'Ecco Homo' Tries to Unravel the Dark Chameleon Troy Davies

In the 1980s, Troy Davies was an Australian artist and performer who hung out with INXS and U2, and collaborated with some of the most famous people on the planet. What his friends and family didn't realize was that almost everything Troy said and did were part of a series of lies and deception that started in childhood. Born Peter Davies, he was a chameleon who shifted genders, names, and personalities over the years.

Directors Lynn-Maree Milburn and Richard Lowenstein were friends with Troy during this period, and up till his death of AIDS in the early 2000. Their new film Ecco Homo attempts to unravel their friend's spiral of lies. The results were far more macabre than they expected.

VICE spoke to them before Ecco Homo's debut at the 2015 Melbourne International Film Festival to ask how they pieced together his story.

VICE: Troy Davies is such a shifting central figure, how do you even begin to form a portrait of someone like that?
Lynn-Maree Milburn: I think that's what the attraction was. After knowing him, and hearing different stories from other people, the disparity about his story became more clear. Whatever was there, was a juggling of truth that was intrinsic within that Troy. One of the questions the film asks—without answering it—is: Was there a cause for that? Was it his experience, or was it intrinsically in his nature, which made him play with identity and truth?

Richard Lowenstein: Initially, it was all about the story. We got glimpses of the epic story behind him, but it was only instinct. We didn't realize how big it was until we made the film.

The film is about discovering the breadth of his lies. To what extent did you feel like you knew him?
Milburn: We've both had very different experiences of Troy, he did really behave differently to different people. We all felt that there was an authentic "inner" Troy who didn't change, but then there was this other part of him who could just adapt and change depending on who he was with at the time.

*Lowenstein:* We knew him, but we didn't really know him as well as we know him now. As I went through my 20s, I heard these stories and you took them seriously—but you were left wondering what was the truth and what wasn't. You didn't quite feel like you knew him, because he wouldn't have allowed you to anyway.

Aside from the lies, there were dark truths uncovered during the making of the film, right? Like his childhood abuse?
There're people who've experienced what Troy had experienced and would internalize it. He was one of those people who would bring it out early on in your connection to him, with a sense of humor. He'd take the core of the truth and turn it almost into a Monty Python sketch. He'd play the characters of his abuser, or his mother.

One of the byproducts of that was that a lot of people thought these were wacky stories he'd made up. But throughout the film, everybody acknowledged their concerns that it wasn't just a funny story. He's obviously taken those events and turned it into something that became part of what made him Troy—he avoided victimhood and didn't recede into a hole. It's an incredibly important part of his story, and how these sorts of events actually affect you in later life. That's why he was never really able to sustain what you'd call a "conventional relationship" over a period of time. As the other brother—who was also a victim—says, "he didn't have relationships, he took hostages."

Both Troy and his brother, Simon, accuse their eldest brother of sexual abuse. You actually spoke to the older brother, how did you manage that?
Initially, going into the film, we thought the eldest would never talk. We made a very gentle approach after he had approached us through an intermediary and he actually was fine about everything. He wanted to go on record and talk about it.

But with regard to the allegations, you have to go and watch the interview and make up your own mind really. He doesn't necessarily give it away. That's what's intriguing about the film, as there's no easy answer

Now that the film's done, has this process changed your opinion on whether someone actually can have a fixed identity? Troy certainly makes a case for the otherwise.
Milburn: I don't believe in it. When you knew him, you really did feel there was a true Troy, but there were all these other things. One time, he was really sick and he said he'd been able to complete ten identities in his lifetime. He named them all, but the only one he felt he didn't design was the person with AIDS.

Lowenstein: I think an interesting part of this was that you could go back to the very beginning of the horror that had happened to him—you couldn't just laugh off his death as the wacky death of a wacky character. But he always dealt with the horror of whatever he had to go through with a sense of humor. He'd take incest and make a joke out of it. So by the time AIDS took hold, he knew how to deal with it and not be a breathing corpse in a bed. He let the world know he'd be doing things in a uniquely Troy way. But it's also got to do with how you defined a fixed self. If your definition can be very broad and fit into multiple personalities, then I think he was a fixed self.

Ecco Homo will be showing as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival. VICE is giving away tickets to our favorite films at MIFF, grab one here.

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