A tip o’ the hat to Q Cinema, Fort Worth’s LGBT film forum, for the recently announced decision to give Dallas filmmaker Israel Luna’s controversial “transploitation” flick Ticked-Off Trannies With Knives its Southwest premiere at Q’s 12th annual festival June 3-6.
A couple of “Blotch” posts ago, I railed against protesters trying to shut down a Tarleton University student class excerpt from Terrence McNally’s “gay Jesus play” Corpus Christi. Well, in all fairness, sometimes the oppressed can start to resemble their oppressors: The national media watchdog group GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) recently asked New York’s Tribeca Film Festival to pull its screening of Ticked-Off Trannies, which stars a bevy of North Texas transgender entertainers, because it allegedly “caricatures” trans folk and makes light of hate crimes. (This week’s “Dallas Voice” has an interview with director Luna). Tribeca organizers said, “Thanks for your concern, but screw you, we’re keeping it on the sked.”
I haven’t seen t
he movie, so I can’t say whether it’s entertaining or genuinely offensive or both. I can say that the concept sounds like drive-in movie gold – a group of transgender women are brutalized but take revenge on their attackers in ultra-gory I Spit On Your Grave fashion. Any kind of break from noble gay cinematic martyrs is welcome by this gay moviegoer. Hilary Swank was mesmerizing as Teena Brandon in Boys Don’t Cry, but I’d still love an alternate ending from ‘70s master Jack Hill (Foxy Brown, The Big Doll House) in which Swank opens a can of semi-automatic on her tormentors. We’re talking about The Movies here, and that means – unlike life – we can give it the ending we want.
I have seen the movie and I loved it. If you like the Tarrentino/Waters esq movies you will love it. Anyone who goes to see it and expects this to be a true deptiction of trans life needs therapy.