Boys Don't Cry is a 1999 American biographical drama film directed by Kimberly Peirce, and co-written by Peirce and Andy Bienen. The film is a dramatization of the real-life story of Brandon Teena (played by Hilary Swank), an American trans man who attempts to find himself and love in Nebraska but falls victim to a brutal hate crime perpetrated by two male acquaintances. The film co-stars Chloë Sevigny as Brandon's girlfriend, Lana Tisdel.
After reading about the case while in college, Peirce conducted extensive research for a screenplay, which she worked on for almost five years. The film focuses on the relationship between Brandon and Lana. The script took dialogue directly from archive footage in the 1998 documentary The Brandon Teena Story.Kimberly Peirce profile Many actresses sought the lead role during a three-year casting process before Swank was cast. Swank was chosen because her personality seemed similar to Brandon's. Most of the film's characters were based on real-life people; others were composites.
Filming occurred during October and November 1998 in the Dallas, Texas area. The producers initially wanted to film in Falls City, Nebraska, where the real-life events had taken place; however, budget constraints meant that principal photography had to occur in Texas. The film's cinematography uses dim and artificial lighting throughout and was influenced by a variety of styles, including neorealism and the films of Martin Scorsese, while the soundtrack consisted primarily of country, blues, and rock music. The film's themes include the nature of romantic and platonic relationships, the causes of violence against LGBTQ people, especially transgender people, and the relationship among social class, race, and gender.
The film premiered at the New York Film Festival on October 8, 1999, before appearing at various other film festivals. Distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures, the film received a limited release in the United States on October 22, 1999, and it performed well at the North American box office, gaining three times its production budget by May 2000. The film was acclaimed by critics, with many ranking it as one of the best films of the year; praise focused on the lead performances by Swank and Sevigny as well as the film's depiction of its subject matter. However, some people who had been involved with Brandon in real life criticized the film for not portraying the events accurately.
Boys Don't Cry was nominated for multiple awards; at the 72nd Academy Awards in 2000, Swank was awarded the Academy Award for Best Actress and Sevigny was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. The pair were also nominated at the 57th Golden Globe Awards, with Swank winning the Best Actress – Drama award. Boys Don't Cry, which dealt with controversial issues, was initially assigned an NC-17 rating but was later reclassified to an R rating. It was released on home video in September 2000. In 2019, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
Plot In 1993, Brandon Teena is a young trans man living in rural Nebraska. When Brandon is discovered to be transgender by a former girlfriend's brother, he receives death threats. Soon after, he is involved in a bar fight and is evicted from his cousin's trailer. Brandon moves to Falls City, Nebraska, where he befriends ex-convicts John Lotter and Tom Nissen, and their friends Candace and Lana Tisdel. Brandon becomes romantically involved with Lana, who is initially unaware both of his anatomy and his troubled past. The two make plans to move to Memphis, Tennessee, where Brandon will manage Lana's karaoke singing career. Eventually, they kiss during a date night which ends with them having sex.
The police detain Brandon on charges that arose before his relocation; they place him in the women's section of the Falls City jail. Lana bails Brandon out and asks why he was placed in a women's jail. Brandon attempts to lie to her, saying he's a hermaphrodite born with intersex organs, and will soon receive genital reconstruction surgery, but Lana stops him, declaring her love for him regardless of his gender. However, while Brandon is in jail, Candace finds a number of documents listing Brandon's birth name, and she and her friends react to this news with shock and disgust. They enter Brandon's room, search among Brandon's things, and discover transgender pamphlets that confirm their suspicions. When Brandon and Lana return, Tom and John violently confront Brandon and take him into the bathroom, forcibly removing his pants and his white briefs, revealing his female genitals. They try to make Lana look, but she shields her eyes and turns away. After this confrontation, Tom and John drag Brandon into John's car and drive to an isolated location, where they brutally beat and take turns raping him.
Afterward, they take Brandon to Tom's house, but Brandon escapes by climbing through a bathroom window. Although his assailants threaten Brandon and warn him not to report the attack to the police, Lana convinces him to do so. However, the police chief proves to be less concerned with the crime and interrogates Brandon about his sexual identity.
Later, John and Tom get drunk and drive to Candace's house. Lana attempts to stop them, but they find Brandon and kill him along with Candace before fleeing the scene, while Lana lies with Brandon's body. The next morning, Lana awakens next to Brandon's corpse. Her mother arrives and takes her away from the scene. As Lana leaves Falls City, a letter to her from Brandon that she found on his body, is heard in a voiceover, saying that in Memphis "I'll be waiting for you, love always and forever".
Cast Hilary Swank as Brandon Teena Chloë Sevigny as Lana Tisdel Peter Sarsgaard as John Lotter Brendan Sexton III as Marvin "Tom" Nissen Lecy Goranson as Candace (based on Lisa Lambert) Jeannetta Arnette as Linda Tisdel, Lana's mother Matt McGrath as Lonny, Brandon's cousin Alison Folland as Kate Lotter, John's sister and Lana's best friend Lou Perryman as Sheriff Charles B. Laux Cheyenne Rushing as Nicole, Brandon's fictional first girlfriend in Lincoln Libby Villari as The Nurse Gail Cronauer as Clerk Gabriel Horn as Lester, Restraining Order Guy
Production
Background
Brandon Teena was a trans man who was gang raped and murdered by a group of male acquaintances in December 1993, when he was 21. Kimberly Peirce, at the time a Columbia University film student, became interested in the case after reading a 1994 Village Voice article by Donna Minkowitz. Peirce became engrossed in Brandon's life and death; she said, "the minute I read about Brandon, I fell in love. With the intensity of his desire to turn himself into a boy, the fact that he did it with no role models. The leap of imagination that this person took was completely overwhelming to me." The sensationalist news coverage of the case prolonged her interest. Peirce said she looked beyond the brutality of the case and instead viewed the positive aspects of Brandon's life as part of what eventually caused his death. She admired Brandon's audacity, ability to solve complicated problems, and what she perceived as the sense of fantasy invoked by his personality.
Peirce wanted to tell the story from Brandon's perspective. She was familiar with Brandon's desire to wear men's clothing: "I started looking at all the other coverage and a great deal of it was sensational. People were focusing on the spectacle of a girl who had passed as a boy because that is so unfamiliar to so many people. Where to me, I knew girls who had passed as boys, so Brandon was not some weird person to me. Brandon was a very familiar person." Peirce was influenced by the public perception of the case, believing the American public was generally misinformed: she said, "People were also focusing on the crime without giving it much emotional understanding and I think that's really dangerous, especially with this culture of violence that we live in". Peirce began working on a concept for the film and gave it the working title Take It Like a Man.
The project drew interest from various production companies. Diane Keaton's production company, Blue Relief, showed interest in the screenplay in the mid-1990s. Initially, the film was to be largely based on Aphrodite Jones' 1996 true crime book All She Wanted, which told the story of Brandon's final few weeks. Earlier drafts of the script incorporated scenes featuring Brandon's family background, including his sister Tammy and mother Joann, as well as some of Teena's ex-girlfriends. However, Peirce modified the script to fit her vision to focus on the relationship between Brandon and his 19-year-old girlfriend Lana Tisdel, which Peirce termed a "great love story", in contrast to All She Wanted, which did not place an emphasis on the relationship.
To fund the writing and development of the project, Peirce worked as a paralegal on a midnight shift and as a 35mm film projectionist; she also received a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts. The project attracted the attention of producer Christine Vachon, who had seen a short film Peirce had made for her thesis in 1995 about the case. IFC Films, Hart Sharp Entertainment, and Killer Films, Vachon and Eva Kolodner's production company, provided financing for the project. IFC contributed roughly $1 million, but the film's eventual budget remained under $2 million. Peirce co-wrote the screenplay with Andy Bienen. They worked together for 18 months on the final drafts and were careful not to "mythologize" Brandon; the aim was to keep him as human as possible. In the editing stage of the script, Peirce sent the draft to Fox Searchlight Pictures, which agreed to produce and distribute the film while giving Peirce artistic license.
Prior to filming, Peirce researched the facts by interviewing the people surrounding the case. She immersed herself in the information available about the murder, including trial transcripts. She met Lana Tisdel at a convenience store and interviewed her at Tisdel's home. Tisdel, who began dating Brandon just two weeks before he was murdered, was 19 years old at the time of the murders and lived in Falls City with her mother. Peirce also interviewed Tisdel's mother and Brandon's acquaintances. However, she was unable to interview Brandon's mother or any of his biological family. Much factual information, including Nissen being a convicted arsonist, was incorporated into Boys Don't Cry.
Casting
The filmmakers retained the names of most of the case's real-life protagonists, but the names of several supporting characters were altered. For example, the character of Candace was named Lisa Lambert in real life. The casting process for Boys Don't Cry lasted almost four years. Drew Barrymore was an early candidate to star in the film. Peirce scouted the LGBTQ community, looking mainly for masculine, lesbian women for the role of Brandon Teena. Peirce said the LGBT community was very interested in the project because of the publicity surrounding the murder. High-profile actors avoided Peirce's auditions at the request of their agents because of the stigma associated with the role.