New Zealand Journalist Stumbles Onto Bizarre Internet Subculture in Fascinating Documentary ‘Tickled’

Sandra Miska

“Tickled,” the documentary that was the talk of the ‘16 Sundance, all began with a viral video. New Zealand filmmaker David Farrier has interviewed the likes of Justin Bieber and Lorde and also reports on “the weird and bizarre side of life.” His curiosity led him to view a clip of an endurance competition, a “sport” involving young men being paid to be tied up and tickled. Further digging leads Farrier to contact Jane O’Brien Productions, the company that offers fit young men full-paid trips to Los Angeles and a paycheck of $1,500 for their participation in their videos. To his surprise, his inquiries to the company behind the competition are met not only with legal threats but also homophobic remarks (Farrier is openly gay). The homophobia from the woman who is supposedly Jane O’Brien’s assistant baffles Farrier, because as he puts it, all-male competitive ticking comes across as pretty gay.

The threats that are meant to scare Farrier only serve to intensify his curiosity and further “troublemaking” on the part of himself and collaborator/nerd expert Dylan Reeve and leads to a visit from three male associates of the mysterious Jane; initially, they seem friendly until they end up threatening them. It becomes apparent that if O’Brien has deep enough pockets to fly three people across the world, what else is she capable of? Farrier and Reeve hop a plane to Los Angeles to infiltrate her secret ticking facilities.

As one can predict, the guys are barred access to the DTLA studio where the videos are filmed. Many of the young men featured in the videos declined interview requests but a man named TJ appears to discuss how he agreed to be tied down and tickled for a hefty paycheck. Subsequently, the aspiring pro football player was met with a barrage of harassment from O’Brien and her associates after asking YouTube to pull the video of him; harassment that included emailing the school where he coached outing him as an alleged deviant.

The trail left by O’Brien and a similarly shadowy figure known as Terri Tickle leads Farrier and Reeve all over the country including Muskegon, a downtrodden Michigan town where O’Brien has recruited a host of MMA fighters into her secret “tickle cells” (really shady hotel rooms). The filmmakers also travel to Florida to meet another tickle enthusiast, Richard Ivey, who unlike O’Brien, is upfront about his fetish and admits that being tied up and tickled is a form of BDSM, albeit on the tame end of the spectrum. Everything comes to a head when Farrier and Reeve travel to New Jersey for a major reveal.

“Tickled” is not so much about tickling as it is about cyber bullying and exploitation. Only a small portion of the film explores the fetish making it more of a mystery than an exploration of a fetish community, although there are glimpses. While it is full of humorous moments, its tone is more serious than the title suggests, as a trail of sinister emails, letters and phone messages, not only to Farrier but also to other former associates of O’Brien and Terri lead to a dark discovery. Well-crafted and tightly-edited, the doc is full of twists, some predictable, some not so much.

Not surprisingly, the highly litigious production company examined in “Tickled” have hit Farrier and Reeve with a lawsuit and launched a smear campaign on social media. However, the filmmakers claim they did everything by the book during the making of their documentary including hiring a team of lawyers.

“Tickled” opens June 17 in Los Angeles and New York and in other select cities June 24.