Several movies about
transsexual issues have come to the screen in the last few years. We are adding our firsthand experiences through consultations and our own productions. Since Soldier's Girl, we've also consulted and appeared in the 2005 film Transamerica, starring Felicity Huffman, and in the LOGO network's Beautiful Daughters, a documentary about our V-Day LA 2004 event, scheduled to air in February 2006.
Films like Soldier’s
Girl and Boys Don’t Cry have
finally brought compassionate depictions of our lives to large audiences.
We’ve been inspired to do even more. We plan to create more accurate
and positive portrayals of us in the media, and work to give actors like us
a chance to break out of the limited roles to which we are currently confined. Our upcoming short Casting Pearls comments on the treatment of transgender characters in Hollywood through a humorous series of auditions and screen tests navigated by a transgender protagonist.
Because the community has been so supportive of what we are trying to do, we wanted to give you more details about our latest artistic/political project. We have completed shooting and are in the process of post production on our upcoming short film. It's called Casting Pearls, and it's a humorous look at the difficulties faced by transwomen auditioning for roles in Hollywood. It's going to be about 10 to 15 minutes long. We are very excited about this film, because it's disarming, yet makes a point.
We are at the point in production they call "gap financing" in the industry. That means we have a budget in place, and we are trying to raise funds to meet our budgetary needs. We are scrambling to come up with as much to cover editing and post production costs as possible.
Unfortunately, we can't do this as a non-profit donation. Short films usually don't turn a profit when sold (they usually go for $50 to $100 a minute), so we don't expect to make anything from this. We do hope to use it to generate interest in our feature-length film; this short is a scene from that film. If you are interested in helping, we have provided this page with information. Those interested in making a larger contribution ($500+) have the option of being acknowledged at the end of the film if they wish.
This is going to be our big project for the year, so any any help would be greatly appreciated! If you are interested, please send along any amount you'd like. Even a dollar helps. If you would like to make a larger contribution and have questions, please contact us, and we will be happy to answer any questions.
As an example of the work we do, don't miss our pages devoted to Deep Stealth's 2004 groundbreaking event, the V-Day LA 2004 benefit production of The Vagina Monologues, mentored by Jane Fonda and playwright Eve Ensler.
Thanks as always for your interest in our work!
Calpernia & Andrea
Click to Donate via PayPal or mail to: Deep Stealth Productions
5419 Hollywood Blvd, C-142
Hollywood, CA 90027
Deep Stealth recently provided voice training and consultation for Felicity Huffman, star of television's Desperate Housewives, for her role as transwoman Bree Daniels in the feature film Transamerica. Calpernia also plays a Texas fiddle player encountered by Felicity's character, and the very first image in the film is our own Andrea James, in an excerpt from Finding Your Female Voice. Bree is a serious, hard-working woman on track for vaginoplasty and absolutely committed to being accepted by society as the woman she is. And she chooses Finding Your Female Voice, going through the exercises as she readies herself for work at the beginning of the film.
Transamerica is a film by writer/director Duncan Tucker about a transwoman (Felicity Huffman) who discovers a son she never knew the week before her sexual reassignment surgery. After bailing him out of jail in New York, she returns home to LA with him on a cross-country journey in which she struggles with issues of coming out, parenthood and self-acceptance.
Duncan contacted Calpernia and Andrea and engaged them as consultants for his script, verifying the accuracy of his portrayal of a transwoman's experience. Lead actress Felicity Huffman visited with the Deep Stealth founders on numerous occasions to talk with Calpernia and Andrea, and to work on getting her voice and presentation right for the role.
A festival darling at Tribeca and others, it was acquired by the Weinsteins and will be distributed later this year.
LOGO Network's documentary of our V-Day LA 2004 event is scheduled to debut in February 2006.
The benefit performance showcased the trans community's best and brightest women from all over America. Many were still living in "stealth" and chose this performance to come out.
Working with famed playwright Eve Ensler, Deep Stealth Productions’ Calpernia Addams and Andrea James produced an all-trans version of Eve’s beautiful monologues – a series of evocative readings about the experiences of womanhood, and about the reclaiming of self through loving and respecting our bodies.
Beautiful Daughters starts with the initial interviews with trans women (which led Eve to her new trans monologue for this production), through weeks of auditions and rehearsals – on to dress rehearsals, opening night back-stage jitters, the star-studded Hollywood audience, and culminates with the performance itself.
For more on the documentary, please see the Beautiful Daughters page on lynnconway.com
U.S.A., 2002, 111 Minutes, Color
(Quoted from Sundance webpage)
Director: Frank Pierson
Producers: Linda Gottlieb, Doro Bachrach
Coproducer: Ron Nyswaner
Screenwriter: Ron Nyswaner
Cinematographer: Paul Sarossy CSC, BSC
Editor: Katina Zinner
Music: Jan A.P. Kaczmarek
Cast: Troy Garity, Lee Pace, with Andre Braugher and Shawn Hatosy
Presentation Format: 35mm
As the subject on which this story was based, Calpernia acted as consultant on the film and worked closely with the writer, director and actors to ensure the most sympathetic and accurate retelling possible. Below is a quote from the Sundance writeup:
On the fourth of July 1999, just after the installment of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, Barry Winchell, a soldier in the 101st Airborne Division, was brutally murdered by a fellow GI. It is rare and beautiful when a filmmaker can take a disturbing true-life headline and convert it into a cinematic experience rich with pathos and poignancy. Such is the case in Soldier's Girl.
What really happened to Barry Winchell was simple--he fell in love. On an outing with his buddies, he was captivated by the beautiful Calpernia Addams, a transgendered entertainer in a local Nashville nightclub.
Director Frank Pierson incorporates incomparable integrity into this true story. Ron Nyswaner's tender script comes to life in the voices of the oddly matched lovers. The superb Troy Garity is the unsophisticated loner, and fantastic Lee Pace the beautifully sexy singer. Shawn Hatosy, as the off-balance, pharamaceutically dependent roommate, is chillingly believable, representing the darker side of military dysfunction.
There is rarely any meaning in this kind of atrocity. One can only hope for the truth. In Soldier's Girl, the truth is told by clearly focusing on the love shared by these two individuals. --- John Cooper ---
This historic documentary chronicles the life of a female-to-male transgender seminary student and his struggle with faith, love and gender identity. The Rev. Malcolm Himschoot is Minister for Outreach at Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Our first company project was an unusual challenge: we took the voice coaching techniques used to train actors and combined them with therapeutic methods used by speech pathologists to create a unique program to help feminize any voice.
We show that anyone who desires to do so can sound completely female after a few weeks of practice with our tips, even the deepest baritone.
Based on the principles of voice coaches like Arthur Lessac and published medical data on vocal range and sex-based characteristics, this video takes a step-by-step approach that focuses on feel.
For more on this groundbreaking project, please click the link below:
This program has quickly established itself as the best product of its kind available. This success led to our second instructional project on makeovers for trans women:
Deep Stealth recently provided voice training and consultation for Felicity Huffman, star of television's Desperate Housewives, for her role as transwoman Bree Daniels in the feature film Transamerica. Calpernia also plays a Texas fiddle player encountered by Felicity's character, and the very first image in the film is our own Andrea James, in an excerpt from 