From Tucker took winding road to “Transamerica”:
New York-based Tucker had always wanted to direct movies. After years of odd jobs as a starving photographer/painter and a stint in business with his financial whiz of a brother, he wrote ‘Transamerica,’ a story about Bree, a preop transsexual woman who finds out right before her scheduled surgery that she once sired a son. She rescues the troubled teenager from a lockup, and together they drive cross-country, where he eventually learns her secret and meets her family. ‘Transamerica’ is more of a healing family comedy than a threatening exploration of transgender issues. ‘I know what it feels like to be an outsider,’ Tucker says. ‘I have felt misunderstood. Bree feels so unloved and born into the wrong body.’At first the project met with nothing but slamming doors, but Tucker finally raised a little less than $1 million from family, friends and his credit cards. ‘Once I took the risk of being in debt for the next 15 years, the gates opened in a nice way,’ he says.
“Once I took the risk of being in debt for the next 15 years, the gates opened in a nice way.” I’d love to see interviews with the dozen daring young filmmakers for whom the gates did not open in a nice way.