Trans in Film and Video 9/18/23
Due to the strikes in the film industry it’s getting harder to put together this column. Hopefully the unions and producers will get together and come up with a deal that gets things moving. In the meantime writers and actors are walking the picket lines, not acting. We do though have news on some projects that got finished before the writers strike happened.
Elliot Page
The first of those is Elliot Page’s Close to You. The film premiered recently at the Toronto Film Festival. It focuses on Sam, played by Page. Sam has transitioned away from his family and is returning to home for a family reunion, and dreading awkward questions and comments that may come his way. Page and the rest of the cast improvised the entire film. All the dialogue was created by them the day of the shoot. The director, Dominic Savage, created a safe work space where every actor could feel free to explore their characters. “It allowed us to feel free, limitless and dive into the material, and it worked,” Page said. Learn more about the film and how it was made from an interview in Variety.
The annual report from USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found that Universal’s film Bros accounted for 80% of the transgender characters in the 100 top-grossing movies of 2022. That means that just 87 of 4,169 speaking or named characters (2.1%) in 2022 movies were LGBTQ+. Of those 87 five characters identified as transgender—and four of them appeared in Bros. They are: TS Madison, Miss Lawrence, Eve Lindley, and Becca Blackwell. Drag performer Symone is also in the cast but seems to have been overlooked by the study.
Morgan Davies
Have you heard about One Piece? It started out as a manga about the adventures of Monkey D. Luffy and his crew, the Straw Hat Pirates. Luffy explores the “Grand Line” in search of a mythical treasure known as the “One Piece” in order to become the next King of the Pirates. The manga became an anime in 1999 and now it has become a live action series on Netflix. It’s a big win for Netflix as the show holds a 96% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Of interest to TGF users is a character called Koby who is played by trans man Morgan Davies. Learn more about the new series and its trans man cast member from them.
Younger Charles Busch.
Charles Busch has a memoir that went on sale recently. It is titled Leading Lady: A Memoir of a Most Unusual Boy. Busch has written and starred in films and stage productions that most often parody the performances of actresses such as Lana Turner, Joan Crawford, and Bette Davis in films from late in their careers. Among the films he wrote are The Sixth Reel, A Very Serious Person, Psycho Beach Party, and Die Mommie Die!. If you don’t know about Charles Busch you can learn by reading his memoir and an interview with him in The New York Times. There is a pay wall to climb but you should be able to avoid it by signing up for a free account. That should let you read a small number of articles before you have to pay.
Category: Transgender Fun & Entertainment
About the Author (Author Profile)
Angela Gardner is a founding member of The Renaissance Transgender Assoc., Inc., former editor of its newsletter and magazine, Transgender Community News. She was the Diva of Dish for TGF in the late 1990s and Editor of LadyLike magazine until its untimely demise. She has appeared in film and television shows portraying TG characters, as well as representing Renaissance on numerous talk shows.Subscribe
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