You know you're old when films you viewed on release get a 25th anniversary re-release! And that's what's happened with the Dodge/Howard debut, By Hook or By Crook. By chance I was (re)visiting San Francisco in 2001 and was able to chat to Silas Howard about the imminent release of the DIY project, which was news to me as I had been away for awhile and only knew Silas as the rhythm guitarist in Tribe 8. We chatted a bit about the film and the gender politics behind it. Some months later I was sent a VHS copy of it, which was hard to watch as I had to play it on a PAL machine. Anyway... I was struck by what a time capsule it was of the queer SF of the time, full of familiar streets, venues, faces...
25 years later the film has undergone a 4K restoration and is doing a tour of select US cities and I was able to watch it in a crisp online version. Everyone looks very young and so many of the venues are gone, the streets have changed and quite a few gender identities have also altered. What was a butch buddy film is now more of a butch/trans masc buddy film. The two protagonists can be seen in different ways and it will be interesting to see how a new audience finds them.
I was struck at the time how much Valentine (played by Harry Dodge) reminded me of Raymond in Rainman. Now I would probably view the character as being on the spectrum with possible PTSD thrown in. Howard's Shy still has the butch swagger of before but with added gender fluidity, which was always there in the shifting pronouns on show. The story of the two ducking and diving through a world that is not built for them is even more poignant as the world is still not built for them. And there seems less space for the marginal in my beloved SF. Sigh.
The film is still overlong and the sound is not great in some scenes, especially as Valentine is given to long, rambling, mumbled monologues. But it is quite the debut from the two, with cameos from Joan Jett, Kris Kovick and many more queer icons.
BY HOOK OR BY CROOK will screen theatrically June 12th - 18th in NYC and June 16th in Los Angeles, and expand to additional cities throughout the US. Digital and physical releases will follow later this summer.