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LEO: Hello everyone and welcome to Changing the Frame. We are your hosts. My name is Leo Torre and I use he/they pronouns.

INDIGO: My name is Indigo Korres, and I use she/her pronouns. We’re a podcast that discusses trans and non-binary experiences in the film industries. Every episode will come with the appearance of a trans and/or non-binary multimedia artist in the film industries to talk about their work. We’re really excited to share these amazing talks and discussions with.

LEO: Today we have two incredible guests: Chase Joynt and Morgan M Page. Chase is a director and writer whose films have won jury and audience awards internationally. Morgan is a writer, historian, artist and activist, currently based in London, England. Chase and Morgan worked together on the feature film Framing Agnes, a trans history documentary featuring a cast of trans actors turning a TV talk show inside out to confront the legacy of a young trans woman forced to choose between honesty and access. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2022, where it won two awards. Together, they also wrote the book, Boys Don’t Cry, a Critical History of the 1999 Film by Kimberly Peirce.

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INDIGO: This is Changing The Frame.

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INDIGO: Hello, Chase and Morgan. Thank you so much for joining us today. I was just wondering if you could start by, if you could tell us a little bit about your background and also about yourselves and what you do in your practice?

MORGAN: Well, I’m Morgan M Page, pronouns she/ her, and I am a writer, artist and historian and general multihyphenate, based in London, England. I am the voice of One From The Vaults, the podcast that brings you all of the dirt, gossip and glamour from trans history. And with my dear friend Chase Joynt, I am the co-writer of the feature film Framing Agnes and the book Boys Don’t Cry, which we wrote in the editing process, or not in the editing, in the middle, in the middle of shooting. Really. And many other things. But anyway, that’s who I am.

CHASE: Morgan, that was an extraordinary introduction, almost as if you were reading it off of a bio page, but I know that you’re not. Just to make that perfectly explicitly clear for our podcast listeners. My name is Chase Joint. I’m a writer-director. I identify as having come up in Toronto, as someone being mentored by people like John Grayson who made experimental film and video work in and throughout the AIDS crisis. And one of the reasons why I like to start my sort of background bio there is because I really identify AIDS cinemas as cinemas of extraordinary urgency that prioritize community needs and motivations and are designed for immediate circulation and use. And I think that some of our impulses around Framing Agnes, well, it was not circulated for immediate use, let’s be clear, are really motivated by those early beginnings. And, and Morgan and I share a lot of affection for certain kinds of artists and styles. My background is in theater. I went to UCLA and really pivoted into activist art communities from that place.

LEO: Stunning, stunning. Well, thank you for introducing yourselves. We’re here today to talk because of Framing Agnes, and we want to explore a little bit what producing Framing Agnes was like for you both and what role you played in the production of it. If you would like to discuss that a bit further.

CHASE: Sure. I can start this one. So I am a grateful recipient of some federal Canadian arts funding, which allowed us to begin the process of turning Framing Agnes the short into a feature film version. And I am credited as a director and co-writer and and co-producer. But really the project is such a deeply and enduringly collaborative project that it’s hard to sort of separate out these roles for very important reasons, which is to say, the storytelling is contingent upon the collaboration of everyone within the film. So in no way could Morgan and I identify as the sole writers of the film. In a lot of ways, though we can speak explicitly to the kind of writing that we did. And I also appear on screen. 

MORGAN: I mean, yeah, all of that. I also appear on screen, which I wasn’t expecting when we were doing it. I thought I was just gonna show up to set and like script supervise, but oh no. So I came into this project after the short had been making the rounds. Chase brought me in to think about what it could look like as a feature together and as he just explained, that was like a long and ongoing collaboration, not just with the two of us, but also with our like quote unquote subjects in the film with the other producers, with lots of other voices. Up until, you know, up until now basically, as we continue to promote it a year after it’s released, I feel like we’re still writing the film in some ways. 

CHASE: Totally agree. Yeah. 

INDIGO: Thank you so much for that. And before we actually move into talk about the film and the book as well, Boys Don’t Cry, would you be able to tell us a bit about what made you pursue filmmaking and writing in the first place? And what roadblocks did you face when you were starting out? 

CHASE: I think visually and orally about sociopolitical issues. So film in some ways emerges as the most dynamic medium through which to kind of wrestle these issues and debates. And because film is such an inherently collaborative medium, I feel excited by the demand to be working with others all the time. And you know, I really appreciate the fact that good films are good films because every person on them, is often doing what they do to the best of their ability. And if you have a number of people who are all thriving and vibing and doing what they do, then the whole becomes something else on account of those energies. And I think film is a very particular kind of art making for that reason. I’m sure maybe musicians could jam out in the same way, but I don’t know nearly enough about music to make the parallel. But I do find that the circulation of media in this particular moment is an exciting, though complicated tool to elevate and enhance community specific conversations.

MORGAN: I feel like I came to writing because I am inherently two things. One, a chatty Cathy and two an introvert. So I love to write all my little diatribes about things and then throw them out into the world and disappear into the night. Because I don’t wanna have like, interactions. But you know, I, I’ve actually gone through many mediums. I was a gallery based artist for a little bit. I was a performance artist. And the sort of through line, through everything that I do, which I think is a lot of where I connect with Chase, is that I have a very like sociopolitical lens through which I see the world and that comes through in everything I’m doing, whether it’s you know, performance art of me and my collaborator, Jessica Whitbread in space suits going on cute dates, which is actually very political or something like Framing Agnes or One From The Vaults or whatever. It’s always about trying to communicate really specific positions and views of the communities that I inhabit and the sort of politics that I push. I would say.

LEO: That is very good answers, I think having a sociopolitical lens is very important. We’re making art cause they influence a lot the coming results from it. And we have seen that from Framing Agnes and it’s importance. But if you would like to discuss a little bit more about Boys Don’t Cry and the process of writing that book together, how you both came together, how you met and where all the inspiration for all the creative art that you do comes from. That would be lovely, thank you.

MORGAN: You know, hilariously, we didn’t meet for a very long time. This is the like beginning of our story is that we were both Toronto queer people for a long period of time. But though I kind of knew who Chase was and like was following his work, yeah, we never actually really connected until after I left Toronto. And. . Then we got, we only really started working together over Framing Agnes. But in the middle of that Chase asked me if I’d be interested in co-writing this book on the film Boys Don’t Cry. And that became our, like pandemic project because we had started, we had shot the bulk of Framing Agnes the December before Covid. But there was still some more to do and then Covid hit and we couldn’t do it. And so we like sat on Zoom calls like five days a week, for months and just thought together about Boys Don’t Cry and wrote this book, which I think is an excellent companion piece to Framing Agnes, cause it’s, we’re thinking through a lot of the same ideas but in a different context. It’s like a parallel project. 

CHASE: We should bundle the book and the Agnes DVD as a holiday gift pack.

LEO: That’s an amazing idea. 

MORGAN: I feel like if we ever got a criterion release, like I’m dreaming really big here, but if we ever had a Criterion Release, that would be the booklet in the Criterion DVD box set.

CHASE: I love that. And the only thing I’ll add is that we wrote the book for a series called Queer Film Classics, and the series is designed for deep dives for wide audiences into one particular film text, and one of the reasons why I immediately asked Morgan beyond my enduring desire to just work with Morgan on everything, is that it is such a hotly contested film that is so complicated and is in some ways repellent. Some people don’t even want to engage in a conversation about the film, let alone read a book about it. And Morgan and I just find that fascinating. I mean, what an interesting place to start because there is so much to be said for “bad trans objects” and early trans representations. And you know, Morgan and I have been around a number of these trans blocks enough to, to think, I think more capaciously about trying to return to these early places and see what else was going on there. And so we try to sidestep in the book a lot of the more common ways in which people have approached the texts while we say, yes, we understand it, these are the debates, what else can we look at? What else was going on? What are the under attended issues? And to Morgan’s point, I think in some ways that’s the work we do in Framing Agnes as well.

LEO: Very stunning. How do you think your work influences each other’s work further from like being, working together to being working separately as well? 

MORGAN: You know…

CHASE: I love that question.

MORGAN: That’s a great question. I, I would, I started thinking when we were like, especially when we were running the book together in particular, I was like, we are like burrows and geen. We have the third mind going on. Like, I know where Chase is gonna go now. And like we were so synced up. And I would say that I’ve, you know, since working on the book and since working on the film, I’ve had the opportunity to work with other directors and other projects. And it’s really interesting because I sort of bring Chase with me. I have that same little voice in the back of my head about the particular stylistic concerns, the, the way of like messing with genre, messing with the frame, which I think is the Chase side of things that I just like bring into sort of all the work that I’m doing now.

CHASE: I love that. I really appreciate this question. And I think about it often. I think that, you know, there are so many times where my desire is to send Morgan a text to be like, I just think you’re wonderful. Like, I just think this, you know, and that’s like an enduring desire to communicate my gratitude for what’s possible in this collaboration. And you know, one of the things that I love most is because we’re friends and because we really trust each other, we are really happy to tell each other that we have like shitty ideas or that something’s not going right or that we need to scrap things or that we’re… and that breeds a lot of humor. And a lot of joy because we don’t take each other too seriously. But it also means that we’re not afraid to really try and push and experiment. And so it’s funny, it doesn’t maybe seem as intuitive, but because we have a lighter touch and an ability to enjoy each other’s company really go hard. And I think Framing Agnes is an example of an experiment where we are pushing, we’re pushing hard at the boundaries of genre, we’re pushing hard at the kinds of conversations that we’re having about trans life and trans death and, and trans representation more broadly. And that comes out of, for me personally, my enduring respect for Morgan and all the things that she does. And, you know, I think all you have to do is listen to One From The Vaults to recognize the extraordinary intervention into the ways in which people talk about trans history. And so how can we move some of that energy into, into other forms?

INDIGO: That’s so lovely. I love the way that you talk about each other and the way that you work together. So you worked on a film and a book together, and how do you both think working towards completing a film differs from completing a book? In a way, in what sort of specific issues did you face whilst working on Framing Agnes and Boys Don’t Cry? They were kind of different. 

MORGAN: I mean, there’s a lot less cooks in the kitchen with a book. 

INDIGO: Yeah. 

MORGAN: To be honest, we could just do whatever we wanted. I mean, there were like little tiny framework we had to follow for the series of books, but beyond that, we could just do whatever we wanted and there’s no cost concerns. So we could just sit on Zoom all day and like come up with whatever wacky ideas we have. And it’s not like, we’re going into significant debt to do so. And I think a film is sort of the opposite situation.

CHASE: That is precisely my answer as well.

LEO: Incredible. Oh, we’re getting to the point where we’re gonna discuss more about Framing Agnes and I think from watching it, I did realize that there’s a lot of self-referential sense to it. It the, the film is a very standalone piece. Like, it it, it is what it is for. And I think obviously because it has a very interesting documentary style where you’re also involved in it and you’re discussing it, you respond to the question of why the film is necessary already. But if you could develop a little bit more on why you decided to come up with the idea and how you developed it and why do you think the story is important to be told, that would be lovely. 

CHASE: Yeah. So I think that there’s a couple different ways into answering that question. You know, we could take. The archive and Agnes as one potential starting point where we understand that this particular person in the mid-century was made an exemplary case and all the violence that happens when research and attention consolidates around one person. And then we’re trying to think about how that’s happening in contemporary pop culture as well around certain kinds of trans subjects. So that’s one way to answer it. You know, the other way to answer it is to borrow from my dear friend Morgan M Page, to say that in a culture that is obsessed with thinking about transness and trans representation, we are, and I quote, terrified of boring our contemporaries. And what I mean by that is that we think the time is up on certain kinds of approaches to trans history. And so the motivation to be thinking in more formally innovative ways is to try to jam the system that likes to tell trans stories in very particular forms. And so we use Agnes and we use the archive and we use all these other questions and themes as a way to think about that. But at its most, you know, expansive level, we’re really trying to think about the limitations of documentary as a genre and the limitations of the way in which we approach stories about ourselves and our histories.

INDIGO: That’s beautiful.

MORGAN: That was amazing. Yeah.

INDIGO: Yeah. Just taking it in. And I know Morgan’s a historian, but you also worked with another historian, Jules Gill-Peterson for this project. How was that collaboration like?

CHASE: Oh, we just love Jules. We wish Jules was here. I mean, Jules emerges in the film very much as Jules is in life. You know, she is the author of Histories of the Transgender Child. She is writing op-eds for the New York Times and showing up on NPR every few weeks. I mean, she’s really become a kind of force. And one of the things that I think she allows us to do in the film is open up access. So she reaches her hand out and says, come walk with me for a little bit. Let me show you what’s happening in a variety of different ways and scenes. And one of the reasons she’s able to do that is because we were already in the process of cutting the film when we shot with her. So the work that Morgan and I had done, the scripting, the television format, all of these things were in place. And so we were able to show Jules string outs to say, here’s how we’re thinking about the following themes or issues. And so what Jules is doing in the film is critiquing the film, within the film. She’s saying, this is what happens when you put this together with this. This is what happens when you linger here for a little bit too long. And so it’s this really fascinating organic move that she’s making where I then with our editor collaborators respond to her in the edit. And so there’s an exciting way that she is who she is as a historian and as a public intellectual, but then she’s also a kind of actor interpreter in the ways that many of our other subjects emerge in the film.

MORGAN: Yeah, she was like a huge gift from Covid, to be honest, because before the pandemic we… she wasn’t part of the whole idea really. And then it was the, all the time we had, while we were writing the book and just hanging out in our homes that sort of opened up space for her to become part of the collaboration. And obviously it’s a very, it would’ve been a completely different film without her and I think a much weaker film without her. So, it kind of all worked out.

INDIGO: That’s incredible.

LEO: It’s actually a good segway into my next question because obviously in the film there’s discussions about the documentary form itself as a method of authority and excavation and interrogation, and you asked Jules about the role collaboration and storytelling play in shifting the terms of engagement. And I remember that your own feelings about your own questions weren’t very positive. And we would like to know if your response has changed to this question after having finished the project now. 

CHASE: No, I think it’s a trap, my feelings have not changed at all. In some ways I’m doubling down into my feelings. Yeah. I mean, I think it’s a really difficult and challenging pursuit, one that I, I can use the… we in, in thinking about Morgan and I as we continue to move toward other projects, I think we will still reckon with those questions. I think they’re in some ways unsolvable questions. But I think that thinking about authority and authorship is something that will run through everything we do because the stakes are so high.

INDIGO: I have an interesting question cause I’ve been listening to how you’ve moulded this project from 2019 until now. And I was just wondering if there were any other styles of filmmaking that you considered prior to making the short film and after making the short film and turning it into a feature film.

MORGAN: You know, when Chase and I… I can’t speak about the short film, but when Chase and I met up in London the first time to have a proper talk about the feature, we came up with a whole other idea for the feature, and it was in a spreadsheet called and this is problematic, but talk show trainees. I had this idea that like or like we had this idea that we would maybe like go through the decades of talk shows with our actors and like changing sets and whatever, but we’re a micro budget feature and that was not really gonna happen. And there was, there was a time where there would’ve been a lot more of the sort of like, history of trans people on talk shows included, and we went through like hours and hours of video of Jerry Springer and like the Arsenio Hall Show and like all these things, you know, to pull from. But in the end it, it just, I think it just would’ve complicated the story we were trying to tell. I don’t know. What do you think, Chase? 

CHASE: Yeah, it felt like a different project, which I love, you know, and I also think that, I wonder what we would do if we had to make it again, like I think it would transform again. It feels very much a moment of its time and, and constructed in response to the ongoing sociopolitical debates that, and if, one thing that I think is so fascinating is if you were to watch the short and the feature together, they pull from the same archive and it’s very clear that we’re test driving the methods in the short that emerge in the feature. But they’re really different films. And they’re different films because in the short, our actor collaborators are relying upon or trafficking in personal narrative as a way to stitch their relationships to the historical subjects and a, as a way to argue for their rights and dignity. So Zachary will say, I was born in Syracuse, New York. I grew up, I blah, blah, blah. I had these feelings. And what you see in the feature is a kind of refusal of that form of narration. And so when you say, I’m no longer gonna tell the story of I was born in this place and I felt this way, and then I made the change to quote the film back, right? There is a way in which avoiding all of that set of trans narration opens up a totally different arena of storytelling possibility. And so the kinds of conversations we’re having in the feature only emerge because we’ve said no. And I think the same thing would happen if we were to do it again, which we’re not.

LEO: You’re not at all. Are you sure?

CHASE: Yes, I’m sure.

LEO: Oh, I would like to know why you chose to deliver a second version of the film. What was the reasoning behind it? Because you obviously made the one in 2019, but then you chose to make a longer version, an extended version. And we find that very interesting in the sense of like developing projects even further, so…

CHASE: Yeah, it’s a great question and it’s a question that is shared by many funders all around the world who like to say, you’ve made a short, so why should you make a feature? You know, there’s a couple really practical answers, which is that we love the opportunity to welcome Jen and Steven into the cast who we were in conversation with around the short and who we just didn’t have capacity and or the schedule to accommodate. And, you know, I love the short and will always hold it close to me, but let’s be clear, we shot it in one room in three days. We’re wearing our own clothes, we’re like eating granola bars, we’re putting our costs on credit cards and favors from friends, and we’re nailing tablecloths to a wall to make our black box studio. I mean, it’s a really different DIY beast and I think that production design really enhances a lot of our ability to, to tell the story in the feature and if you look at the feature you, I think you can feel Morgan’s hand in the feature. You can feel our collaborator’s hands differently orchestrating. And that is a actually a question of resources. It’s all well and good that we love each other, but you actually need to build out a different kind of scaffolding to allow for that kind of participation. And so that is just as important to me as the kind of stories that we’re trying to tell, right? So if we return to the funder, which of course Leo, I’m not putting you in this category anymore cause I’m moving toward critique, right? The funders are like, oh, but you already did it. And I’m like, but what did we do? Like what’s, what’s being done? Okay. We’re bringing an archive onto the screen. That’s only one of so many things that we’re trying to do in the film. How we make the film is just as important as the film itself. And so to get to that feature level, which again, was still underfunded and we would still love to do differently, but it’s a way to really shift the, the power structure and the ways in which we come to tell these stories.

MORGAN: I also think there’s something important to recognize about the difference in audience that you can have from a short versus a feature. The fact is most people don’t watch shorts. Like film nerds absolutely do, people who attend festivals will go watch a short, or like people who know filmmakers will like watch their friend shorts and usually not like them. But send a congratulations, you know. We’ve all been there, but… some of us this week. But… you all laugh because you’ve all been there, but…

LEO: Yeah.

MORGAN: But when you have a feature, you have the potential, even with a documentary. And bear in mind, like most people do not watch documentaries, especially outside of the Netflix documentary, kind of like genre. But you have the opportunity to reach a much larger audience, and thankfully we’ve been able to do that with Agnes, the feature. Not only having like a festival run, but now we’re having a theatrical release in North America as we, as we speak, which I, I did not expect was gonna, I mean, I love our little movie, but I was like, this is a nerd movie for nerd people and, you know, it ended up, you know, getting reviewed in the New Yorker and things like that. And I think that’s something that’s only really gonna happen with a feature. A feature makes something, not only relevant to a larger audience, but something like this, it makes it politically relevant to conversations that are happening, which is, I think part of why it is connecting with the broader audiences given our slide into populist fascism at the moment and all of the obvious controversies surrounding trans healthcare.

INDIGO: That’s really exciting about the theatrical release of the film. That’s really good. Chase, you mentioned a little bit about like how you were in conversation with two other cast members that you invited for the feature film and how you’ve extended that for the feature film, and we noticed that some of them, that was the first time that they were performing in a film. How was casting for those roles, like in terms of finding all the members? 

CHASE: Yeah, I love the question and also to be thinking about the word casting in this context, right? Because were we casting? What were we doing? What is actually happening? Are they acting? Are they inhabiting? Like it’s very slippery and I think productively so. You know, upon reading the transcripts and recognizing the kind of life narration that was happening, buying through these folks in the mid-century, it was very easy to make connections to people in our shared worlds. So what did it mean to encounter someone like Henry on the page who was writing about his life and to immediately spark to someone like Maxwell Valerio, who wrote a trans-masc memoir in the early two thousands called the testosterone files that many of us who came up in and around the same age knew and read and or at least could recognize on a bookshelf, right? And so there’s sparks for each of our collaborators that we could narrate if we had all the time in the world. But it’s not necessary. And one of the things that I think is most exciting to me about their presence beyond what is so beautifully revealed in the, in the film through their collaboration, is also that there are many more layers to those connections that are not as explicit. And so part of that is a little bit of a T4T wink. Like if you know, you know, and if you don’t, it doesn’t matter. And part of that is because I think we are trying to think beyond casting. We are trying to think beyond a separate entity, performing another separate entity. We’re trying to think about that kind of like trans historical commingling to say that Max and Henry are in some ways one and the same. Like there are resonances there that are complicated and that are deeply trans. And to let that commingling exist on screen, but to also allow folks to have the opportunity if they want to further explore and further recognize some of those connections. 

MORGAN: I think there’s also something really important around like our personal connections with all of the, like our cast slash collaborators because, you know, I don’t think we could have had the conversations that we do have with them without the trust of having been in community together for a very long time. And often having been like quite good friends. Like obviously I’m ,you know, love all of them to death, but I’m particularly good friends with a number of them of many years and I think that allows us to go deeper. And is also one of the reasons why you couldn’t make this film with like cis filmmakers on the lead. It just would not have worked, you couldn’t get people to talk about their narratives in that way if it was cis people.

LEO: Oh, it, it’s very important to have the correct people to portray the correct people. And kinda leading the same path of connections within the trans community and the trans filmmaking community. Was the production team behind cameras also people you’ve worked with in the past? In previous projects? Separately or together? We would just like to know how it was like interacting with the production team. 

CHASE: Yeah. The team is majority queer and trans, and definitely a combination of folks that we’ve worked with for a long time. You know, my producing partner, Samantha Curley, for example, and our trans-identified dps. And you know, one of the things that I think our collaborators would say is you look out across the camera and you recognize that we’re all in community in a variety of different ways in every direction. There’s all the ways that we traffic in behind the scenes in the film, when we watch KC our sound recordist come in and adjust my mic, and there’s a surface level of reading that about, trying to think about quote bts, but there’s a much more invested layer of opportunity there to actually read multiple layers of transness and collaboration on screen. And so we were happy to bring also a number of people who worked on the short through into the feature with us for that kind of continuity as well.

INDIGO: Yeah. We, we like to ask this question to everyone that comes to the podcast, but how is your way of exploring gender throughout your own artistic form, so be it writing or filmmaking, different from other artists who are also writers and filmmakers?

MORGAN: You know, I am of the opinion that gender naval gazing is deeply boring and I refuse to do it in public and in private. I transitioned like 20 years ago. I’m over it. I don’t need to hear about anymore. I don’t wanna hear anyone else’s gender naval gazing. I’m done. The only thing that I’m interested in is talking about our experiences within a culture that frequently does not understand or have room for us and what that tension produces in our lives historically and currently and unfortunately probably in the future too. So to me, I’m like, I don’t think gender itself is a thing that I find particularly interesting. What I find interesting is how our community is affected by the systems around it that produces, you know, unique experiences, but those unique experiences tell a really broad story about the shape of society in general, about the shape of history, you know, it’s looking at the specific to get the real much more universal story often. So that’s it for me. I’m like, oh fuck, gender. I mean, it’s great.

LEO: That’s an incredible answer. To be fair.

MORGAN: If people, if people wanna do that, good for them, it’s just not really…

LEO: But fuck gender. Yeah. 

MORGAN: Just, it’s just not my artistic concern. And like, I feel I, and part of the reason, sorry to just hog this question, but like, part of the reason is I often think about Vivian Nema Day’s idea of the autobiographical imperative, which is this concept that like trans people are constantly, as in our film, put on the spot to deliver, these like life narratives to explain our gender, to talk about our feelings about our gender, to talk about like, why are we this way and what does it really mean and what does it feel like? And we’ve been pushed into that corner for hundreds of years in the English language, actually almost a thousand years in the English language, if you go back to like Eleanor Reichner in like, I don’t know, the 12th or 13th century. Like we’ve been pushed into that corner for so long and I think I have a really strong reaction to that where I’m like, I actually don’t wanna be put in that corner anymore. And I think Framing Agnes is such an interesting project because we’re actually interrogating that corner. We are trying to get people to recognize that that is what we’ve been pushed into, and not to just do the same script over and over again. So yeah, I think that’s the, the, at the center of a lot of my work is this refusal to give over my life narrative. And people, people find it very off-putting sometimes, like , especially when I get interviewed by cis people, they often wanna ask those questions like, oh, when did you know that you were a woman? Like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I won’t talk about it like my body, my business, my life history, my business. Or as we talk about in the film, there is a certain version of events that I’m willing to talk about in public that may have actually very little relation to the version of events I might self narrate or talk to someone like Chase about or other people who are like close in my life, particularly trans people. So yeah. Sorry, I had a very strong reaction to that question.

LEO: No, I think that that was fantastic. I just wanna stand up and clap, honestly. But that’s, yeah. Incredible. What have the audience responses been like? So not necessarily the interviewees and interviewers. You, you would be the interviewee. Sorry. But the actual audience responses, if you’ve gotten to know any.

CHASE: Yeah. I mean, I feel like we are so lucky to have, have had a film that. Not only premiered at Sundance, but has played, you know, more than a hundred festivals and is now in theaters. And I mean, we’re really, we feel so grateful for the kind of circulation and that means that we have a kind of visibility where people are talking about the film and having lots of interesting conversations about it. And you know, I think that we understood that we were trying to engage a variety of different conversations simultaneously, and those conversations are continuing. So I’m really excited by the momentum of trans people who, coming out of Sundance, who felt like, yes, here we go. Like this is a different kind of conversation. And then to also have the cis white straight film critics recognizing something in the film as being yes, about transness, but also being about documentary as a genre. And the fact that both of those conversations can be happening in the same time is very exciting to me as a maker. 

MORGAN: Yeah, we’ve had like a really lovely set of responses from people. And so, you know, not everybody loves it, I will say, but I think one of the things that’s really interesting, in addition to what Chase is saying, is seeing, and this is like true with any art you put out into the world, but it’s always fascinating to see what people walk away from it with. And you know, some people are just walking away with like, wow, trans people in the past, and some people… I get this reaction a lot. And that’s about as far as it goes. And some people are like way more interested in the messing with form and the documentary side, like Chase is saying. And some people are also interested in the notion of truth and like, what is true in there? What did we play with? Let’s say like, can we believe everyone’s narration in the archive or in the documentary itself? There’s like many different ways people have engaged with it and it’s all great, all of it’s wonderful to see. It’s just often surprising cuz you have no idea, you have no way of predicting how people are gonna, and again, this is, this is true of any art you put out in the world, but you have no way of predicting how people are gonna take it really. But I feel like audiences have been really generous and lovely with us, especially in the in-person screenings I’ve been to people have been so lovely and like wanted to stay afterwards and meet us and like, yeah, it’s been really warm.

INDIGO: That’s, yeah, that’s really good. And did you have any specific hopes for the impact that the film was going to have in the trans community and in general?

CHASE: I think it’s really hard to answer that question. I think that we had hopes for eachother and the world that we were making in the film, and that’s what you can control. You can control your making and your commitment to each other. And then when you put something out in the world, you have to understand and recognize it as an object that’s gonna do its own kind of work. And I think it’s an important lesson in art making to learn how to detach. And it’s not that we don’t care, we care deeply, but you understand that it becomes something else. It becomes something else through interpretation. And that is why art is such a dynamic and interesting force that the role of the film in 2022 is going to be different than the role of the film in 2028. I mean, one of the things that I love our, our producer, Sam Curly likes to say, is, you know, it’s a film that is going to age we hope beautifully because it is a film that desires to continue challenging and or interacting with its publics. It does not have a clean and very pretty beginning, middle, and an end. We are not trafficking in a feel good catharsis that’s gonna allow you to make sure that you feel better about your life and circumstances. Does the film make some people feel better? For sure, but not for the traditional reasons of a kind of narrative arc that lands you in a very particular place where you feel like, okay, great, everyone got what they needed and we’re moving on. And so because of that, you know, I think that the, the answers to your question are, are ongoing. 

MORGAN: Yeah, I feel like, you know, my secret hope always and in particular with this project is that it will open up space for a different type of conversation to happen that isn’t just like, wow, some transgenders, like, which I feel that often trans art and particularly, you know, film and television gets really reduced to. Just like that we should just be excited about the idea of representation period and not really thinking about like what that representation is about. So my secret hope or not so secret, cause I’m telling your podcast, is that it allows us to have a different conversation about the role of history, like why we care so much about it, what it means to us now, and you know, what is, what exists outside of just pure representation in film.

INDIGO: And I know we’ve talked a lot about the film and the production of the film, but I wanted to know more about the funding opportunities behind it. Cause I feel like it’s quite, I don’t know how it is in Canada, but for example in the UK it’s quite hard to find funding for some trans projects. So I was just wondering how accessible are the funding opportunities and how accessible it was for you to find the funding opportunities for this particular project?

CHASE: So the structure of Canadian arts funding is federal, provincial, and municipal. So there’s three different tiers of access and there are other larger granting bodies like Telefilm Canada and Telefilm is responsible for the majority of our funding through a program called Talent to Watch. We are, as Morgan mentioned, a micro micro budget feature, and it was extremely hard to fund our project. And part of the reason why it was so hard is not only its content, but its form. So how do you explain a film like ours to funders? And we also got rejected from so many grants. So many grants, so many rejections. And I think one of the things that’s, one of the things that I will take with me as I move into other projects is a moment where we received a grant rejection and in the narrative of why we didn’t receive the grant, the jury essentially accused me of some kind of transphobia. I don’t know if they like, didn’t read me as a trans person or not. I don’t have no idea what was happening, but the feedback was so infuriating, that I felt ready to make the film with exactly what we had and to stop seeking more. I felt like the granting process was demanding a kind of contortion of our story and of our methods that was depleting and felt evacuating of precisely the reason why we wanted to do it. Like what does it mean to say we’re trying to push the genre in service of a very particular kind of sociopolitical critique, but then to arrive on a grant page and to repackage ourselves as some basic narrative, you know? Social justice inspired trans opportunity and I don’t, none of those words are, are bad in and of themselves, but it’s not what we’re doing. And so there was a real fracture between the way in which we had to talk about the film in order to get it funded and what we were actually doing in the film. And I learned a lot through that process. And I think that, I hope that we are participating in a kind of boom of projects that exist as examples for other filmmakers because it’s very hard to say what you’re doing if you cannot point to anything. And so it’s a systemic problem where trans projects aren’t getting funded because they can’t point to other projects that have existed and circulated in a variety of different ways. And so it really is an issue of more is actually better and more of all kinds. It does not matter. More genres, more stories, more subject matters. I love bad work. I’m like, whatever. Let’s get more work into circulation so that we can actually start to reference and talk to each other and say there is a market, there is a community, there is a way, and that we are participating in something that is ongoing.

INDIGO: Yeah. I, I don’t have much experience on applying for funding for films, but I do have loads of experience in applying for funding for festivals. And I feel like sometimes they look at the numbers of how many people are gonna watch, what audiences are gonna, are you gonna tackle, but they don’t actually see the project as a project and how you’re impacting smaller communities. They just wanna know the numbers of how much they’re gonna make, how much they’re gonna affect. So yeah. That’s very interesting to learn more about Canada and the way that you access funding there.

CHASE: And I’ll just to say we’re very grateful to receive the funding that we have received. Right. All of those things happen simultaneously, but I think one of the, one of the, one of the similarities that’s sparking to me between our experience in film and your experience in the festivals is it’s such a flattened and uninteresting projection onto audiences as if audiences are uninterested, right? Like as if people, as if there isn’t a totally underexplored market for X, whether it be stories about trans life and or documentaries that are pushing genre, like you actually have to make the work and let your audience step up to the opportunities if you don’t ever give them. I’m totally rambling right now. Feel free to cut this answer out of this podcast, but just to say there’s lots to be said about our expectations of audiences and the questions that we can be asking.

INDIGO: Yeah. 

MORGAN: Yeah. Which I think is like, I mean, not to continue too far down this tangent. But I think the film industry is in a really interesting place right now, especially like in America pretty much all you have being made are superhero movies, which are increasingly tedious year on year. And there’s this idea that like there aren’t other audiences, or that the other audiences that exist aren’t enough, you know? And I think at least in Canada and definitely throughout Europe, the, it’s not quite as bad, as grim as that, because there is particularly here in Europe, there is like a film culture that still exists. But, you know, I’ve had some like, not the most positive experiences applying for British film funding over the past few years. And it sure does seem like they’re taking some hints to the Americans, unfortunately, because they don’t know what to do with work that isn’t in the format that they want it to be in, I guess is the way to say. And that includes a lot of trans work. Like I know so many trans filmmakers in the UK who are really struggling to get any money at all and are having to turn to things like Kickstarter and that sort of thing. Which is fine if you’re doing a short film, but it’s unrealistic if you’re doing a feature. Like it’s just not really gonna be able to produce that. Unless you’re gonna do something wacky like with skin and Ari, I don’t know if you’ve all seen this, but it’s the scariest movie of the year and was made for 15 Grand Canadian dollars.

CHASE: I love that.

MORGAN: Terrifying. Anyway, it’s very good. Not trans, unfortunately. Although we could make a reading. Maybe.

LEO: Noted for reference, watching later. What other creative practices are you both interested in? So hobbies or any other type of art you make? Anything, anything at all.

MORGAN: I mean, we’ve both, I, not to speak for Chase, but we’ve both worked through many genres. You know, I, I was a, a performance artist and a video artist for several years. And it’s not that I wouldn’t do that again, but I’m tired and old. I don’t feel like forcing myself to vomit on stage in front of a bunch of strangers is really like how I wanna spend the later half of my thirties. And in addition to that, I have like, other, other creative practices that I do mostly for fun. But, yeah, I write in lots of different genres. I write nonfiction, I write fiction, I write screenplays, et cetera, et cetera. I just wanna write all the time. So that’s me. What about you, Chase?

CHASE: Yeah, I also feel very genre agnostic. I mean, I think I’m, I feel most motivated by work in the non-fiction space, but I’m excited by different kinds of storytelling opportunities. And I also enjoy doing things like cooking and yoga and things that run alongside my creative practice and definitely inform it in ways that are unexpected.

LEO: What’s the last thing you cooked?

CHASE: I sauteed a large pot of kale in some sesame oil and ate it alongside some brown bosma, I’m not gonna lie. And make it more interesting than it was. That’s just where we’re at.

LEO: No, that sounds good. That sounds very good.

MORGAN:I knew it was gonna be a salad.

INDIGO: We’re almost getting to the end, but I was just gonna ask, what advice would you share for trans creators that are just starting out? 

CHASE: You know, I received a piece of advice early on in my career that I think about often, which was, if you wanna do something, try to surround yourself with people who are doing it, period. And I just love that advice, like you wanna make movies, figure out a way to get closer to movies, figure out a way to start hanging out and talking to people who are making movies. And that remains true for me in so many different ways. And it’s connected to the next thing, which is: try to work with people that you love and that you respect and that you adore. Because it allows you to keep a very realistic expectation around your end point. Like if you love the process of what you’re doing, it becomes less important where that festival is or what that launch is. And I think that that could not be more clear than Morgan and I writing a book in the middle of a pandemic in Google Docs. Like who even cares where that was going at some point because it was so fun to show up on the page and to figure that out together. And then yes, we ended up with a book that we love and we’re so grateful for, but the process of making it was as exciting as as the final product. 

MORGAN: Yeah, definitely. I think my advice would be somewhat along similar lines, and this is something that I learned when I was involved with publishing collective called Topside Press, which no longer exists, thank God. But, it’s been long enough I’m allowed to talk shit about them now. But the, the thing they did really good, which I have carried through in everything that I do, is to, especially if you’re gonna make work about transness, to not center cis people as your projected audience. Like, be in conversation with other trans thinkers and makers, et cetera. Because like this is where it comes back to me saying like, I’m terrified of boring my contemporaries. I think when we center cis people in our projects in terms of who we wanna make something consumable to, we dumb down our projects to the point where cis people aren’t interested in them either. I think if we have the elevated conversation, if Chase and I have a conversation, people will join us. Like people will rise to the occasion and learn something more rather than just having the same old, tired, watered down conversation that we are pushed into having in mainstream media all the time. I see. I talk to a lot of people, especially young people, who are trying to like, break into writing or break into film or other forms of art, and they get really lost in this idea that they have to make like the most mainstream understandable version of their story. And it just, it doesn’t produce good work. Like focus on producing good work, worry about the audience afterwards. I think that’s the main advice.

INDIGO: That’s great advice.

LEO: It is, it really is. Sorry, I was just taking all of that in, making mental notes for myself as well, cause obviously very young here, starting out right now, so I was just mentally noting down. But yeah. Any new projects in the horizon for either of you joined together or separately? 

MORGAN: You know, There’s some, there’s some things on the stove, but, you know, I hope that Chase and I get the opportunity to do some more collaborating in the not too distant future. And I certainly have a few other film and TV things going on, on the side, but I can’t really talk about them.

CHASE: Oh yeah, we, we’ll, we’ll be back. We’ll be back and be able to make this answer more concrete soon enough.

INDIGO: That’s good.

LEO: I guess that’s a big way to be like, keep an eye out. See what happens. That’s very exciting though.

INDIGO: Yeah. I can’t wait to watch more of your films and yeah, that’ll be really good. To finish it off, I was just wondering what other forms of queer media would you recommend to our lovely audience? That could be books, films, anything that you’ve seen recently. It doesn’t have to be trans, that you’d recommend? 

CHASE: Sometimes in Q&As people will ask, what are the film citations that are connected to Framing Agnes, and I always love drawing attention to early canonical works like Marlon Riggs’s is Tongues Untied or Cheryl Dune’s The Watermelon Woman. And to try and build connections between our film and these makers in the past who might not be as explicit and or might not be as trans, but are formative to some of our methods.

MORGAN: Yeah. Yeah, and I was for a Funeral Parade Of Roses on there as well, strongly recommend. In terms of like more contemporary stuff. You know what book I’m crazy about? And I’m talking to everybody about this and I’ve been such a cheerleader for it and it just got released in America. It’s already been released here in the UK for ages is Lote by Shola von Reinhold, which I think is the funniest book I’ve probably ever read. It is so good, it’s so smart. I’d also recommend, the book X by Davey Davis, my dear friend who, it’s a like queer SM noir novel. And it’s very good. And then in terms of movies, I don’t know. I’m watching movies all the time. I’m just watching a lot of, for another project at the moment, I’m watching a lot of old horror movies. Oh, oh, contemporary movie. Here’s one you should all go watch cause it just got its theatrical release as well is All The Beauty And The Bloodshed by Laura Poitras, which is about Nan Goldin, the queer artist from the eighties and nineties and now. And her fight to take down the Sackler family. It is incredibly satisfying to watch her completely destroy some billionaires. So, strongly recommend.

INDIGO: Thank you so much for the recommendations. I’m gonna listen back later and take a, a note of every one.

LEO: This has been stunning. I, yeah, I’m just very excited cause Indigo does the editing and I do the transcribing and it’s always a very good exercise to listen back and just, you know, take it, it all more in. But I feel like I’ve learned a lot already and I’m very thankful for your time. So thank you for joining us. 

INDIGO:Yeah, thank you so much. 

CHASE: So happy to chat.

MORGAN: It’s been so lovely. Thank you.

[upbeat drum based song]

LEO: I loved this conversation with Chase and Morgan. We wanna thank them so much for joining us today. It has been a pleasure. 

INDIGO: Make sure to follow Chase and Morgan on social media. The film Framing Agnes just had its theatrical release in the US and Canada, and will be going on tour in Scotland during SQIFF On Tour from April until June this year. Make sure to check it out on the SQIFF website: sqiff.org.

LEO: Thank you so much for listening to this amazing episode, and stay tuned for a following episode next month.