The Brandon Teena Story

Rating:
Summary: Ignorance and prejudice lead to murder
Review: Even though I knew the story after seeing the movie "Boys Don't Cry", I am glad I saw this video. The facts of the case, especially the actual words that the sheriff used to interrogate Brandon after the rape, were absolutely appalling and display the ignorance and prejudice of the people in the small town of 5000, known for its dead-end jobs and domestic violence.

Now that I've seen both versions of this story, I must say I preferred Boys Don't Cry with its scripted performance and planned dramatic tension. It also was able to portray some of the more intimate moments with a sense of humor, such as the scene in which he gets a period and steals tampax from a convenience store. Scenes like this are impossible in a documentary of course.

The strength of the documentary, however, was being able to see the real people, not actors. And real photographs of the troubled Brandon. The realization that this is the truth, not fiction, adds an extra punch or horror to that sickening feeling I felt when I saw the dramatized version.

If the story intrigues you, as it did me as well as the filmmakers, make sure not to miss this penetrating true look at this horrible crime. Recommended.

Rating:
Summary: The tragic life art imitated
Review: I decided to see this video before seeing "Boys Don't Cry", the movie based on the same story. I have concluded that seeing both films is essential for anyone not directly involved in the actual situation to understand what went on. "Boys Don't Cry" took some liberties with the facts involved in the true story, as most artistic works must ultimately do. "The Brandon Tenna Story" focused on the facts leading up to the hate-crime rape and murder--showing John Lotter and Tom Nissen as amoral sociopaths who, even two years after their crimes, see themselves as homegrown heros who saved a friend through sexual assault and who each proclaims his innocence of the subsequent triple (not double) murder that followed. (This video tells of the third victim of the murder--a physically disabled African American man who just happened to be at the murder scene at the time.) Also in this film (and missing from "BDC") are interviews with the mother of Brandon Teena and the parents of the friend who offered him shelter and tried to offer him a refuge from Lotter and Nissen, only to die for her efforts an leave a 9-month-old son an orphan. The actual filmed interviews with the deputy sheriff who let Lotter and Nissen go, even after they as good as confessed their involvement in the rape to him, is perhaps the most puzzling character of all in this video. The excerpts from his interrogations of Brandon after the rape, and subsequently of Nissen and Lotter, indicate that he was far more aggressive and harsh in his questioning of the victim. There is evidence that both Nissen and Lotter were already well-known as violent trouble-makers in the county's law enforcement officers, this deputy included. In his brief appearances in the film, the sheriff of the county where Brandon dies gives a distinct impression of a town in severe financial depression where violence of all sorts is an everyday affair that everyone learns to live with, if they want to live at all. Somehow, a careful analysis of all that information, and a bit more fact gathering, might ultimately explain why, even after the murders, the deputy seems to regard himself as a law enforcement professional who did his job as best he could. At the end of this video, however, he seems to be nearly as culpable in the crimes as Nissen and Lotter themselves. I don't apologize for that impression, since evidently the Nebraska courts are still dealing with that very issue in a lawsuit filed by Brandon's mother.

This video does not portray Brandon in his best light (I definitely refer anyone to "BDC" for that), because it seems to focus more on the basic facts of his too-short life more than on the pain and confusion that must have been his--trying to live as a man when he had been given a body that appeared to be mostly female, and in a part of the world where the people surrounding him were too busy screwing up their own lives to understand his unique set of problems. So Brandon's survival skills came to include lying and occasionally writing bad checks. But even the most hardcore pragmatist would have to say at the end of the film that Brandon's "victims" would recover in short order and get on with their lives. That's a great deal more than can be said for the victims of Nissen and Lotter, who in this documentary seem to be singing, "We're just some good ol' boys, never meaning' no harm" to the world."

Perhaps the most chilling part of viewing this excellent documentary is that knowledge that this savagery took place only seven years ago in America, helped along by people who at least still give lip service to the idea that they were doing the right thing at the time. At the end of the film, one's mind is filled with the usual 20/20 hindsight solutions for the perverted conditions that enabled the slaughter, and a quiet determination to do whatever possible to change those conditions wherever they may still, unfortunately be found.

A powerful film, a definite must-see.

Rating:
Summary: Nothing is as good as the true story
Review: Although I enjoyed the documentary, I thought there could have been more details to explore than to simply turn the camera on and let the subjects talk. And there are so many "urban myths" attached to this story -- i.e. the name "Brandon Teena" was never used, only "Brandon."
The film makers had chances to explore, push buttons, and probe, but evidently chose not to do so. Lana obviously considers herself a star to the show but is never pursued as a suspect; the rumour of her being present at the time of the killings could have been explored. Both of the killer's sexualities could have been explored, showing there are no easy answers and no 'simple' crimes. Why did Teena B trust these three low life, white trash losers (Lana & the killers)? What common bond kept them together, even in the midst of a heinous crime? Interesting how much Lana played into the story, yet not once did she show emotion when discussing the crime - except to laugh.
The additions to the DVD seem slapped on - and again, could have been so much better. Documentaries can educate and explain, or open an issue to discussion.
I truly believe, as a criminologist and as a gay activist, all of the persons responsible for the 3 murders were not held accountable. They caught the "bad guys" and locked them up, end of story. But there seems to be so much more than this. Lana & her mother should have been interrogated for aiding the killers (Lana's mother admits to doing so in her explanation to hide the evidence). Lana's role in the killing should have been explored. These are not bright, clever people; they could have been "had" with the right interview by law enforcement.
All in all, kudos to the filmmakers for their work, but consider that nothing is as good as the TRUE story.

Rating:
Summary: A tough story handled well
Review: To be honest, my first inclination was to shy away from the Brandon Teena Story because the sales pitch led me to believe it was about homophobia. While I don't consider myself homophobic, I must say the very serious subject matter made me hesitant to view the film. Originally, I'm from a small town and moved to a big city. We had no gay people in my town........that we were aware of.

After having summoned up my courage.... surprise............I actually enjoyed it and feel it is one of the most important films I've ever seen. The film delicately demonstrated that homophobia, like racism and sexism, is really about hatred. Far from blaming individuals, the Brandon Teena story demonstrates how society teaches people to isolate, hurt and even kill those around them who are different from the mainstream. This larger theme made me think about the ways that I am different from the masses, and it made me realize that people who are different from me don't want special treatment; they just want to live their lives in peace like I do.

While quite moving, I won't lie and say the Brandon Teena Story was "easy viewing" grappling as it does with hidden and painful issues. The film motivated me, in a non-judgemental manner, to reexamine my values. And it made me wish that my small corner of suburbia hadn't been so 'white bread'. Maybe if I had known more people who were different from me during my childhood, I wouldn't be such a judgmental adult.

Rating:
Summary: The tragic life art imitated
Review: I decided to see this video before seeing "Boys Don't Cry", the movie based on the same story. I have concluded that seeing both films is essential for anyone not directly involved in the actual situation to understand what went on. "Boys Don't Cry" took some liberties with the facts involved in the true story, as most artistic works must ultimately do. "The Brandon Tenna Story" focused on the facts leading up to the hate-crime rape and murder--showing John Lotter and Tom Nissen as amoral sociopaths who, even two years after their crimes, see themselves as homegrown heros who saved a friend through sexual assault and who each proclaims his innocence of the subsequent triple (not double) murder that followed. (This video tells of the third victim of the murder--a physically disabled African American man who just happened to be at the murder scene at the time.) Also in this film (and missing from "BDC") are interviews with the mother of Brandon Teena and the parents of the friend who offered him shelter and tried to offer him a refuge from Lotter and Nissen, only to die for her efforts an leave a 9-month-old son an orphan. The actual filmed interviews with the deputy sheriff who let Lotter and Nissen go, even after they as good as confessed their involvement in the rape to him, is perhaps the most puzzling character of all in this video. The excerpts from his interrogations of Brandon after the rape, and subsequently of Nissen and Lotter, indicate that he was far more aggressive and harsh in his questioning of the victim. There is evidence that both Nissen and Lotter were already well-known as violent trouble-makers in the county's law enforcement officers, this deputy included. In his brief appearances in the film, the sheriff of the county where Brandon dies gives a distinct impression of a town in severe financial depression where violence of all sorts is an everyday affair that everyone learns to live with, if they want to live at all. Somehow, a careful analysis of all that information, and a bit more fact gathering, might ultimately explain why, even after the murders, the deputy seems to regard himself as a law enforcement professional who did his job as best he could. At the end of this video, however, he seems to be nearly as culpable in the crimes as Nissen and Lotter themselves. I don't apologize for that impression, since evidently the Nebraska courts are still dealing with that very issue in a lawsuit filed by Brandon's mother.

This video does not portray Brandon in his best light (I definitely refer anyone to "BDC" for that), because it seems to focus more on the basic facts of his too-short life more than on the pain and confusion that must have been his--trying to live as a man when he had been given a body that appeared to be mostly female, and in a part of the world where the people surrounding him were too busy screwing up their own lives to understand his unique set of problems. So Brandon's survival skills came to include lying and occasionally writing bad checks. But even the most hardcore pragmatist would have to say at the end of the film that Brandon's "victims" would recover in short order and get on with their lives. That's a great deal more than can be said for the victims of Nissen and Lotter, who in this documentary seem to be singing, "We're just some good ol' boys, never meaning' no harm" to the world."

Perhaps the most chilling part of viewing this excellent documentary is that knowledge that this savagery took place only seven years ago in America, helped along by people who at least still give lip service to the idea that they were doing the right thing at the time. At the end of the film, one's mind is filled with the usual 20/20 hindsight solutions for the perverted conditions that enabled the slaughter, and a quiet determination to do whatever possible to change those conditions wherever they may still, unfortunately be found.

A powerful film, a definite must-see.

Rating:
Summary: Ignorance and prejudice lead to murder
Review: Even though I knew the story after seeing the movie "Boys Don't Cry", I am glad I saw this video. The facts of the case, especially the actual words that the sheriff used to interrogate Brandon after the rape, were absolutely appalling and display the ignorance and prejudice of the people in the small town of 5000, known for its dead-end jobs and domestic violence.

Now that I've seen both versions of this story, I must say I preferred Boys Don't Cry with its scripted performance and planned dramatic tension. It also was able to portray some of the more intimate moments with a sense of humor, such as the scene in which he gets a period and steals tampax from a convenience store. Scenes like this are impossible in a documentary of course.

The strength of the documentary, however, was being able to see the real people, not actors. And real photographs of the troubled Brandon. The realization that this is the truth, not fiction, adds an extra punch or horror to that sickening feeling I felt when I saw the dramatized version.

If the story intrigues you, as it did me as well as the filmmakers, make sure not to miss this penetrating true look at this horrible crime. Recommended.

Rating:
Summary: The TRUE Facts
Review: I have seen "Boys Dont Cry". (VERY good, recamended) And read the book. "All she wonted", But this movie "THE BRANBON TENNA STORY". Is the best because it tells alot of true facts. It shows great photos, and real interviews with the real people from falls city who knew Brandon. his gfs, his mother, his friends, ect. I Recamend this movie very highly if you want to get the facts strate!

Rating:
Summary: A RACIEST WHITE ... TOWN
Review: WATCHING THIS VIDEO I FOUND OUT WHAT KIND OF PEOPLE LIVE IN FALLS CITY AND I WOULDNT WANNA GO TO THAT RACIEST TOWN IF MY LIFE DEPENDED ON IT AND I WOULDNT WANT MY KIDS ARE NONE OF MY FAMILY MEMBERS GOING THERE AND THE PEOPLE THAT TOOK BRANDON TEENAS AND THE OTHER 2 PEOPLES LIVES ARE JUST HEARTLESS COWERDS JUST MAKE YOU THINK OF WHAT KIND OF PARENTS THEY HAVE

Rating:
Summary: EULOGY FOR AN ACTRESS
Review: Teena Brandon was a small woman who came out of nowhere, walked tall for a couple of weeks and died a brutal death at the hands of her associates. She was one of those extraordinary pople who come out against all odds out of trailer parks and the small town oppression. Unfortunately she remains as obscure as she was before, despite all the publicity that she received well meaning and otherwise. That is because everyone concentrated on her cross-dressing and passing herself as a male, focusing on the last three weeks or so of her life in Falls City and ignoring everything else about her.

This film is no exception, sticking strictly to the male persona that she was playing and ignoring her shortcomings. Unlike the true crime book, a film based ion her death, and a couple of magazine articles, this film comes closest at giving us a glimpse of what she must have been like in real life.

This film suffers from a number of shortcomings as a dicumentary. It gives too much air time (amazing that they gave any play at all) to the two people that raped and murdered her. Nothing new revealed by that except their lies and attempts at self justification. In the beginning the film-makers interview a number of girls, whom Teena pursued as Brandon, but they fail to mention that Teena was 18 going on nineteen while the girls were 14 going on fifteen and sixteen, and if Teena was male, she'd be a prime candidate for charges of statutory rape. While it's understandable that they would want to portray her at her best, it doesn't explain why they failed to interview any of her peers or anyone, who knew her as a girl, since she lived as such for most of her life. Another problem, of the caliber that makes the difference between the great and the ordinary is that the film-makers fail to actively engage, question or put on the spot a number of those they interviewed, when they were evasive or less than forthcoming and a more agggressive questioning was called for. This holds true especially, when they take a mother of a convicted murderer and have the gall to ask her if her son deserves a death penalty, while the lead rapist clearly controls the interview, apparently by his ower of refusing to give an interview or to make it public.

Despite these shortcomings, it's still a very moving documentary for all the life of Teena Brandon that it managed to capture. She was a budding actress from an early age and it was the role of her life that led to her death. She clearly loved to be photographed and the film makers picked out a great collection for a coherent narrative. Another strength is the length, which the interviews run, which capture enough information to give us sometimes shocking, sometimes revealing glimpse at what actually must have happened, even though the film makers failed to follow up on it.

One of the things that happened in real life but which did nt made it into the based on a true story movie was the so-called depantsing incident: Jealous Boys come up on two girls at a party. They pull the pants off a girl mascuarading as a boy so that everyone can see that "he" is really a "she", in hopes that the other girl would now know the truth and go back to her boyfriend. there are other more sinister implicaitons in this as well, which are best left to Freudian psychoanalysts and to anthropologists studying mating rituals in tribal societies. What happens next is a lot more serious: Teena Brandon is understandably terrified and runs from the party to a public place in the company of her female friend. The two show up about thirty minutes later, and the female friend leaves Teena Brandon in their company, saying "You will be all right". In the interview that gets into the documentary, the female friend gets a long winded explanation of where they went, and why it was okay for her to leave Teena in the company of two men who just forcibly pulled off her pants, and finally, literally with the last sentence, she attempts to extricate one of the two who happened to have been her boyfriend. Sometime after that they show newsfootage of that girl giving her version of what took place. Instead of going like Oh-my-God-they-pulled-the-pants -off-my-best-friend, the woman goes in a droning monotone "The Depantsing Incident" as if she was a Pentagon spokesman commenting on teh latest snafu. The interviewers treat this girl as a former friend despite the fact that Teena Brandon was afraid to go near her after the rape, thinking that she had set her up.

Another instance of mind-boggling behavior occurs when they iterview Linda, the mother of the last of Brandon's "girlfriends". There is a point that she says "I told Brandon that no one deserves to get raped, well, I did not know she was raped, kidnapped whatever." While saying that, she displays every textbook sign of lying. At first glance it seems innocuous: So, say that no one deserves to get raped. What's the big deal? Why lie about it? Because you knew you should say it, but you didn't? What sort of a person does it take to do that? And what sort of a mind is it that would lie about it and to what purpose? To curry favor with film makers? The film makers fail to mention was that this person had warned the perpetrators to wash their clothes because their victim went to the police and allegedly told them where Teena Brandon was hidingand had it not been for her, she might still be alive.

The audiotape of Teena Brandon making a complaint is another piece of the film to watch carefully. Insensitive remarks of the shriff aside, this is the only voice sample and we should listento it carefully. There are two things: First, she is trying to distance herself from her own femininity,as second, she refers to her rapists by their first names. She is not tgrying to distance herself from them, she relates to them as her friends or peers. Secondly, unlike the stoic portrayal of her by Hillary Swank, with a lone tear running down her cheek, Teena Brandon is on the verge of tears while she gives the statement and she keeps speaking in short gasps, probably to keep from crying, and her narrative builds to a punchline wehich expresses either confusion, existential bewilderment, or heartbreak: They beat ehr into submission, they batter her, then they rape her, they they forced her to sit between then in the front seat of the car, and one of the says soemthing that profoundly affects her, one of them asks her if they are still friends. From the way she says, that remark had really hurt her, which probably means that at some point they really were her friends and she liked them. This explains one of the major mysteries in this story: She got to safety of a hotel lobby. She called for someone to give her a ride. The two showed up and she went with them to get beaten up and raped. The msytery is that she didn't blow them off, she ddin't make a scene, they did not threaten her, she went with them willingly. They talked her into getting a ride with them instead of whoever was coming to pick her up. She probably went with them because she thought of them as friends. They took charge of the sotuation and she respondd passively as a woman. Like experienced batterers they targeted where she was vulnerable as a female and somehow she managed to accept her role as a woman in an abusive relationship. Whatever the case may be, she went with them willingly because she thought of them as friends.

The final point of interest is Michelle Lotter. In the early pictures she looks goofy. She wears baggy clothes to hide her figure. She bleaches her hair and starts wearing them something like Teena Brandon after she got murdered. There is some kind of a connection there. There is a sequence of photos that they took together in a mall photokiosk. There is some kind of tension between the two of them that did not exist between Teena and the other girls. They are grinning at each other like two Chihuahua dogs. From all appearances Teena Brandon had the Don Juan's ap;proach to love - girls were emotional objects to her to be pursued and showered with gifts, while it is with men that you establish friendships and communications. Which is what she did. Noticed that she never hugs or touches anyone in the photos, the only person that she does put ehr arm around is John Lotter, her future murderer. Of all the women it is only Michelle Lotter that she responds as if she is significant. I think the reason for that is the similarities that they shared. Some women attempt to avoid abuse, sexual and otherwise, by drawing attention fro their sexuality, which is what Michelle Lotter seemed to have been doing by hiding her figure in baggy clothes and acting like a clon and a best friend to a good looking girl. During the interview she is the most mature acting of them all, she knows the others and acts confident that she can control them. Teena Brandon is also seen wearing baggy clothes. Perhaps both of them had witnessed their friends in abusive relationships and did not to wind up in their shoes. It is realky tragic that when it happened to her, Teen

Rating:
Summary: Disturbing
Review: I liked this Movie...BUT..It was very disturbing to me, That this actually happened to this poor Girl! It left me a little disheartened By How we treat people who are different. The story is slow at times..But A good rent!