Copyright Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review, Inc. Oct 31, 2000Putting Teena Brandon's story on film: Francesca Miller interviews the director of Boys Don't Cry
Anyone who believes that women directors are only capable of bringing lightweight fare to the screen will have their illusions shattered by one viewing of Boys Don't Cry (Twentieth Century Fox; video and DVD formats by Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment). This powerful film is the first feature by director Kimberly Peirce, who labored for five years to bring her vision to the screen (she is now 33). Peirce and co-screenwriter Andy Bienen based their work on the true story of Brandon Teena, a transgendered youth who, as girl-turned-boy, charmed the small town of Falls City, Nebraska, with his natural charisma. But Brandon Teena would later be brutally murdered by two friends when they discovered his true identity, giving rise to a controversy that persists to this day. Hilary Swank's brilliant portrayal of the main character netted her the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1999. I caught up with Ms. Peirce in Texas, where she was accepting an award from the Texas Film Commission.
Francesca Miller: Brandon Teena's murder became such a cause celebre among gay activists around the world. Do you consider Boys Don't Cry a gay film?
Kimberly Peirce: I think it's a universal story that affects people regardless of their sexual orientation because it focuses on real emotion intertwined with class, culture and sexuality. It resonates with a broad audience because everyone can identify with Brandon. Of course in doing my research, I spoke to a number of butch lesbians and transsexuals and read books like Gender Outlaw and Stone Butch Blues. While Brandon's story reflects lesbian, gay, and transsexual experiences, it also goes beyond these individual stories. I think everyone at some time or other has questioned either their gender identity or their sexual preference, or has struggled to figure out who they are and how to be themselves. People seem to identify with Brandon as a reflection of themselves. If people who are gay look at my film, feel connected to it and to Brandon, and consider it a gay film, that's great; it's doing what it's supposed to do, reflecting them and bringing them inside Brandon's story. The point is to engage the audience as deeply as possible with all the characters and allow the audience to see itself reflected in all of them, in the tragedy as a whole.
FM: Do you identify as a gay filmmaker?
KP: Are you planning on outing me? I've discussed my sexuality in several interviews and in several publications. I identify as queer rather than straight, lesbian, or gay. I like the term "queer" because it gives me the freedom to express more aspects of my personality--the boy side and the girl side--the fact that some days I might wake up feeling like Clyde Barrow and other days wake up feeling like a girl, the fact that I can be attracted to all types of people. I'd rather follow my desire than be limited by a label.
FM: When did you come to this project?
KP: I had been working on another script. It was a true story about a woman who passed as a man during the Civil War. However, the more I probed into her story, the more I found that she was passing as a man to save herself, not to discover who she was, and therefore the act of passing was not inherently dramatic and neither was her story. Ultimately, you were going to have to go beyond the passing as a man to figure out who she was and what she wanted.
In April 1994, I saw an article in The Village Voice about a young woman named Teena Brandon who had fully reinvented herself as a boy named Brandon Teena, and was largely successful as a boy. I fell in love with Brandon and ultimately became much more compelled by him and his story than the woman in the other script I had been working on. I gathered up a lot of material, traveled to Falls City, interviewed Lana Tisdel [Brandon's lover] went to the murder trial, and met the policemen who were actually involved. I was more interested in making a story of gender identity, rather than one of survival. I really fell in love with this kid Teena Brandon, who one day put a sock in her pants and a cowboy hat on her head and reinvented herself into her fantasy of a boy and then went out and passed, asked girls out, was largely successful; and then after it all came crashing down, and Brandon found a deeper, truer self. Brandon just had so much life in him.
In creating Brandon's persona, my writing partner and I drew from a number of film influences, including Montgomery Clift, the young Brando, Clyde Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde, James Dean, Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke, and Jimmy Stewart, the wonderful iconic gentleman of Hollywood films. But we found all the other characters compelling, as well--who they were, why they were drawn to Brandon, why the whole thing played itself out as it did. It seemed to touch such intense truths about desire and identity. Desire--who you think you are, whom you're attracted to--is fascinating, because it seems to be the truest emotion we experience. And more than any other medium, film can capture it so purely.
FM: The film's visual palette is also astonishing, especially when one realizes that you emerged from nowhere. What is your background and who were your influences?
KP: I studied English and Japanese at the University of Chicago, attended graduate school at Columbia for film, and worked as a photographer in Japan. My influences? I loved the neo-realistic works of Pasolini, Robert Bresson, the "French New Wave," early Cassavetes, and the young Scorsese. I loved them because of their rough intensity and the poetry of realism. I was also moved by the surrealism of Michael Powell and Black Narcissus, Carol Reed, Japanese cinema, film noir, and early Disney, because it was important for me to capture the hard-core realism of life in Falls City as well as the landscape of the imagination that the characters escape into when the world they live in won't let them be who they believe they are--you want to create a visceral and emotionally true world that brings the audience as deeply inside the experience as possible, so they can see and feel what the characters see and feel.
FM: Given the tremendous interest in this story and the fact that there was a competing Brandon Teena film with Drew Barrymore and Diane Keaton, why do you think it took so long to get this low budget ($2 million) story on screen?
KP: I just wasn't ready, the film community wasn't ready, the culture wasn't ready, and I didn't have my skills as a filmmaker up to speed yet. I think Brandon's life and death reflected things that were deeply reflective of the culture as a whole--the proliferation of violence, the fragility of masculinity, and the fact that gender is everyone's issue--who has not at some time or another been at odds with how they feel about their gender on the inside and how it's manifested to the outside world? I think as time passed, as violence, particularly crimes against identity, swept through the country--for example, the crimes against the Jewish day care center, the execution of Matthew Shepard, the shootings at Columbine--people woke up. The time became right: I got the financing, we found Hilary [Swank] and we got the other elements necessary to make the film.
FM: What was the search for Brandon like?
KP: I auditioned every butch lesbian and transsexual I could find. They were wonderful and could pass in real life, but unfortunately none of them could portray what they did in real life on screen. Great screen actors have this extraordinary ability to exteriorize emotions so as to bring you deeply inside their experience. I started looking at actresses, but there was a stigma attached to the role and few actresses would come in. Then, in 1998, after Ellen came out, we were inundated with a flood of actors interested in the part, but none of them could pull off being a boy. After three years of searching we had four weeks to go before we started shooting and we still had not found Brandon. We pulled out all the stops and sent our casting agent to LA. Late one night, a tape came in and this beautiful androgynous person floated across screen with a cowboy hat on and a sock in his pants--we didn't know if he was a boy or a girl and then he smiled, and that was all we needed to see. Hilary blurred the gender line and, just by smiling, captured Brandon's spirit and invited the audience all the way inside the character. I then realized that I had my Brandon.
FM: It was fascinating that you didn't portray the two killers as villains but instead as victims--as much as Brandon was a victim.
KP: Demonizing these two guys would have kept them at a distance from the audience and left the audience unengaged in the story as a whole. So we aimed to characterize them in such a way that you identified with them, saw them through Brandon's eyes and therefore engaged in their and Brandon's story. Brandon sees John as a role model, John sees Brandon as a friend. Because we do connect with the guys and with Brandon's affection for them at the beginning of the story, we watch the mechanics of hatred take over as they turn on Brandon. And we feel a deeper loss than if we had never connected with them to begin with. Their arcs are fuller, and our ability to empathize with them makes their lives in some ways as tragic as Brandon's.
FM: One of the boys who murdered Brandon, John Lotter, may be executed soon. Are you following it?
KP: No. Killing John Lotter does not seem the solution to John Lotter having killed Brandon Teena. John and Brandon were both in and out of the social services and criminal justice systems since they were young. Brandon was the kind of kid who was ultimately going to piss someone off enough to provoke retaliation, and John was a blueprint for murder. So, when they cross paths, is it any surprise that John strikes out against Brandon? I am not blaming society or Brandon or excusing John for what happened, simply asking how come these kids were passing through places where they could have gotten help, and didn't. Brandon is dead and John is in jail, waiting to be executed. There has to be a better way of dealing with this kind of tragedy.
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