTT J. RAMSEY ON EROTIC QUEER THRILLER, ‘X’

Scott J. Ramsey’s debut feature film X, an erotic queer thriller about a voyeur who hosts debauched masked balls, will makes its North American release on Feb. 9.

A Hitchcockian mix of melodrama and camp, X made its world premiere at the Starburst International Film Festival in Manchester, U.K. It went on to screen at over a dozen festivals around the world and received overwhelmingly positive reviews. The film will be released along an 11-track electro cabaret album called At the Devil’s Ball, which will be available to stream and download on music platforms beginning Feb. 16.

Sissy Family had the opportunity to catch up with Ramsey and talk more about the film.

Hi, Scott! Thank you for taking some time to chat with me about your film, X, which will be making its North American release. Without too many spoilers, can you give us a brief synopsis? X is basically about a young woman who hosts masked charity balls at her beachside estate that double as sex parties. Little do the guests know, she has a hidden camera in the bathroom. It is kind of like a queer, feminist take on like the Hitchcockian voyeur story.

X is your directorial debut. How meaningful and significant has this project personally been to you?

Extraordinarily meaningful. I have wanted to be a storyteller since I was a little kid. Like, I have always been an artist, and I started making movies when I was in middle school. This project, I am really in love with this movie [laughs]. That might sound arrogant, but it isn’t because I think I’m so great. I like to see so much of myself and every member of the team in every single frame of the movie. It took five years for us. Every single member of the cast and crew were rookies, none of us had any filmmaking experience before making this.

The story itself, when I first had the idea for the story for the movie, I was not quite conscious of exactly what inspired it. It kind of just all fell into my lap when I brought it to my writing partner, Hannah. She and I wrote the script and, but years after we had written it and we were making it, I kind of realized that the inspiration behind the story really was the sense of shame and otherness that comes with being queer filtered through this fucked up lens with the main character being a sexual predator and voyeur.

Art honestly is my life, and that might sound pretentious as hell, but it is true. I really see myself as a vessel for the stories I tell. Film, music – I kind of like to be limitless in terms of the medium. I definitely like to consider myself a filmmaker, but I hope to not just be contained to one single medium.

How did you discover your passion for art and storytelling? Honestly, it has kind of innately been there since I was a little kid. When I was four or five, before I could pick up a pen and write, I would dictate stories to my grandma, and she would write them down for me. I have always been singing and writing stories, and as soon as I had access to my grandpa’s camcorder, I would start shooting stuff in the backyard. Every time for a school project, it could be something creative, like a short story or something, I would always do that. It has always just been a part of my DNA. Then as I got older and I met all of my friends and collaborators through filmmaking, it kind of just made me realize that I wanted to do this all the time.

I heard X had a successful run on the festival circuit. It has been received well? Yes! Honestly, the biggest challenge with X has been getting it seen and heard by everyone. When people see it, they tend to like it. Our audience tends to be people who are queer and like dark subject matter. It is not for everyone, but the people who see it tend to be very receptive to it. I really love that it is ambitious, elegant, and lush, but it definitely has this raw quality to it, and people really respond to that too.

What do you hope audiences take away from it? It is kind of cliché, but I always like the quote, “disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed.” Christian, the main character, has this pitch that she throws to the guests of these masked balls. That it is a world where no fantasy is too obscene. The great irony of the story is that it does not end up living up to that because of her own shame. She is a sexual predator, and her shame has manifested itself in this terrible way. Creating an immersive story world where no fantasy is too obscene is the goal.

I like that although we see various queer identities in X, that is not the focus of the story. Do you think more films are starting to go in the direction where sexual identity and gender is not at the forefront with LGBTQ characters? I don’t feel like I have the authority to talk about all other films, but I will say, I am really drawn to this idea of limitlessness, and that applies to gender and sexuality. I also like the idea of not having to be contained to a box or label, and that pertains to art and in real life. I kind of aim to be limitless, and I applied that to the characters. Their gender and sexuality is a part of their character and it was innately going to be addressed, but the story just was not about that. I think sexuality is more nuanced and complex than just the traditional coming out or being in the closet story.

You are also releasing a complimentary 11-track electro cabaret music album called At the Devil’s Ball with standalone music videos for an immersive multimedia experience. Can you talk more about that and the decision to include this? When I first pitched the project to my other producers, Hannah and Kevin, Kevin is a musician. I told him from the beginning that I really wanted the music to be a big part of this and that I wanted this project to be limitless. To be across different media. When we were building the score, we kind of had in mind that we were going to release the music and that it was going to be its own thing, not just the soundtrack.

When we were making one of the songs for the score, we wanted it to have an 80s New Wave vibe to it. There is a scene in the movie where Christian is hunting down, finding, and making the potential guests of her balls fall in love with her. For that montage, we wanted there to be this 80s New Wave vibe song. Hannah knew that I was a singer, so she suggested I sing the vocals. I wrote a song called “Knave,” which is like 19th century British slang for gay men cruising and trying snuff out whether each other were gay. I wrote this song, sang it, and it was just so fun.

Kevin and I then started making more songs for the movie, and then we kind of accidentally made a whole album. I think it is nice because it is very reflective of the movie, but it is also its own storytelling. It is an intersection between the storytelling of the movie and my own personal experience. The meaning of the album is that at the Devil’s ball, your mask is your real face.

You mentioned earlier that it took you five years to complete this film. What kind of challenges did you encounter? The biggest challenge, obviously, it was our first time making a movie. We had the luxury of having no idea what we were doing [laughs]. Because of that, as each challenge came up, it was just dealing with it as it went. Baby steps. The overarching challenge was because there is no named talent in the movie, it has been hard to get it out there and getting it in front of people.

In terms of the actual making, we had to re-record all the sound in post because of the waves of the ocean, we were shooting with a noisy camera, and all kinds of other production problems. We recorded all the audio and dialogue in ADR and kind of built the movie soundscape from scratch, so that was definitely a challenge. We had all the challenges you would run into when making a movie, but on this microbudget scale. The rerecording of audio and getting the movie in front of people have been the biggest challenges.

What more do you hope to accomplish with your platform? I am always hoping to destroy old norms, question the status quo, be subversive, and continue to create immersive story worlds that span across different media. Being limitless both in the subject matter and in the medium is very important to me. Disturbing the comfortable and comforting the disturbed!

Before we wrap up, are there any other upcoming projects or anything else you would like to mention or plug? We kind of touched on this a little bit, but we did make three music videos, and they went to film festivals also. We are very proud of those, and they are available to watch on our YouTube channel. We also did a web series called Blood, Sweat, and Rose Petals, which focuses on behind the scenes material and the making of the movie and the album.

Sissy Family