Tuesday, May 1, 2007 Last updated 7:51 a.m. PT
Film tracks sex lives of those who see beauty in the beast By ATHIMA CHANSANCHAI P-I REPORTER
People wired as "zoophiles" have one common denominator: They don't need human interaction as much as they need a connection with animals.
For them, paradise means being left alone with the object of their affinity. Sometimes they do it in a way considered most unnatural: sexually.
Because of that isolated predilection, so-called "zoos" gravitate toward others like themselves. In Washington, a community of horse lovers formed and existed under the radar until one explosive event exposed them.
Paradise lost.
Incorporating that unpalatable subject matter, a new movie from local independent filmmakers uses elements of both the documentary and the narrative drama to cast light and shadow on a scandal that made "horse sex" one of the most ubiquitous topics in Seattle in 2005.
Director Robinson Devor and his writing partner, Charles Mudede of The Stranger, debuted the re-enactment-heavy "Zoo" at Sundance Film Festival in January. Now it is headed to Cannes. It opens in Seattle on May 11.
"The darkest side of the story is we all need a community, no matter what it is," Mudede said. "This is a celebration of community, even if it's, 'Oh my God, what kind of community is this?' You should feel from the film empathy."
Repulsion, however, is more likely. Even in a world that no longer shocks easily, sex with animals still stands out as a taboo. When a 45-year-old Boeing engineer known as Mr. Hands arrived at a hospital in July 2005, he was bleeding internally. He died of a perforated colon. He had allowed a horse to penetrate him anally.
Though his name has been published in news accounts, the person's name is never mentioned in the film out of deference to his relatives, who did not participate in the film and asked the filmmakers not to use his name. "Zoo" also identifies Mr. Hands' comrades by their online "handles."
Authorities pieced together how Mr. Hands died after tracing to a horse ranch in Enumclaw the car that carried him to the hospital. At the ranch they found graphic videos of men engaging in sex acts with horses on the property, unbeknownst to the owners, who had left their property in the care of one of their ranch hands.
There is no explicit sex in "Zoo." A scene of police and the owners watching videos effectively conveys a sense of violation.
"We definitely have a prude streak running through us in approaching this," Devor said.
The film sets up a community of men whose sanctuary is the bucolic, pastoral setting of Enumclaw. Mount Rainier looms above, a reminder of the pre-eminence of nature. Men going back to the wild, back to nature, back to a simpler existence, is repeated throughout the film. What's not addressed specifically is why.
"You're connecting with another intelligent being who is very happy to participate," says a man known as "The Happy Horseman," a truck driver who drove Mr. Hands to the hospital. "You're not going to be able to ask it about the latest Madonna album, or Keats, Monet or Picasso. ... It's a very intense, wonderful kind of feeling. I don't think anything can really compare to it. There's no pain involved. At no time is anyone forced, coerced, drugged, roped. There's no bondage or anything involved. These are your friends."
The truck driver was the only one in the group authorities charged with trespassing because police, after viewing the tapes, decided no one could be charged with animal cruelty. James Michael Tait pleaded guilty to illegally entering the stables where the sex acts took place. His punishment: a one-year suspended sentence, a $300 fine and community service.
As a result, the state senator representing Enumclaw introduced legislation to make it illegal to have sex with an animal. Washington had been one of 17 states where bestiality was not a crime. State Sen. Pam Roach's bill passed. Under the law, it is a class C felony to have sex with an animal, punishable by a $10,000 fine and up to five years in prison. In 2006, a Pierce County man caught in flagrante delicto with the family's pit bull became the first person in the state charged under the law.
Mudede said the men saw the gatherings at the farm as the physical form of the virtual interaction that initially bound them together online.
"This guy had a family. He had a relationship with his family," Mudede said. "There's our given family and our constructed family. This film was about the family you get to pick, not the one you're given."
Absent are the usual devices that might help explain how and why "zoos" are drawn to animals. The filmmakers preferred to present the story through the zoos' points of view rather than from the perspective of the detached observer.
"It was a horizontal way to look at a group of people as opposed to drilling into several people's pasts," Devor said. "Psychiatrists and historians usually help ground you, but we wanted you to float above it."
With an abundance of cinematic elements available, the filmmakers could not conceive of making a conventional-style documentary. Neither had done a documentary before.
"We wanted to invert everything we possibly could," Devor said. "It was a great challenge to do this subject matter and take the syntax of documentaries and play with it."
So they cast actors in some of the roles but used as the film's spine audio interviews with the principals. The only "talking head" in the movie is an actor who plays a cop. One of the zoos, Coyote, plays himself, as does horse rescuer Jenny Edwards.
"There was little in this film that wasn't an experiment," Mudede said.
The film met with approval from the zoos, whose worst criticism was that it was "too artsy," Devor said.
Since they were exposed, most of the Enumclaw zoos have scattered outside Washington. Coyote is still around.
"It's not that they were afraid of being caught by the law," Mudede said. "But this was just traumatic for them. They not only fell under heavy media attention, they also lost a friend."