Trailer
Plot summary
It is 1993, and Brandon Teena, a young trans man, lives in rural Nebraska. When a former girlfriend's brother discovers that he is transgender, death threats follow, and a bar fight ends with his eviction from his cousin's trailer. He leaves for Falls City, where two ex-convicts, John Lotter and Tom Nissen, befriend him and he meets Lana Tisdel and Candace. The young women of the town are drawn to him, and he and Lana become close. Lana does not know about his body or about the past he left behind, and the two of them intend to relocate to Memphis, Tennessee, where he would manage her karaoke singing.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Boys Don't Cry (1999)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Swank was 22 when she auditioned but lied to Peirce about her age, saying that, like Brandon, she was 21. When Peirce later confronted her about the lie, Swank responded, "But that's what Brandon would do."
- Swank prepared by dressing and living as a man for at least a month, wrapping her chest in tension bandages and putting socks down the front of her trousers as Brandon Teena had done; her neighbors believed the "young man" coming and going from her home was her visiting brother.
- Peirce was angry that the MPAA wanted the sex scene between Brandon and Lana removed while it was satisfied with the level of brutality in the murder scene, and said another objection was that one scene featured an orgasm that was "too long".
- In 1996, after a hundred female actors had been considered and rejected, the relatively unknown Hilary Swank sent a videotape to Peirce and was signed on to the project. Swank successfully passed as a boy to the doorman at her audition.
- Swank earned $75 per day for her work on Boys Don't Cry, a total of $3,000. Her earnings were so low that she did not qualify for health insurance on the production.
- Lana Tisdel sued the film's producers before its theatrical release, claiming it depicted her as "lazy, white trash and a skanky snake" and that friends and family had come to see her as "a lesbian who did nothing to stop a murder"; she settled with Fox Searchlight for an undisclosed sum.
- For the role of Brandon's girlfriend, Lana Tisdel, Peirce had envisioned a teenage Jodie Foster, and the part was also offered to Reese Witherspoon and Sarah Polley before Chloë Sevigny was cast on the strength of her performance in The Last Days of Disco.
SPOILER
The film portrays a double murder when in reality a third person, a Black disabled man, was also killed at the scene. He had been dating a sister of Lana Tisdel, and she was omitted from the story entirely.
