The Brandon Teena Story

Rating:
Summary: NOT Close-Captioned!
Review: I watched a video, "Boys Don't Cry" and it was very hard to watch, because this boy (Brandon) had to ensure personal humiliation and degradation caused, especially by John Lotter and Tom Nissen along with others who stood by, doing nothing except to take a look at Brandon's private place. Lotter and Nissen couldn't handle their deflated male ego when they discovered that a "girl" actually turned out to be a better man than them. After this film, I wanted to see that documentary film, "The Brandon Teena Story" to learn more about certain persons. I am very disappointed to learn that this videotape is not close-captioned for Deaf people. It is kind of irony, because the creators of this documentary film gathered and filmed information about ignorance and prejudice. As it turned out, the creators are ignorant themselves, because they didn't include to have videotapes close-captioned for Deaf viewers. It is my hope that there would be second release of this documentary film, but this time the videos would be close-captioned. Therefore, my rate for this video is one star.

Rating:
Summary: Really, really good
Review: I've always wondered what it would be like to be inside the homes of people on the "Jerry Springer Show." Now I know. The people in this movie are so out of hand that you have to see it. I know that it is a sad story and all, and I cried through the whole movie. They weren't sad tears, however; they tears from histerical laughter. If you like this one, you'll love "Paradise Lost."

Rating:
Summary: A MUST SEE
Review: OH MY GODDESS. THIS IS SUCH A GOOD WORK OF ART. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS DOCUMENTARY. IT NOT ONLY ILLUSTRATES AMERICA'S UNWILLINGNESS TO ACCEPT PEOPLE NOT FROM THE MAINSTREAM. THIS CRIME WAS A TRAVESTY FOR EVERYONE. NO ONE WON AND EVERYONE LOST ESPECIALLY BRANDON TEENA. WHEN I SAW THIS, MY HEART WENT OUT TO BRANDON. HOW AWFUL IT MUST HAVE FELT TO HAVE THIS SEXUAL IDENTITY CRISIS. WHAT MADE IT MORE AWFUL WAS THE FACT THAT NO ONE WAS REALLY THERE TO HELP AND CONSOLE HIM--STAND BY HIM WITH PRIDE. THIS INCIDENT ONLY SHOWED ME THAT WE HAVE A LONG WAY TO GO BEFORE ATTAINING A NATION THAT IS TRULY ACCEPTING OF EVERYONE. THIS SHOWS THAT WE ARE NOT EQUAL EXCEPT ON PAPER.

Rating:
Summary: Who was this film about, anyway?
Review: Okay, I still haven't been able to see "Boys Don't Cry," but I think it will be much better than this documentary. Fascinated by the story, I decided to go to a showing of this film at the university I attend. I wanted to learn more about the girl behind the story. I was disappointed to find that the movie focused more on the people who knew Teena than on Teena herself. And the people who knew her...other audience members actually laughed at their stupidity. The documentary was amusing, even though its subject was not. Overall, I was unsatisfied because I left feeling that I had learned very little about Teena Brandon and what she went through. See it if you're interested, but don't expect to get too much out of it.

Rating:
Summary: Who was this film about, anyway?
Review: Okay, I still haven't been able to see "Boys Don't Cry," but I think it will be much better than this documentary. Fascinated by the story, I decided to go to a showing of this film at the university I attend. I wanted to learn more about the girl behind the story. I was disappointed to find that the movie focused more on the people who knew Teena than on Teena herself. And the people who knew her...other audience members actually laughed at their stupidity. The documentary was amusing, even though its subject was not. Overall, I was unsatisfied because I left feeling that I had learned very little about Teena Brandon and what she went through. See it if you're interested, but don't expect to get too much out of it.

Rating:
Summary: An accurate portrayal of events
Review: Seldom does a documentary film give such depth and background to a story. These filmmakers spent years in the courtroom and with the victims' families as well as the families of the killers. The obvious cooperation of law enforcement, media and members of the community is because of the attitude of Muska and Olafsdottir. They never succumbed to the promotion of the sensational aspects of the crime which prompted some lurid headlines.Without losing their objectivity, they maintained their compassion for all those involved. As someone who spent five years following this case as a reporter, I can vouch for its accuracy.

Rating:
Summary: EULOGY FOR AN ACTRESS
Review: Teena Brandon was a small woman who came out of nowhere, walked tall for a couple of weeks and died a brutal death at the hands of her associates. She was one of those extraordinary pople who come out against all odds out of trailer parks and the small town oppression. Unfortunately she remains as obscure as she was before, despite all the publicity that she received well meaning and otherwise. That is because everyone concentrated on her cross-dressing and passing herself as a male, focusing on the last three weeks or so of her life in Falls City and ignoring everything else about her.

This film is no exception, sticking strictly to the male persona that she was playing and ignoring her shortcomings. Unlike the true crime book, a film based ion her death, and a couple of magazine articles, this film comes closest at giving us a glimpse of what she must have been like in real life.

This film suffers from a number of shortcomings as a dicumentary. It gives too much air time (amazing that they gave any play at all) to the two people that raped and murdered her. Nothing new revealed by that except their lies and attempts at self justification. In the beginning the film-makers interview a number of girls, whom Teena pursued as Brandon, but they fail to mention that Teena was 18 going on nineteen while the girls were 14 going on fifteen and sixteen, and if Teena was male, she'd be a prime candidate for charges of statutory rape. While it's understandable that they would want to portray her at her best, it doesn't explain why they failed to interview any of her peers or anyone, who knew her as a girl, since she lived as such for most of her life. Another problem, of the caliber that makes the difference between the great and the ordinary is that the film-makers fail to actively engage, question or put on the spot a number of those they interviewed, when they were evasive or less than forthcoming and a more agggressive questioning was called for. This holds true especially, when they take a mother of a convicted murderer and have the gall to ask her if her son deserves a death penalty, while the lead rapist clearly controls the interview, apparently by his ower of refusing to give an interview or to make it public.

Despite these shortcomings, it's still a very moving documentary for all the life of Teena Brandon that it managed to capture. She was a budding actress from an early age and it was the role of her life that led to her death. She clearly loved to be photographed and the film makers picked out a great collection for a coherent narrative. Another strength is the length, which the interviews run, which capture enough information to give us sometimes shocking, sometimes revealing glimpse at what actually must have happened, even though the film makers failed to follow up on it.

One of the things that happened in real life but which did nt made it into the based on a true story movie was the so-called depantsing incident: Jealous Boys come up on two girls at a party. They pull the pants off a girl mascuarading as a boy so that everyone can see that "he" is really a "she", in hopes that the other girl would now know the truth and go back to her boyfriend. there are other more sinister implicaitons in this as well, which are best left to Freudian psychoanalysts and to anthropologists studying mating rituals in tribal societies. What happens next is a lot more serious: Teena Brandon is understandably terrified and runs from the party to a public place in the company of her female friend. The two show up about thirty minutes later, and the female friend leaves Teena Brandon in their company, saying "You will be all right". In the interview that gets into the documentary, the female friend gets a long winded explanation of where they went, and why it was okay for her to leave Teena in the company of two men who just forcibly pulled off her pants, and finally, literally with the last sentence, she attempts to extricate one of the two who happened to have been her boyfriend. Sometime after that they show newsfootage of that girl giving her version of what took place. Instead of going like Oh-my-God-they-pulled-the-pants -off-my-best-friend, the woman goes in a droning monotone "The Depantsing Incident" as if she was a Pentagon spokesman commenting on teh latest snafu. The interviewers treat this girl as a former friend despite the fact that Teena Brandon was afraid to go near her after the rape, thinking that she had set her up.

Another instance of mind-boggling behavior occurs when they iterview Linda, the mother of the last of Brandon's "girlfriends". There is a point that she says "I told Brandon that no one deserves to get raped, well, I did not know she was raped, kidnapped whatever." While saying that, she displays every textbook sign of lying. At first glance it seems innocuous: So, say that no one deserves to get raped. What's the big deal? Why lie about it? Because you knew you should say it, but you didn't? What sort of a person does it take to do that? And what sort of a mind is it that would lie about it and to what purpose? To curry favor with film makers? The film makers fail to mention was that this person had warned the perpetrators to wash their clothes because their victim went to the police and allegedly told them where Teena Brandon was hidingand had it not been for her, she might still be alive.

The audiotape of Teena Brandon making a complaint is another piece of the film to watch carefully. Insensitive remarks of the shriff aside, this is the only voice sample and we should listento it carefully. There are two things: First, she is trying to distance herself from her own femininity,as second, she refers to her rapists by their first names. She is not tgrying to distance herself from them, she relates to them as her friends or peers. Secondly, unlike the stoic portrayal of her by Hillary Swank, with a lone tear running down her cheek, Teena Brandon is on the verge of tears while she gives the statement and she keeps speaking in short gasps, probably to keep from crying, and her narrative builds to a punchline wehich expresses either confusion, existential bewilderment, or heartbreak: They beat ehr into submission, they batter her, then they rape her, they they forced her to sit between then in the front seat of the car, and one of the says soemthing that profoundly affects her, one of them asks her if they are still friends. From the way she says, that remark had really hurt her, which probably means that at some point they really were her friends and she liked them. This explains one of the major mysteries in this story: She got to safety of a hotel lobby. She called for someone to give her a ride. The two showed up and she went with them to get beaten up and raped. The msytery is that she didn't blow them off, she ddin't make a scene, they did not threaten her, she went with them willingly. They talked her into getting a ride with them instead of whoever was coming to pick her up. She probably went with them because she thought of them as friends. They took charge of the sotuation and she respondd passively as a woman. Like experienced batterers they targeted where she was vulnerable as a female and somehow she managed to accept her role as a woman in an abusive relationship. Whatever the case may be, she went with them willingly because she thought of them as friends.

The final point of interest is Michelle Lotter. In the early pictures she looks goofy. She wears baggy clothes to hide her figure. She bleaches her hair and starts wearing them something like Teena Brandon after she got murdered. There is some kind of a connection there. There is a sequence of photos that they took together in a mall photokiosk. There is some kind of tension between the two of them that did not exist between Teena and the other girls. They are grinning at each other like two Chihuahua dogs. From all appearances Teena Brandon had the Don Juan's ap;proach to love - girls were emotional objects to her to be pursued and showered with gifts, while it is with men that you establish friendships and communications. Which is what she did. Noticed that she never hugs or touches anyone in the photos, the only person that she does put ehr arm around is John Lotter, her future murderer. Of all the women it is only Michelle Lotter that she responds as if she is significant. I think the reason for that is the similarities that they shared. Some women attempt to avoid abuse, sexual and otherwise, by drawing attention fro their sexuality, which is what Michelle Lotter seemed to have been doing by hiding her figure in baggy clothes and acting like a clon and a best friend to a good looking girl. During the interview she is the most mature acting of them all, she knows the others and acts confident that she can control them. Teena Brandon is also seen wearing baggy clothes. Perhaps both of them had witnessed their friends in abusive relationships and did not to wind up in their shoes. It is realky tragic that when it happened to her, Teen

Rating:
Summary: A good documentary of a terrible tragedy
Review: The fact that there is a documentary about Brandon Teena-a young, working class, transgender person who was murdered in a small Nebraska town in December 1994-shows that there is a significant and growing movement against trans oppression.

Many transgender people are murdered at the hands of bigots. Trans people have been systematically oppressed by the cops and the bosses for hundreds of years. If we know the names Brandon Teena, Marsha P. Johnson and Venus Extravaganza-all killed by bigots and trans oppression-it's only because of a growing awareness of the lives and deaths of trans people. This is the direct result of a movement for liberation.

The documentary film, The Brandon Teena Story, produced and directed by Susan Muska and Greta Olafsdottir, is a respectful and important work. The most unfortunate aspect of the film is the absence of its main character. We see Brandon Teena only through photographs, people's memories, and testimony from the men who raped and murdered him.

The most painful part of the film is an audio tape of Brandon made by cops as they grilled him about being raped by the men who would later kill him and two others. The cops deliberately waited to arrest the pair until after the murders.

Brandon's story of transitioning, love, murder and oppression is told thoughtfully by friends and former girlfriends. It was Falls City Sheriff Charles Laux, who publicly exposed Brandon's genetic sex (female), who began the cascade of violence that ended in the triple homicide of Brandon Teena, Lisa Lambert and Phillip DeVine.

Lampert and DeVine were killed to try to protect the identities of the murderers, John Lotter and Tom Nissen.

While there is a lot of information about Brandon Teena available to the movement, this film is an important contribution because it exposes the daily oppression transgender people suffer at the hands of bigoted cops and the sexist, transphobic, anti-lesbian/gay/bi system that oppresses us all.

Rating:
Summary: The Brandon Teena Story VHS
Review: The moment I started to watch this video I started to cry, it touched home. It was honest, intense, horribly accurate from the story I know. It showed that justice was not carried out as it should have been, simply because of the hatred of people that are viewed as different, just because they love and live differently. This video is a prime example that shows just how evil people are in small towns, as they are in big cities, still in this day and age. People need to be made aware of the brutality so-called abnormal people have to endure just to live their lives, this video shows injustice and reality, so I give this video a 10++. Maybe someday we can all learn to live together in peace and harmony and leave hate where it should be, in the gutter. A true learning experience. The hard facts are in this video, well done.

Rating:
Summary: The Brandon Teena Story VHS
Review: The moment I started to watch this video I started to cry, it touched home. It was honest, intense, horribly accurate from the story I know. It showed that justice was not carried out as it should have been, simply because of the hatred of people that are viewed as different, just because they love and live differently. This video is a prime example that shows just how evil people are in small towns, as they are in big cities, still in this day and age. People need to be made aware of the brutality so-called abnormal people have to endure just to live their lives, this video shows injustice and reality, so I give this video a 10++. Maybe someday we can all learn to live together in peace and harmony and leave hate where it should be, in the gutter. A true learning experience. The hard facts are in this video, well done.