Have you ever heard the one about one particular ‘Saturday Night Live’ writer homosexual who openly confessed to his friend Will Ferrel that he is a transgender and then they both hit the road to travel the length and the breadth of America, exploring the attitude of people towards the transgender people? You haven’t. You should because it’s very hilarious. But finally, it’s rather tragic. In fact, it is a movie titled, “Will and Harper.” It’s on Netflix.
Though I am sure that the people behind it would hate to call it that, the film is rather quite overtly an educational presentation made for a land where probably a fraction of the electorate holds a passionate hatred resistance against transcendental people but where their hatred against them is unashamedly being propagated. It does get to you in quite a subtle way owing to the chemistry of the titular characters. It also works as the kind of buddy flick Ferrell might once have done in his earlier days which would have required an apology at a later point in time. After all, a lot of ex-‘Saturday Night Live’ cast members have been known to star in comedies and have shown little regard for subtlety.
Harper is Harper Steele and was Andrew Steele before. She was present at ‘Saturday Night Live’ before Ferrell arrived, and she became one of Ferrell’s biggest fans even when no one there envisioned a successful career for him. That’s how their remarkable friendship developed. In the course of the Covid era, Ferrell revealed that he got an email from Steele that simply said: “I’m quite old now, and it’s quite ludicrous and unnecessary to have to declare, but I am coming out as a woman.” It took Ferrell by surprise because, as he seems to remember it, so called Andrew was ‘a guy type,’ Iowa born, wore pair of 501 jeans, drank bad beer, hitchhiked a lovable curmudgeon with a totally strange and creative sort of humor attractions’. This kind of thinking, as the movie shows us, and in a way that puts right Ferrell’s outlook on things without coming over as ‘rude’, is one view of people who transitioned.
As can be seen, Josh Greenbaum who might be best known for directing ‘Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar’ centers the viewer’s attention on Harper Steele rather than Will Ferrell. This however is not exactly a narrative of a heterosexual cis-gendered person coming to enjoy his gay friend’s new facade. Ferrell believes that he is now at a place where such journeys of acceptance are so distant in time that it does not seem plausible and he plays it out in a different way for the audience–reiterating what he has already been through. He explains how uneventful their friendship was by saying, “After I got the email, I thought, ‘How long has she experienced this? What is it that made her keep this in for so long?” Wilko offers a semblance of an explanation, claiming that after the drama unfolded, their bond was in ‘uncharted waters,’ though this seems in context an odd exaggeration for purposes of telling a story. Thanks to the recordings done on these two, their conversations, and several other moments, it becomes clear that there was zero chance of anything close to Mr. Ferrell denying Ms. Steele or having her pursue him.
Steele strikes me as unperturbed. Most of her concerns, however, can be construed as being life-threatening. Steele hails from Iowa and states, “I love the United States, but I just don’t know if it loves me back right now.” Parts of her narration have drastically changed now that she is abroad, but she still enjoys the same things, whether it is “shitty bars,” “truck stops,” or vast territories where people could just vanish without a trace.
This worry becomes evident right away as the two argue back and forth about road trips. The safety of the two film stars as they happen to be in a real life road movie is not the key issue. After all, they do have a camera crew, a famous actor named Will Ferrell is one of them, and one can assume that the production was able to get permits and had signs up saying something like “We are shooting a film, and if you go into this place, you are agreeing to be part of our film,” whether the place is the arena for Indiana Pacers or any of the dive bars already mentioned. Massive hate has been directed at Steele who got misgendered, and a terrible incident occurred during the match with the Governor of Indiana who is nice and friendly but is a great hater of LGBTQ+ and indeed signed the law which forbids providing trans youth any gender affirming care.
Not to de-emphasize a concern with what is taking place in every corner of America and every other country when these people are not celebrities and there are not cameras on them 24/7 to film a documentary for Netflix, Steele asks, “The most difficult part of my transition, I guess, is just walking by all those bros in a bro-ey environment.” Nonetheless, in the end, everything goes pretty well. And, naturally, that is the objective of the activity. To illustrate that those sorts of problems are not as severe as an avowed bigot would lead you to believe, and if Will Ferrell can be 100 percent behind his friend Harper then why can’t this same situation take place everywhere.
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