a complete history of my sexual failures Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Easily one of my favorite films from the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, A Complete History of My Sexual Failures follows Chris Waitt; a jobless slacker who attempts a quest to find out why he's been dumped by every girlfriend he's ever had. As I said in my review, it's like the documentary version of High Fidelity, if that film had stayed in the UK where the novel was originally set. Throughout the doc, we follow Waitt from one ex-girlfriend to another, from an S&M Mistress to the streets of London -- all in the hopes he will finally learn why he sucks at relationships and, maybe, find a new love at the same time. Cinematical sat down with Waitt during this year's Sundance fest to find out what the hell he was thinking when he set out to make this very personal, yet extremely hilarious documentary.

Note: There are spoilers contained within this interview, so read at your own risk.

Cinematical: Ya know, I have to admit it's a little awkward talking to you an hour after watching you butt-naked, being whipped in the balls by an S&M Mistress. I mean, dude -- what was up with that?

Chris Waitt: [laughs] At that point, I think I had the realization that I had lost sight of what I was doing. And we cut from it, but I kept looking at the cameraman, sort of 'Can you do something to stop this?' And of course I was just there with the cameraman and he wasn't going to stop it -- he found it hilarious. The camera kept shaking; we had to cut between the bits because his hand was shaking so much. But yeah, she got really carried away ... that woman. But I was actually in that dungeon for two hours -- we had two hours of footage from that. Deeply painful.

While first explaining A Complete History of My Sexual Failures to a fellow colleague, I said it was sort of like High Fidelity ... if, when they adapted the novel, they kept it in the UK (where the book was originally set) and, instead of John Cusack, threw a Kurt Cobain look-a-like in the lead role. Then again, the only common ground shared between the two is that both feature characters who are seeking out their old ex-girlfriends in an attempt to figure out why they're still alone, miserable and unable to sustain a normal relationship without being dumped. Oh, and this one is real, not fiction.

Directed by and starring Chris Waitt, Sexual Failures follows one man's journey to fix his love life. Early on, Waitt tells (and shows) us how, in fact, he's been dumped by every single girlfriend he's ever had. And there's a lot of them; at least 15 or 20. Some have dumped him over email, some over the answering machine, some in person and one even wrote a book, dedicated it to him, and created a "boyfriend" character who gets brutally murdered. Suffice it to say, the man doesn't have a good track record. But why?