Tom Six reveals MS diagnosis in final film
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- Tom Six reveals in his homemade documentary "The End of Tom Six" that he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2020 and has spent the last six years as a recluse in a darkened Amsterdam apartment; his producer Maartje Willems said the stress battle "totally ravaged his body up to the point that he is now nearing the end of his life."
- Six attributes the worsening of his condition to the prolonged stress of failing to secure a distributor for his 2018 trailer project The Onania Club, about wealthy women aroused by extreme human suffering.
- "The End of Tom Six" is being released on YouTube on August 15 on a pay-what-you-want model, with Six playing both himself and the interviewer, and features a "censor nazi" in an SS uniform interrupting to flag scenes for cuts.
- Six says he "can't walk any more, reducing me to worming through my house like [a] fucking gargoyle," describing a daily routine of lying on a Chinese opium bed, bingeing opioids, smoking Havana cigars, and eating chicken curry, chocolate mousse, and peanut butter.
- Six withheld his diagnosis at the time because he "hates being a victim and get[s] pity," and notes he has a "strong appetite for self-destruction" with "a black belt in ego demolition."
- The Human Centipede (2009), starring Dieter Laser as a crazed surgeon who surgically conjoins three tourists, performed modestly at the box office but became global pop culture lore, referenced in South Park and The Simpsons; Six made sequels in 2011 and 2015 to form a "movie centipede."
- The second half of Six's final film is largely a complaint against "woke cowardice" and "safe-space crybabies" in the film industry, which he blames for The Onania Club's failure to be distributed.
Why it matters: Six frames his physical decline as directly caused by the industry's refusal to distribute The Onania Club, turning a medical disclosure into an industry grievance that will reach audiences free on YouTube from August 15 — effectively bypassing the distributor gatekeeping he blames for his deterioration.
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