amado1

I last watched Boys Don't Cry probably 10 years ago, and then I read Aphrodite Jones' infamous true crime book, All S/he Wanted, and murder Tom Nissen's Playboy interview, "Death of a Deceiver," 5 years after that. This year I finally watched The Brandon Teena Story after the tape had sat on my shelf untouched for years, and that spurred an All S/he Wanted reread, and then I broke and bought Boys Don't Cry on DVD (it's not available anywhere online!) and rewatched it tonight, so ... this compare/contrast essay was inevitable. Full disclosure, I got 1,000 words into this review before I realized it was insanely disorganized, scrapped it, and started over from scratch.

The bare facts of the case first, if you're not familiar with it:

Brandon Teena was a stealth, pre-op, no-hormones trans man who wound up in Falls City, Nebraska in November, 1993. He'd gotten into legal and romantic trouble in his hometown of Lincoln and wound up running to Falls City with a girlfriend. There, he met and started dating Lana Tisdel, and befriended John Lotter and Tom Nissen, who would eventually publicly de-pants Brandon and then kidnap and rape him late Christmas Eve/early Christmas Day. Brandon reported the rape the next day, and although cops in Falls City seemed eager to ignore it, Lotter and Nissen tracked Brandon down and murdered him, along with Lisa Lambert and Phillip DeVine (witnesses and roommates) on New Year's Eve.

OK, now let’s compare and contrast a little, starting with structure and going by order of publication/distribution.

“Death of a Deceiver” by Eric Konigsberg is a Playboy article written about the case and published in December, 1994, while killer Tom Nissen was still on trial. Nissen had developed a close penpal relationship with Konigsberg while he was in jail, and agreed to speak about the case because when Konigsberg said, “Hey, you wanna do an interview for our January, 1995 edition?” Nissen didn’t realize that the magazine would actually be published in December, while his trial was still going on. As a result, Konigsberg was called as a damning witness for the prosecution, and Nissen’s portrayal of himself as an innocent bystander was undermined by his own testimony in Playboy admitting to the murder.

“Death of a Deceiver” starts with an overview of Brandon’s childhood, with heavy emphasis on his titillating teenage adventures with girls. It details his relationship with Gina Bartu and his arrival in Falls City, his relationship with Lana Tisdel, his rape, and his murder by John Lotter and Tom Nissen.

Tone: largely judgmental toward Brandon – he’s portrayed as a bit of a sex-crazed pervert and a sexual rebel in the beginning. But at the end, I’ll grant Konigsberg that he pulls back from that a bit, focusing intensely on Brandon’s relationship with Gina and her regrets and continuing love for him.
Transphobia: High, but largely benign, meaning “I wouldn’t expect much from a cishet guy writing for Playboy anyway.” Konigsberg uses she/her pronouns for Brandon throughout the entire article, but he does include a brief explanation of transsexuality. However, he undermines this slightly by devoting just as much time to an argument that Brandon could have been a cis lesbian. The article itself never implies that Brandon deserved to die, and even ends on a romantic, sad note from Gina; but the title is damning. (Caveat for any nitpickers here: I know that journalists rarely get to pick their own headlines when writing for a publication. I’m not using the title to “prove” Konigsberg is transphobic; I’m using it as part of my analysis of the whole piece).

“All S/he Wanted” by Aphrodite Jones is a true crime book published in 1996. It covers Brandon’s early life in detail, with roughly equal emphasis given to his innocent toddler years as to his sexual adventures. From there it takes us to Falls City, the rape, the murder, and the trials of Lotter and Nissen. Lengthy backstories are given to Nissen and Lotter; Phillip DeVine also gets quite a bit of spotlight here; Lisa Lambert is allotted a quick sketch at the start of the book and not much else, which is especially interesting because she was local, and I assume it would have been relatively easy for Jones to contact her mom and dad. It’s possible she alienated herself from them by focusing on an allegation not made in any other source – according to Jones, Lisa and Brandon dated for nearly a month before he met Lana Tisdel, and broke up when Lisa discovered speeding tickets and court summons issued to Brandon’s deadname.

Tone: Extremely judgmental toward Brandon. He’s portrayed as a thief, a possessive, controlling boyfriend, and a pathological liar. Jones regularly resists the urge to get inside Brandon’s head and theorize about why he may do X or say Z – but she gleefully hops into the heads of Nissen and Lotter and invents sympathetic excuses for their actions. However, to her credit, she is empathetic toward Brandon’s family and doesn’t seem happy about Brandon’s death.
Transphobia: High. Jones switches back and forth between she/her pronouns and he/him pronouns, which is the least-offensive example of transphobia in this book. The difference between her treatment of Brandon vs. the treatment of his killers is stark. You almost don’t notice how much she dislikes Brandon until you reach her backstory for Nissen, and then she’s so empathetic and kind that you go, “Wait, hang on.” Other reviewers have called her out for one line in particular already, but it bears repeating. When she mentions trans activists in Falls City, you can almost feel her rolling her eyes at their petition for Brandon’s gravestone to bear a masculine name. She makes a snarky comment: “Later, when it came to activists’ attention that JoAnn Brandon had set up a trust fund for the purpose of getting her child’s headstone, some were willing to help out, but not if the headstone read Teena Brandon. Really, all that mattered was that the activists had their martyr. For them, Brandon Teena was a latter-day Joan of Arc.” If she has any empathy for Brandon – and I think she does – it seems to be only because she spent so long investigating his life. For other trans people, she has no empathy at all, and ascribes no good intentions to their interest in the case. It never seems to cross her mind that they might be emotionally affected by the murder of a trans man, or that it might heighten their fear for their own safety. She portrays them as opportunistic vultures swooping in to take advantage of a mourning community … and then whines in her foreword about people viewing true crime writers the same way

“The Brandon Teena Story” is a documentary released in 1998. It features interviews with all the key players: Brandon’s mother JoAnn; his final girlfriend, Lana Tisdel; his early girlfriends, including Gina Bartu; the sheriff whose prejudice led to his death, Sheriff Laux; and both his killers. Lisa Lambert is given a laudable amount of screentime; both her parents are interviewed. But Phillip DeVine’s family is absent, and he’s barely mentioned except for a quick memorial photo at the end. I can think of two innocent reasons for this: 1) that his family simply said no to the documentary; 2) that the filmmakers could not wrangle an interview due to the DeVines’ physical distance from Nebraska. IIRC, his dad was living in Maryland and his mom in California, so it may have simply been physically impossible for them to participate. The less-innocent reason is, of course, racism. Phillip DeVine was Black.

Tone: Very sympathetic and kind to Brandon, though of course, not everyone interviewed is kind. Linda Gutierres (Lana Tisdel’s mom) veers back and forth between sympathy for him (a sympathy that rings false) and unapologetic confessions about her role in the murder. Nissen and Lotter are unrepentant, and so is Sheriff Laux.
Transphobia: Mixed. I don’t think the documentary itself is transphobic, but other reviewers disagree. Letterboxd is full of one-star reviews for this reason. Yes, Brandon is constantly misgendered by interviewees; clearly some of them are extremely transphobic. Others simply appear well-meaning but uneducated on trans issues. Laux, Lotter, and Nissen are given free range to defend themselves, but I think it’s clear that the documentary does this so you can judge them, not so you can agree.

“Boys Don’t Cry” is a film released in 1999 starring Hilary Swank as Brandon. It skips Brandon’s early years almost completely; we get a brief scene of him receiving a fresh haircut and appearing as a man for a roller-rink date, and then he’s quickly chased out of Lincoln and the Falls City storyline – the last month of his life – begins. The focus is put squarely on his romance with Lana, with a secondary focus on his friendship with Lotter/Nissen. The movie includes a graphic re-creation of his rape and also shows his murder – not in a gory way, but quite explicitly. It ends immediately after this, with Lana driving to an unknown location, presumably Memphis. Most characters are renamed, aside from Brandon, Lana, John, and Tom. Phillip DeVine is entirely erased from the film.

Tone: Very sympathetic and kind to Brandon, moreso than the documentary purely because, as a non-journalistic enterprise, it has no motivation to explore the killers’ justifications and defenses.
Transphobia: Low. Nonexistent, even. Obviously there’s plenty of it from the bad guys, but the movie itself? Almost nil. I know I’m in the minority here – I saw the Letterboxd reviews – but to me, it came across as highly sensitive, affectionate, accurate, respectful… There’s an authentic sense of grief and longing that can only come from one queer person telling another queer person’s story. One could argue that it’s transphobic simply for casting a cis woman to play Brandon, but I’ve never personally put much stock in that argument, and I’ve seen a few people admit they don’t have that problem with *this* movie since Brandon was pre-op and no-hormones. I’ve also seen people argue that Brandon is portrayed as a butch lesbian in this movie. I was confused by that even before rewatching it – my memory was 100% “trans man,” and a rewatch confirmed that. It seems possible – likely, even – that director Kimberly Peirce has made unsatisfactory comments about Brandon outside of the film (in a featurette included under Special Features, she is the only person involved in the film who refers to him with she/her pronouns, and she’s listed Donna Mincowitz’s Village Voice article as an inspiration – that article presented Brandon as a butch lesbian), but the film itself 100% portrays Brandon as he was; he refuses to identify as a dyke; he repeatedly states that he’s a man, not a lesbian; and his conflicting desire for “the operation” is explored.

EDIT: Since writing this review, I've learned that Kimberly Peirce identifies as genderqueer and used the film to explore her sense of masculinity, and even went by a masculine name and he/him pronouns for a while. Having read her comments on the film, and her comments on how tricky it is to identify as a lesbian when one is not quite female, I feel more secure saying she understood Brandon just fine.

OK, now that I’ve done a general overview of structure, tone, and transphobia, I’d like to explore the characters and how they’re portrayed as well.

BRANDON

This will be the quickest, since it’s largely covered above.

“Death of a Deceiver” – Brandon is portrayed, with some degree of affection, as a mischievous lesbian prankster who lowkey got what was coming to him. There’s sympathy, but also judgment; there’s an air of sideshow freakery in the writing. The age gap between Brandon and his earliest girlfriends is emphasized here more than anywhere else, maybe because the author thought it was hot. (I’m not sure how accurate his depiction of the ages actually is. To play devil’s advocate for him, though, it’s also possible that he reported the girls’ ages simply because no one else had done so yet, and he believed it was a matter of journalistic interest). Brandon’s rebellious nature is played up more here than anyone else, but his crimes are fairly downplayed; not much detail is given to them. His relationships, as depicted here, fell apart solely because of his deceit re: gender/sex.

“All S/he Wanted” – Brandon is portrayed almost clinically, from a distance. His actions are laid out without any attempt to understand them. Jones vacillates between male and female pronouns but seems to largely view Brandon as a confused woman. I’m not sure she even really views him as a lesbian – she spends a lot of time playing up reports from high school classmates that Brandon once had crushes on guys. That stood out to me, because I think every gay person has, at some point, lied and said, “Oh yeah, I totally have a crush on Appropriate Boy/Girl” to throw people off the scent. Jones doesn’t seem aware of that and treats the high school reports as fully credible. As a boyfriend, Brandon is portrayed as controlling and jealous – Jones repeatedly uses those words without giving any evidence for it. Strange, since she seems to have interviewed his exes at length. I don’t necessarily doubt her, but I think a wiser writer would have included some anecdotes and let readers judge for themselves. Brandon’s crimes are emphasized at length, but to Jones’ credit, she’s the only one who points out how difficult it was for him to get a job. She does so once, very briefly, in a single sentence, so it’s easy to miss, or for the reader to be overwhelmed by later screeds about Brandon’s crimes and to forget the context. Also, Jones makes much of a psych ward stay where Brandon was described as a pathological liar, but it seems clear to me – from Jones’ own writing – that when Brandon lied, it was solely to cover up his AGAB.

“The Brandon Teena Documentary” – Brandon here is a loving, dreamboat boyfriend. His ex-girlfriends describe him as generous, affectionate, kind. He’s a sensitive listener, a chronic gift-giver – honestly, a bit of a sap, but I mean that in a good way. The type of guy who wakes up before everyone else, does all the laundry, cooks breakfast, and drives his girl to work before he goes back home to clean the whole house. Now, when it comes to Lotter, Nissen, and Laux, the story is entirely different, but their perspectives are far outweighed by the ex-girlfriends, who get far more screentime, collectively. I’ll examine Lotter, Nissen, and Laux more closely in their own sections.

“Boys Don’t Cry” – Brandon squares up neatly with his portrayal in the documentary, but the overall effect is maybe slightly less clear, because we really only see him in one relationship – so we don’t know if he’s like this all the time or just with Lana. He’s impulsive, eager to please (traits that match every other source and seem factual) and loving. He comes across, achingly, as a very young man whose inexperience and immaturity leads him into bad situations. None of this is presented negatively. It’s loving. And I think it’s important, too, to an extent. Brandon had just turned 21 when he died; he was immature, and like any 21-year-old he was making impulsive decisions and getting himself into bad situations. That’s a key aspect of his story that is missing from all other portrayals, documentary included. One note here, though – Brandon does lie about things which aren’t related to his AGAB in this movie; he pretends that he knows his dad (in reality, his dad died before Brandon was born) and claims his mother is in Hollywood and his sister is a model. I couldn’t find any other source that confirmed he really told these lies; I’m assuming that someone on the creative team saw the “pathological liar” comment from his doctor and took it seriously. I don’t think that’s a great sin, though – the way the movie handles it is less “pathological liar” and more “new kid in town trying desperately to impress his friends.”

LANA

“Death of a Deceiver” – Lana is portrayed here with suspicion. Her relationship with Brandon really isn’t given much detail, but her possible connection to the murder is. Konigsberg claims that Lana was in a sexual relationship with Tom Nissen prior to dating Brandon. This claim apparently comes from Nissen himself, and is something Lana denies. She *was* legitimately an ex-girlfriend of John Lotter’s, which Konigsberg also mentions. In this article, he claims that Nissen and Lotter visited the Tisdel home before killing Brandon (true), asked Linda Gutierres where they could find Brandon (possibly true), and made comments about killing someone tonight (true, possibly). Konigsberg goes a step further by saying Lana overheard these comments (again, possibly true) and makes an eyebrow-raising comment in narration – something like, “Despite this, she didn’t bother to call the cops or warn Brandon.” He then informs readers that Brandon’s mother believes Lana was involved with the murders, and reminds us that Lana appeared on TV with Lotter’s sister Michelle, a friend of hers.

This was all very interesting to me… It seems undeniably biased against Lana. I’m not saying that means it’s untrue – Lana is in many ways a mystery. But here’s a breakdown of all those “possibly true”s I threw in there.

Lotter and Nissen asked Linda Gutierres, Lana’s mom, where they could find Brandon. This may be true, but all three of the parties involved have given conflicting stories and have changed their stories several times. It’s not clear that Linda even knew where Brandon was. In Konigsberg’s article, he gives her answer as, “He’s staying in Humboldt,” which is not enough information for Nissen and Lotter to find him. Even if Linda did know where Brandon was staying and gave that info to his killers, it does NOT reflect poorly on Lana. She was not the one who gave him up.
Lotter made comments about killing someone tonight. Lana has changed her story on this a few times. She’s always maintained that Lotter said this, but she’s changed who heard him – initially she said she couldn’t make out his words, as she was downstairs eavesdropping, but other people in the house heard him clearly and informed her later. Later she claimed she heard him herself. Whether she heard him say this or not is less interesting to me than her motivation in telling the police that she heard it. Personally, I think it’s likely that Lana is lying – she did not hear Lotter make this damning comment, but when she learned the next day that Brandon was dead, she made this up to bolster the state’s case and convinced her family members to reinforce the lie.
“Despite this, she didn’t call the cops or Brandon.” Other sources have made it clear the Tisdels did not have their own phone. If Lana is lying about hearing the “kill someone tonight” comment– and I believe she was – then she had no reason to call the cops or Brandon anyway. She didn’t know Lotter and Nissen were planning a murder until the murder actually occurred. If she isn’t lying about hearing this, then she had no phone to call the cops with, and the nearest usable phone seems to have been a full block away, according to Jones. If she didn’t know where Brandon was actually staying (remember, Konigsberg himself says the Tisdels only knew he was somewhere in Humboldt) then she couldn’t call him. But I do believe she knew where he was staying. I’ll get into that later; imo, if she knew where he was staying, it reinforces my opinion that the “kill someone” comment was a lie. If she’d really heard that, and really believed it, she would have called Brandon.

“All S/he Wanted” – Lana is treated with some degree of suspicion here too, but in a rather half-assed way. I get the impression that Jones toyed with the idea of pursuing this lead, but couldn’t find anything to bolster the theory. So she introduces it halfway through the book and then lets it drop. Lana here is largely portrayed sympathetically. She loves Brandon and she stays with him after she finds out his AGAB; she refuses to look when he’s depantsed at the Christmas Eve party (though she’s eventually forced to) and she is absent – opening Christmas gifts at her own home – when Brandon is kidnapped and raped. When Brandon escapes from his rapists the next day, he runs to Lana’s house and she persuades him to report the crime. Her relationship with Brandon becomes vague after that; her mother won’t allow him to stay with them, so he’s laying low in Humboldt. Still, he seems to have made time to see Lana, although Jones has little interest in exploring this period – on Dec. 30th, for example, Lana herself drives Brandon and Phillip DeVine to Lisa Lambert’s house early in the morning. On the same day, at 6 p.m., Brandon and Phillip make their way back to Falls City, and Brandon sees Lana one last time before he returns home and is murdered.

Lana’s own backstory is given some detail here – we learn that her parents divorced when she was young and that she largely stayed with her dad growing up, a fact that isn’t explored in the documentary or film. She cared deeply about her dad’s opinion but was still willing to steal from him to bail Brandon out of jail, even after she learned he was AFAB. Her close relationship with her sister is explored affectionately (not without repeated unnecessary jabs at Leslie Tisdel’s appearance) and her relationship with John Lotter is also explored, I think accurately – from John’s POV, they seem to have been soulmates from birth; from Linda’s POV, they were the cutest little couple, destined to be with each other since pre-school; from Lana’s POV, John seems to be just some guy who had a crush on her, and who she briefly considered dating during that hormonal pre-teen stage when she was just getting interested in boys and John was at a safe distance (in jail). Her “relationship” with Tom Nissen is written off, I think accurately, as fiction.

“The Brandon Teena Story” – Lana tells her story in her own words here and comes off as sincere to me. She seems naturally stoic, determined not to get too emotional onscreen, but still visibly beaten-up by Brandon’s death. She tells the story of their romance with clear affection and grief and refers to him with he/him pronouns. She confirms that their relationship continued after she learned his sex, but would later deny this when Boys Don’t Cry came out, and as you’ll see in the next section, I don’t think she was necessarily lying either time.

“Boys Don’t Cry” – Lana has gone on-record protesting her portrayal in this movie, first of all for depicting her as “white trash” (which I don’t think is fair, although she is portrayed as slightly dumb/naive, as gregoryhousegf mentioned in the comments) and for claiming that she continued a *sexual* relationship with Brandon after learning his AGAB (which I do think is fair). Lana in Boys Don’t Cry is pretty clearly meant to be a closeted lesbian or bisexual, maybe one who never realized she was into both sexes but has no trouble getting with the program once she sees Brandon’s chest. The timeline is even sped up a little to facilitate this interpretation – in real life, Lana claims she realized Brandon’s sex only when she visited him in prison and saw his breasts through the V-neck of his jumpsuit. At this point, Brandon’s deadname had been printed in the local paper and rumors were swirling that he was being held in a woman’s cell, but Lana believed this was some sort of clerical error until she visited him in person and saw that the rumors were true.

In the movie, Lana’s discovery comes before Brandon’s arrest. She sees his breasts the first time they have sex and simply pretends not to notice. When she visits him in jail, she interrupts his desperate confession of hermaphroditism with a brusque, “It’s none of my business,” and promises to support him. They have sex again afterward – twice, iirc – and Lana is tempted to run away with Brandon the night before his murder (no evidence this happened, but I like it a lot as a plot point) only to get cold feet. Her involvement with Brandon’s murder lines up with elements pointed out by both Konigsberg and Jones as “suspicious” but portrays it all much more sympathetically. Basically, Lotter and Nissen arrive at the Tisdel house demanding to know where Brandon is. Lotter threatens Linda Gutierres with a gun, and she gives Brandon up. Lana, at this point, is actually hiding Brandon in her bedroom, but when she runs back – to tell him to flee, or to tell him not to go back to Humboldt, we don’t know – he’s already gone. Lotter and Nissen find Lana in the house and force her into the car with them.

This part matches up with Jones’ half-baked theory about Lana. Apparently, at some point Nissen changed his story to slyly imply that Lana was there with him and Lotter when they killed Brandon. She waited in the car – or she went in with them – or she ordered them to kill Brandon – or she didn’t ask them to do it, but they did it to protect her, so whatever. Like I said, his story changes. Jones uses this to stoke readers’ curiosity, but then doesn’t follow up. She doesn’t give evidence that Lana was there or explain what evidence she came across that convinced her to drop it (if any). But in the movie, Lana *is* in the car – just against her will. When they arrive at the Humboldt farmhouse, she wraps herself around Lotter’s leg and begs him not to kill Candace (she doesn’t know Brandon is also there), and she witnesses both murders … and drapes herself over Brandon’s body, protecting his corpse all night until her mother arrives and drags her away.

In reality, as best we know, Lana was never in the farmhouse. She received a late-night visit from Lotter and Nissen, but didn’t know where they were going or what they had planned. In the morning, worried primarily about Brandon but also about Phillip and Lisa, Lana and her sister Leslie drove out to the Humboldt farmhouse, which was already surrounded by police. They gave statements to the cops and were cooperative throughout the investigation.

JOHN LOTTER

“Death of a Deceiver” – barely mentioned. Lotter did not respond to Konigsberg’s request for an interview, so the first part of the article focuses solely on Brandon’s story as told by his exes, and the second half focuses on the murder, as told by Nissen. In Nissen’s version of events here, Lotter is the bad guy. Yes, Nissen goes with him, but he doesn’t shoot anybody. That’s all John.

“All S/he Wanted” – John gets less focus than Nissen, but is portrayed with quite a bit of sympathy here. Jones informs readers that his home life wasn’t great – he was a child of divorce confused by the fact that his parents still lived together. His mom worked three jobs to support the family and slept on the couch, while his dad gambled, drank, and slept in the master bedroom. John was a problem child with a propensity toward violence; a neighbor describes how he once attacked her baby with a hammer, hitting it in the head. At age 8 or 9, John was sent to a psychiatric institution, and Jones takes the time to detail how his therapists saw him as a caring boy who just needed more attention; in typical Aphrodite Jones-fashion, she blames the mom a lot more than John’s unemployed drunkard dad.

By the time he hit his teens, John had been in endless trouble with the law – more serious stuff than Brandon’s check forgery charges – and had been in and out of foster homes in an effort to get him away from his family. He was frequently violent with his siblings, but despite that, his sister Michelle has a lot of fondness for him and defends him. Jones highlights John’s learning disabilities and his low IQ. He’s portrayed as a kind of hapless dumbass who was spurred on by Nissen. Unlike Konigsberg, Jones openly doubts Nissen’s version of events; she seems very confident that it was Nissen who pulled the trigger, and that he outsmarted Lotter twice (once during the rape investigation, then during the murder trial) by turning on his buddy. I think she’s right, honestly, but the depiction of John Lotter as a victim of circumstance? No, hard disagree.

“The Brandon Teena Story” – John fumbles his story repeatedly here. He seems to have a hard time remembering which lies he’s already told. IIRC he admits to and then denies raping Brandon, claiming that he “tried” but couldn’t keep a hard-on. He’s pretty committed to maintaining his innocence and seems hopeful that he can get out of his death sentence on appeal, so he’s careful with what he says.

“Boys Don’t Lie” – here, John Lotter is the mastermind. Candace is the first person Brandon meets in Falls City, and John is a quick second – he saves Brandon’s ass when casual flirting with Candace turns into a bar-fight. John, in the movie, is cunning, short-tempered, possessive, and unpredictable. He’s deeply hung up on Lana, and at times he seems suspicious of Brandon, which puts him far ahead of the other characters. What reads to me as suspicion might simply be jealousy, though, and there’s definitely plenty of that. His initial buddy-buddy friendship with Brandon turns south when Brandon and Lana start dating; John can’t handle it, and when Candace tells him that Brandon is a “girl,” he has the ammunition he needs to break up their relationship. It’s John who leads the efforts to de-pants Brandon, kidnap, and rape him, and it’s John who takes charge at the Humboldt farmhouse. He shoots all three victims himself. As mentioned earlier, he also threatens Linda Gutierres with a gun – as far as I know, there’s no other source for this, just the movie.

In reality, there is reason to believe that John was more involved with the murders than Jones portrays him. He was the one who stole the revolver used to kill Brandon, Lisa, and Phillip. The knife used to stab Brandon was also Lotter’s, and he was the one with a long-term crush on Lana. According to Lana, it was also Lotter who made the Christmas Eve party uncomfortable. He was deeply drunk when guests arrived and spent all night publicly interrogating Brandon about his sex, even “joking” about raping him hours before the actual rape occured. In “All S/he Wanted,” Lana says the only reason she agreed to leave Brandon at the Nissen house and go home is because Tom was there, and she and Brandon both trusted Tom more than John.

That said, I’m pretty sure – beyond a shadow of a doubt – that while Lotter had the motivation, Nissen took the lead.

TOM NISSEN

“Death of a Deceiver” – not much to say here that hasn’t been already covered. In this version, Tom is a reluctant participant. He describes himself as being caught up in the moment, and claims that he held Lisa Lambert’s baby while John Lotter killed her. Although Konigsberg largely accepts Nissen’s version of events, he makes his opinion on Nissen’s character pretty clear by including choice quotes from Nissen, quotes that minimize the harm and showcase Nissen’s callous, flippant POV. Nissen in this article says he doesn’t really feel bad about killing Brandon, though he does regret that he stabbed Brandon’s dead body after Lotter killed him. He says he *kind of* feels bad about Phillip DeVine’s death, and is really torn up and guilty about Lisa Lambert. Primarily, he says this is because someday, someone will have to tell Tanner Lambert that his mom was murdered, and that news might fuck Tanner up and send him down a dark path. Nissen doesn’t like the idea that something he took part in could wind up corrupting a kid. His sympathy is not for the woman he killed but for her male offspring, and he makes it clear that this is because he relates to Tanner and feels like he had a similar life.

“All S/he Wanted” – HOO BOY. Man, it’s a mixed bag! Jones is sympathetic to Tom Nissen when she talks about his early life, for sure. But she also seems pretty thoroughly convinced that he was the mastermind here, and I think she’s right. According to Jones, Nissen’s parents divorced when he was quite young and he was kidnapped by his father, who eventually remarried a woman named Pam. Nissen grew up hearing awful stories about his bio mom. As a kid, his sister says most people found Nissen strange, but she never saw him that way. His “strangeness” is similar to Lotter’s, but not identical. Where Lotter was a violent child, Nissen was unusually quiet and emotionless. He had no reaction to violence or shouting from his parents. But around the time he entered his pre-teen years, a rift grew between Nissen and his step-mom. His older brother had gone back to Nebraska to live with their bio mom, and Nissen was frustrated that he wasn’t allowed to follow. The rest of his teen years include a string of crimes, including arson with the intent to kill and/or rescue the inhabitants and win their affection. He moved back and forth between his bio mom’s and his dad’s houses in his teen years, not happy at either home. He also self-harmed frequently and once failed at killing himself with a shot to the heart; at a psych ward, doctors theorized that he was sociopathic.

In Falls City, Nissen at some point married a woman named Kandi – a tumultuous relationship, and Jones largely takes Nissen’s side *because of course she does,* good GOD, this woman hates women. Supposedly, according to Jones, Kandi was a dumb blonde, white trash, dirty, a neglectful mother, unfaithful, etc. She had three kids with Nissen, though it’s unclear how many are actually his biological children; at least Jones makes sure to clarify that Nissen was unfaithful too, though she doesn’t judge him as much for it.

She makes a few off-hand references to Nissen being involved with white-power movements, but doesn’t give those references much weight; you get the impression that she sees that as a youthful indiscretion that doesn’t need to be explored. However, as much leeway as Jones gives Nissen in regards to his childhood and personal relationships, she doesn’t back down when it comes to the rape of Brandon and the Humboldt murders. She calls out Nissen’s inconsistent stories, his tendency to turn jailbird-snitch, and his self-serving motivations for lying. By the end, she makes it pretty clear that she believes it was Nissen who shot Brandon, Lisa and Phillip – or that he at least shot some of them, if not all.

“The Brandon Teena Story” – Nissen comes off VERY badly here. He seems cunning, arrogant. He thinks before speaking, and has a practiced delivery; he narrows his eyes and studies the interviewers, and sometimes makes catty comments to them, calling out which ones believe him and which don’t (I don’t believe any of them do, actually). He sticks to his story – “it was all John, I’m innocent” – but there’s a damning moment where he says that if he had never met Brandon or John, this wouldn’t have happened. The interviewer asks, “What if you just met Brandon?” Nissen thinks about it, rocking back and forth in his chair and avoiding eye contact, and doesn’t answer.

“Boys Don’t Cry” – Nissen is largely a footnote in this movie, but he does have some interesting scenes, and he’s not portrayed as an innocent. Interestingly, one element of his portrayal here seems perfectly swapped with his portrayal in “All S/he Wanted.” Aphrodite Jones emphasizes over and over again that Nissen is a father, that he is good with kids (or at least thinks he is), that he stepped up as a dad to Kandi’s oldest child, and that his lack of access to his children while in prison devastates him. In the movie, Nissen doesn’t appear to have a wife or children. John does though, and is shown interacting with his daughter repeatedly (sometimes in a cute way, sometimes in an abusive, rage-filled way). In reality, both of them had wives, but I can’t remember if John actually had kids.

Though most of the movie, Nissen is just Lotter’s shadow. He meets Brandon very early on, but doesn’t say much to him; he’s there in the background during most of the group hang-outs, but we don’t get a sense of his personality until we get to a fictionalized moment where Brandon gets into a road race. This is the scene: Brandon is driving Candace’s car. Candace, Lana, and the fictional version of Leslie are there, as are Tom and John, who are both too drunk to drive. When a girl insults them at a stoplight, John encourages Brandon to race her, and then, when a cop starts chasing them, John eggs Brandon on to evade the cops. It doesn’t work, and John throws a fit afterward, calling Candace’s car “my car” and abandoning Brandon, Candace, and Tom on the side of the road. It’s our first real sign of John’s instability, and it gives the filmmakers an opportunity to develop Tom a bit more.

Tom, generally laidback in this film, sort of shrugs and tells Brandon that only he, Tom, can handle John when he gets like this. He volunteers to walk Candace home with Brandon, and he and Brandon build a campfire and sit together afterward, drinking. Tom shows off his self-mutilation scars and says he and John used to compete against each other in lock-up to see who could go deeper (no other source claims that John and Tom spent any time together in jail, or that John self-harmed). Brandon is clearly freaked out, but trying to appear casual; Tom encourages him to cut himself and Brandon laughs it off and refuses. Tom psychs him out, pretending to attack him, and Brandon shrugs that off too. After this, Tom once again fades into the background, but he’s shown as a willing, eager participant in the de-pantsing and the rape. In the murder, he doesn’t shoot anyone, he just stabs Brandon’s body after Brandon is clearly already dead.

In reality, Tom Nissen recanted his testimony and admitted that he was the one who shot all three victims. Whether this is true or just another lie is up for debate, and I’m not sure whether to believe him – but I also can’t imagine what his motivation is if he’s lying this time, too. Maybe just for street cred, who knows?

LISA LAMBERT

“Death of a Deceiver” – Lisa is mentioned, barely, as a lively, well-liked Humboldt girl who generously opened her home to Brandon when he had nowhere else to stay.

“All S/he Wanted” – I almost want to save this one for last, because it’s so different from the others! Aphrodite Jones makes some very interesting allegations here and makes no effort to back her allegations up – that doesn’t mean they’re untrue, but it does raise eyebrows. Here, and nowhere else, Lisa Lambert is listed as one of Brandon’s girlfriends. When he first arrived in Falls City, he had a girlfriend in tow, but she disappears from the narrative on Day 1, when Brandon meets Lisa. Lisa is described just as affectionately by Jones as by Konigsberg – she’s a smart, responsible single mother who is gainfully employed, kind to everyone, and generous with her home. She has a rocky relationship with both her parents – her dad left the family years ago and her mom is highly critical, and doesn’t approve of Lisa having a baby out of wedlock. When she meets Brandon (according to Jones and ONLY Jones, remember), Lisa is wooed by his unending compliments and his easy, affectionate manner with her son, Tanner. Lisa needs someone to compliment her and tell her she’s a good mom, and she starts considering Brandon as a potential dad to Tanner. According to Jones, they date for about a month (?) (Jones’ biggest flaw is not her transphobia or misogyny; it’s her inability to write a clear, concise timeline in any of her books). But things start to go south. Brandon keeps taking Lisa’s car to Falls City to hang out and flirt with other girls; he wrecks her car at one point and gets either a speeding ticket or a “minor in possession” charge another time (it may be both, at the same time. The reason he was charged as a minor is because he was using his underage cousin’s ID). The breakup is solidified when Lisa discovers papers identifying Brandon as male. She’s distraught by this, and shares the news with all their housemate. Brandon is forced to find somewhere else to live – but notably, if all this really happened, Lisa did *not* spread the news *beyond* her housemates. Her mutual friends with Brandon, aka the people in Falls City, learned about it from the local paper when Brandon was arrested later on.

“The Brandon Teena Story” – Lisa is given limited screentime here, but is portrayed lovingly. Her mother and father are both interviewed, and I’m afraid that … How do I put this? I think some viewers will see them and think, “Geez, these aren’t pleasant people. I bet their daughter sucked, too.” Her dad is blatantly transphobic and really doesn’t seem that cut up about Lisa’s death; her mother, too, is odd. Not exactly unemotional, but when she describes discovering the bodies (she was the first on the scene), she seems not to care about Lisa at all, and no additional context is given for this (additional context would be that she had worked in the medical field and knew not to interfere with a crime scene, so when she walked through the house, she focused on saving Tanner. Now, obviously, I don’t know this woman, so I don’t know if she was cut up about Lisa or not. But I think including that context is like, the only moral decision, so people don’t get a skewed view of her as a heartless grandma from hell).

“Boys Don’t Cry” – this is egregious, man. “Lisa” does not really exist in this story. She’s Candace here, and she’s portrayed basically as dumb, dumpy, white trash. She has an unrequited crush on Brandon, and when she finds out halfway through the film that he’s AFAB, she betrays his secret immediately – to his killers. She does still harbor him after his rape, and she still dies alongside him on New Year’s Eve, but her disgust at Brandon’s secret and her willingness to rat him out is a sharp contrast to Lana’s loyalty and love.

This is going to sound crazy, but I don’t … necessarily find this change offensive. I think it makes sense narratively, and I think the filmmakers did the right thing by changing Lisa’s name, as well as her son’s, in order to streamline a fictional version of the story without besmirching a real woman in the process. It would have me so, so pissed off if that was my relative, though. Like, you can change her name, but the Lamberts still know that’s Lisa. The moral dilemma of making a good fictional story out of a true crime is a whole other can of worms though, and it would require an essay probably twice as long as this one.

I’d like to know where the filmmakers got the idea for Lisa’s unrequited crush. Does it come from All S/he Wanted? Where did Aphrodite Jones get her information –? She never says, but that doesn’t mean it’s untrue. Lisa and Brandon supposedly had several housemates during November and early December; it’s possible Jones could have interviewed them, and they could have informed her of the relationship. Frustratingly, she never says. Even worse, she admits in her foreword that she fictionalized certain parts of the story, but doesn’t disclose which parts those are. Maybe she thought it would be obvious – like, “Hey, I’m writing out dialogue here, obviously the readers know I had to make this up.” But when you never cite your source for ANY information, readers have no clue which conversations are fictional, or which information to trust. A simple, “I obtained this information from a police report” goes a long way, and it helps the reader form their own opinion on how trustworthy the information is.

PHILLIP DEVINE

Out of the Humboldt murder victims, Phillip is the most frequently ignored. If you watch the movie, you don’t even know he exists. If you read articles online about the case, you have almost zero clue of how he’s connected.

There seem to be multiple possible reasons for *why* his part of the story is largely forgotten. The first and most obvious is racism. Phillip was a Black man, and while Brandon was also a person of color, his ethnicity is often forgotten or erased – to the point where I think it’s fair to say that, even among relatively knowledgeable parties, most would call Brandon a white man without batting an eye.

Reason 2: Phillip was the only murder victim who was not in some sense local. Lisa was raised in Humboldt and had close ties to the community. Brandon was new to Falls City, but local to Nebraska, and was actively living in Humboldt/Falls City for about two months before his murder. Phillip was just visiting for the holidays and had much less time to establish himself and make friends, meaning there were fewer people in town for reporters to turn to after the murder to get more information.

Reason 3: Phillip’s family was spread out. I believe at the time of his death, his dad was living in Maryland and his mom in California. Again, practically speaking, this made the logistics of an interview difficult. Any journalist hoping to get more information on DeVine would have to either ambush his mother at trial, make an expensive long-distance call, or take an expensive flight.

Reason 4 (speculation): It’s possible Phillip’s family did not wish to speak to reporters and did not want to take part in the documentary. I haven’t found any evidence for or against this, but it’s worth a mention because I think it’s a strong possibility. Multiple sources say that even people barely involved with the crime were strongly opposed to speaking with reporters, and this was before the true crime boom. Nowadays I think it’s culturally more acceptable or more expected for families to participate when a journalist comes knocking.

Reason 5: Of course, both Phillip and Lisa were destined to fall by the wayside when this story hit the news. Part of that is because Brandon was the main target and Phillip and Lisa were collateral damage, killed only (or mostly) because they were witnesses. Part of it is because Brandon was a trans man at a time when trans people had zero visibility, but were primed to grab the spotlight. Trans activists responded mightily to Brandon’s death; national news media responded mightily to what they saw as a freakshow. All of this inevitably centered Brandon. Lisa held on better than Phillip did because 1) she was an attractive white woman and a mother, and 2) she was local, so other locals felt motivated to call attention to her and make sure she was remembered.

I think all of these, possibly barring Reason 4, twisted together to create a perfect storm – ensuring that Phillip was almost entirely forgotten. His race, his status as an out-of-towner, the sensational nature of Brandon’s identity… basically, this was the 90s, and even today, a story like Phillip’s would not gather much attention from white audiences.

“Death of a Deceiver” – Phillip is briefly mentioned.

“All S/he Wanted” – this is by far the most diligent source when it comes to Phillip. His story is given a bit more detail than even Lisa’s, and his connection to Brandon is made clear. Phillip, like everyone else in the story, was a child of divorce. His mother was deeply involved with the Transcendental Meditation cult, and lost custody of Phillip and his older brother when he was still a toddler. Phillip’s father speculates that his ex-wife got into TM partially because of Phillip’s disabilities – he was born with severe medical conditions that required a battery of surgeries. One of those conditions involved a leg which ended naturally at the knee.

Phillip spent time with his grandparents before moving in with his dad and stepmom, ardent Seventh-Day Adventists. In his teens he reconnected with his mother. He didn’t believe in her TM shtick, but he appreciated the freedom of religion and apparently enjoyed exploring different ways of thinking. He dreamed about studying the original texts of the Bible and the Quran and helping people understand that they worshiped the same God. At some point, according to Jones, Phillip got involved with either the Bloods or the Cripps (I admit I can’t remember which) but despite this her portrayal of him remains 100% positive, which I gotta reluctantly commend her for. She takes pains to inform the readers that these gangs weren’t nearly as violent as they seemed to be in the media, and she focuses instead on Phillip’s exemplary performance at the Job Corps in Iowa as a young man. He really excelled there, and that’s where he met Leslie, Lana’s sister.

IIRC, they dated for about a year before Leslie was kicked out of the Corps and went back home to Nebraska. Phillip promised to visit her around Christmas, and when he arrived, one of the first people he met was Brandon – Brandon, Lana, and Leslie picked him up from the bus station. Jones is vague about the timeline, but from what I can tell, Brandon and Phillip actually lived together at the Tisdels’ house during this first week or so. Unfortunately, Phillip’s relationship with Leslie almost instantly imploded: there was another Black man at her home when he arrived, and he knew Leslie exclusively dated Black guys. She insisted she wasn’t sleeping with this guy, and Phillip actually became friends with him, but that was the beginning of the end for their relationship. Leslie, according to Jones, had been abused in every previous relationship, and she felt a compulsion to push Phillip until he abused her too – but he wouldn’t, and this frustrated and confused her. At some point before Christmas Eve, it seems Phillip and Leslie were through, and he might have gone to stay with Lisa Lambert at that point.

When Brandon was raped and had to stop staying at the Nissens’ and at the Tisdels’, he went to Humboldt. He must have lived with Phillip and Lisa for a week, but little is known about that period. We do know that he and Phillip visited Leslie and Lana frequently, and if Phillip didn’t go back home right away, he might have hoped to patch things up. In the book, Phillip is the last person killed; how Nissen and Lotter got past him when they first entered the house is unknown, because his body was found in the living room, which is also where he was sleeping, I think. They would have had to walk past him to get to the bedroom and kill Lisa and Brandon. It’s possible Phillip slept through the break-in and woke up only when he heard the gunshots.

“The Brandon Teena Story” – Phillip is acknowledged at the very end with a memorial photo, but is otherwise not mentioned. I don’t know if the producers failed to reach out to the family, if the family refused to participate, or if maybe they did ask, and maybe the family did agree, but it just wasn’t financially feasible to get them on camera, considering they weren’t local.

“Boys Don’t Cry” – Phillip is erased from the film entirely. He’s not mentioned in the end credits, and neither is Lisa Lambert.

Worth noting, as I mentioned earlier, Tom Nissen was involved in white power movements. I don’t think he ever met Phillip DeVine, but he certainly knew who he was, and at times he’s claimed that Lana and Leslie both approached him and John and asked them to get rid of their boyfriends. I don’t put much stock in that. I think Tom Nissen was probably thrilled that he got the chance to kill a Black man, but I don’t think he knew Phillip was there; his target was Brandon. That said, it’s made clear in All S/he Wanted that Leslie’s father did not approve of her dating Black men, and Linda Gutierres did not approve of Lana dating Brandon. If someone really did put Lotter and Nissen up to the killings, my money would be Linda or Leland, most likely Linda – she had a relationship with the boys; Leland did not.

LINDA

“Death of a Deceiver” – mentioned only three times, and only once by name. Linda was supporting herself and her daughters off a $346 disability check in 1993; she earned the check by getting stabbed by an ex-husband. Whether that husband was Leland, I don’t know. Later, she’s mentioned obliquely, as one of Lana’s family members who don’t approve of her dating Brandon, and still later, Konigsberg says that it was Linda who told Lotter and Nissen, “I think she’s in Humboldt” when asked where Brandon was.

“All S/he Wanted” – Linda is portrayed sympathetically here. She’s a mother rightfully concerned for her daughter, in Jones’ eyes. Linda doesn’t seem to have much of an opinion on Brandon when he first shows up, and when rumors start swirling about Brandon’s gender, she’s firmly on the “let’s de-pants him and find out” side of things. Jones’ timeline is confused and muddled, but she seems to say that either Linda was present at the Christmas Eve party and de-pantsed Brandon herself first, before Lotter and Nissen did it publicly; or she did at some unspecified point before that. In any case, Linda admits that she cornered Brandon in a bedroom, physically assaulted him, and tried to take his pants off.

When Brandon is raped, Linda accepts him into her home and encourages him to go to the police. But really, she assumes he’s lying. She hopes that telling him, “Go report it, then,” will make him give up the lie. She’s very close to Nissen and Lotter – both men call her “Mom” – and when Brandon is taken away by ambulance, Linda hurries to find them and warns them about the police report. She urges them to get rid of any evidence. Then, when she sees Nissen rush to wash up areas of his house, she realizes they really did rape Brandon after all.

“The Brandon Teena Story” – much the same as “All S/he Wanted.” Linda tries to portray herself as sympathetic, but also blatantly admits to the worst parts of the story.

“Boys Don’t Cry” – the movie does a pretty great job of making Linda into a complex character. Honestly, they do a better job than Linda herself (who has obvious reasons to make herself seem sympathetic) and than Jones (who seems to genuinely sympathize with Linda, unlike the filmmakers). I think it mostly comes down to her expressions, but they do also erase some of her most unsightly actions. They show her warning the boys about the rape, but they don’t show her rolling her eyes at Brandon’s story; they show her worrying about Brandon’s real gender and being present for the de-pantsing, but they don’t show her assaulting Brandon herself, and they have her intervene a little when John and Tom get violent. At the end, when Linda gives Brandon up, it’s only because Lotter threatens her with a gun.

All this might make it sound like the filmmakers did sympathize with Linda, like they whitewashed her a bit. I don’t think that’s quite true. She’s still a villain in the story; but in real life, Linda comes across as *cartoonishly* villainous, and in the movie, she’s toned down to a more believable character. It’s that old Mark Twain saying, basically. “True” and “believable” are not the same thing.

SHERIFF LAUX (or police in general)

This guy, lmao. Nobody likes this guy. Here’s why, basically:

Sheriff Laux was one of two men who interviewed Brandon when he was raped. IIRC, he was the sheriff of the rural county where Brandon was raped, so he shared the case with the Falls City police, since Brandon was kidnapped from there. But Laux had plenty of experience in big-city crime, he was no rube.

He sure acted like one, though…

During his interrogation with Brandon, Laux was infamously vulgar and aggressive. The tapes are available to listen to, but you really don’t need to hear his tone; the transcript alone leaves no room for interpretation. He hated Brandon’s guts, he thought he was a weird freak, and he wanted to bully the fuck out of this guy. After the interrogation – which got so highly inappropriate that other police officers were disturbed – Laux failed to interview the accused rapists, even though he had both their names and knew where they lived. He reluctantly interviewed them three days later due to repeated calls from Brandon’s family and friends, and then … he didn’t arrest them. He said there just wasn’t enough evidence, and Brandon’s story held too many contradictions.

He let them go, y’all, *after Nissen confessed.* Nissen fucking confessed. And Laux let them go, and they murdered Brandon three days later.

“Death of a Deceiver” – calls Laux out for his shitty treatment of Brandon, and also calls out one of his deputies, Olberding, by informing readers that he was a friend of John Lotter’s. I had no clue! This was the last thing that I reviewed in my reread/rewatch journey, and it was the only one to mention that Olberding – who helped interrogate Brandon after the rape – was friends with John.

“All S/he Wanted” – Laux gets called out long and hard, and kudos to Jones for that. Sometimes she’s even subtle about it. For example, when Brandon is raped, Jones goes on a seemingly insignificant tangent where she details a phone call between Laux and another police officer in Lincoln, Nebraska. Supposedly, Laux’s reason for calling was to ask how to investigate a rape – like he’d never handled one before??? In reality, the dialogue from the call is pretty telling; he seems to be blatantly fishing for information on Brandon, maybe hoping that this guy from Brandon’s hometown will go, “Aw, shit, we know that chick, she’s crazy. Don’t even bother investigating, man.” The way Jones pops this in is so coy; it’s really the only time where she just lays the seemingly-innocent information out and trusts readers to realize what’s up. Like I said, though, she doesn’t spare Laux at all, she details his failures at length and without sympathy. She also includes the infamous interrogation transcript. Interestingly, Olberding is portrayed as a good guy here – he’s the police officer who gets disgusted with Laux’s interrogation and supposedly ends the interview. But a sentence later, Jones tells us that the interview continued, that Olberding apparently “ended” it by walking out and leaving Brandon alone with the cop who was abusing him. And then apparently hovered nearby, so he could reenter when Laux was done???

“The Brandon Teena Story” – Laux is interviewed and is completely unapologetic about his role in Brandon’s death. I’m stunned he took part, but I guess by this time, Brandon’s family had already won their wrongful death suit against him. He tries to stick to the facts of the murder – maybe at first he thought they were interviewing him because he was the authority on the case? – but when they question him about his treatment of Brandon, he seems pretty damn proud. He sticks to his guns, throws in a few judgmental “get a load of this freak” comments, and stubbornly refuses to reflect on his role in Brandon’s death. Laux is the ONLY person in the documentary who uses she/her pronouns for Brandon exclusively; even the killers switch back and forth. The interrogation tape is played, possibly in full – I know that part of the tape was erased, and I’ve never come across a source that goes further than the documentary, so this might be all that exists.

“Boys Don’t Cry” – Laux is present, piggy, and pathetic. His interrogation is acted out word-for-word, as much as time constraints and decency allow. His role in the film is small, since the movie ends without showing the murder investigation and trial. But his cruelty is on full display, and for me, it’s the most harrowing scene in the film – worse than the rape itself, worse than the murder.

Overall, I don’t find “Boys Don’t Cry” offensive or transphobic, but this scene crossed a line for me. I wish it had been cut; it feels like it violates Brandon’s dignity and privacy in a way that even the rape did not. The part that throws it over the edge is when Laux asks Brandon where they “poked” him. There’s a closeup on Brandon, crying, voice breaking, as he says, “My vagina.” It’s too much. You’re taking a trans man who was proud, in real life, that he didn’t cry when he was raped, and you’re showing him crying, his voice higher and more feminine than we’ve ever heard it, saying, “My vagina.”

I’ve read a few nonfiction books about rape, some from the victims’ POV and some from psychologists, which assert that the rape itself is often less traumatic than the process of reporting and getting a rape kit done. I’m sure that’s not true for every case, but I feel strongly that it was true here, and it shouldn’t have been included in the film. At the same time, I know other people disagree with me and feel that the rape is more offensive, so your mileage may vary.

Finally, a note on the Brandons and on Brandon’s name.

The Brandons, JoAnn and Tammy: They’re infamous in the trans community for refusing to accept Brandon’s identity. They put his deadname on his headstone, along with, “Daughter, sister, friend” – at the same time, they buried him in men’s clothing, his favorite outfit. Today, they acknowledge that he was trans and express support for the trans community, but at the same time, they continue to use female pronouns and call him by his deadname.

What I can gather, from all sources, is that they did love Brandon and were willing to accept him – but they couldn’t understand what they were accepting, if that makes sense. The concept of trans men was foreign to them; what little they knew didn’t seem to apply. (At one point, in All S/he Wanted, JoAnn remembers that the doctors at the psych ward told her Brandon had GID, and she protested to Brandon that transsexuals usually know before puberty, so it couldn’t apply to him – even though, of course, to outsiders, it looks like Brandon certainly knew that early). JoAnn seems to have seen Brandon’s transition as a sudden, dramatic change that came out of nowhere when he was 18. Suddenly he was cutting his hair, dressing like a man, going by Billy, even dating girls… But actually, the signs were there much earlier. They just weren’t quite so dramatic, so JoAnn could rationalize them away: yes, Brandon wore a boys’ uniform to school, but so what? JoAnn herself preferred jeans to skirts. Yes, Brandon had short hair, but so do lots of women; and yes, he was awfully close to Sara Gapp, but that’s just what friendships are like between girls.

I think, if Brandon hadn’t been murdered, it’s very likely his family would have grown to accept him, that he would have remained close to them. I don’t think they would ever be perfect allies or use the right pronouns consistently, but I think that’s true for most families of trans people, and it’s a little sad that they lost a son AND were turned into villains during their grief. That said, it’s just as possible that if Brandon had lived, he would have grown to see his family’s behavior as unacceptable and would have cut them off – that’s also valid. We just don’t know.

One thing of note: Brandon often told people he was a hermaphrodite. JoAnn denies this; but notes from her family therapy sessions with Brandon say it’s true, and that JoAnn confirmed to the doctors that Brandon was born intersex, and that she requested he be surgically altered to be a girl. I wish we knew more about this; I wish it was talked about more; I wish we had some answers, and I wish I wasn’t the only person screaming into the void about this! In hyper-online arguments between trans people and intersex people, I’ve seen conversations like this:

Trans person: If someone clocks me as trans, I pretend that I’m intersex
Intersex person: You shouldn’t do that
Trans person: I’ll do anything that stops me from being killed, thanks
Intersex person: Yeah, Brandon Teena said the same thing, and guess what, he still got killed.

Nasty on both sides. I know I already ranted about this when I reviewed “As Nature Made Him,” but I desperately wish we could get more funding for research into a link between intersex conditions and a transgender identity – hell, I wish we could get more research into intersex conditions, period.

Okay, and my last note, on Brandon’s name:

Throughout this review, I mostly just stick to “Brandon.” That was the name he was going by at the time of his death. “Death of a Deceiver” lists his other aliases around the time as “Brandon Teena, Brandon Tenna, and Brandon Yale” – Aphrodite Jones and “Boys Don’t Cry” both acknowledge that Brandon was using his cousin’s ID at the time, identifying himself as Charles Brayman to law enforcement. At other times in his life, he went by Billy Brinson, Tenna, or Tenor Ray. Aphrodite Jones – and a few apparently well-intentioned trans people online today – mock the idea of calling him “Brandon Teena” and claim he never went by that name, which might be true, but he certainly went by Brandon.

All this, I think, is common knowledge to anyone who’s looked into the case. The reason I bring it up is because, over the last five days, I’ve consulted Brandon’s Wikipedia page a LOT. It uses the correct pronouns for Brandon and has his name listed as “Brandon Teena.” Unfortunately, this means that he is referred to almost exclusively as “Teena” in the article. Wikipedia uses surnames the same way journalists do. If Brandon’s accepted name is “Brandon Teena,” then Wikipedia is going to, by default, say, “Teena was raped and murdered,” instead of using his actual surname to refer to him, as Brandon preferred. It left a really bad taste in my mouth. I don’t know what the solution is; we don’t have a solid fake surname that we know he preferred, and I imagine that if you said, “Have you heard about Brandon?” instead of “Brandon Teena” it would just lead to a lot of confused looks. But this – this token gesture of changing his name in a way that allows you to repeatedly deadname him just feels malicious.

ETA 11/19/25: Corrected some misspellings, added a note about Kimberly Peirce's gender identity, and corrected the name of Lisa Lambert's child from "Tucker" to "Tanner."

OK, that’s it from me. I’ll leave you with my ranking of the Brandon Teena stories – in order of quality, the order I think you should watch or read them in:

Boy Don’t Cry. Watch this first; it’s empathetic, it’s easy to understand, and it’s emotionally accurate, even if the details are sometimes wrong.
The Brandon Teena Story. Watch this next to correct your misconceptions.
All S/he Wanted. Read this for the full details, but take it with a grain of salt. I’ve heard that “Black on Both Sides” also covers Phillip DeVine in detail, so if you’ve had your fill of Brandon but want to know Phillip’s story, skip All S/he Wanted and read Black on Both Sides instead.
Death of a Deceiver. The quality of this article is actually higher, imo, than All S/he Wanted. But it is, after all, a Playboy article. It’s short, it’s OOP, and you’ll give yourself a headache tracking it down.