Shy (Silas Howard) receives a foreclosure notice for his dead father's house in rural Kansas, and plans to rob a bank to make enough money to save his home. He hitchhikes to San Francisco, where he meets Valentine (Harry Dodge) and his partner Billie (Stanya Kahn), and together they engage in small-scale crimes while plotting their big break.
The film has been linked to the New Queer Cinema movement, and is one of the first works of fiction directed by trans directors about trans subjects.
It is available for free on Vimeo here
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This film provides examples of:
- Ambiguous Gender Identity: The gender identity of the protagonists, Shy and Val, is left ambiguous. The film is written and directed by two transmasculine people, who play both of the protagonists, who usually refer to each other as "he/him", "guy", and "man". However, when a child asks Shy "are you a boy or a girl?", Shy answers "both". In a later scene, Val explains to Shy, "I'm a two-for-one, a special." These scenes can be interpreted as evidence that these characters have a bigender or genderfluid identity.
- Bank Robbery: After seeing a news report about a bank robbery on TV, Shy decides that will be the way he gets enough money to save his home. He doesn't end up robbing a bank; in the end, he attempts to hold up a convenience store with a toy gun, and is humiliated by the clerk, not even getting any money.
- Bedlam House: Val was institutionalized in what he sarcastically describes as "very nice place in the country" as a child, as a form of conversion therapy for his gender identity. After a run-in with the police, he is institutionalized again. He is forcibly restrained and sedated. The building is run-down, patients mill about aimlessly, seemingly sedated or out of touch with reality, and there are messages written on the walls in blood.
- The Con: Shy and Val pull off a scheme to defraud a hardware store clerk by returning an item they stole.
- Couldn't Find a Pen: In the mental institution where Val is sent after being arrested, someone has scrawled "LONELY IS THE HUNTER" on the walls in blood.
- Cure Your Gays: Val's parents sent him to a mental instutition when he was 13, for "wearing boy's clothes" (i.e. for being transgender). It didn't work, of course; he continues to present as male and has a romantic relationship with a woman, Billie.
- Dream Sequence: A very trippy montage of seemingly unrelated images illustrates Val's experiences being sedated in the mental hospital.
- Family of Choice: Shy, Val, and Billie effectively form a chosen family.
- Gay Cowboy: Shy and Val wear some fabulously queer Western outfits.
- Gene Hunting: Val is adopted, and has been trying for a long time to find his birth mother. Shy helps him out.
- Good Samaritan: Val is being beaten by an unnamed assailant when Shy pulls his attacker off him, and finally chases the attacker away with a Groin Attack. This is how the two characters meet and become friends.
- Guile Hero: Shy scams people, robs a vending machine, and hotwires several cars in his quest to get rich and help out his friends.
- Justified Criminal: Shy is implied to have very few choices, as a newly orphaned trans person who recently lost his house to foreclosure, and arrives in the city homeless and broke.
- Karmic Thief: Shy plans to rob a bank, and in an early monologue implies that he wants to steal from "all the crooks in the world, like presidents, senators, cops".
- Lovable Rogue: The protagonist, Shy, steals and cons his way through San Francisco to get rich. However, he's well-dressed and slick-talking enough to be likeable to the audience and to other characters.
- Orphan's Ordeal: Shy was raised by a single father, and his financial problems start after his father dies. Val was given up for adoption and adopted by a family that put him in a mental institution when he was 13 for being transgender.
- Pronoun Trouble: Shy and Val usually refer to each other as "he/him", "guy", and "man". However, when interacting with the straight world, sometimes they use feminine pronouns, like in the scene where Shy and Val conspire to rip off a hardware store clerk.
- Punk Rock: The soundtrack features a lot of punk and Queercore bands, including Silas Howard's own band, Tribe 8.
- Room Full of Crazy: In the mental instutition where Val is sent after being arrested, someone has scrawled "LONELY IS THE HUNTER" on the walls in blood.
- Sharp-Dressed Man: Shy and Val both often wear suit jackets and ties, although not full three-piece suits.
- Shout-Out:
- In both their introductions, Shy and Val reference The Wizard of Oz. Shy refers to himself as being "like Dorothy, but with biceps and no dog," while Val calls himself the tin man, the lion, and then says "I'm all the guys from that movie."
- Flashbacks to Shy's childhood show him dressed as Superman, flying in his father's arms. In other scenes, he's shown making a Superman pose on a roof, sometimes while wearing a towel as a cape.
- Shy gets the idea to rob a bank from watching a news report on a bank robbery, in which a witness says "It reminded me of that movie, Bonnie and Clyde."
- Tin-Can Telephone: Billie and Val use one of these instead of a doorbell. In one scene, Val insists that Shy use it, to Shy's irritation.
- Welcome to the Big City: In his first day after reaching San Francisco, Shy is forced to sleep on the streets and witnesses a man beating up Val.
