Set in the late 1970s, Thailand, “Doctor Climax” follows a dermatologist and venereal disease specialist “Dr.Nat” who took on a sex columnist position answering anonymous letters and educating the public on topics from premature ejaculation to sexually transmitted disease. All the while maintaining his role as an upstanding citizen and a faithful husband.

 

 

Two decades ago, director Kongdej Jaturanrasamee made a risque co-directorial debut with “Sayew” about a tomboy-ish young woman figuring out her sexuality and putting herself through university by secretly writing for an erotic magazine.

 

 

Pairach Khumwan had a hand in the scathing 2011 film “Love, Not Yet”, in charge of one of the triptych tales with an overarching cautionary message about accidental teen pregnancy.

 

BK sat down with the two daredevils directors, discussing how this period piece shows just how far we’ve come.

 

 

 

Kongdej: It started three years ago. The showrunner of this project, Ekachai Uekrongtham, contacted me to write a script about a sex columnist in the late 1970s. Their team had already gathered some research material like the actual letters that people would submit to magazines. So when I read those, it was like a lightbulb went off, and I got started on the plot. After it was almost done, I was asked to direct. But I’d only directed films, and this is a series. It's quite long and I’m already old. That’s when Pairach’s name came up. He’s worked on series before, and I saw that all of them are high quality. So I thought we’d work well together.

 

 

Kongdej: I think there's a lot of interesting societal aspects. It’s one of the first times that sex was discussed out in the open. Sex became popular and visible in the most influential form of media at that time which was newspapers. So I think there are a lot of elements at play that can also reflect modern society.

 

 

 

Pairach: As a viewer of both these projects, I think they share certain elements but “Doctor Climax” covers and delves deeper into the sexual issues in Thailand. 

 

Kongdej: I think “Sayew” is more about escapism. The main character is already very different. Sex in Sayew is portrayed more like a fantasy but "Doctor Climax" covers more ground, more characters and obviously more stories. In terms of the intensity, "Doctor Climax" definitely went a lot further. 

 

 

Pairach: Yes, when I worked on “Love, Not Yet" which came out in 2011, I remember that during the promotion of that film society was really critical. They were saying stuff like ‘Why are you making films that sell sex?’ but I don’t think it’s something that’s happening with “Doctor Climax.” I think society slowly evolved from there. 

 

 

 

Kongdej: Honestly, I was super impressed with the entire ensemble. When it’s a series about sex, we need actors who are ready to perform and commit to the role physically. Sex is something personal and private. I think when the series is out there, it’s always going to create some ripple effects and the people who’d be on the receiving end of those critiques are the actors. There’s a lot of faith and respect there, and everyone quite literally dedicated their body and soul to this. 

 

Pairach: I’d like to add that when we block and shoot the sex scenes, it requires a lot of trust. It requires everyone from the actors, the writers, and the directors to strip down your walls. Collectively sharing something super intimate like that, after a number of takes, creates trust.

 

Kongdej: Yeah even after filming, we still meet up, ask each other to go get suki. It’s like we’ve bonded through the experience.

 

 

 

Pairach: Yes, I think it’s one of the first projects in Thailand to use an intimacy coordinator.

 

Kongdej: Right from the get go, we make it a priority to have this position. We’re lucky to have Kru Rom, [Romchat Tanalappipat] who is an acting coach that we’ve worked with for a long time. She took up an intimacy coordinating course from abroad. She learned everything from the know-how and the consent agreement documents up until the actual steps that we can follow. 

 

Pairach: To put it simply, it’s like when you film an action scene. You need to map out the queues of when your body would make contact and how to properly capture it. This is the same thing. We consider the safety of the actors.

 

 

 

Kongdej: The thing is, I don’t think you can improvise stuff like that. You can’t just yell, ‘Oh,just continue making out,’ or ‘Give us more emotion!’ You have to agree to a set of rules beforehand. There’s stuff about position, movements. The camera has to be able to pick up those things. 

 

Pairach: Yeah, if the actors have already done the scene but the camera didn’t pick it up, that means what the actors did wasn’t productive. It’s like they did it for free, so having an intimacy coordinator really saves them from that sort of situation. 

 

Kongdej: On set, we try to have as few people in front of the monitor as possible. We have a red zone, yellow zone, dark red zone, we try to leave only the necessary staff. And we have an intimacy coordinator on hand to communicate info between the directors and actors. These are details but it really has a lot of impact on the overall performance. 

 

Pairach: I think actors could feel kreng jai [feel bad] to speak up because there's a hundred people waiting on them, but having this intimacy coordinator makes it easier to express when they feel unsafe.

 

 

 

Kongdej: Because this is a period piece and we’re filming in a city that doesn’t really conserve historical spaces, there are a lot of things that don't look like they belong in that era. 

 

Pairach: We mostly filmed in Bangkok and a little bit in the provinces because we couldn’t find a period-accurate landscape in Bangkok. For example, we could use about 10 shophouses but if you go further down, it looks very out of place.

 

Kongdej: You’ll see that we had to erase a lot of things, CGI things. What really helped is the costuming department. I think the fashion is fantastic. Very vibrant, very 70s

 

 

 

Pairach: In the series, there are sequences portraying the letters received from the readers. I think this is the fun bit. You’ll get all kinds of wacky and bizarre scenarios. 

 

Kongdej: It’s the same for me too. There’s so much liberty in how we fantasize and bring these letters to life. These are based on real letters from that time. There is some strange stuff going on but there’s also things that are common knowledge today. It really normalizes sex.

 

 

 

Kongdej: Well, I got to eat (laughs). Okay but in all seriousness, when you complain about Thai movies not having anything innovative. Like oh look the characters are in a catfight. Oh they’re fighting over the same man again. Supporting a topic that’s rarely talked about can be the gateway for less popular topics to be raised. Sex is something that's close to heart for a lot of people. It can reflect other problems in society, what people were thinking, their lifestyle, the oppression. That’s the fun of this story.

 

Pairach: It’s been awhile since production wrapped and coming from someone who is both the filmmaker and the audience, I can say that I had a blast doing both. Sex is a good jumping off point that’ll lead us to talk about other underlying issues that we weren’t discussing at that time.

 

This interview has been edited for clarification and brevity.