Best of 2024, #1: Will and Harper

Putting this here now feels like a protest against Emilia Perez, but I already had my list drawn up before I saw that one. Nonetheless, it is impossible not to compare and contrast the two. One of the many offensive things about Emilia Perez was that, as with The Crying Game, it was stuck in the mindset that trans people are trying to trick us all. Those movies focus on the question of whether they get away with it. This doesn’t jibe with my experience. Is it possible that I have post-transition trans people in my life that are passing? If so, that’s fine, but it seems to me that that’s just not what being trans is about.

This documentary is a much more touching story of a trans person who just wants to be accepted, so she goes on a road trip with her friend Will Ferrell. It’s at this place on the list because, more than any other movie this year, it made me laugh and it made me cry.

At this point, if you poll all Americans, you won’t find a majority who say they hate black people, or any other race, or gays or lesbians. And that’s been true for many years. The only minority group that a majority of Americans will flat out state that they hate is trans people. Trans hatred is a majority opinion. Trump hates black people, but he didn’t say “Vote for me because I hate blacks.” Instead, he said “Vote for me because I hate trans people, just like you do.” Previously good people like J.K. Rowling get infected with trans hate and it destroys them from the inside. Elon Musk was supposedly turned to the far right by his hatred of his trans daughter.

Why?? Why? Why all the hate? I don’t understand it. These are just the nicest people! They’ve done nothing wrong. As far as I can tell, the hatred is because the idea of trans-ness just seems so weird to cis people. Is that enough reason to hate?

Interestingly, Harper, despite expectations, does not encounter any face-to-face hatred in her roadtrip. But after she leaves each place, hateful trolls pop up on the internet to ridicule her. In person, she’s disarming and inoffensive. It’s the idea of her that inspires retroactive hatred.

I think most Americans have never met a trans person. What this movie does so well is give everyone who watches it a trans friend. Please watch it.

Storyteller’s Rulebook: They Don’t Have to Be On All the Time

I say that it made me laugh and cry, but I didn’t laugh as much as I thought I would: An interesting thing about the movie is that, despite starring a comedy giant and one of his head writers, it’s only mildly funny. These are comedy professionals who aren’t “on” all the time, and this movie shows us what they’re really like in their downtime. That turns out to be pretty fascinating. This is not a “Will Farrell” movie. Instead, it’s just a Will Farrell movie, and I loved it.