There are few storms a mutually loving, longtime married couple can't weather. But Roy and Irma Applewood, together 25 years, are about to confront a tornado. Just celebrating their anniversary, Roy (Tom Wilkinson) makes an unexpected announcement: he's a woman trapped inside a man's body and must begin the process of sexual reassignment. Irma (Jessica Lange), as devoted a wife can be, lashes out with feelings of betrayal and confusion. Equally aggressive responses— some with tinges of support, most not—come from the church, neighbors, Roy's co-workers, and the Applewood's adolescent daughter (Hayden Panettiere) and roadie son (Joe Sikora). All everyone desires is a state of happiness and normalcy ... but is there such a thing?
Written and directed by multitalented, out lesbian Jane Anderson (screenwriter of It Could Happen to You and How To Make An American Quilt), Normal began its life as a play, Looking For Normal, staged in Los Angeles during 2001. An HBO rep caught the production's opening—which starred Lori Metcalf as Irma and Beau Bridges as Roy—and asked Anderson how she felt about turning it into a movie. She was delighted. This is like a dream, Anderson remarked at the 2003 Sundance film festival, where Normal debuted. Tired and bleary-eyed following a week of screenings, parties and schmooze, I caught up with the equally tired and bleary-eyed Anderson.
LF: Why Normal, Jane?
JA: Because my favorite thing to do when I write is put very ordinary people into extraordinary circumstances. And I deliberately chose to have this take place in Middle America, which is supposed to be the heartland. It's what we measure 'normalcy' by. The barometer. And all of us perceive of sex-change operations as a freakish, bizarre thing, but for someone with this condition it's a way to return to a state of normalcy.
LF: What is the biggest difference between the show and the film?
JA: Stylistically, [the play] was more magical realism. I had a whole other character that spoke directly to the audience. In fact, all my characters except for Roy spoke to the audience. It was in a very theatrical form and it worked beautifully as a play, but the fun thing about turning something into a screenplay is I got to write all these other scenes. There's a lot of new material.
LF: What sort of response did you get to the play?
JA: Great. The best part about it was that really regular straight people loved it. They got it and, as bizarre as this was, they really could understand Irma's love for Roy. Preaching to the choir is very easy and I was delighted a lot of people from the transgendered community came, but it's also important that I reach the straight community.
LF: Have you ever experienced any sort of gender-identity issue?
JA: Me? No. It's fiction.
LF: Never a day you wished you were a guy?
JA: No. I'm a tomboy. I'm deeply a tomboy and I have a lot of masculine in me. When I was a kid actually I wanted to be a boy. I had two big brothers and they got to do all the good stuff ... guys have more fun and I was never a girly-girl. I'm a mix. Of male and female.
LF: When did you come out as lesbian?
JA: When I was 23. I was living in NYC and I should have known [years earlier]. But it took me years to get over self hatred and all of that.
LF: How long have you and your girlfriend been together?
JA: Not a girlfriend—a spouse. Twenty years. We have a little boy.
LF: What would you do if your spouse told you she wanted to transition to a man?
JA: I don't know what I'd do. What would you do?
LF: Such a complicated question. I know I'd want to continue being with my lover, though.
JA: Actually, that's exactly ... I think what I want everyone in the audience to wonder is do you love your husband, wife or lover so much that you could stay this change? That's the question I'm begging here.
LF: I heard you did a good bit of research on transsexualism while writing Normal.
JA: I did. I love the adventure of choosing a subject I know nothing about and plunging into it. I'm not an autobiographical writer. On a deep, deep level I am. But when I choose my subjects I like to go on a great safari into lands I don't know about and it was like that with this. I wrote it as a play years and years ago in a very crude form, it was more about exploring the transgender thing because I thought it was so interesting. Then, as I matured as a writer and as my relationship got richer, I used it as a metaphor for love.
LF: Were there any particular trans plays or movies you studied?
JA: No, because I don't consider this a movie about transgender. I consider it a movie about marriage. I studied movies like Country, Tender Mercies, because I wanted to turn the farm genre film on its ear. That's really what I was going after.
LF: Playing devil's advocate here ... . Are you at all angry with Roy, do you find him a bit of a jerk? His decision to pop this doozy can be seen as selfish, as it is quite late in the game to put your peg back on start and expect everyone else to continue playing.
JA: No [I'm not angry with Roy], but I was aware people would think he was a jerk. Tom Wilkinson and I had the task of making sure that wouldn't happen. I started out repressed [sexually] in my generation and anybody who lives in the midwest or isolated parts of the world represses themselves out of utter terror and I have great sympathy for that. You must. Roy's a very brave character. There's this fear and, especially if Roy loves Irma so dearly and is aware he could lose her, of course he represses it for years and years. That's what happens with people like that.
LF: I got that you were totally in love with Jessica as a director. The camera adores her; she consumes her scenes.
JA: Tom as well. I'd have to say in love with both of them. I really was. It might appear that [I was more in love with Jessica] because her character is the more active one and has to go through the larger changes. Every director falls in love with a gifted actor and Jessica's incredibly intelligent as well ... she has such an emotional depth. Every take she can pull from some unknown mysterious place these extreme, existential feelings. Jessica is a national treasure, she's one of the greats!
LF: How much did you have to school Hayden, who plays the Applewoods' tomboy daughter, in what the film was about?
JA: Hayden is a pro. She's been working since she was three, I think. I guess her mom explained it to her. Because her parents are very liberal, very hip, they discussed it completely so I didn't have to talk to her about it at all.
LF: Do you think her character is a babydyke?
JA: Absolutely. Of course she is. Yeah.
LF: How was Beau versus Roy? Who was sexier?
JA: It's not a matter of sexy. Both actors we coached not to do anything campy, but to find that inner comfort of being a woman and they both carried it off beautifully.
LF: The Church and its denizens come across as hypocritical bigots in Normal.
JA: Any fundamentalist makes me sad, makes me scared. But we shot at a church in the midwest, very conservative people who were very loving about this. They knew exactly what it was about, some wanted to be extras in the movie, and the Pastor said 'I wish you'd write a scene in which the churchgoers accept Roy back into the fold.'
LF: Ultimately, would you like people to cull a lesson out of Normal?
JA: A piece of film is there to entertain and enlighten, and I hope both happen.
