Directing Traffic:
Director Justin Kerrigan Talks Party Politics

It's a story we've all heard before, if not personally experienced, and Human Traffic takes us back there again. Watching this summer's Human Traffic is like riding a chemically-charged roller coaster and vicariously taking part in the fun of five high-spirited characters indulging in a weekend of clubs, pubs and drugs.

First-time writer/director 25-year-old Justin Kerrigan, wrote the script for Human Traffic while 23 and on the dole. "I never gave up because I had nothing else going on in my life," says Kerrigan, a convivial Cardiffian with sparkling blue eyes and white-blonde hair. "We couldn't get any financial support out of Britain whatsoever. No one would touch it because it was immoralistic about the use of recreational drugs and unconventional in its structure."

Through the sheer perseverance of executive producer Renata Aly though, the financing came thorough in venture capital and the sale of television rights. Still budget was tight, and the film team couldn't afford extras. So instead they advertised in several music magazines. Everyday, says Kerrigan, they would get busloads of club kids, off their rockers, ready to party. "It'd be mental, man," Kerrigan muses. "When we advertised, we said we'd be giving out free CDs. But when it came time, our producers turned to me and said, 'Look, we don't have the money.' So, to keep them happy and their morale up for 14 hours a day, they'd all get a cheese sandwich and a bottle of beer.

"At the time," recalls Kerrigan, "there was a general hysteria in the press for anything related to ecstasy use or the rave culture." But as Kerrigan and his peers realize, these are just post-teen scenesters living their real lives at the end of the work week: drinking, smoking dope, sniffing coke, popping pills and just plain partying. "The film is a representative of contemporary mainstream youth culture," say Kerrigan. "It's the biggest culture ever to hit Britain. And the point of it all is to just have fun."

As a film holding no moral content, Kerrigan wasn't expecting a warm reception from the conservative British press for Human Traffic. But the film turned out to be a box office success in his homeland, and not only that, but Kerrigan soon found himself signing a contract with Miramax Films for North American circulation of the film.

"It was crazy. I mean, at first, we couldn't get any distribution for the film at all. Everyone turned it down. So we didn't think we'd ever get any American distribution," says Kerrigan, who followed the advice traditionally given to young filmmakers when writing a screenplay -- stick to what you know. It just happened that what he knew, was what everyone else liked.

"I wrote as honestly as I could, and what's interesting is that people seem to be able to relate to it. I was basing the film on personal experiences. It was a film about my friends and me. Like I was Jip [John Simm] trying to control 'Mr. Floppy,'" admits the young director in a manner that is so utterly guileless. "I was living that, and it was a fucking nightmare. I didn't think I'd ever have sex again for the rest of my life."

Kerrigan, who has been getting into "proper clubs" since the age of 14, confesses to making many of his closest friends going out alone. "Me and my friends used to cane it," says Kerrigan, whose main vice is marijuana ("because it chills you out and makes you feel mellow, happy and high"). "We used to live in the clubs. We'd be there four, five nights a week." He points out, however, that he's never seen anyone OD or die at a party, nor has he had any guru-like experiences on chemical substances. "I haven't seen God yet, but I have felt the devil," he says winking.

Human Traffic does not attempt to explain why youths indulge in chemical substances, and there are no stereotypical portraits of drug users as typically portrayed in other films. Kerrigan's characters are not addicts or criminals, but ordinary kids who take drugs, have a good time, then go back to their ho-hum lives. In Human Traffic as in Kerrigan's world, drugs don't drive you crazy, life does.

"Fantasy is a part of reality," he says. "A part of mine, anyway. People don't take drugs to have a grim, realistic take. They take them to enhance their experiences, and it's up to the individual if they use it or abuse it."

Still his debut film has been endlessly compared to Danny Boyle's drug-fueled Brit flick, Trainspotting. "Basically, you look at films about young people who take drugs that have come out of Britain in the last 10 years, and there's only one film: Trainspotting," says Kerrigan. "Trainspotting is a great film about heroin addiction and the previous generation, but Human Traffic represents contemporary mainstream youth culture. It's about living for the weekend."

And while both are set in 1990s Britain, Human Traffic cuts more to the core of youth consciousness everywhere. "I think fundamentally, everyone can relate to a lost weekend," says Kerrigan. "When it comes to Friday, me and my friends will just have to go out. Whatever our paranoia, whatever our stress, whatever our anxiety, we just drop it and say, 'Fuck it' and we totally lose it. You know -- live for the moment. Take pleasure in the present, and stop worrying about the future."

Justin Kerrigan won the Best Achievement in Production from the British Independent Film Awards and the Best Director at the 1999 Thessiniki Film Festival in Greece. He is currently in the early stages of writing a film based on his experiences with his father, who died earlier this year.

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