00:00This version of this story, I was very taken by the way that Molina is kind of explicitly
00:06a trans woman in this adaptation. Can you speak into crafting this version of the story and why
00:14that was important? Yeah. And I'm not sure I would put it exactly that way because I do think
00:19it's, I would say almost proto-trans because he didn't, you know, if we think of trans as something
00:25that, you know, an internal journey toward transitioning, he's not on that path. He would
00:34like to be, but doesn't have the tools necessarily. But it's because it's in the novel, you know,
00:40that dialogue is lifted straight from the novel. And that answered for me the question of like,
00:46why? I mean, why obviously doing a musical version was important, you know, doing another movie
00:51musical I love, but it really is, you know, sort of being true to what Manuel Puig wrote 49 years
00:57ago
00:58and hasn't yet been captured in any of these iterations. I feel like this is such a nuanced
01:03conversation. So I want to start with like our 2025 vocabulary, language, understanding of gender and
01:09sexuality is so much more apt, which is a wonderful thing. And so the conversations that Bill and I had
01:17were, how do we take our 2025 understanding of it and also honor the 1980s Argentina lived experience
01:27at the same time? And I think that our compromise here is I don't believe that Molina has gender
01:32dysphoria. I mean, body dysphoria, dysmorphia. I think that they are very comfortable in their body,
01:40but they refuse to be belittled in a world that makes them feel wrong, right? So maybe in 2025,
01:46they would have identified as gender nonconforming, genderqueer, maybe possibly even trans. But at
01:52the time there, I think they just wanted the opportunity to fall in love and to be respected.
01:57Yeah. And despite them feeling and being conditioned to think that they were a loser in their life,
02:03they were capable of so much heroic things as soon as they fell in love. I know myself, I'm constantly
02:09like picking little jokes at myself, but it's because I grew up in a community and in a culture that
02:13would
02:14pick those jokes at me. And so it almost becomes second nature. And so it's funny because like it
02:19took somebody else to remind you of the dignity and the respect that you deserve because it is your
02:26birthright for Molina to even begin to think about those things. And so I hope that our film does the
02:31very same thing, especially in a time where Latinos and LGBTQIA people are being belittled.
02:36It's like, no, no, no. Remember who you are. Remember your dignity. Remember your worth.
Comments