14 Weird Questions With Louise Weard, Part 7 of 7

The filmmaker speaks to The Needle about trans culture and trans cinema.

By Jane Migliara Brigham

One of the latest, (and as I have argued, one of the greatest) recent pieces of trans cinema is Louise Weard’s Castration Movie Anthology II. For The Needle’s culture coverage, I spoke to Weard at length about the film, what got her into film making, and other things.

Weard's director statement for the film opens with this paragraph.

“I sit with my co-producer co-star Dakota Blais with my Sony TRV330 pointed at my 720i Sony TV’s screen. 

We are in the midst of filming the backing track to a scene that complements our characters’ prior moment together in the RV for Chapter 3 of Castration Movie.

On the TV, Trump signs executive orders one after the other for hours on end. I hurriedly ask Dakota to toss me another Hi8 tape. 

A few minutes later, as co-producer co-star Aoife Josie Clements enters the apartment, we yell Shush! as we hear the words “Defending Women from Gender Ideology…” and I zoom the camera in on the pen. 

Trump lets out a deflating “Oooo” and then everyone on TV is ushered out of the room. No fanfare or comment for the biggest rollback of transgender rights in the USA to date. 

We watch this unfold knowing that our country will be soon to follow.

I wanted to ensure I had that moment, in its stark lived entirety, captured on camera to place exactly where we begin with the second half of Castration Movie as the narrative jumps forward a year later from the events of Part 1.”

To understand more surrounding the woman behind the film, this article is Part 7 (of 7) in The Needle’s series of articles called “14 Weird Questions with Louise Weard.”

In the style of her work, I have done the minimum amount of editing needed to immerse the reader in the conversation.

To view all parts of the interview, click below:

Full Interview Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7

Question 13:

Jane: After Castration Movie, do you have a vision of what happens next? You've made this massive sprawling project. Do you have your vision for ideas after? 

Louise: I'll get this done and then I can die… No, I'm just kidding. The idea is to adapt the novel Little Fish by Casey Platt next. I have the rights to that, and Casey has written an amazing screenplay, so that's the next project on the docket. And then, I don't know, I should throw my hat in the ring. I'd love to do the Detransition Baby adaptation that's getting put together right now. I love trans literature, so anything that feels adjacent to that, I definitely want to be involved in. But at the same time, if I got a meeting with a film studio, and they were to say, hey, we want you to do a movie at a studio level, I'd be like, fuck yeah, you know. I'd love to reboot Tremors or something. There's so many movies. I also love normal movies. I'm just a movie fan. I'll do anything. I mean,  I was gonna go interview for a job to direct Hallmark and Lifetime movies, so I don't really care. I'm kind of movie agnostic. I'll do anything.

Jane: Interesting. Can you talk about the idea of adapting existing trans literature for a while. I thought that somebody should do the Sisters of Dorley. I don't know if you know it.