Why Empowering Stories Matter to This Producer

This post was written by Alex Schmider.

I started working at GLAAD in 2016, and the reason I’ve stayed is profoundly personal. The characters and stories we encounter in entertainment can show us who we are and, sometimes more importantly, introduce us to people different from us. These truths also inform why I produce and how I select projects, including Sav Rodgers’ directorial debut, Chasing Chasing Amy.

It’s personal for me because, at twelve years old, I watched Boys Don’t Cry. The 1999 film is the true story of Brandon Teena, a young trans man who is raped and murdered when his gender history is uncovered. That film was my first and only reference point for what my future might look like as a transgender man. It was both deeply relieving to find out I wasn’t the only person like me and intensely terrifying to see that being myself could lead to a violent death. Watching this movie delayed my self-acceptance for a decade.

Sav Rodgers’ personal relationship with Kevin Smith’s 1997 film Chasing Amy shares a similar if different, significance for him.

Growing up in Kansas, Sav, also twelve years old, relied on a DVD of Chasing Amy as a liferaft as it was the only place he could see LGBTQ people–albeit fictional ones. Like me, Sav didn’t really have any LGBTQ people he identified with in his real life and needed to turn to storytelling for the closest reflection.

Working at GLAAD, the leading LGBTQ media advocacy organization, I’ve gained an acute understanding of how media influences culture. Under the guidance of Nick Adams, who’s worked at the organization for 25 years and is considered the preeminent expert on transgender representation, I’ve received what I call an unofficial masters degree in LGBTQ media criticism–particularly around transgender portrayals.

I’ve spent over seven years unlearning the stereotypes, tropes, and clichés that both reflect society’s ignorance of transgender people and reinforce that ignorance. Those portrayals, usually helmed by cisgender people, concentrate on our physical transitions to the exclusion of nearly everything else. It’s not easy to confront the unhealthy media diet we’ve all been repeatedly fed and sometimes unintentionally regurgitate, even as trans people, but it’s necessary to create and consume balanced and nourishing representation more intentionally. This ongoing and sometimes uncomfortable education makes me a better person, a better collaborator, and a more discerning storyteller.

I was struck by Sav’s eagerness to learn and his hopeful sensibility and outlook–something we both share. Even though I’m selective about the projects I take on, I told Sav to let me know if he ever needed a producer. Almost immediately, and by his own admission, Sav brought me into his confidence as a trusted friend and advisor. We talked endlessly about the stories we wished existed for guys like us and the hope, humor, and light-heartedness missing in stories about trans people.

At a certain point, as Sav was struggling with how to situate his personal story into Chasing Chasing Amy, especially his gender transition, Sav took me up on my offer to come on board as a producer. While Sav was reluctantly resigned to share details about his private medical transition in the film, I challenged him about why he felt that was even necessary.

For many trans people, our physical transitions do mark significant points in our lives; however, in stories about us, those steps are typically assigned more weight and time than the profound mental and emotional development that is also taking place. By giving physical transitions so much real estate in trans stories, generally, we tend to get fossilized in them as if our lives don’t continue and contain more than those specific moments.

So when Sav and I were contending with how to share his coming-of-age on screen, we deeply interrogated what would be included–was it serving the story or reflexively relying on the templates we’d already ingested in the media we consumed? Were we showing hormone shots or surgery because it was additive or because it was expected?

Ultimately, we chose to focus on Sav’s interior life, showing him as a man coming-of-age who also happens to be trans. It’s also the C-storyline. While I know Sav appreciates me as a creative producer, I also know that it was the knowledge and experience I’d gained at GLAAD, including a high-altitude perspective of the patterns of trans storytelling, that was particularly appealing to him as we collaborated.

Because of the deliberate decisions we made about how to convey Sav’s path to manhood, we’ve received overwhelming feedback about how refreshing it is to see a story that doesn’t concentrate on Sav’s coming out story or his physical transition–outside one specific allusion with Kevin Smith that makes our Q&As particularly emotional. Audiences notice the difference and have shared their appreciation for the way the film focuses on the many additional dimensions of Sav’s life.

Sav and the team understood that simply being a trans person doesn’t necessarily make you an expert on representation and that my in-depth knowledge of trans narratives would help both Sav and the film itself. As we collaborated, Sav, the team, and I were able to explore new and interesting ways to tell his personal story–at the same time, model a different way for others to portray (or not) someone’s transition on screen.

What initially drew me to Chasing Chasing Amy is that even though Sav’s relationship with Chasing Amy was different than mine with Boys Don’t Cry, we are proof that stories, particularly movies, shape us. Ultimately, Chasing Chasing Amy is a meditation on growing up, and the way that relationships with ourselves, the people around us, and the media that roots us can change and take on different meanings over time.

Chasing Chasing Amy, Changing the Game, Disclosure, Framing Agnes, and Stay on Board: The Leo Baker Story are the films I’ve been proud and privileged to produce so far. My hope is for the opportunity to keep collaborating, challenging, and championing stories that show people, those of us who are trans included, as fully dimensional with histories, interior lives, and as more than any one singular identity or life stage–all laced with hope, humor, and light-heartedness.

I often think about myself as that kid who, because he didn’t see a future where someone like him existed, believed there was no future at all. It’s why my advice for aspiring and established filmmakers is to lean into the fact that stories do not live on their own, by themselves, in a vacuum with no consequences. Just like people don’t exist in isolation.

Create your work with intention, collaboration, and consideration for the larger canon of stories it will join, the culture it enters into, and with attention to narrative balance and plurality. Know the history of the people who have come and created before and alongside you. As a producer, I want to empower storytellers like Sav, that aspire to create work that will move us beyond what we’ve seen before and create anew with a grounding in cultural consciousness.

You never know how your art may inspire someone else to create art of their own. And in doing so, it could save them and countless others.

_{This post was written byAlex Schmider.}

_{Alex Schmider is an acclaimed documentary film producer and the Director of Transgender Representation at GLAAD, for your upcoming pride month coverage. As the Director of Transgender Representation at GLAAD, Alex advises media and entertainment industry leaders on LGBTQIA+ and, specifically, transgender inclusion, characters, and storylines.}

_{In addition to his work with GLAAD, Alex has an impressive producing resume, including credits on five successful Queer documentaries: Changing the Game (Hulu 2021), Disclosure (Netflix 2020), Framing Agnes (Kino Lorber 2022), Stay on Board: The Leo Baker Story (Netflix 2022) and Chasing Chasing Amy (2023). Chasing Chasing Amy is his most recent documentary and will be premiering on June 8th at the Tribeca Film Festival.}