David Farrier On ‘Tickled,’ Lawsuits, The Crazy World Of Competitive Tickling [Video Exclusive]

David Farrier on ‘Tickled,’ The Crazy World Of… by Uinterview

David Farrier had no idea that he had just stumbled on a documentary idea – and into a few lawsuits – when he discovered competitive tickling.

David Farrier Video On ‘Tickled’

Farrier made Tickled over the course of two years. The subject, competitive tickling, was never supposed to take up more than two minutes on an entertainment news show. But after looking into the sport, Farrier knew that there was a lot more to explore and a lot more to say.

“I’m an entertainment reporter in New Zealand, so I was looking for another wacky story to cover. A friend sent me a link to a website that was running monthly tickling shoots in Los Angeles and so it was kinda framed as competitive endurance tickling,” Farrier explained in an exclusive interview with uInterview. “You’d get paid really good money to be flown into Los Angeles — if you were a good looking male aged between 18 and 24 and you’d take part in a tickling contest. I just thought it was the strangest sport I’ve ever heard of.”

When Farrier tried to get more information about competitive tickling, he was shut down by a PR person, who told him, “We don’t want to deal with a homosexual journalist.” Undeterred, Farrier and his friend Dylan Reeve continued their investigation, and were met with even more resistance. It was that resistance that eventually convinced Farrier that they needed to go full steam ahead with learning more about the sport of tickling.

“We started looking at who owned the websites and what was behind them potentially, and once we started doing that … they hired lawyers and they told us to stop and so we thought there must be more going on than what’s on the surface,” Farrier said. “It was originally gonna be a two minute story at the end of the news or late news like, ‘Here’s this crazy tickling contest,’ but once the threats came in and once they sent those three men to New Zealand to tell us not to make a film.”

Farrier and Reeve soon learned that they were not the only ones being bullied by the competitive tickling company. Those who participated in the tickle sporting events were subjected to far worse.

“A small percentage of those people involved, they basically found themselves with a website made up in their name, their tickling video was suddenly everywhere — you google your name and your tickling video is in the top 50 results, all over the internet,” Farrier explained. “You’ve been doxed so all your personal information is suddenly available online and there’s videos and various lies about you being sent to your school that you coach at or your girlfriend, your parents, your grandparents. Basically, there’s just this huge online harassment campaign against these young men. A lot of them are from parts of America that are fairly conservative. This stuff would really derail their lives.”

As a result of going through with making Tickled, Farrier and Reeve are entangled in lawsuits filed by the main figure behind competitive tickling. The goal, according to Farrier, is to withstand the litigation, and then make more documentaries.

“It’s not nice to have a lawsuit with you name on it. I mean we were warned when we started making the film we would be sued and that is now happening,” Farrier said. “I guess we’ve had time to prepare for it, we stand by the film, it’s just I don’t wanna spend my life dealing with lawsuits. I wanna make other films, so it’s worrying, but we knew it would happen and we’re prepared for it.”