No one expected that it would take nine years after “Boys Don’t Cry” for lesbian director Kimberly Peirce to release her second feature film — including herself. But the experience of “Boys Don’t Cry,” the true story of slain transgender teen Brandon Teena that won Hilary Swank her first Oscar in the starring role, stuck with the director.
“The thing was, I had fallen so deeply in love with that character and that story,” Peirce says. “In a really humble way, my artistic standards were very high because that movie was really like a dream come true. It was about friends of mine, about identity and gender, things that mattered to me.
“It’s very rare to make a feature film in a way that was so personal,” she adds. “When the world embraced it, it set the stage for the kind of movies I wanted to do.”
“Boys Don’t Cry” made Peirce a hot property in Hollywood after the 1999 buzz. But her new “Stop-Loss,” which takes a fictional look at the miltary’s authority to deny service members’ release, is the first film she has made since. It opens nationwide March 28.
It really wasn’t a matter of pickiness — just timing, stalled projects and waiting for the right feature, Peirce says.
“[Hollywood] certainly came to me with projects, millions of dollars, and as I would get into them, they wanted to hire me because I brought such authenticity to it, but what I brought to it wasn’t necessarily what Hollywood was looking for,” she says. “For me, it’s like I am going to make it anthropologically truthful, get deep in the character, make it as honest as possible, [but] that isn’t always what the machine wants.”
Peirce came close with projects including “Silent Star,” a chronicle of the mysterious murder of director William Desmond Taylor. But nothing ever officially materialized. She did direct an episode of the Showtime lesbian series “The L Word” in 2006, but “Stop-Loss” is her first feature in almost a decade.
“STOP-LOSS” FOLLOWS FICTIONAL Iraq war veteran Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe), who returns to his Texas home from the war with fellow vets, looking to start life anew. But when Brandon is given a stop-loss order and asked to return against his wishes, he fights the order, and his decision challenges his personal relationships.
President Bush’s stop-loss policy, intended to maximize forces in a time of war, became a gay issue during the 2004 presidential race.
Gay activists were already fighting the miltary’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy and the slew of discharges it created. When Bush implemented the stop-loss order, activists questioned why the military would require service members who wanted out to stay, while fully supporting the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that kicked out willing gay service members.
Peirce began working on the movie in 2005, when her brother fought in the war. His involvement in the military raised questions for the director about soldiers’ experiences, and her research led her to interview her brother as well as hundreds of other soldiers.
IN ADDITION TO THE PROVEN sex appeal of Phillippe, actor Channing Tatum brings more beefcake — and authenticity — to his role as one of Brandon’s fellow soldiers.
“Channing, who I adore, came to the audition, but relative to the other actors, had less experience,” Peirce says. “I couldn’t look at his credits and go the studio and tell them they could open the movie on him. ‘A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints’ hadn’t come out, ‘Step Up’ hadn’t come out.
“He was so stunning,” she recalls. “I would interview real soldiers, and they were very masculine, real men. That isn’t so common in movies these days; there’s the metrosexual thing going on. I needed someone hunky, big bodied, strong, masculine, confident cocky, charismatic. I wasn’t finding it until Channing walked in.”
Peirce claims the issue of masculinity is a common thread in her two films.
“I am hugely interested in constructions of masculinity,” she says. “It’s not like anyone’s going to write a thesis on it, but I am drawn to it, particularly a girl who is dressing like a boy, or these men.”
Peirce says the demands and expectations on American men to be masculine create dilemmas she finds fascinating.
“Does being a good man mean you sign up and are willing to die for your country? Does it mean you get drunk, does it mean you get into a bar fight, does it mean you don’t?” she asks. “That’s where the struggle of why men are boys or metrosexuals vs. what we consider real men [comes in]. … It moves me and breaks my heart.”
The bonds of masculinity within groups of men intrigue the director and inform her new movie.
“With these soldiers, so many said to me, they said ‘it’s about the guys, I love the guys I fought with, I’d die for them, that it was the most intimate relationship I had in my entire life,’” she recalls. “That says so much about what men need.”
AS A LESBIAN, PEIRCE SAYS she does not feel she has faced obstacles in the film industry.
“What I don’t want to do is be blind or diminish obstacles others may face, because I am sensitive to it,” she says. “I have been afforded so much leeway, in terms of the kinds of stories I want to take, in terms of doing what I want. But if you notice, I face the same kind of obstacles every director hits in terms of the studio not moving forward on a project. I don’t know, maybe the culture is more accepting and more empowering than we realize.”
The director also says Hollywood doesn’t have the same kind of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ mentality as the military, but that gay actors still face some resistance in the industry to stay closeted — which is why she is unaware if any of her “Stop-Loss” cast members are gay.
“I don’t know that any out actor wanted to be in [‘Stop-Loss’]” she says. “But how many out actors in Hollywood are there? A lot of actors feel as if they come out, they won’t be accepted by the public in roles that are opposite of what their gender or sexual orientation is.
“I don’t know if that is true. Maybe it would take a bunch of actors coming out to change that, but that’s why they don’t come out,” she adds. “They feel they won’t be given roles they want.”
— Mike Fleming contributed
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