Boys Don't Cry

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Boys Don't Cry

USA (1999): Drama
Rated R, Color, 118 Minutes
Director: Kimberly Peirce
From a script by Peirce and Andy Bienen
Starring Hilary Swank, Chloë Sevigny, Peter Sarsgaard, and Brendan Sexton III

In Falls City, Nebraska, Brandon Teena (Hilary Swank) was a newcomer with a future who had the small rural community enchanted. Women adored him and almost everyone who met this charismatic stranger was drawn to his charming innocence. But, Falls City's hottest date and truest friend had one secret: he wasn't the person people thought he was. Back home in Lincoln just seventy-five miles away, Brandon Teena was a different person caught up in a personal crisis that had haunted him his entire life. Like many young people, he made costly mistakes and when he inadvertently trespassed between his new love Lana (Chloë Sevigny) and her reckless friend John (Peter Sarsgaard), the mystery unraveled into violence.

Links:

"Death of a Deceiver" (The True Story of Teena Brandon), from Playboy Magazine
Production Notes (from the Boy's Don't Cry website)
Interview with Hilary Swank (from TNT's Rough Cut)
Interview with Kimberly Peirce (from San Francisco CitySearch)

Scenes for Study (require RealPlayer, available as free download from www.real.com):

Opening Credits/Brandon's Passing
- director's audio commentary: part I | part II
Brandon Exposed
- director's audio commentary
Conclusion: Brandon's Letter

Click here for the introductory slideshow

Hilary Swank as Brandon Teena 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 like an inexplicably brutal heartland killing soon turned into something far more revealing as the true story of the killers and one 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 town's 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 headlines would soon reveal, Brandon Teena was not the boy he and everybody 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 young 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 unraveled.

This is the mystery that first drew filmmaker Kimberly Peirce. Director Kimberly Peirce "Here was a character who was already becoming an icon within months after being killed, Brandon Teena represented so many strands of our culture -- he was a female to male, he was a petty thief, he was the victim of a 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 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 had 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 assumed identity unraveled, this kid who had at 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 Executioner's 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 days 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 through the convolutions of identity, gender, class, violence and fate against the stark backdrop of rural America.

Questions for Consideration:

According to Boggs, when studying films adapted from real-life events, “the issue of factual accuracy versus creative license raises genuine concern” (399). Evaluate the dramatic approach and the cinematic effects of Boys Don’t Cry. What changes were made from the "real" story of Teena Brandon, and to what effect? Were the changes warranted, disclaimed, or simply deceptive?
What do you find impressive or interesting about Hilary Swank's portrayal of Brandon Teena? What kinds of choices did she make as an actress, and to what effect? In terms of casting, what kinds of decisions did the director, Kimberly Peirce, have to make? Why did she choose Swank instead of someone more recognizable? Who else might have been able to play the role?
Consider the limitations of a first-time director's budget, and the effects of those limitations on casting, visual design, setting, score, and effects. What kinds of compromises or choices does a director like Peirce have to make to get this story told?
Even when working with established facts, filmmakers still have a remarkable number of decisions to make. Whyt do you think Peirce chose to tell a strictly chronological narrative, beginning with the first night of Brandon's "passing" and concluding with his death? What might have been the effects of beginning earlier (with the seeds of his transformation, a la Jekyll and Hyde) or later (with his outing, rape, or death)?
Set in 1990s mid-America, Boys Don't Cry has much to say about the values, practices, and limitations of small-town life. What are Peirce's choices intended to tell us?
Thematically, Boys Don't Cry seems to be "about" identity transformation, sexual ambiguity, androgyny/transsexuality, violence, and intolerance. What do you think the film says about any one of these topics? Support your claims with evidence from the film.

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