Victor Dionisio: VD, Marcy Patra: MP, Rhys Ernst: RE

VD: Firstly, I'd like to congratulate you on your debut film, Adam. It was my first time seeing it; it was a unique coming of age film. What I appreciated about the film was that it reversed the roles of coming out and placed this pressure on the straight cisgender male. I'm just curious to know, what was the casting process like during the making of the film?

RE: First of all, thank you very much for saying all that. And yeah, I completely agree with how you interpreted the movie. I'm happy that that's how you saw the film, because, for me, it was really important and so interesting that these roles that we take for granted, that queer people have to come out, trans people have to come out: these are part of the normalized straight cisgender world that I wanted to reverse. I thought that was such an interesting idea. But for your question about casting, the lead for the guy who actually played Adam was actually the hardest role to cast, which is sort of ironic because so many of the rest of the cast are trans actors and queer actors. There's this assumption in more mainstream media that casting trans people is too hard, at least this used to be something that people would say, “We can't go to the trouble of casting a trans actor, because they're too hard to find. So we'll just go with someone we already know.” I completely disagree with that. Ironically, in the case of Adam, all the trans actors and queer actors were the easiest ones to cast because there were so many interesting, great options available to find very easily.

The role of Adam was the hard one, because it had to be just the right kind of actor and someone who could bring a lot of sensitivity to the role. They had to be able to seem a little younger than they are in real life. The actor who I cast named Nicholas Alexander was actually 23 years old at the time, but the character's 17, so he had to be able to embody that. So I worked with a casting agent in New York City and saw a lot of self-tapes, where people had auditioned and sent in tapes. That process actually took a while; I looked at a lot of people for that role and finally found Nicholas Alexander at the very last minute and was really excited to find him. He was considered a discovery because he wasn't really well known. And so I brought him into the ensemble alongside some nonprofessional actors.

One of the other actors I cast for the movie, an actor named Leo Shang --- he’s a trans actor who now has gone on to be on The L Word reboots. He’s been doing a lot of other acting since then. But when I cast them, it was his first time ever really acting, and I found him on Instagram. So that was a very different way of going about casting than how I found the lead. But it was a combination of looking at non-professionals and people from non-traditional backgrounds like theater backgrounds in New York City. Then more traditional actors like Margaret Qualley, who played Adam's sister, at the time was probably one of the best-known actors in the movie, because she had already been in quite a lot of things and came from a totally different pool, if you will. So it had many different approaches.

Margaret Qualley is really, really awesome. She's a really, really talented actress, so cool, and such a great down-to-earth person. But she really has that thing I would call X factor like she just leaps off the screen when you see her. She's actually the daughter of this actress Andy McDowell, who is pretty famous from a lot of indie movies in the 90s and also bigger mainstream movies like Four Weddings and a Funeral and Groundhog's Day. That's Margaret’s mom. So she came out of an acting background.

VD: It was also awesome seeing MJ Rodriguez there.

RE: Yeah. and this was before Pose came out, so actually, she hadn't been cast in Pose yet. She was in the New York City Theatre community but was kind of a struggling actor at the time. She hadn't had her big break yet. So I knew of her through the theater scene a little bit and she was just awesome to work with. It's been so cool to have met her at that point and seen how her career has just exploded and skyrocketed. She's a star now. It's just amazing.

VD: Yeah, I was first introduced to her on Pose. Then, when I saw her in your film, I was amazed.

RE: She did such an incredible job on the film.

MP: What inspired you to go into the film industry?

RE: I guess the film industry was sort of just an organic conclusion to a long journey through art and filmmaking and different kinds of pursuits. I fell in love with filmmaking when I was in college and made my first film back then. It was very mixed media and experimental and really different from the kind of work that maybe you know me for at this point. But I came into that as a queer person and as an artist.

What appealed to me about filmmaking was that it could combine so many things at once, like writing, photography, visual art, music, sound, performance. I was interested in all those things but I didn't really know how to tie them all together. My background was photography, music, visual art, you know? And I was like, “What can I do with these interests?” And so I fell in love with filmmaking but was really engaging with it as a queer outsider. When I first graduated from college, I felt like I should learn more about the film industry, because I just made my own experimental films and knew nothing about how the industry works. I worked on sets, I was a PA, I worked in camera departments, I did sound sometimes, I ended up associate producing for a documentary company, and I did some editing-- wore a lot of different hats to learn all the sides of filmmaking. I think I knew I wanted to direct but still was kind of an outsider to the industry.

So I went back to grad school at Cal Arts and that's what brought me to the LA area, about 12 years ago now. Because I had an experimental film background, I felt like what I needed to learn more about was working with actors, narrative construction, screenwriting, and storytelling. One thing I've found is that sometimes, when people from a more experimental film background try to change it up and start working with actors and try to tell a more traditional narrative, they find that, “Wow, this is really a lot harder than I thought it was, and there are these subtle rules that I haven't learned yet.” Sometimes there's a rocky transition getting into narrative filmmaking, so I really wanted to focus on that and really learn that craft.

I guess that's when I ended up getting more involved in the more "conventional" part of the film industry. For my graduate thesis film, I made a short film called The Thing, and it was the most traditional narrative I'd ever made at that point. It was about a trans guy and his cis girlfriend, this couple who were on a road trip going towards a mysterious roadside attraction called “The Thing.” You're sort of like, “Well, why are they going there? What's going on with them?” and it looks like they're fighting. I would try to tell a story of this relationship over the course of a road trip, and that film got into Sundance Film Festival. And that's when the film industry opened up to me a little bit because I met Joey Solloway there at the film festival at Sundance, who then went on to create Transparent. They invited me to be a part of the show a couple of years later, and it grew from there.

But I didn’t end up in the film industry on purpose, it just happened organically. Before that, I was actually working a bit more in the art world, like making more video art, experimental films, photography, and stuff like that. So even around the time, I was working in Transparent, I wasn't coming from an industry background; I ended up there almost on accident. But as a result of working with actors, wanting to tell stories, and being trans myself--- when I transitioned, I decided that I want to use filmmaking as a vehicle to talk about trans issues, broaden people's understandings of them, and put trans characters in larger stories, almost to the point where you forget that a certain character's trans because you're just so engaged with the journey they're on. So politically, it made more and more sense for me to start talking to a wider audience rather than just sort of a small niche audience because I wanted to shift culture with storytelling.

MP: That makes a lot of sense, especially considering that a lot of cis directors tend to only focus on the “transness” when they cast for trans roles. They leave out the fact that we’re people outside of that, too. I don’t think most directors know how to represent us in the most holistic way, so I think that’s a really cool thing that you’re doing.

What you said about trying to veer into a more "conventional" style from experimentation really resonated with me too because I'm an experimental musician who is self-taught and whose work also deals with trans issues. Recently, I've felt the need to adapt to more conventional and accessible styles, and I've found that that's actually a lot harder.

RE: It's like that old cliche that you have to learn the rules to know how to break them effectively, you know? There's something to that for sure.

MP: Can you recall the most difficult part about getting into this type of work? I imagine being the types of people that we are, there are pretty unique challenges.

RE: So when I first started working in film professionally, like when I was just out of college and I was working on sets as a crew member and stuff like that, I felt at that time it was a liability to be trans, and I felt like I had to keep it secret. I hadn't transitioned yet that time, so there were different issues I was dealing with, being perceived as a very gender-nonconforming person. I definitely felt there was an unspoken rule that it wasn't okay to be gender-nonconforming in a professional space at that time. Now, this is a little while ago, and things have somewhat changed, but not completely, obviously. I think it's hard especially being gender nonconforming or being read as trans by non-trans people. Even if people think that they're open-minded, there are obviously unconscious biases or even conscious biases in some cases. I think that that can be a real challenge. Obviously, employment for the trans community is a real issue and there's a really, really high percentage of unemployment for trans people, particularly for trans women of color. There's a lot we could talk about when it comes to employment, trans issues, and what the obstacles are.

But for me, personally, while I have experienced job discrimination for being trans, when I decided consciously to make my transness a big part of my filmmaking, the type of work I was making, and my creative voice, and I stood up on my own two feet and declared this, I found that doors actually opened up for me more. That was shocking for me at the time. I think being authentic, having an authentic voice is really important in any kind of arts, and even though there are obstacles, being authentic about who you are, no matter who you are, is gonna make arts or any kind of creative voice more compelling and more specific, and people respond to that. They respond to openness and honesty and vulnerability in creative work. It really changed for me when I decided to braid transness together with my filmmaking and take a stand. It was scary, but that's when things started to happen for me more too, being honest and open and out. I wanted to be out as a trans person to show that it could be done and to create an example for other people because when I was growing up, there really weren't any out trans people in public. I'm an older millennial, so I'm not super old, but growing up in the 90s, people were just dealing with, "is being gay okay or not?" Trans wasn't even in the conversation yet, so there were no examples that I was aware of at the time. I think I wanted to create stuff that I would have liked to have seen when I was a teenager growing up. Adam is the type of film that I would have loved to have seen in my teenage years.

MP: Thank you for sharing that. I could see how moving into being more open about it and fusing it with your work, giving the work a different type of authenticity, would open doors.

RE: As I said, it surprised me, because it's a scary thing to do, and it could backfire. I'm not saying it's always going to be easy and it's always going to be fruitful for everybody, but in my experience, getting solid about those things, accepting yourself, and believing in yourself goes a long way for how other people see you. It's harder for people to connect if you're not being completely authentic with who you are.

MP: I can understand that. What you said about making what you would have wanted to see as a kid resonated with me also because growing up I didn't really have the language to understand this kind of experience and there wasn't exactly a positive representation. I was watching that documentary that came out last year, Disclosure, and it explains it really well. There really weren't many genuine depictions of us until very recently.

RE: Disclosure's such a great film and how it breaks all this stuff down is so effective. I was actually at the world premiere of that film at Sundance last year and it was so exciting to be there because it felt like a really momentous film. I don't know if you know of this film, The Celluloid Closet, the precursor to Disclosure. It's about a similar topic, but it's about gay and lesbian representation in Hollywood, and how it was similarly defamatory or prejudiced, and how that shaped society. Disclosure is a part of this really interesting canon of films that change culture.

MP: That's how I felt watching it too. I've never really seen a film like it, a film that was so candid and realistic about this. I feel like it was one of those things we’re all aware of, but haven’t really delved into until now.

RE: I mean, we're still at the beginning of this new chapter of trans representation. I almost hesitate to say "representation" because I feel like that word has lost a lot of meaning, and I don't even know if it's the goal, but we've been in a new chapter of the story of trans lives on film in the past couple of years. I still think we're at the early stages of this history and it's exciting to look forward to imagining the possibilities of what it could become because I think it's gonna start to really evolve and that really excites me.

VD: Since Marcy and I are currently taking a feminist media class, we'd like to know what the terms "experimental" and "feminism" mean to you, and how they may relate to the work you focus on.

RE: Cool, that's a really good question. I guess I would take them one by one. So, experimental film is a very specific canon, kind of like modern art is, but there are specific rules and history of experimental film, but I guess more broadly, I think it's challenging the standard conventions of filmmaking in various ways. They could be formal conventions, like how something's shot like you're scratching on a film leader or shooting on a really weird toy video camera or something. Or you could reference a narrative approach. Maybe there isn't a narrative at all. You're really breaking a ton of rules about how you're telling a story. I wonder if I could say it's connected with the idea of being culturally transgressive, though I would actually pose that as a question that I'm not sure the answer to. I think being experimental could overlap with ideas of being culturally transgressive. They’re not exactly synonyms, but I do think there's an overlap in the Venn diagram there; Most often, we think of it in terms of form and narrative, and challenging conventions of those two things.

Feminism, for me, is about acknowledging that we live in a patriarchal society, much in the way that we live in a white supremacist society, and in a similar way, acknowledging that these systems of power are really deeply ingrained. To me, being a feminist also means actively working to challenge them and work against them and empower people who don't have as much agency because they are oppressed. In terms of filmmaking, it's shifting the gaze. We talk about this idea of the male gaze in filmmaking and in lots of things beyond film, but I think it's really interesting and important to challenge these notions of what the gaze is because it can be so invisible. This idea of whose gaze is looking at what --- a female gaze, a trans gaze --- is a really important conversation to discuss and bring perspectives in on. How does the perspective shift when a trans director or a trans person is looking through a camera at a subject? I think there are lots of ways to challenge patriarchy and create alliances that bring this conversation into the forum more, but feminism is a lifelong pursuit. It’s kind of never-ending.

VD: I could see where being transgressive falls into being experimental. It’s important to challenge the patriarchy and create new conventions to replace the old ones the industry uses.

RE: Totally. As a trans man myself, I think it's really important to be really explicit about being aligned with feminist politics --- obviously trans-inclusive feminist politics. I could go down a total wormhole talking about feminism and trans politics, because obviously there's a lot to say there, including some not-so-great things from certain self-identified feminists. But I guess it's about human rights and equity and fighting oppression, which has a lot to do with ideas of intersectionality. I'm happy that these conversations are becoming a norm in filmmaking and art and culture. I mean, the #MeToo movement isn't even that old. Three years ago, this conversation around feminism and who's behind the camera and what it all means wasn't even the same as the conversation we're having today; it's really evolved a lot. It's certainly far from perfect, but I'm so glad that it's a conversation we're having.

VD: It's definitely great seeing filmmakers like yourself trying to change these conventional practices. Thank you for that.

RE: Thanks for saying so. I think about all these things as a long game. Thinking in 5 and 10-year increments, which is kind of nuts, but sometimes that's how long it takes to shift things. Sometimes things move really fast. We're in a big period of cultural change right now, obviously, and I don't know where it's gonna end up. But you know, we gotta all just be paying attention and thinking about these things across all kinds of intersections of identity and oppression and really stay engaged.

MP: Growing up, did you have someone you looked up to that influenced your work now?

RE: Well, I didn't know of any trans people really. I was very inspired by new queer cinema as a teenager in the 90s, directors like Todd Haynes and Jamie Babbitt and John Cameron Mitchell and Pedro Almodovar --- I could go on, but there's a lot of queer artists and directors that I really looked up to. I came out as queer pretty young, like age 13. So I was aligned with the "queer community." I put that in air quotes because there wasn't really a queer community where I grew up, but I was aligned with queer ideas and culture, and I was really into underground music and punk music, queercore, stuff like that.

So knowing about queer musicians and queer punk musicians, or pop-punk culture and feminist punk culture and queer filmmakers was kind of the thing that helped me imagine a better future, or really a future at all. I dropped out of high school when I was 14, so I didn't really know what I was gonna do. I wasn't even sure how I was gonna get out of the town I lived in. I was the only out queer person in my high school in North Carolina and I dropped out and was getting bullied and stuff like that. I wasn't even ready to start contemplating transness at that time, even though that was clearly a part of my story. When I was really young, I was clearly a very trans little kid, but there just wasn't really a conversation about that at that time. So, I think knowing about queer culture really saved me. But it wasn't until I went to college that my world got bigger and I could meet more people and imagine a future out of that.

As a young person, it was harder. And if I couldn't find something that looked like me, I found something that was related to something that I was looking for, like a cousin of what I was looking for, and that was good enough for me at the time. What’s really cool is that recently I’ve gotten to know some of those directors I mentioned, who inspired me when I was a teenager, and they have been mentors of mine as I’ve emerged as a filmmaker. So that's been really exciting. I tell younger filmmakers to try to find their… I hate this word but tribe. Find your people, whoever they are in the film world, or whatever world you're interested in and those people can teach you and they'll open doors for you. You can help them with something, and they'll remember you. When I first moved to LA, I worked for free on a bunch of film sets for queer film, and then those people turned around and helped me later with my career. So, I think that kind of community is really important for people who are outsiders in any kind of industry.

MP: I think it's easier to find that kind of broader queer community once we move out of our hometowns and we go to college, where we see more people who are like us. That was definitely my experience, too. Where I've been staying is a pretty conservative town and I didn't really know a lot of queer kids growing up. But you know, as soon as I went to college, it's like, now all my friends are queer kids.

RE: Yeah, it's true. I mean, one thing I hope is that all queer people don't just move to LA and New York or something and leave the small towns, because we kind of do need queer people to stay close to, but then it's complicated, you know? Maybe there's not creative industry there. I don't know, that's a whole other conversation. But, yeah, it's great to find your people wherever they are.

MP: Thank you. I guess this is related to that question and a few of the questions that I mentioned in the first leg of the interview. What advice would you have for a young trans person who's trying to enter this industry right now? That's the position I’m in at the moment.

RE: I think it's good to think about things in the long game a little bit, like a five-year plan, because it takes time to build your path in filmmaking, and it's not the easiest thing on any given day. Though there are jobs and there are established pathways into it, so it’s not like you have to make it up from scratch. But yeah, I would say, keep making things. I mean, one thing I always try to tell people, especially when they're just out of college, is if you can figure out a way to have low overhead with your rent, you can continue to make things, you know what I mean? I recommend for people who are starting to work, figure out your side hustle --- maybe it's working on sets, or maybe it's something else. In my case, I did freelance editing for little commercial jobs. not big commercials. I mean, really small things. So I could make enough money in a relatively short period, and then have enough free time to then go and make more short films, because short films --- or any films of any length --- take a lot of work., you know what I mean? And it's hard when you're having to support yourself at the same time, how can you do both?

I think that's a really big challenge for people, especially people who don’t come from privileged backgrounds. Some people have family support and don't have to worry about that. But I did, I had to worry about how I was going to pay my rent and everything. It's really easy to get off course with filmmaking because you don't have time because you're having to work your job all the time. You know what I mean? So the big issue is a financial one. How do you sustainably continue to make films in the short term, because you have to just keep on making things and improving. It's really important to be able to make mistakes in filmmaking. Not every film or short you make is gonna work, and sometimes that’s really embarrassing, but you gotta just be able to move on and keep making things. I really want to underline this point, because I’ve seen people get upset about something not working out, and just stop. I’ve made plenty of shorts that didn’t really work that you guys have never heard about because they weren’t that good, but it’s important to try and fail and then continue. It’s good to try on different roles, like the art department or camera or production --- trying on a lot of different hats and figuring out how these things work. Maybe you’ll find that what you thought you wanted to do isn’t what you end up actually doing, maybe you’ll end up going in a different direction that’s a little better.

There is a community for basically every demographic in filmmaking, and I think that's really important. Coming in as somebody who's not as experienced is totally fine. Making inroads, reaching out to people saying, “Oh, can I volunteer on your next thing? Can I help out on set?” is a good way to get in. I worked for free on some sets when I first moved to LA, and those relationships really helped me in the long run.

So yeah, that's pretty much it. Those are the main things: thinking long-term, finding a community, volunteering, figuring out your financial situation, figuring out your side hustle so you can continue to make work and don't get stuck on a failure. Continue to work, expect failure at some point but don’t get too hurt by it when it happens.

MP: Thank you! That last point really resonates with me, because within film, my area of focus is more within music. I've been making music for a couple of years now, and there's definitely been no shortage of flops, let's just say. But I'm grateful that even despite those, I kept going, trying to prove to myself that I can make something that wasn't gonna flop, basically.

RE: Yeah. You're working on it. I made this one film just out of undergrad that didn't really work at all, and I was really ashamed; this one project was kind of my first flop. It was quite a big flop, at least for me at the time, because there were a lot of people that helped on the movie, you know what I mean? A lot of people believed in it, and it just didn't work. And I was so ashamed that I didn't make anything for a couple of years, and I really regret that, looking back. Now I'm like, “Man, I really wasted time.” I could have just been having fun making goofy things. Who cares, just keep on doing it, you know?

MP: That makes sense. Thank you for sharing that.

VD: What would you say some of the challenges are for you as an openly transgender person in the film industry?

RE: I would say it's being pigeonholed a little bit. I feel like people send me a lot of trans-related stuff, which is good, but I'm also not getting projects that are not trans-related. People don't think of me for non-trans-related things at this point. That can kind of feel almost tokenizing. I have concerns about getting stuck in that lane and not being able to evolve and do something much bigger. Often I get sent scripts and projects that are only about someone's trans-ness, there's nothing else happening there. Because it may be from a cis-perspective or something and I find that a little frustrating. But I guess that's just where the culture’s at people are halfway caught up, but not all the way. They are kind of trying, but it's a little bit limited sometimes. I'd say that's probably the biggest thing: not being seen as a broader filmmaker, but a trans filmmaker. There's a double-edged sword by being seen as a trans-fill in the blank –– trans-director, trans-writer. People may only see that you can do stuff that's related to that topic. That's actually kind of infantilizing sometimes.

MP: Yeah, exactly. It's not the only thing there is about us. We are capable of having our own perspectives on other issues outside the trans community.

RS: Yeah, exactly. I think it'll just take time for culture to evolve. Maybe it's incumbent on me to go and make something that doesn't really have anything to do with transness. Or transness is only a metaphor or something. People would be like, "whoa, I never realized that's what a trans film could be like." It is kind of a way to challenge the film industry and to not see this as such a kind of limited narrow scope.

VD: Yeah, I can definitely see what you were saying about how the industry only uses people to their convenience. It gets annoying when you're only categorized into this one, particular place.

RE: I mean, you know, white cis men can tell any story they want, right? There's no limitation and also, they can play any part -- the hero, the villain, the scientist, they can play the person in poverty, or whatever. It won't be seen as a reflection of what white cis maleness is. It is the naturalized thing that everything else is performing around or that's how it's perceived. Again, it's about shifting that perspective. It is just seeing humans as humans and telling complex stories from a multitude of perspectives. How do we get there? But, you know, it's slow work chipping away at this thing that's been so established for so long.

MP: What do you believe is the result of having, at least until recently, the majority of stories about trans people, kind of told from this very tunnel vision as like cisgender perspective? In what ways do you think that has been detrimental to the community?

RE: There are a lot of blind spots that come along with telling something from a noninsider or privileged perspective. Disclosure does such a great job of talking about the history of how trans stories have been told or not told. There's this whole idea of, either victims or villains. Throughout history, trans stories and particularly trans feminine stories were only told as examples of either victim of a kind of crime or maybe they were dying from a medical illness that allows the audience to pity them. On the other hand, they are villains, someone in a horror film like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or in Psycho –– this sort of cross-dressing killer was a trope for a long time. Meanwhile, trans masculine stories just didn't even exist. There is this weird kind of prurient fantasy that cis people had about transness. It comes from a very specific place in some cis person's imagination at some point and just became engrained, but it doesn't come out of reality. It's so useless, frankly, in culture that this has happened for so long. It has had such terrible real-world effects. It is a no-brainer that there is a phrase in the disability community which is, "nothing about us without us." I think that has been taken up by some people in the trans community to, "no stories about us without us." You guys can't tell stories about us anymore, that we're not involved with. It is kind of insane that this conversation has taken so long, frankly.

MP: The quote that came from the disability community points out what is so ethnically ambiguous. Representing a community that you're not personally a part of makes it so easy to misrepresent.

RE: Yeah, I wouldn't say that should never ever happen again, by anybody in any direction. That is a little bit too black and white, as a means of thinking. There are sometimes good examples of people doing things really ethically and responsibly. Doing the work and investing, becoming intimate enough with a community. There is not as much separation there. I won't say that it is impossible to do well. But if you have privilege, and you're not a part of a certain community, and you want to be an ally, or engage in a kind of ethical and responsible work around supporting that community, telling a story that has to do with that community –– you obviously have to do a lot of work as an outsider. Sort of like a "tourist", [you need to] counteract your privilege and educate yourself. I just think there's a huge amount of work that is the responsibility of a cis person to engage with the trans story. I think it's rare to see people who have done that deep of an investment-- it's possible, but it doesn't happen all the time.

VD: Yeah, you've kind of answered this previously in the other questions. In the New York Times Magazine, published by Emily Barbara, you said, "it's making trans people the author rather than just the subject." I was just wondering if you could explain the importance of this.

RE: Yes, it is sort of related to some of the things we've been talking about. I'm not really that interested in being the subject of a cis person's film. No, I remember when I was in graduate school, I had a classmate who, a cis person, was like: "oh, I want to make a short film about you because I think it's so interesting that you're trans." I was like, "I'm not interested in that, thank you." She says, "Why, you are open about being trans." I then go on to say, "it's one thing if I wear a shirt that says I'm trans, then if you wear a shirt that says Rhys is trans.”

MP: Yeah, it's almost like voyeuristic.

RE: Exactly. I think there is obviously a voyeuristic or kind of prurient interest in trans people, in trans bodies, in genitals, and the idea of a transformation. It seems almost dehumanizing sometimes, you know what I mean? That kind of prurient interest doesn't see trans people as whole people, always. Sometimes being the subject is being seen, as just a one-dimensional thing. I don't have any problem with other trans people participating in, for example, a documentary -- there's nothing wrong with that at all. Don't get me wrong about that. The history of cameras and trans people is that they've only been pointed in one direction. Trans people being in front of a camera and not behind, enables a lot of harm. Again, this idea of challenging the white cis male gaze. How does a fish know what water is? That is how we are about the sort of straight male white gaze. We do not even know that it is a specific subjectivity, because we are so used to it, it has become the law of the land, right? Flipping that and putting trans people or any kind of marginalized people, indigenous, people with disabilities, BIPOC, any demographic that's been marginalized and putting them behind a camera to tell their story and share their perspective is such a powerful act. It almost cannot be overstated. We have to do so much reparative work to challenge the kind of status quo of what we have been saturated within the media. This idea of filmmaking being a machine for empathy because you can put any audience in any perspective. Suddenly, if you have a trans protagonist, for example, that is being shot from an insider perspective, maybe it's a trans director, you could have a real privileged white cis male watching that and be really affected by walking in this other person's shoes. I don't mean for it to always be didactic mechanisms towards an aspirational thing. I don't think it has to be sort of a black and white thing about always selling empathy. I'm just using that as an example, these tools that we have of storytelling and cameras are very powerful in how they impact thinking, culture, and values -- what we value and what lives we value. It is really imperative that we continue to democratize the politics of filmmaking and who has the means to make films?

VD: Yeah, definitely. Growing up all I was introduced to was cis white straight men. It wasn't until recently, I was only introduced to people who are actually part of the community, like you and Janet Mock, who was a director of POSE.

RE: Yeah, there's not really a very long list of trans directors, but it is constantly growing. It is not just trans directors that are given more access, or who are claiming more access, but it is people from all kinds of marginalized communities who are core -- claiming that access and standing up for it, which is a really incredible thing to see. We are only at the beginning so it is really exciting to imagine what this will look like in 10 years.

VD: Yeah, it is definitely exciting.

MP: Your short docuseries, This is Me, showcases the daily struggles of trans and gender non-conforming people. Besides the five themes that were explored, was there anything else that you were hoping to include while working on?

RE: Right, that series was specifically kind of born out of Transparent-- as a way to jump off of some of the topics that came up in the show. For example, "coming out", was one of the episodes. Basically, all the topics related in some way back to Transparent. I believe that the topics were, “non-binary”, “coming out”, “intergenerational” “trans friendships.” Most of the topics connected back to Transparent's plot points at the time. There are so many more topics that would have been included if there had been a second season. There is way more that would be great to talk about, but I didn't have other specific topics at the time. I also have this other series called, We've Been Around, that I was able to get into some other topics which I was not able to get into with, This Is Me. I guess there are as many trans issues and questions around transness as there are trans people. There are so many different ish colors in the kaleidoscope if you will.

MP: For me, what I would perhaps want to do is, at least, make media that is outside of this kind of very narrow political scope, because I think that, even for allies, the extent to which we are viewed, there's this whole kind of experiential and almost existential side of it that doesn't really get talked about.

RE: I mean, that's interesting. Yeah.

MP: Yeah. That has been kind of the focus of my work.

RE: That's really interesting. I would like to see more films, more voices, more short films, more long films, all kinds of people, not just LGBTQ trans or nonbinary people. We need more stories that are not focused on cis straight white men. I find it a little boring, honestly. Not that we will not also have those stories. Don't freak out White cis straight people, you guys will still have your stories; like, it's okay. There is space for all stories, it is just not a zero-sum game.

MP: Yeah, exactly. There is this kind of misconception that the more representation our rights have granted to one party, that implies the cancellation of those things for someone else, and I don't think that's really how that works.

RE: It doesn't actually make any sense. It is similar to GamerGate people who say there should not be diversity in a Star Wars movie, because it creates "white male erasure." It does not make any sense at all.

VD: Also, I just wanted to say that I appreciated that, in the first episode of, This is Me, it was talking about South Asian Trans women. I am also Southeast Asian so it felt nice being able to somewhat connect to their struggles. Our culture is very patriarchal and conservative. It is important to challenge these dominant ideologies and it is hard to open yourself up to your own family. When I was watching the film, I was so drawn to their story.

RE: I know what you mean, I'm really moved by that episode to actually kind of make me cry. The two people in that particular episode are so amazing, and all the people in that film are just incredible and obviously so generous with their stories. While you say that there is a lot of conservatism in certain Southeast Asian countries, there is also a rich pre-colonial history of gender diversity. A lot of issues around the repression of trans identity actually have to do with colonialism. We can definitely talk a lot more about that, but I'm glad you responded to that. I feel strongly about representing people from all different cultures as much as I can in an authentic way. My father is actually a professor of Islamic Studies and I've thought a lot about how, Muslims are depicted in film, and in western film. It is obviously not the same history of how trans people are represented, but you see these overlaps and intersections of how the media creates and feeds these stereotypes. It creates fear and all these things kind of touch each other in these interesting and relevant ways.

VD: Yeah, thank you for representing us. For the title sequence in Transparent, I just wanted to know how the process of creating this was like?

RE: Yeah, that was a really cool and interesting process. On the first season of Transparent Joey Solloway asked me to be a part of the show and work on it from the pilot. We did not have very big expectations for the show. We just assumed people would just like the show, but we did not expect it to become a hit or phenomenon. At the beginning of season one, Joey, the creator, asked me: "Oh, you do video art and experimental film and stuff? Do you want to take a crack at a title sequence?" I said, "Yeah, sure, of course." Normally title sequences go to these big kinds of post houses, which all they do is title sequences and very much like a boys club. I give a lot of credit to Joey for collaborating and being so open to new people and bringing them in. I worked at first with Zachary Drucker, who was my collaborator off and on for a long time. The first version Zachary helped find clips, we pulled some clips from the internet, from YouTube, to make a test version. From there, I went and got a really crappy VHS camera. I shot stuff that was original, but it was supposed to look archival, and I blended that in with actual archival footage. Joey also asked friends and family to like share their VHS videotapes of family gatherings and Bar and Bat Mitzvahs. I've watched all those things and pulled clips from those and just kept on editing. I have a bit of an editing background from before I was working professionally as a writer, director, producer. I did freelance editing, so I'm very good at editing and especially like short form stuff with a lot of fast cuts. I was very experienced with that kind of sizzle reel style editing. I kind of treated it like a short art film. I was just in charge of it from that point forward. Every season, I would change the shots and bring in new shots that would reflect the themes of each season. They evolve over time and I made five of them altogether, there were four seasons, then the musical finale. I did a different title sequence for each of those. They are all 45 seconds long and I really loved making them. I would squeeze in little bits from queer and trans history. Not everything was always legible to an audience. An audience member might not know what that shot they're looking at was from. There was a lot of history in the title sequence.

VD: I appreciated the approach you took and not knowing what it is about, maybe for people who don't know about it, their curiosity will lead them to do further research.

RE: Yeah, they were really fun to make.

MP: During the filming process of Transparent, what was the most valuable thing you learned?

RE: It was really a learning experience to be able to spend so much time on set, on a television set. For several years, just observing, I got to watch really, really amazing directors direct for hours and hours and hours. Sometimes it was really boring, but I put in time and really soaked it all up and learned how the whole operation works -- learning all that stuff, like script coordination, how that works. I just learned a lot, being able to observe and being a part of that as a kind of an indie filmmaker, who's coming more from the outside. I learned a lot about writing because I would give script notes on every script and every script draft. It was great to see the scripts evolve. I also learned a lot about what it looks like when you open the doors in the industry and let people in from various backgrounds and support them. Let them foster their growth, and I benefited from that and also enacted that for other people too. I learned so much from that experience, it's hard to sum it up. Taking an opportunity, not just being given an opportunity, but standing up and asserting myself for the next part. It's just invaluable how much you'll learn from being a part of the production and being on set, and having a relationship with other people there.

VD: Thank you, I guess, to end it off, we were just curious, what was next for you or if you had anything in the works?

RE: What can I say? I have a secret project in development that I can't say too much about, but it will be kind of a long-form, multi-year project. I also finished this screenplay that I wrote, it features a middle aged, trans man, I call it a middle-aged trans guy buddy movie. It is called Cactus. It is a close look at trans masculinity and a particular type of transmasculine, it's also about white whiteness and white masculinity because the two main characters are white trans men. It is asking questions about that and sort of critiquing that at times. It asks, how do we even know what white masculine is? It is considered the norm, that it's almost invisible, it's hard to look at it as an exotic thing because it's so naturalized. In this film, I'm trying to look at White masculinity through the subjects of these two white trans men and seeing how they struggle with it. When are they participating in it in problematic ways sometimes, too. That's a film I am really excited about. I also executive produced this film called Death and Bowling, which is a trans film with an all-trans cast by a trans filmmaker. It is more avant-garde and it's really interesting.

VD: Yeah. We're all excited about the projects you're creating and hopefully, we'll see it soon. I mean within the near future.

RE: I hope they come out soon, too. Well, thank you guys, I really appreciate everything.

Rhys Ernst's website: http://rhysernst.com/