Once in a while we come across a new small movie that
is unafraid to tackle important issues with a very big heart, and " Boy Meets Girl" is certainly one such film. It is a
tender, human, sex-positive romantic comedy that explores what it means to be
“real”: to live and love authentically to the truth of one’s heart, regardless
of the sex or small town you’re born into. We were so moved by the refreshing
and sensitive way that writer/director Eric Shaeffer told this story that stars
a transgendered girl but is so much more about all the other people in her life
who learn to embrace their own identities.
It also challenges us to suspend our preconceived views on gender labels
and be as open to what happens as these lovelorn kids are.
We were not the only leading LGBT news site to give this movie a 5 Star
review, and queerguru.com was thrilled to sit down with Eric Shaeffer to find about more about his new remarkable new film.
QG: Where did the story come
from?
ES: It’s dramatically very similar to all my other
eight movies. Everyone I know has a very
colorful myriad of sexual and emotional feelings and interests that really
don’t fit into the narrow boxes that society puts us in, and what I
like to write about is breaking out of the confines of these boxes. This
time I wanted to create a landscape that possibly people could begin
to look into this world of the themes that I have just described in a
new way. I came up with this idea of writing about a transgender
girl in a small town in the South and challenging the boy meets
girl cliché, and so this is in fact a broad simplistic kind of romance but
with a twist that middle America and the rest of the world can relate too.
I am a straight man and I date women and I have dated
transgender women as well in the past. Getting to intimately know some
transgender women and also meeting transgendered men gave me the idea of
wanting to write about them. The idea that a cisgendered straight man who had
always dated cisgender women started to be interested in dating transgendered
women at a certain point of his life was very interesting to me.
Opening up his heart and his eyes to dating these women I
thought was a fascinating story especially as it had some real
life correlation with me. However quite honestly, the
real driving force was much more abut making a story about
people who at the core want to be loved for who they are, as that essentially is what all
my films are about.
Without giving too much way, what surprises
so many people who have seen the movie is that Ricky the transgender girl had
the smallest arc and the smallest transition emotionally of any
of the characters. Everyone around her was having much more dramatic profound emotional realizations and
that was very exactly what I planned. I wanted the character of Ricky the
transgender girl to be ‘normal’ as possible in terms of her life goals, her
challenges, her joys, her family and her friends. In a lot of movies, transgender
characters are too often being portrayed as people who have all kind of
challenges that are different from cisgender people and that is not really the
case in a lot of my own experience and from
the research that I did. Most of my trans friends have very
wonderful lives that are replete with all the same challenges and
joys of cisgender people.
The other young leads Robbie, Francesca and David are
characters who slowly realize that they are being challenged about
having the courage to lead lives that they want to live, and with
convictions that they feel are right regardless of what society tells them they
should feel and how they should live.
This is really what this movie is all about.
QC: How did you find the wonderful Michelle Hendley, and
how important was it to you that you cast a transgender actress in this part?
ES: Besides Laverne Cox, there is a very very small list
of transgender actors and actresses who are successful enough
to be represented by Agents, and so they are hard to find. I Googled both
‘transgendered women’ and ‘transgendered actress’, and by a stroke of luck I
found Michelle's Youtube channel. On all her Vlogs she was talking about
her life and her boyfriends and the fashions she liked and she clearly had a
performance bone in her body because she was
not afraid to be on the net and do these very
impressive videos. She looked the part
and is young and very pretty and had the right personality.
When I got in touch with her she was understandably dubious because she didn't know
my work so she wasn't sure if my offer of an
audition was legit or not. I also had my
concerns as she had never acted before and it is a far cry from
having charisma to make a Vlog to being in a feature film. Not only that,
she was going to be the star in my movie, which was going to live or die
on the performance of her alone. So I rehearsed and auditioned her over
Skype and then flew her to NY and had her workshop with other actors. It
was a six month process before I gave her the part and over that time she
worked harder and harder and got better and better.
I had a lot of latitude because this was an
indie movie with a small budget so I could cast anyone I wanted in that part.
Had it been a bigger film with a lot more money behind it I would
have been answerable to both investors and a Studio and
I would probably have been under a great deal of pressure
to cast a famous cisgender actress in that role. While every actor can portray all
sort of characters who they aren’t in real life, no one can argue
with the fact that a transgender woman would have
the absolute organic profound experience of being transgender. I also
thought it important element of this whole project that I give
this unique opportunity to a transgender girl.
QG: Was the YouTube plot line in the movie then taken
from the Vlogs in her own life?
ES: No, not at all. I thought it would be unrealistic
to have a movie where everything was just so completely fantastic in her life,
so I wanted to ground her and show her exposing her more troubled and challenging
part of her youth with her making these online videos. I got the idea
when I was actually looking around on the Internet trying to find an actress to
play the part. I don't know how I ended up on this video of this young 13 year-old
edgy Goth tough-looking girl who was doing this cue card video about being
bullied. At the end of this video she broke into a smile, which was so
disarming and completely charming as it made her look so childlike and sweet
and adorable. It literally broke my heart when I later found out that this
particular girl’s life ended tragically as she either killed herself or was
killed. Although Ricky’s story has a much
happier and positive outcome with such a supportive community, I still wanted people
to understand that she didn't always have a perfect life. So the cue card video
sequence is to show that she had struggled with things that we all struggle
with in her youth.
I always wanted it to be very realistic and in fact it
is on the edge of being a fable, but it was also a very crucial element to me to
ensure that there is a lot of positivity in the story.
QG: You very surprisingly gave her a completely
supportive father and a loving kid brother. Why was that important to
you?
ES: Again in the world of wanting to paint this
transgender character as being realistic, and I thought it important that she
have a supportive family life. Like most people I had suffered from the
delusion that is born out of what the media tells us which portrays transgender
women as being victims of system that denies them the same experiences as
cisgender women and not having loving support in their world. In my
research I found that was simply not accurate and many of the transgender women
I spoke with came from small communities in the South and were not bullied and
had fully supportive families.
QG: I read recently that someone wrote about your
movies/TV shows: “They all tend to center
around love, or lovin’ and losin;.
Usually involving sexual taboos at some point’ which are a huge
fascination of his.’ How true is that, and where does Boy Meets Girl fit
into that spectrum as a cursory glance at your resume, this seems quiet a leap.
ES: I don't think that this is a large leap at all. If one
looks at my body of work you would see tremendous similarities with the themes
that are running through this film with those in all my other films. However I don’t
mind people thinking it is a change because there are three big departures from
my norm. Firstly I chose not to star in this film like I usually do, and secondly
I abandoned my usual setting of New York and placed the action in the Deep
South, and thirdly I was writing for the first time about people in their early
20's. However quite honestly to me it dramatically talks about things that I
have always talked about.
QG: You swept the board at the San Diego Film Festival winning 11 Awards, and amongst the many others you have been awarded is the
prestigious Iris Prize in Cardiff. Do you think that will help you get
the movie beyond Gay Film Festival audiences?
ES: We opened in New York movie theaters and
did extremely well and Wolfe Video who have the World Rights then rolled it
out theatrically right across the US before releasing it on VOD/DVD later on.
QG: Has it been marketed as a romantic comedy or
specifically as an LGBT film?
ES: Marketing people hate it when I insist that it is simply
a movie for people who like good movies. I love the fact that my audiences cut right
across a radical age range and sexual orientation and gender race. All my
films, especially this one, are heart films, and hearts speak to hearts, and
everyone has one. We marketed the film not as straight or LGBT but as a smart
edgy sexy romantic comedy.
QG: You have a reputation for putting a great deal of
your own story in your movies, is that a fair observation?
ES: People often say that, and I will admit that some of
my stuff is autobiographical but quite a lot is not. ‘Wirey Spindell’ which I wrote, directed and
starred in, is totally from my life, and he is a character who I am
very closely connected too. However unlike him, I never made
a death pact to kill myself at 30. (laugh)
The characters that I play in my own movies are very
similar to me so in that respect that have the same
personality traits, albeit thinly veiled.
‘After Fall Winter’ a movie I set in Paris has
a BDSM backdrop and the leading character that I play is
interested in a lot of physical and emotional abuse. So much so that some of my friends who know I
write about my life expressed their concerned and said
‘Eric should we be worried about you?’ I told them
not to panic, I do have an imagination too. (laugh)
QG: Lets talk a little about Eric Schaeffer. You have
one of the longest and funniest titles for a blog ever which you parlayed into a book and then a TV reality
series 'I Can't Believe I'm Still Single'. How do you like living your life out
loud and so publicly?
Whilst I would agree that it would appear that I lead
my life very publicly in terms of some of my work, what may come as a total
surprise is that I am also fiercely private too. In my book I am
certainly very open about aspects of my life and in my series you can see me in
some very compromising situations. Having said that I am a performer and
I am a director and I do understand that there is a bit of me in every
character that I play. I did that TV series 7/8 years ago and I really enjoyed it
as it was fun to do, but that chapter of my life is definitely closed.
And I think going forward creatively that less personal projects will maybe more interesting to me now.
Our world is very fractured and there is still a
tremendous amount of bigotry and suffering borne out of the delusion of
separateness and I really want my work to unite people. I think that I'm
just a regular old dude but the big difference between me and other old dudes
is that I accept who I am and I talk about it.
QG: What gives you the most satisfaction?
ES: I really enjoy creating TV shows and movies and being
part of a community of people experiencing a TV show or movie that I have made.
I was at a screening of ‘Boy Meets Girl’
in New York the other week and I saw two men who had their heads on each others
shoulders as they watched the movie. When it ended they looked at each
other and had a really sweet love heart kiss, and that brought tears to my
eyes. Seeing the bond these two lovers had that in some way my film had
helped them create, was just priceless to me. That’s why I do what I do.
QG: What’s next for you Eric?
ES: I’m spending the next 6 months making sure that 'Boy Meets Girl' gets in front as many people as possible it can. Unlike bigger
budget films where the filmmaker’s job is done once the movie is in the can, the
life of an independent filmmaker like me is completely different. It’s just like
having a child but whereas well-funded filmmakers have nannies to raise them, as an independent director
you are more like a single parent dad. Once I have given my child the best
upbringing I can then I will start writing my next project that I have that already
have ideas for.
'Boy Meets Girl' is now streaming worldwide from http://www.wolfevideo.com
Eric’s book : 'I Can't Believe I'm Still Single –
Sane, Slightly Neurotic (But in a Sane Way) Filmmaker into Good Yoga, Bad
Reality TV, Too Much Chocolate, and a Little Kinky Sex Seeks Smart, Emotionally
Evolved ... Oh Hell, At This Point Anyone Who'll Let Me Watch Football.’ Available http://www.amazon.com
(N.B. Cisgender is a person
whose self-identity conforms with the gender that corresponds to their
biological sex; not transgender.)
