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By Hook or By Crook (2001)
Of all the people to be quoted at the outset of a pioneering trans film, Al Capone has to be among the least likely choices.
But there it is—the famed Chicago mobster cited in the opening frames of By Hook or By Crook: “Don’t get the idea that I’m one of those radicals,” the Capone line goes. “Don’t get the idea that I’m knocking the American system.”
Superficially, you could read that inscription as By Hook establishing its rebel voice in the chorus of art house street-crime movies. There’s more than a little Midnight Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho to Silas Howard and Harry Dodge’s seminal work of queer DIY cinema. (See also: some post-Tarantino thieves in suits who banter about pop culture.)
Co-director Howard plays Shy, a trans man from small-town Kansas, who lights out for San Francisco with a single suitcase, a handsome pair of cowboy boots, and tall tales about being descended from opera aficionados and rocket scientists.
Immediately broke and on the street, Shy saves the puckish Valentine (Dodge, also a co-director) from a beating. This charitable act kicks off a friendship defined by petty theft, quarts of Tab and tequila, and a side quest to find Valentine’s birth mother.
Howard and Dodge have said they didn’t know they were making a work that would be canonized 25 years later—or presumably restored in 4K and toured to the Tomorrow Theater on Sept. 10. They just wanted to see themselves and people like them on screen, even as Shy and Valentine barely discuss gender identity.
Indeed, that Capone quote says a lot about defiantly expressing one’s obvious belonging to a society that often pretends otherwise. Likewise, By Hook is so steeped in charming masculinity, urban survival and crime conventions that it could just as well be pure 1955 Americana, only starring two gender-nonconforming actors and awash in the hyper-immediate digital grain of its mini DV camera.
Maybe old Alphonse had this one thing right, at least. American culture would not exist without near-constant transgression. And a canon without outsider art is a formless, pulseless nothing. Tomorrow Theater. Sept. 10.
Also Playing:
5th Avenue: Sogobi (2002), Sept. 11–13. Academy: To Die For (1995), Breathless (1960) and Day of the Dead (1985), Sept. 9–10. Scanners (1981), Sept. 11–17. Cinema 21: Tokyo Story (1953), Sept. 12. Cinemagic: Boat People (1982), Sept. 10. Society (1989) and The Guyver (1991) double feature, Sept. 12. Clinton: Malombra (1942), Sept. 9. Shrek 2 (2004), Sept. 10. The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), Sept. 12. Hollywood: Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise (1987), Sept. 13. Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), Sept. 14. Moreland: Grease (1978) and Purple Rain (1984), Sept. 9. Tomorrow: Lady Terminator (1988), Sept. 12.
