www.hglcf.org“Transamerica” is not your typical road-trip movie – at least, it doesn’t appear to be at first. “Desperate Housewives” star Felicity Huffman plays a transsexual woman (that is, she was named Stan but now calls herself Bree) who is about to undergo sexual reassignment surgery to become a full-fledged woman – until she discovers that she fathered a son when still a man. Confused yet? With the suggestion of her therapist, Bree must resolve the issue of her newly discovered son, Toby, before she undergoes surgery. Bree finds Toby in New York, prostituting himself for drugs and money. The film focuses on the relationship these two characters develop as they drive cross-country from New York to California, Bree’s home and the place where Toby hopes to start an adult film career. Here’s what director Duncan Tucker had to say of his full-length film debut:
Cadenza: You have written short stories, created pieces of artwork and done photography. Was writing and directing a film just the next step?
Tucker: In my life, I’ve had every odd job that you can mention, and I’ve always gravitated towards artistic things. But I’ve also worked in nonartistic things, and I’ve lived in various places in the world. I worked as a cabin boy on a cruise ship, and I’ve bumped around the South Pacific and all around the world. Then a few years ago I was thinking, how can I put together the things I love – pictures, music and stories – all in one job? And directing was a no-brainer solution.
C: What do you hope to accomplish or portray through this story?
T: Interestingly, before I even knew that I was going to write a transsexual woman as the main character – because the movie is not about transsexuality, although it so happens that a trans woman is the main character – it’s really about growing up and coming home, about family and self-acceptance. These are pretty universal themes. I like to call this movie the ‘Lord of the Rings’ of tranny movies, because it’s a quest sort of film. I like stories with a capital ‘S,’ stories you’d tell a kid, and they’d say with wide eyes, ‘What’s going to happen next?’ I think it’s kind of an adventure film.
C: How did you come up with the idea of writing a movie that has a transsexual protagonist?
T: I met this trans woman who told me she was trans, and a light bulb went off. So I started doing a lot of research, and I thought, well, talk about a long journey that you’d have to make towards self-acceptance in being transsexual.
C: You mentioned research – how much research on transsexuality did you do for the film?
T: First, I read around a couple dozen different books on the topic. I was also trying to get invited to go to a transsexual support group in New York, but they’re very self-protective, and I couldn’t get into one. They didn’t want just some guy coming in, and these women were often stealth, they weren’t out as trans women. Finally, through a friend of a friend and their friends, I met and talked to dozens of trans women. I heard stories that were hilarious and tragic – sometimes both at the same time – and this helped me evolve the character of Bree.
C: After casting Felicity Huffman as Bree, how did she go about acting as a man who acts like a woman, being already a woman herself?
T: You know, she asked the same question when I first talked to her. The primary thing we tried to focus on was the emotional truth of the character, rather then the specific gender issues. Who is this woman? What is she feeling? Where is she on her emotional journey? All the rest were just externals, and I think that gave Felicity such comfort that I had this focus. She was able to study with trans women in the eight weeks of pre-production, however, and she got down the walk and the talk and the posture, gestures and voice. The good thing was that Felicity never got bogged down into just mimicry, like some other ‘transformative’ performances that just seem like mimicry to me. She was really inhabiting the skin of this person.
C: I think Huffman does do a good job in the role and definitely allows some humor in it as well.
T: Yeah, during a hard scene, Felicity sometimes would be sobbing herself off set, just feeling so deeply for her character Bree. It was quite amazing. Yet, the woman loves a gag. She’s always willing to take a fall, and the movie’s hopefully really fucking funny because of this.