SICK: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist

Let's start out by getting a few things right out in the open before we go any further. The subject of this documentary is Bob Flanagan, a "super-masochist" performance artist. Bob likes his mistress to punish him by, oh, doing things like shoving a tennis-ball sized orb up his ass, or threading needles through his chest skin. One of his more famous art pieces was a series of photos called the Wall of Pain, that were close-ups of his facial contortions as he got spanked (or was it whipped?) from behind. And yes, there is an infamous scene in this film that shows Bob nailing his penis to a 2 x 4 piece of wood.

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The catch of the film Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist is that (per the title) Bob is dying. Flanagan has cystic fibrosis—a disease that causes the afflicted's lungs to repeatedly and relentlessly fill with fluid, causing the person to drown slowly. Most people with the disease apparently to live only to their teens or 20s, but Bob beat the odds, surviving to 42. Director Kirby Dick's film follows the last few years of Bob's life. It's almost like this documentary is Bob Flanagan's ultimate performance piece.

Bob's way of dealing with the disease (or maybe to distract himself from it), is to inflict pain on himself. For him the pain equals pleasure—he can control this pain in a way that he cannot control his disease. Bob and his longtime wife and mistress Sheree Rose are an interesting couple. She is the dominant one in the relationship (the sadist), who inflicts pain, humiliation, and suffering on her submissive, Bob (the masochistic), who is quite literally asking for it. It is only towards the end of the film, when Bob is quite literally dying, that he denies his mistress her wishes to make him submit. For me, I have to say it was a bit hard to understand a scene where the hard-ass Sheree gets pissed off at Bob for not abiding by her wishes, as he is doubled-over, trying to breathe, requesting to go to the hospital. But at the same time, you can see that these two were made for each other.

One of the more curious moments in the film arrives with the introduction of a 17-year-old Canadian girl named Sarah. Sarah also has cystic fibrosis, and has been very sick her whole life. Through the freakin' Make a Wish Foundation, she asks to meet Bob Flanagan! She likes horses, and Bob likes leather toys, so she brings him a riding crop as a gift when she arrives with her smiling, and only slightly uncomfortable mother.

You know from the start that Bob will die by the end of the film, but when it comes, and he is hooked up to an oxygen mask in the hospital, it is still shockingly hard to watch. There is a very telling moment in one of the extras on the DVD called "Sarah's Sick Too," following up on the fate of the Make a Wish teenager (she is now in her 20s, married, and has survived much longer than even she expected to). In an interview with Sarah, the film Sick is showing in the background on the living room TV. She can barely watch. During Bob's death scene, she is crying, and has to turn it off. She and Bob had a special understanding. Most of the fuss about the film has been about the nail-in-the-penis scene, she explains. Everyone thinks that scene is so hard to watch. But she thinks watching a man die like Bob did is much more horrible. And she's right.