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| Really Happy Someday |
“It's my first international festival that I've been able to attend... Anyone I tell the film has gotten into this festival, they're like, ‘Oh my God, I love BFI Flare!” said J Stevens when we met earlier this month, along with their co-writer and star, Breton Lalama. Both were excited, looking forward to screening Really Happy Someday to an international audience.
The film tells the story of a trans man, Z, who has reached a critical point in his career as a singer but, because he’s taking testosterone, has to deal with his voice breaking. Feeling as if everything he’s worked for is over, he embarks on a journey to regain control of his voice and, in the process, transforms his life, discovering new aspects of his personal identity. I begin the conversation by explaining that it was particularly moving for me because I know a trans man who felt unable to transition hormonally because of his singing, but it occurs to me that they’ve probably spoken to everybody in that situation during their research for this film.
“I'm sure there are some we haven't yet spoken to,” J responds, laughing, “but we have heard from a lot of folks who do resonate with the film. And I think the surprising part for me has been how many folks for whom it's not necessarily a gender transition, but just resonate with a changing voice, that reached out to us or came up to us after screenings. So it's very specific, but also we're learning that it's perhaps more universal than we thought.”
“Yeah,” says Breton. “And I think I would say, as far as trans guy singers in Canada, we probably have spoken to all of them. I think we pretty much all go to the same vocal teacher who is featured in the movie – not as herself. But, yeah, J's point, I think, is something that I knew a bit about as a singer before. At multiple points in our lives, no matter what our gender is, no matter whether we're cisgender or transgender, our voices do change. I had a cis woman talk to me about how she resonated with the film in that she's a singer. Her voice went through a massive change when she was turning 30, that was really challenging to her work. I love that it is more universal than we could have known.”
“I had been writing different films throughout two years, but with similar themes and similar tone,” says J. “Breton and I had followed each other on Instagram, but we ran into each other one day on a street corner in Toronto. We were both heading to work, we talked for about 45 seconds, and that day happened to be Breton's one year on testosterone anniversary, so that night he posted a ton of Instagram stories about his vocal transition. He had done an Ask Me Anything, so was talking about how it felt in his voice and posted different things about his progress along the way in terms of his vocal transition. And I just went, ‘This is a more nuanced version of the film I've been trying to write, and something that I've never seen or heard talked about before. So I reached out to Breton on Instagram and said ‘Wild, wild question: any chance you'd like to co-write a feature film and star in it with me?’”
“I literally said out loud when I got the message, ‘Yes!’” says Breton. “Because I was such a fan of J’s work. It was a no brainer for me. And so we did – pulling from both of our lives, I would say, but it is a fictional story.”
“It was the tone and the slice of life feel of the film I think maintained [from the earlier script],” says J. “In terms of Z as a character, and all the supporting characters, those all changed. We rewrote the entire film, and it's not at all what I was writing. And I just have to say: thank goodness for that. It's a better film for it.”
“I don't think we per se sat down and said this is what we are looking to acknowledge in the relationships dynamic,” says Breton. “I come to writing as a listener. I feel like my job is less to will a story into being and more, with the privilege of time and money, which are not always on the table, listen to what the story wants to be. And I do feel that we got to do that with this.
“I was reflecting the other day and you know, for better or for worse, I realised I don't know a single trans person whose relationship has survived their medical transition. What I'm happy we get to see in this film, I mean, obviously there's destruction involved in that in some way, but it's not devastation. When you go through a becoming, of course things have to fall away. I think with this character in particular, there's a lot of coming into self, and I think that's a theme interpersonally that a lot of trans people can relate to. But I really do believe that anyone on the journey of becoming, be that puberty or moving or I don't know, can relate to that – things must fall away to make space for what's true.”
I note that a lot of cis men who've been singers as children will go through a similar experience when their testosterone ramps up as well.
“Totally,” says Breton, but adds that there’s a technical difference. “When you transition as an assigned female at birth person to yourself, to a man, as an adult, you don't have growth hormone present in your body. So the difference is that with a cis boy and vocal transition, the vocal cords will lengthen and thicken. And then for an assigned female at birth person going through vocal transition, there's no growth hormone, so they only thicken. This is why trans men are told ‘You won't be able to sing.’ You will – it's just a completely different instrument that we have to learn and are in the process of learning how to best facilitate.”
We discuss how they captured Z’s vocal progression over the course of the film, which was possible in large part because Breton’s own voice was changing at the same time.
“In one of the opening scenes of the film, we had written it and I messaged Breton and I was like, ‘Do you think you're going to be able to make your voice crack?’” J remembers. “’And he went ‘Oh, if I try and sing this song in the original key, there's no way I'm hitting those notes.’”
“We didn't really know [how it would work],” says Breton. “I know a guy who's gone through vocal transition. I met some people while I was transitioning who had. But I really knew two guys who had done it, and they were so far along in their process, they were like, ‘Oh, yeah, when you get to this point, it's fine.’ And I'm like, ‘I can't sing.’ They're like, ‘Oh, I don't remember that anymore.’ And it's funny because now I'm kind of on the other side, and I was just talking to a younger guy who was like, ‘I can't sing.’ And I'm like, ‘Oh, it's fine. You're fine.’ And then I'm like, no, think of your movie. It's devastating. But all this is to say we did not know.”
“We actually filmed over the course of a year in small chunks to authentically capture that transition on screen,” explains J. “We did also adapt the script to what was happening in real life. There was a more idealised middle version of the film when we had first written it, but I think it was a hope and a dream for Breton that his voice would be at a certain point in four months after we began filming. The reality was it wasn't there.
“I got a voice message from Breton one day just being like, ‘I can't fucking sing anything, and I think we have to put this in the film.’ It was so important for us to show trans joy. But I went, ‘It's also okay to show the truth of the struggle.’ And so we then did adapt the script to what was happening in real time, because there was no faking what was happening. It was learning and growing and just being open to what we actually were both learning along the way.”
I mention Z’s use of cigarettes and straight whisky to cheer himself up. They’re substances that some transmasculine people use to roughen up their voices in the absence of testosterone supplements, but they’re not great for singers.
“I would down pitch my voice always just talking to try and pass, and just because the sound of my own voice was dysphoric to me,” Breton recalls, but concludes “I don't think that's what he's doing. I think he's just trying to survive in the best way he knows how.”
“We often do things that aren't good for us,” J observes. “I think Z has that tendency where, yeah, it's kind of ironic that the thing he wants is to get control of his voice and yet in constantly smoking or vaping or whatever it is, he's destroying parts of his vocals. It's a part, I think, of just showing that humans cope in weird ways and not in healthy ways sometimes.”
The visual in those parts of the film are gently distorted to help us get into his mindset. Directors often go overboard with scenes like that. How did J strike the right balance?
“I always approach cinematography just from a story perspective,” they say. “And so again, rather than trying to put what I want the visuals to be onto a scene, onto a situation, I let the story guide it. It felt very natural to lean in a little bit, and Z's perspective was always the perspective of the film. I was trying to find ways to put viewers in Z's shoes without feeling gimmicky or anything. That was how we were leading those choices, and wanting it to feel as natural as possible and almost like you're watching a documentary, even though it's a fictional film. We never wanted it to feel like filmmaking.”
“There's so much I want to say,” adds Breton. “I found that J shoots like a poem. That's really what it is. They're writing a poem and to get to be inside their frame is to get to become part of this poem. They're very good at what they do. They're the best.”
Finally, I ask J about their work with the Spindle Films Foundation.
“It’s a non-profit organisation that is rooted in an annual mentorship programme for gender diverse emerging filmmakers in Canada,” they explain. “It came out of having the beautiful experience of this film together, and working with the primarily gender diverse crew and cast, and then juxtaposed to being on larger sets, union sets, where then you're possibly the only one, or one of the few gender diverse people on set. It’s a stark difference in terms of how that feels and how you can navigate those spaces. So Breton and I were talking about the state of the industry and how we could lift trans folks up around us, with us, help make that shift happen faster.
“We're in our second year of programming. We had a cohort of nine writers and directors in our first year, and this year we have nine producers, and we try and give them as much applicable training as possible, and practical training, and empower them with community and the tools to level up in their careers. It's been absolutely magical to be a part of and to be in that community. Especially in these horrific times, to be surrounded by incredibly talented, brilliant, gender diverse filmmakers is a gift.”
