I am a film buff, but I had never heard of the 2010 film titled The Extra Man. I should have known about it because it stars one of my favorite living actors, Kevin Kline, along with Katie Holmes, Paul Dano, and John C. Riley. Somehow, it flew under my radar until last week when I learned that Paul Dano appears en femme in the film.
My interest was piqued, so I added the film to my Blockbuster queue.
The DVD arrived Saturday. I have not watched the whole film yet, but I fast-forwarded through the DVD to check out the transgender bits and found many pertinent scenes. There may be others because I fast-forwarded through the film very quickly and I might have missed some scenes, but here are the ones I did find:
* The Dano character peruses the trans bar advertisements in a tabloid newspaper.
* Dano goes to a trans bar and converses with a trans waitress.
* Dano has a male-to-female head-to-toe makeover.
I am not sure how these trans scenes fit into the rest of the film because I have not watched the film from beginning to end yet. According to IMDB, the story is about a man who escorts wealthy widows in New York's Upper East Side" and "takes a young aspiring playwright under his wing." Kline is the escort and Dano is the aspiring playwright.
And how it goes, I don't know yet.
AND... it's streamable on Netflix, for those like me who would have trouble using one of the film slots for an "offbeat" movie like this.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is, it shows up in the downloaded movies too. I need to figure this out.
I haven't seen the movie yet, but the Jonathan Ames novel of the same title is full of trans stuff. The protagonist is interested in cross-dressing (the novel starts out with him swiping a co-worker's newly purchased bra out of her shopping bag), but mostly (he eventually decides) he's interested in trans girls, though he's also attracted to genetic girls. There's a scene in the book in which the protagonist sees a young couple making out on the subway and wishes he could be both of them. I know the feeling.
ReplyDeleteWill have to check this out. @CallMeMeg if you worry about someone seeing your recently viewed, I just check how many movies show up on the list, and start that many movies in a row. You don't have to actually watch them, it will push the oldest off the list.
ReplyDeleteKasumi --- Jonathan Ames appears briefly in the film as one of the patrons in the trans bar.
ReplyDeleteI just saw the movie (Netflix streaming, hooray!). Certainly the vibe of the novel is captured nicely--Kevin Kline and Paul Dano both strike me as just right. The movie compresses most of the novel's trans stuff, however--in the book, Sally's "tranny" bar comes up a bunch of times, and the protagonist's attraction to the girls is quite clear. (So it figures that Jonathan Ames would appear in the movie as a patron of the bar!) The girl in the bar scene is played by Giselle Alecia, aka Giselle Xtravaganza, whom I'd like to nominate for a future "The Femulated," if you please, Stana.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I enjoyed the film. Thanks for the tip!