By Glenn Dunks
In No Ordinary Man, a groundbreaking biography emerges out of the tragic throes of history. Populated almost exclusively by the voices and experiences of transgender individuals, this riveting and decidedly trans-positive documentary from co-directors Aisling Chin-Yee and Chase Joynt has the power and the depth to deserve a place in the queer canon (if such a thing exists). It dismantles the very politics of disclosure, and tells its story of self-discovery with empathy and tenderness while utilising film craft in a way that offers genuine inclusive insight.
It tells the story of Billy Tipton, an acclaimed jazz musician, husband and father who, upon his death, was discovered to have been assigned female at birth. At first mocked on the daytime talk show and tabloid entertainment circuit as a ‘unimaginable’ fraud who deceived his family and society for personal gain (women had little access to the jazz scene), No Ordinary Man charts how Tipton’s story was just one of many in a society that was woefully ill-prepared for the complexities of human behaviour. And how Tipton inspired a generation to live authentically.
Chin-Yee and Joynt chart Tipton’s story through several different methods. The first is by using archival footage from after the musician’s death, balanced by a contemporary interview with Tipton’s (adopted) son, who is the only cisgender interviewee in the film and who is shown to be unaware of the legacy his doting father left behind. This old video is as damning as you would expect to the E! and Oprah crowds, as well as Diane Middlebrook whose biography of Tipton was marked by transphobic language. The second method is through traditional talking head interviews with transgender activists and historians like Susan Stryker and C. Riley Snorton. Their insights are valuable for many reasons, not least of which in their ability to craft their own version of queer history that for so long has recast transgender men and women as other than what they truly were.
Lastly, and most astute when it comes to the film’s broader themes, the film invites a collective of transgender male actors to ‘audition’ for the role of Billy Tipton in a (presumably) fabricated biopic. These men recite words from a script, often getting caught in the way his story reflects their own. It is here that we get a stronger and more personal sense of the affect Tipton’s story has had on many transmasculine people when examples of such were impossibly rare. It is through this audition process that we learn more about what it is like to be a transgender man today, as the participants weave autobiography through the film’s attempt at biography. It is here that we engage with some of Tipton’s own experiences, including most interestingly his first interaction with another transgender man, a radio host to whom he is instantly recognised and vice versa.
This isn’t a new documentary conceit, but in No Ordinary Man it is one that works by highlighting how there is not one singular way to be transmasculine. It also works very specifically because, as a filmmaking concept, it really shines a light on how many transgender men and women must ‘perform’ for society—and how explicitly transgender people are villainized for either assimilating into cis culture too much or not enough. Yin-Chee and Joynt also feel their own way through Tipton’s story by way of these auditions, finding interesting narrative crevices that would go otherwise unseen by such a feat of filmmaking collaboration.
No Ordinary Man is easily one of the best films I have seen about transgender representation. An affectionately mounted production that is more than just the retelling on screen of some passage of history. It is a recontextualising of history in a way that hopefully opens up a more empathetic path to understanding for its audience far beyond those to whom Billy Tipton was already a figure of strength and self-acceptance.
Release: In limited release as of this week via Oscilloscope Laboratories.
Oscar chances: I would suspect it has a better chance with the likes of Independent Spirit than Oscar, who rarely latch on to documentaries about LGBTIQ issues.