Life is more than the sum of its parts
I just got back from seeing Transamerica. If you've been hiding under a rock lately, it's about a pre-operative MTF transsexual that discovers she's fathered a son who's now a teenager hustling on the streets of NYC.
It was opening night here in Indianapolis at my favorite Keystone Art Cinema. We'd decided on going to the 7:35 pm show so we purchased the tickets ahead of time online. When we arrived around 7:05 the place was packed. When you pre-purchase the tickets online you still have to get the tickets printed out of a little machine at the theater. There are three of those machines and all of them had lines of at least a dozen people. Luckily, there was no line at the bar so I headed over to get a glass of pinot grigio. I was amazed at the sheer number of people there tonight. It's amazing what a little Oscar buzz can do for a few art films.
First off, I wonder why the masses flocked to see this movie. Is is due to Felicity Huffman and her Desperate Housewives fame? The Oscar buzz around this film? I don't know... But since when is the general American public clamoring to see a film about a male-to-female transsexual? I find it ironic that "Brokeback Mountain" and "Transamerica" are both doing well and creating quite the buzz in Hollywood, but America is still not accepting of legalizing gay marriage. It's okay, just as long as it's only a story, only a movie? It's fine, as long as we don't have to have one of "those people" living next door to us? That is all so much crap....
I am the first one to admit that I have limited knowledge about the "T" folks in the GLTB community. So I cannot offer a fact-based opinion if this film was accurate or not. I can't even say if it was complimentary or insulting to the transgendered population...
Bree (Felicity Huffman) was talking with a physician to get her final sign-off for the surgery and they had this conversation:
Dr. Spikowsky: How do you feel about your penis?
Bree Osbourne: It disgusts me. I don't even like looking at it.
Dr. Spikowsky: And how about your friends?
Bree Osbourne: They don't like it either.
The film did posses a wonderful balance of humor and dead-on seriousness. That is most likely the best way to take on such an issue as gender identity. What amazed me was Huffman's ability to make you forget she was born a woman. I cannot imagine how she had to prepare herself to play the part of Bree. You believe she is a transsexual. She had to re-learn how to talk, walk, dress and move like a woman playing a man becoming a woman.
...Just a thought...
Life is a journey. Bring an open mind.
“I am the first one to admit that I have limited knowledge about the "T" folks in the GLTB community. So I cannot offer a fact-based opinion if this film was accurate or not. I can't even say if it was complimentary or insulting to the transgendered population... Bree (Felicity Huffman) was talking with a physician to get her final sign-off for the surgery”
From what I hear from my friends it is mostly positive. There are some who didn’t like but most of them gave it a good review. My comments were:
1. She was going to have her surgery in one week and she needed the letter from the doctors, she would have needed it almost a year before her surgery ( The surgeons are booked that far in advance ).
2. That long leg panty girdle, yikes! Who wears those anymore?
3. She dressed like she was a housewife from the fifties, everyone who is trans that I know want to dress to blend in, not stand out.
4. She had only a week to fly out and drive all the way back, that is a lot of driving. Say she flew out on a Friday night and she bailed out her son on Saturday, that means she had to drive across country in eight days. Stopping along the way like she did that is a lot of traveling to do each day.
“....... but America is still not accepting of legalizing gay marriage.”
But we are working on it! Connecticut was the first state to create “Civil Union” without a court order. Yesterday I went to lobbying training to help pass an Anti-Discrimination law to include Gender and Gender Expression. Once we get that passed we will then concentrate on passing a full marriage law. None of this separate but equal junk.