Let's Talk About Sex... - Chris Waitt Interview

How would you fare if you decided to track down your ex-partners? Do you think you'd end up in a dominatrix's dungeon? What about singing to a sex therapist about wanting to sleep with every woman you met? Or downing seven Viagra pills at once? 3D's Anita Connors talks to the very funny Chris Waitt about his debut film, A Complete History Of My Sexual Failures, as well as love, life and relationship advice.

'New idiot filmmaker Chris Waitt attempts to find out what's wrong with him by talking to his ex-girlfriends and subsequently ritually humiliated by a series of women, from his ex-girlfriends to his mother to a dominatrix.'

This is how British filmmaker and Kurt Cobain doppelganger Chris Waitt has chosen to sell A Complete History Of My Sexual Failures to you dear readers. A crowd-pleaser of a documentary, it is sure to heat up more than many a cinema seat at this year's Sydney Film Festival. The film focuses on the 30-something, self-confessed disaster-at-relationships as he decides to change.

'I expected it to be really, pretty simple,' Waitt says. 'And that's probably because I'm stupidly naïve in these things, just as I in relationships as well. My life is really made up of that, I just stagger into things. I don't really, really think them through. That's true of my relationships, and that's true of the film.'

At once hilarious and heart-rending, A Complete History- sees Waitt thrust into a tragicomic tornado of confronting situations.

'I don't really think things through, so I didn't think a lot about what these situations would really entail,' he says. 'I actually thought it would be pretty simple. I thought it would be phoning up or speaking to some ex-girlfriends, finding out what was wrong with and you know, I thought they'd be kind of a bit pleased to see me, speak to me, and we'd find it an interesting way to deal with the problems in my life. But actually, of course, it turned out to be way, way more difficult than that.

'I don't think it's an obvious way to try and look at one's life or address one's problems, great or small. I myself had my doubts all the way along. I really kept thinking, 'What the hell am I making this for?' I either thought it was deeply self-indulgent or it must be some absurd ego trip, or it was just a bad idea. Although I think there may be elements of that in the film, in the end it turned out to go way beyond what I expected. It did end up being very important in my personal life, it was cathartic.'

Curiously, the film almost didn't get made.

'Both me and the people putting the money into it thought it was an absolute disaster,' Waitt recalls. 'The funding was withdrawn twice. And you know, what you see in the film is a call from the head of the film company, which was an actual call, you hear him saying he was going to shut the film down and everything.'

Luckily for us, A Complete History- was given the final green light late last year. The film will strike a chord notably for its sincerity; it truly is unique in that it records Waitt's personal problems and experiences with unflinching candour; everything is documented from the various emotional and physical embarrassments he suffers to the poignant revelations he gains. A great deal of the footage will surprise and even shock. It is then perhaps surprising to hear that Waitt's family were among the first to see the film.

'I had a screening at Christmas for my family, just after I had finished the film. It didn't go well. I mean they laughed at some sections, but it's not a normal family movie to see someone talk about their sexual, emotional problems at great length. The trouble was, a lot of the material in it was a lot of stuff they didn't know. It turned out to be kind of like a huge convention- My aunts were there, my uncles, my cousins. They insis