The Gay Couple Behind Brothers of the Head

Filmmaking life-partners Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe, whose award-winning 2002 documentary Lost in LaMancha profiled the downward spiral on the set of a Terry Gilliam movie, have returned with the extraordinary Brothers of the Head. Essentially the story of conjoined twins Tom and Barry Howe (played by Harry and Luke Treadaway), and how they became early punk rock legends, the movie has a pseudo-documentary feel and spirit without ever crossing over into the comedic mockumentary realm. It even includes a movie within a movie, credited to legendary filmmaker Ken Russell, who is also an interview subject in Brothers of the Head. Fulton and Pepe, who are about to celebrate their fifteenth anniversary, spoke with AfterElton.com shortly before the film's release last week.

Afterelton.com: What was it about Brian Aldiss's novel that caught your attention?
Louis Pepe: I think the fact that it was about these two people whose lives are inextricably bound together, who have a kind of troubled but strangely beautiful collaborative relationship. It did kind of jog a few resonances with Keith [and me], as a couple who make films together.

AE: There is a longstanding cinematic fascination with people who are born different, including David Lynch's The Elephant Man and more recently Mark Polish's Twin Falls, Idaho. What can you tell me about your interest in the subject?
LP: I think we were fascinated, especially since this story is about a rock and roll band as well. There's a whole cult about the rock and roll superstar and our desire for our rock and roll superstars to be extraordinary. To be much more extreme than we, as the audience, are. We want them to be more dangerous and transgressive and freakish. We also look to those rock and roll superstars for pushing boundaries, pushing us into areas we never wanted to go. There's something about these personae and their willingness to be out there that fascinates us.

AE: As rock stars they can get away with things that we mere mortals can't.
LP: Right. And we want them to pave the way for us. Tom and Barry Howe are characters that don't seek that out. Iggy Pop was doing it in his rec-room somewhere in Michigan, doing this stuff as a teenager, and Tom and Barry Howe are not. They're kind of thrust into it. Another angle on this is the character of outsiders who learn to appropriate their status and use it to their own advantage or turn it against those who would otherwise exploit or oppress them. That has a lot to do with what the punk movement meant to this whole generation of disenfranchised British youth. “We are going to derive our power from being aggressive and in your face and shocking you.” You throw the two things together and you get Brothers of the Head (laughs).

AE: I'm glad that you mentioned the exploitation, because an air of it hangs over the story – from the sale of the Howe twins to impresario Zak by their father to the beatings at the hands of manager Nick to the sexual aspect of the presence of journalist Laura to the brothers' substance abuse. Can you say something about the way people like the Howe's become victims?
LP: Every stitch of the film is steeped in that. Zak (the impresario) makes this comment at the beginning of the film – “I never exploited anyone who didn't want to be exploited.” Is this a guy trying to sweet talk his way out of what he's doing? Or is this idea of exploitation about a two-way street or a relationship. Is it something where one party willingly submits to another party's wishes, and why? There are all kinds of exploitation in the film. Do Tom and Barry exploit each other? There's the exploitation by Eddie Pasqua, the documentary filmmaker, who clearly has some sort of strange hidden agendas, creeping around with a flashlight in Tom and Barry's bedroom at night. It's to look at it and say there are the exploiters and the exploited, but we wanted to look at how it was more of a symbiotic relationship.