Twenty-five-year old Justin Kerrigan hardly seems the image of a typical
writer-director. During a recent Dallas interview, the Cardiff native
looked like the archetypal example of the club culture that’s the
subject of his debut film, “Human Traffic,” which became, as Kerrigan
put it, “the most successful film ever to come out of Wales” during its
smash run in Britain last year and is now poised to open in the U.S. via
Miramax Films.

The picture, which depicts a weekend in the life of five buddies who
immerse themselves in the drug-and-dance scene as a respite from their
dull working week, is entirely true to its maker’s own experience.
“It’s a film about me and my friends that we’d want to see ourselves,”
Kerrigan said. “Everything that happens in the film is about me and my
friends. We were all stuck in dead- end jobs, and when it came to the
weekend we’d go out and party.” The sites of their partying were the
clubs where drugs like Ecstasy were readily available and the mellowness
it brought much appreciated. The club culture, Kerrigan explained, is
“now mainstream. Millions of people can relate to it. It’s a huge
phenomenon that keeps growing and growing–a way of life.”

The opportunity to make any film, let alone one about his own life,
seemed remote to Kerrigan as he worked a series of what he calls
“McJobs” while enjoying the club scene himself. Then he decided to
attend film school–it took him a year to get accepted–where he made a
series of successful short films. Still, it took major pressure from
one of his teachers to get Kerrigan to commit to trying to write and
direct a feature after graduation, and three years of work to get the
picture made. (During the filming, Kerrigan said, “I was on the dole.”)

The result is a splashy, high-energy movie, stylistically garish but
undeniably engaging, and extremely successful to boot. That
differentiates it from the films of Woody Allen, the filmmaker whom
Kerrigan most admires. “I think he’s a genius,” Kerrigan enthused.
“What I learned from him most of all was not to make a picture like
other people make a picture, but to bend and innovate. That’s the whole
thrill of filmmaking for me.”

And Kerrigan hopes for the thrill to continue. He’s at work on a second
script which he expects to be a step in the gradual evolution of his
cinematic work. “I think it will happen organically,” he said when
asked how he sees his writing-directing interests developing. “I’m
going to continue to write personal stories, things I know about.” His
current project deals with his relationship to his recently-deceased
father; Kerrigan describes his parents as “kind of like old hippies,”
and said that his dad gave him “quite an unconventional upbringing” and
“exposed me to an adult world at an earl age.” He hopes that the
picture about his father that eventually results will be “like a
celebration of his life.”

And after that, Kerrigan will go on making movies. “I can’t do anything
else,” he explained. “Nobody else is going to give me a job!”