By Hook or by Crook, 25 Years Later

“I didn’t know if I was a total loser or just totally lost,” admits Shy (Silas Howard) at the beginning of 2001’s By Hook or by Crook, a trailblazing “trans and butch buddy film” that’s equally revolutionary for refusing to broach the subject of gender at all. Co-directed by real-life buddies Harry Dodge and Silas Howard (who also teamed up in 1992 to found the iconic San Francisco performance space Red Dora’s Bearded Lady), the micro-budget movie follows a couple of down-on-their-luck “freaky grifters” who refreshingly don’t even acknowledge, let alone comport with, hetero-cis society’s norms. The film centers on the transmasculine Shy, who, reeling from the death of his father, decides to leave his small town to pursue a criminal lifestyle in the big city. Once there, however, the low-key drifter gets caught up with Val (Dodge), a vibrantly eccentric bulldagger on a Sisyphean search for her birth mother. Unsurprisingly, drama soon ensues for this unlikely duo.

To read my interview with the director-screenwriter-actor-producers visit The Gay & Lesbian Review.