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COVER STORY 35
Caveh Zahedi exposes himself on film
by Anjali Sundaram
Confessions of a Sex Addict
It is October 4, 2003, a mere two-and-a-half weeks before the Sundance Zahedi and Watkins co-directed their first feature-length film, A
submission deadline. I am watching a small crew prepare a classroom Little Stiff, while in graduate school at UCLA. It screened in competi-
in St. John’s Presbyterian Church in Berkeley. Caveh Zahedi is restag- tion at Sundance in 1991. The film re-enacts Zahedi’s crush on an art
ing an all-male Sex Addicts Anonymous meeting—the last scene for student, and, in a risky venture typical of their work, the film uses the
his new feature film, I Am a Sex Addict. Empty chairs form a large cir- actual people involved instead of actors. Its black-and-white images,
cle with a Sony PD-150 camera at the center. The wiry-framed Zahedi is static wide shots, and long takes create a lyrical naturalism as Zahedi’s
behind the teacher’s desk discussing camera angles with his friend and obsession with the unresponsive Erin builds. The film evinces an un-
frequent collaborator, Greg Watkins. The “actors” stroll in. They are mitigated trust in its actors’ ability to carry a scene and is devoid of the
Zahedi’s friends and colleagues: filmmakers, editors, sound designers, heavy-handed symbolism and overworked plots favored by so many
a radio producer. Zahedi reminds them that they are to ad-lib, drawing first-time directors. Ray Carney, Cassavetes scholar and professor of
on personal experience as much as possible. On the walls, colorful il- American Studies and Film at Boston University, has devoted a chapter
lustrations of Ancient Greek battleships and hoplite shields dwarf a to Zahedi in his forthcoming book, The Real Independent Movement:
“Celebrate Girls” poster from another era. As the actors practice the Beyond the Hype (www.cassavetes.com). In a telephone conversation
obligatory twelve-step “Hi Caveh” in unison, it occurs to the cynic in me with me, he praised A Little Stiff for “its Bressonian austerity, in which
that this scene is telling. Four thousand years of Western Civilization a simple object, a door ajar, or the way Caveh changes his grip on an
has brought us from the bronze-covered battering ram on the wall to a ivy clipping can convey a colossal emotional event.” Poignant and dryly
group of men in a third-grade classroom discussing their inability to funny, the film contains many seeds of the pair’s later work: the blend-
control their sexual appetites. As Zahedi fingers his new wedding ring ing of narrative and documentary, the filming of true and unflattering
and talks about how his fascination with prostitutes began, I realize he chapters from Zahedi’s life, and the mystical belief in some sort of
is engaged in a very sincere attempt to address this history through his grand design in the universe.
personal experience. He continues long after the camera stops rolling, Zahedi’s 1994 solo project I Don’t Hate Las Vegas Anymore, is a
his audience enthralled. “I was walking down the street in Paris when I delightful gamble, if not a sucker’s bet. Zahedi sets up the premise:
saw a prostitute. There was something about her—she was wearing taking his father and estranged half-brother on a road trip to Las Vegas
this transparent blouse. It reminded me that I was pretending to be with the intention of plying them with ecstasy in order to get closer to
someone I wasn’t. A nice guy with all these dark secrets….” them. Yet he leaves the rest unscripted—a bold move considering it
For anyone who has met the wide-eyed Zahedi, it’s hard to imag- was shot in 16mm, not video. The film, he tells us onscreen, is an at-
ine him pretending to be anything that he is not. Solemn and restless, tempt to prove the existence of God. He will eschew directing, shoot
but almost childlike in his directness—this unadorned, uncensored reality, and have faith that God will take care of the rest. And it works.
quality is what makes his autobiographical films so watchable. His For example, a roll of film was accidentally loaded into the camera
work is pervaded by an unabashed willingness to be vulnerable on cam- twice, serendipitously creating a hallucinatory double exposure during
era. Some may find his films narcissistic and self-indulgent. However, the ecstasy experience. His small crew has a visible presence in the
many, like Joel Shepard, Film/Video Curator at Yerba Buena Center for film and the dynamics of movie-making become part of the story. The
the Arts, find them inspiring. “I think Caveh is trying to express some- film works on multiple levels, calling into question the camera’s ability
thing very basic in himself that most humans can relate to—a sense of to capture reality and leaving us to ponder the relationship between
what consciousness is, and a kind of existential sense of what it is like documentary and fiction, truth and perception.
to be alive on this planet.” In 2002, Shepard chose Zahedi to be a Wat- Zahedi’s spiritual experiences with hallucinogens became the sub-
tis artist-in-residence at the Center and believes he is poised to become ject of his next film I Was Possessed by God (2000). The short features
a major international filmmaker. long takes of Zahedi on a mushroom trip, writhing in bed and possibly
channeling voices from some universal subconscious. In the Bathtub of
Director Zahedi used the streets of San Francisco to stand in for
Paris on his low-budget shoot of I Am a Sex Addict. the World (2001), a video diary shot over the course of a year, shows
(Photo by Lisa Fremont)
36 COVER STORY
him shaving his head to stimulate hair growth, fighting with his girl- Zahedi screened a work-in-progress cut of I Am a Sex Addict at the
friend, and lamenting that he’s run out of ideas. Most recently, Zahe- recent Film Arts Festival of Independent Cinema, just after meeting
di’s contribution to a compilation of films about 9/11, features Zahedi the Sundance deadline in October. A couple days later, Zahedi and I are
teaching a class at the San Francisco Art Institute two days after the on the sidewalk outside his apartment doing a sun dance of our own,
collapse of the Twin Towers. The World Is a Classroom (2002) docu- trying to find the right mixture of sun and warmth, without glare. We
ments the real-life battle of bruised egos suffered when Zahedi tried to talk about the difficult balancing act his film performs, moving be-
get his students to loosen up and move around the room. The confron- tween experimental and narrative forms, between openness and clo-
tation between Zahedi and a student quickly escalates into an unproduc- sure, between ironic distance and character identification.
tive stalemate, until a round of “diplomatic” talks diffuses the situation.
The ideas of French film critic André Bazin clearly inform Zahe-
di’s work. In Richard Linklater’s 2001 animated feature Waking Life, I Am a Sex Addict reflects Zahedi’s deep
Zahedi appears, extemporizing on Bazin’s notion that while literature’s ambivalence toward narrative, and is an
strength is telling stories, the power of cinema is in reproducing reality.
In Zahedi’s interpretation of the Christian Bazin, reality is God, and, in ambitious attempt to find a new form that can
framing reality, film has a unique ability to render the seemingly mun- accurately capture human experience.
dane moments of our lives holy. In his work, Zahedi takes Bazin a step
further. Rather than aiming to reproduce reality as faithfully as possi-
ble, he experiments with relinquishing directorial control. He films No chronicle of saturnalian delights as the title suggests, I Am a
reality, taking his own experience as the best possible source of materi- Sex Addict is rather a critique of the self, filled with dread, misgivings,
al. Yet, Zahedi does not really help us filter through this material. He is and neurosis. It may be the most personal and embarrassing confes-
an unreliable narrator, either stoned or too emotionally involved to of- sion committed to celluloid. Standing in the backroom of the hall
fer an objective report on the action. Because of this approach, his where he is about to be married to his girlfriend of six years, Zahedi
films stay with you, as days later you find yourself still contemplating describes his addiction to sex with prostitutes, which began in his early
their ambiguities. ’20s, and his twelve-step recovery. He is expert at culling wonderfully
awkward and intimate moments from his life. For instance, Zahedi is
in a hotel room with a prostitute for the first time. As she methodically
cleans him below the frameline, he turns to the camera—a man with
his pants around his ankles, looking terrified and confused. Such mo-
ments engender a tenderness and empathy for the character. At other
times, he comes off as an insensitive lout who can only see his own
immediate self-interest. There’s a lot of bickering and a lot of banging.
While most of the sex is rote and played for laughs, Zahedi’s orgasms
during a series of blow-jobs are discomfiting in their excess and con-
trast with the sanitized and ritualized sex act usually depicted in main-
stream movies. Provoking a mixed reaction to his character from the
viewer is quintessential Zahedi. Carney finds this strategy admirable:
“What a wonderful place to get your work to as an artist—one where
the viewer does not quite know how to react. It forces us to stay open.”
Like his previous work, I Am a Sex Addict reflects Zahedi’s deep
ambivalence toward narrative, and is an ambitious attempt to find a
new form that can accurately capture human experience. But here his
story is told in retrospect. With a mock-instructional format laying out
the psychology of addiction and guiding us through dramatic reenact-
ments of his past relationships, he has become a reliable narrator. His
experience has been fully processed, and with the ironic telling of past
events, little is left unarticulated or unresolved. At the time of our con-
versation, Zahedi is in the editing stage, struggling with this aspect of
the film. “What I like about my films is that they usually give the view-
er a lot of room. I feel like I erred a little bit on this one by trying to get
it the way I wanted it, but yeah, I had a very specific thing I was trying
Frequent Zahedi collaborator Greg Watkins on the set with Zahedi, center,
to convey…. It’s a weird balance between getting what you want and
and actress Heidi Dupre
(Photo by Lisa Fremont) letting it be. Now my task is to let it breathe more.” He is contemplat-
ing opening up the narrative by combining it with the parallel story of
ReleasePrint January/February 2004
COVER STORY 37
making the movie. “There were all kinds of things that happened on investors that he find recognizable actors to play himself and the other
the set that involved sexuality and power, manipulation. These seemed major roles. Zahedi played the game, and the actors he approached
to me like interesting refractions of the other story.” either passed on it or never responded. He nearly gave up. But in 2001,
Looking back on his motives for making the film, Zahedi says, he decided to forge ahead with an initial donation of $50,000. Settling
“Something had happened to me that was universal and painful, and I for shooting digital video on a smaller budget, Zahedi had to revise the
felt like this is why it all happened—so I could verbalize it.” The Amer- form. “It forced me to make it more experimental, which I am glad
ican-born son of Iranian immigrants, he takes on his parents’ past as about. It’s truer to my own aesthetic.” In Brechtian fashion, the drama-
well, “I think that the culture of my parents is a very unenlightened tizing of past events in I Am a Sex Addict is interrupted with second
culture, sexually. I think I inherited some of that just from being their takes, actors forgetting their lines, and Zahedi breaking character mid-
kid, but I also inherited it genetically. I felt like I was trying to redeem scene to address the viewer.
something that was very ancient and old in history.” Zahedi is also in- I Am a Sex Addict is also more humorous than Zahedi’s previous
terested in addressing the Puritanism of contemporary American cul- work. Yet, Zahedi is also aware that his playful narration works to mini-
ture. “I really want to explain sex addiction to people who don’t get it mize character psychology, and, in effect, the ironic distance is some-
and are judgmental about it…. It’s really obvious with public figures, what at odds with the serious content of the piece. “I suffered a lot in
like with the Monica Lewinsky thing, where people are like, ‘he’s [Bill that period, and I am not sure that comes across in the film yet…. It’s
Clinton] an asshole for doing that.’ No one ever said, ‘well, he’s obvi- hard because you are always trying to make people laugh, keep them
ously got some pain that isn’t being addressed here.’ There was no em- entertained, and then at the end, they’re not going to buy [the epipha-
pathy in the public eye.” ny] because you have sent them down this other path.” These issues are
Given these imperatives, I Am a Sex Addict was written initially to difficult for any director working with both form and content of any
reach a wider audience than his experimental work. Zahedi conceived complexity. Even tougher for one making autobiographical work, in
the film as a conventional, dramatic narrative shot in 35mm. He spent which the script is deeply personal.
six years after completing the script in 1993 seeking a modest $2 mil- For Zahedi, the process of making the work is as important to him
lion budget. He succumbed to the insistence on the part of potential as the final outcome. He says dealing with frustration, humiliation, and
his own investment in perfectionism during the making of the film has
been incredibly painful but also productive. “It is very scary for me to
make this film because I want to make ‘the’ great film, and it’s hard to
make this film perfect. It’s quite possible that it will always have these
essential flaws, but I feel like I am a better person for being able to do
it anyway.”
In early December, Zahedi received word from Sundance that I
Am a Sex Addict did not pass the jury’s muster. Although Sundance has
long-since abandoned the independent, experimental, and low-budget
feature, I am, nevertheless, surprised by the news. Zahedi has been
making courageous and provocative work for nearly 15 years. He has
garnered critical acclaim and fostered a small but devoted following
among independent film afficionados. And though his latest effort may
be imperfect, a thoughtful perspective on this “aberrant” side of male
sexuality is all too rarely proffered on the American screen. In spite of
this setback, Zahedi remains optimistic, and has set his sights on other
festival deadlines, including Cannes (“if it’s done in time”), Telluride,
Toronto, Venice, and Berlin. “The good news is that gives us time to
finish the film properly, instead of having to rush it just for Sundance,”
says Zahedi. “The truth is that these things take the time they take to
get right, and it’s absurd to rush something just to fit into someone
else’s timetable…. The plan now is to finish the film, and to make it as
good as it can possibly be. In ten years, no one will care whether the
film played at Sundance or not, but they will care how good it is.”
Anjali Sundaram teaches film production at San Francisco State University.
Caveh Zahedi reenacts his first Sex Addicts Anonymous meeting.
(Photo by Lisa Fremont) Her experimental short Buckle My Shoe screens at the Slamdance Film
Festival in January.
www.filmarts.org
