Jessica on Gender

Source: The Advocate
Date: 3/18/2003

by Anne Stockweel


Jessica is one of the greats," says out writer-director Jane Anderson, describing Jessica Lange's performance in the HBO original film Normal, set to debut March 16. "I think she's a national treasure."

Having watched the glamorous Lange put Dustin Hoffman's panty hose in a twist in the gender comedy Tootsie, one finds it startling at first to see her peering over her bifocals as a small-town Midwestern wife who learns that her husband of 25 years is transgendered. Yet the Minnesota-born two-time Academy Award winner knows plenty about small-town life--and Normal is rich with the big dramatic challenges she savors.

Adapted by Anderson (If These Walls Could Talk 2) from her 1988 play, Normal begins when Roy (Tom Wilkinson of In the Bedroom) blurts out that he's spent his life as a woman trapped in a man's body. As Irma, Roy's wife, Lange is first horrified, then deeply angry, then accepting. How was Lange affected by Irma's journey? Here are excerpts from her talk with The Advocate.

What interested you about Normal? It wasn't one of those things I read and said, "Oh, yes, I'll do it." I thought, This could prove to be quite extraordinary. But there are also a lot of pitfalls.

What pitfalls?

That the transition of man to woman would be handled properly--that it wouldn't become a broad, generic, drag-queen type of thing. As soon as I knew that Tom Wilkinson was going to play the part, that didn't concern me anymore. The other question was, Can we get away with this without it becoming mawkishly sentimental? Can we make it believable that this man would take this path and that this woman would somehow accompany him on this journey?

Could you talk about working with Jane Anderson?

Jane's like this little spirit, like a forest sprite. She's a very unusual person. I love her humor and this kind of wild enthusiasm she has. I had seen the segment that she did on If These Walls Could Talk with Vanessa [Redgrave], which I thought was absolutely lovely. Looking at that allayed my fear that this [film] could become sentimental. I figured if she could do a piece like that--not sentimental but tremendously emotional--it was exactly the kind of approach that I imagined would work with this piece.

Did Jane think of you because of your performance in Tootsie?

I have a feeling she didn't. Tootsie was a broad comedy; Dustin was obviously playing a man in drag. That's very different than what's going on in Normal, with Tom malting a kind of amazing physical transformation from a man to a woman, which I thought he did really beautifully.

At the end of Normal, I wasn't sure where Irma and Roy were with their sexual and emotional relationship.

I think the end is confusing, and it's meant to be. Are these people going to stay together? Is [Irma] going to be with women now? It gets into a very complex and difficult area. When we played it, it was with the idea that you took the next step but you didn't know where it was going to lead you. Obviously this [story] is a metaphor for any number of situations that could arise between two people who love each other. It's about loss. What do you do when somebody you've loved for 25 years suddenly becomes someone else?

Did you investigate more specific ways to resolve this story?

The film goes in a one-year span, from the time Roy says "I have to become a woman" to the eve before his surgery. It's anybody's guess what's going to happen after that I think Jane was very smart in putting these two characters on this journey but not indicating whether it would be possible for them to stay together.

Even more than gay people at this point, transgendered people seem to arouse hate and fear. Why?.

I did not do the kind of research that I normally do when I go into a film, [because] I wanted to really come at this the way [Irma] would. But I would assume that if [transgenderism] does engender hate, it would have to be because it feels like some kind of act against nature. Now, why something like that becomes frightening but everything else that's unnatural in this world that we engage in does not frighten people, I don't know.

"Everything else that's unnatural"?

Our values. This thing that has grown stronger and stronger in this country. This idea of selfishness as a virtue, as opposed to generosity: That to me is unnatural. How people can justify shooting a doctor who performs abortions and yet be so rabidly pro-life--that to me is unnatural. It's like an illogical, an insane kind of doublespeak. There are all sorts of variations of nature. To me, the people who are reacting are the ones who are working against nature.

 

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