Boys Don't Cry

In late 1993, down a quiet, dusty road in Southeast Nebraska, in a ramshackle farmhouse, two ex-cons committed a multiple murder. What seemed at the time an inexplicably brutal heartland killing soon turned into something more revealing as the true story of the killers and on of the victims emerged. For among the dead was Brandon Teena, a young man who had been in town only for a short while but had already become one of the towns most enchanting characters: a playful rebel, a loyal friend and an irresistible romancer of the ladies. But who was he really? And why had he incited such a violent reaction?

As the headlines would soon reveal, Brandon Teena was not the boy he and everyone else wanted him to be. In fact, despite the fact that he had apparently been a dashing boyfriend to many women, people were shocked to learn after his death that Brandon Teena was, in fact, a woman from Lincoln, Nebraska named Teena Brandon. While Teena Brandon was a young adult trapped in a world that did not accept her, Brandon Teena was a fun-loving heartbreaker with beautiful girlfriends who publicly adored him. What stumped the police officers, parents and broken-hearted you women of the small town of Falls City was how one person could take on two utterly opposite identities and be believed, at least until it all unravelled.

This is the mystery that first drew filmmaker Kimberly Peirce. "Here was a character who was already becoming an icon within months after being killed, Brandon Teena represented so many strands of out culture -- he was female to male, he was a petty thief, he was a victim of hate crime -- he was being written about by true crime writers, journalists and feminists. There was no disputing that his story was dramatic and tragic, but the real challenge in telling it was finding the human being underneath it all, discovering what it was like to be inside Brandon’s skin the very first night he passed as a boy. When you think about who he was and begin to see how extraordinary what he did was, just how powerful his spirit, imagination and creativity had to have been. The more the story unfolded, the more I found that the simple fact that this person actually existed was completely compelling. Figuring out what was going on inside of him and making sense of how he created himself into his fantasy of a guy, how he managed to find a place in so many people’s lives and why he provoked such intense reprisal was worth as many years as it took to figure it out."

Peirce set off to create a dramatic account of Teena Brandon’s life. The result, Boys Don’t Cry, is a story where the mystery is human identity itself. "Brandon unwittingly provided not only a sense of adventure and possibility in a place where there was very little, he instilled a sense that you could go ahead and live out your dreams," says Peirce. "Yet when his assumes identity unravelled, this kid who had as first appeared simply harmless and eager to please, became entirely threatening. The story had classic mythic elements. The trick was uncovering the underlying emotional truth and figuring out how to tell it."

Like the true-life rural killings that were chillingly depicted in In Cold Blood, Badlands and The Executioners Song, Peirce saw the murders as a contemporary evocation of dreams and desires, lost innocence and crimes of young drifters in the heartland. Although no one could know exactly what happened in Brandon Teena’s short life, using a mixture of trial transcripts, media coverage, interviews with local kids, real life participants and her own imagination to plumb the minds and souls of the real-life characters, Peirce decided to piece together her own version of the puzzling tale. The hard facts of the case were gruesome. Several says before Brandon’s death, on Christmas Eve, two ex-cons, John Lotter and Thomas Nissen, had raped Brandon, then later tracked him to a rural hideout to keep him from pursuing criminal charges against them, slaying him and the people who were with him. But behind the facts was an even more astonishing story about a young misfit’s journey though the convolutions of identity, gender, class, violence and fate against the stark backdrop of rural America.

The basic story Peirce saw was that of a young Nebraskan on the lam, a misfit among misfits looking for love, who took on the persona of a ‘perfect boyfriend’ to lonely, innocent and underprivileged young beauties. Brandon was everything a woman wanted: generous, affectionate, sweet, and a knockout kisser. He was so cute. He was a perfect gentleman. He knew how a woman wanted to be treated. Peirce heard these comments again and again from friends and former girlfriends. Brandon was a fantasy so skilfully drawn that even those who knew him intimately, refused to doubt it and often embellished it.

But, the fantasy had a dark side. In order to pay for the lavish attentions, Brandon became not only a thief of hearts, but a thief of another kind, stealing ATM cards, forging checks and illicitly using girlfriends credit cards, further crimes of impersonation. In the end, it was these criminal activities that would unravel Brandon’s identity and lead directly to the revelation of his underlying identity. But, it was the intensity of Brandon’s desire -- to shape himself into his own fantasy, seduce people into that fantasy and pursue his dreams of true love -- that attracted Peirce.

In April of 1994, Peirce was a graduate student at Columbia and had been working on a thesis script about a female Civil War spy who had posed as a man when she first read about Brandon Teena. Peirce had long been fascinated by the tradition of woman soldiers, musicians and spies who passed as men throughout American history, but this story was different. Brandon Teena’s story seemed to embody all of the issues about identity that Peirce had been seeking in her Civil War script while opening up vital themes of American mythology and the transcendency of love.

"I was amazed by Brandon’s story," Peirce says. "Here was a girl living in a small town, with little money and few, if any, role models for her to make herself into the person she wanted to be, of being loved for her true self and the audacity it took to make the dream come true against the stark landscape of the American heartland. Then, she finally reinvents herself into her fantasy of the ideal guy. It’s such an American thing to be the underdog, to go up against the odds, to re-invent yourself, go out into the world and find the one person who will accept you for who you truly are. At a time when men are struggling to define themselves, it’s quite incredible what Brandon did. It’s a classic myth, yet this was Brandon’s life. I knew that of we could capture the bravado and humour with which Brandon lived, this character could be truly wonderful."

Production Notes.

Brandon Teena	Hilary Swank
Lana	Chloe Sevigny
John	Peter Sarsgaard
Tom	Brendon Sexton III
Kate	Alison Folland
Candace	Alicia Goranson
Lonny	Matt McGrath
Lana’s Mom	Jeanetta Arnette

Compiled by Tyneside Cinema

10 Pilgrim Street Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 6QG

With the assistance of Northern Arts.