EXCLUSIVE: Documentary filmmaker David Farrier has a way of getting himself entangled in strange situations.
In his 2016 film Tickled, he explored the slightly perverse if ostensibly harmless subculture of “competitive tickling” where grown men veer into something that borders on torture. The director wound up involved in a ferocious legal battle over his film.
Now, Farrier returns with Mister Organ, a documentary that Drafthouse Films is releasing in theaters on October 6. We have your first look at the film in the trailer above.
“In Mister Organ, Farrier again stumbles upon a strange, seemingly-innocuous news item that slowly becomes darker and more nefarious than he expected,” notes a description of the new film. “But this time, he becomes more enmeshed than ever. After reading an article in a local New Zealand newspaper about people getting saddled with astronomical fees for parking in front of an antiques store, he pulls the thread to discover that one man, Michael Organ, was behind that and so much worse. When Organ learns of Farrier’s investigation, he embeds himself in Farrier’s life and makes it a living hell.”
“My work typically is about the strangest sides of life,” Farrier says in press notes for Mister Organ. “I often go down rabbit holes that begin in one place and go somewhere completely different, and are hopefully surprising.”
He adds, “I often end up chasing bad people doing bad things in a way. People on the outside of society, that are manipulating others in some way. I think that’s the kind of stuff that I tend to gravitate towards — for whatever reason.”
As hinted at above, the filmmaker’s journey on Mister Organ began with him becoming aware of a regular hubbub erupting outside a shop called Bashford Antiques & Interiors in Auckland, New Zealand. The owner of the place had a propensity to clamp an immobilizing “boot” on any car parked improperly in a space reserved for the store.
“Conceding that an antiques store is typically a ‘boring, quiet kind of place,’ the chaos that Bashford’s attracted piqued Farrier’s interest. He had made a career about delving deeper into life’s oddities; whether via his documentaries, like the Sundance hit Tickled, which uncovered the dark underworld of competitive tickling and his Netflix series Dark Tourist, where he travelled himself to the world’s strangest tourist attractions or via other journalistic endeavors and his social media.”
Mister Organ is directed by David Farrier and produced by Farrier, Emma Slade, and Alex Reed. The executive producers are Ant Timpson, Bobby Allen, and Efe Cakarel. Cinematography is by Dominic Fryer; Lachlan Anderson is the composer. Mister Organ is edited by Dan Kircher.
Watch the trailer above.
