In what is easily the most daring and rewarding film performance of the year, Emmy Award-winning actress Felicity Huffman portrays Bree, a pre-operative MTF transsexual in Duncan Tucker's feature-length motion picture debut Transamerica. The title has more than one meaning, referring first to Bree's transition from one gender to another. It also makes reference to crossing America, a journey which Bree undertakes, beginning in California, when she learns that Toby (Kevin Zegers), a teenage son she never knew she fathered, is in trouble with the law in New York. On the road trip back to California, to which Bree is anxious to return for the fulfillment of her gender reassignment, she and Toby get to know each other, and the audience is that much better for having the opportunity to ride along with them. I spoke with Tucker while he was in Chicago meeting the press.

AfterElton.com: What is the genesis of your interest in the subject of the transgendered community?
Duncan Tucker: First of all, I want to say the subject of this movie is not transsexuality. (If) this movie is subversive at all, it's that the main character is a transsexual woman, but it's a movie about family, and connection; the universal feeling of trying to wonder why we sometimes feel different and alone, and how we can connect with one another. It's a celebration of a life and of life. It's about authenticity.

The main character happens to be a transsexual woman. But, then once I made the decision that that was who she was going to be, I tried to be as honest, as clearly, incisively honest as I could be; did a lot of research. The genesis: I was thinking about the themes I just described, and then a woman I knew in Los Angeles told me that she was transgendered and I had no idea, I had no clue. And a light bulb went off and I thought wow, these people really are a community whose stories haven't been told. And talk about feeling different and alone. I mean, it's just like the way we all felt in high school to a factor of a thousand.

AE: In the process of putting the film together, you cast a female actor, Felicity Huffman, in the role of Bree as opposed to a male actor. What was involved in that decision?
DT: As I just said, the woman I first met was very feminine-looking, very voluptuous, curvaceous, had a female-sounding voice. Then, I went over the next months (and) interviewed a lot of women in the trans community at different stages of their journey and some didn't pass so well. But, a surprising amount of women I met, I would arrange to meet them in a café and it was difficult to find these women. They were very self-protective, with good reason. I would go to the café and look at the women around and had no idea which was the trans woman. I just learned that trans women do not necessarily look like guys in dresses, which is how they're typically portrayed by Hollywood. The ones we recognize are often the ones in the beginning of their journeys. I wanted to honor where the character was going and not anchor her in what she left behind.

AE: Right, because it is very much transitional; these women are on a journey, in transition.
DT: And Felicity in that scene at the party in Dallas with the other trans women, she was not the most feminine-looking woman in the room. (laughs) Some of the real trans women were a lot more petite and girly than she.

AE: I'm glad you mentioned that scene, because Calpernia Addams is in that scene. How did you come to work with here?
DT: Calpernia and her business partner Andrea James run a company called Deep Stealth to help consult with trans people, trans women (on) make-up, voice, carriage. Somehow,
I found them and was in touch with them, and then I put them in touch with Felicity and she consulted with them quite intensively in preparing for the role. And then I invited them both to be in the movie. Andrea gives the voice instruction at the very beginning, and Calpernia does a cameo for us at the Dallas party playing he fiddle. How many times do you get to see a room full of trans-suburban women singing “Home on the Range?”

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