Bros Before director Henry Hanson on making the “Trans Superbad”
The long read on the transf*g film everyone’s talking about
I sat down with Henry Hanson to talk about his short film Bros Before, a tale of complicated transf*g desire, now available for free, online as part of The Otherness Archive – a digital, visual archive hoping to “make the discoverability of trans work more accessible”.
Go see the film here if you haven’t already!
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First of all, why this story of all the transf*g tales you could have told? It’s not a coming out story or a transition story.
When I was writing it, I was like what would be really fun to write about? I had been watching a lot of film shorts with transition themes at film festivals that were like “these are the trans shorts”. And I just thought that stuff was kind of boring. The biggest moments in my life aren't doing my shot – it's relationships and all this other stuff. And there was something about homophobic homoeroticism amongst trans men that was interesting and funny to me. I just wanted to entertain myself.
This film really felt like it was made for a trans audience. Tell us about that creative choice.
When I was making it I was like this is for trans Twitter – this is who's gonna really love this, and that's just my world, you know? This is authentic to me, I don't really care if it's not understandable to certain people. I'm just gonna place this firmly in this world and the assumption is that you get what I'm saying and showing. I've watched films from other countries, cultures and subcultures that do that – that I have no context for – and I get what they're saying. If people aren't totally up their own assholes, even if they've never met a trans person before, they could still watch this and be like, oh, this is cool. This is this whole other world. So that was my decision.
What do you think is the value in making a T4T film?
I'm hesitant to say that it's important… A lot of conversations about representation as this grand political act I don't know if I really agree with. It is important for people to see themselves represented on screen, but I don't want to say that because that's such a cliché that I think gets decontextualized.
I wanted to create something that was super fun and about people like me. My friends would always say stuff like “I just want the trans super bad” – I think we deserve that kind of fun content too. Not everything has to be so important. That's what entertainment is.
I enjoyed your Special Sorry to your family at the end of the movie. What kinds of cis reactions have you had to the film?
It's actually been really positive. My parents love it and they were actually like “you hyped it up too much, this isn't that crazy”. They wanted to watch it with me and I was so embarrassed. And then actually this one cis guy who’s very straight told me “yeah I get it – you know, like you have like your open marriage and things are really hard and you don't know people's boundaries”. And it’s like oh, you related to it!
Tell us about the casting process, who and what were you looking for?
I had a very specific type of vibe in my head. I wanted people that were actually alternative – people with a lot of cool tattoos and stuff. I knew they were going to be wearing their own clothes, so they had to have good style and really live in the characters.
Trans casting gets talked about in terms of authenticity a lot, which is really important but to me that's more than sharing the identity with the character – it's really sharing a vibe. It goes down to subculture and personal experience and affect. I tried to do a casting process with professional actors by posting on Backstage, but none of them were really alternative, and I was like, okay, this isn't gonna work. So I just put it out on my personal social media and posted a casting call on Lex and I was like, it's not porn, but it's really sexy!
Elijah’s struggle to accept being gay made me think a lot about trans men with a lesbian background, and the guilt associated with both becoming and desiring men. What are some of the complexities you've observed between trans men and queer masculinity?
It’s very personal to me because I lived that. I was in a Riot Grrrl band and we had a song called “Misandry” and I was like “I hate men”. It was really bad – my first tattoo was kind of a terfy thing, because I was like, “I really hate my body, so I'm trying to like reclaim that”. And it was all this misplaced dysphoria and jealousy of men that got turned into hating men. Although that tendency is understandable, it also picks up these toxic things that are coming from different places, or transphobia.
For a really long time I was so confused and struggled with the difference between being a butch lesbian and being a trans man – and why is that important? I read so many books and theory and I was just so confused. Ultimately I feel like you're probably not gonna find it in a book, it's something that's so much more intuitive.
Once I did come out and I was in more trans spaces, I thought it was kind of annoying how a lot of transmasculine people still couldn't let go of hating men or saying “we're not like those men we're soft boys” or trans men could still go to women's spaces and all this stuff. And I'm like, you know, what if we were like those men? What if a trans man was bro-y? Are men evil? What if a trans man was a bro and still had feelings, then what?
One of the things that's really interesting about this film is it really gets to the heart of some of our of most divisive conversations around masculinity… What is the difference between being butch versus a transf*g? Do you have a take on that?
I think it's just whatever you feel comfortable with and also it's probably not so clear cut. Rad, who plays Billy in the film, identifies very strongly with being butch and literally has a huge stomach tattoo that says “Butch” (unfortunately they got it after we filmed so it's not in the movie).
What I would say about these labels is that I think it's very specific to our time and place that we're expected to choose one forever and draw these really clear boundaries. In previous iterations of queer culture, my understanding is that these labels were a lot more fluid and fun and playful. It wasn't so much about choosing your one true identity, but using words to find community and describe a shared experience with others. Language around self-identity as a way to connect with others rather than a way to divide ourselves.
One of the things that stood out to me in this portrayal of trans masculinity, is that it really wasn’t that different from understandings of cis masculinity: the bromance, the no-homo homoerotic activity, comparing dick sizes etc… Do you think there are differences or similarities between cis and trans masculinities?
I think that there's a bunch of different masculinities in general, and that they don't necessarily fall along the lines of cis and trans. To go back to the auditions, a lot of people wanted to audition or considered it, but were like, “I'm not bro-y so I'm not gonna do it”. And there's a million cis guys that could never play a bro.
I think the labels of cis and trans are honestly less helpful than we might think they are in terms of actually figuring out what someone's whole deal is. That was also what I wanted to do – to show trans men doing things considered to be cis because I feel like being homophobic is the ultimate gender euphoria. In order to be worried about being gay with another guy, it has to be taken for granted that you're obviously men and there's no question about that.
This film really oozes sex – specifically the unbridled, unapologetic horniness of a trans man newly on T. Why was that important to show?
I did write it when I was within the first couple of years of being on T and it was honestly just how I felt. It's funny because both of the actors have been on T way longer than me, and they were like “we are playing people who started transitioning more recently than us.” It’s so obvious in the script.
You reference Lou Sullivan’s diaries in the film. What significance does that text have for you?
I wanted Elijah to be reading something and I always love when movies reference other media. When we were on set, everyone had their stories about sharing the book and passing it around to friends and stuff. And Martin, who plays Elijah, was like “you know, sometimes I say that being transsexual is just one big book club”. There are certain books that within certain queer trans circles, everyone passes around. And I think that is important because it informs our reality and how we think about things. It's why I also wanted to put in Monogamy House – these cultural ideas about gender and sexuality are coming from somewhere.
Can you tell us a bit about The Otherness Archive and what it means for you to be part of that project?
I think it's so important to archive media that doesn't get a ton of attention. I have this whole thing I wrote for my hometown premiere of Bros Before about how it's part of this tradition of queer underground media which has its own very rich legacy and aesthetic conventions. And the reason that these aesthetic conventions exist is because of the material conditions which limited our resources and access to traditional, mainstream filmmaking. So these underground alternative practices developed. That's my favourite media and that's what really inspired me to make this project – I see it in that legacy.
Recently there's been more mainstream queer media that I think is totally divorced from that tradition – a kind of plug and play of gay people into the mainstream narrative. And I think it's erasing a lot of this really cool stuff that already exists. Especially with the discourse around this is “the first thing to ever do this”. And it's like, no, this stuff has existed for decades and it's there and we should appreciate it. Something like the Otherness Archive, which is gathering these things that already exist and that don't have the financial resources to be appreciated on such a wide scale as mainstream media is important. This is where I want my film to live and this is exactly what it's in conversation with.
What can we expect to see from you next? Can you give us a teaser?
Well I'm actually making my first feature. I haven't really announced it yet, but I have shot most of it. I made it for even less money than bros before! That'll be coming out soon.
Stay up to date with Henry Hanson’s work by following him on Instagram and/or Twitter!