Transsexual talkback

I'm writing this in response to the mother who wrote the "Transsexuals and tykes" letter [July 8]. As a transgendered person, I take much offence to the comment, "A child does not need to know what a transsexual is, okay? These are very abnormal things…"

Screw you, lady! I am highly educated, very talented, gainfully employed in an office doing customer service work and have a huge network of friends. Some of my friends have children who are unaffected by my presence, because I'm nice and fun to be around - just one of mommy and daddy's friends. And mommy and daddy haven't raised their babies to be prejudiced or closed-minded.

I am not abnormal, I'm just a little bit different and I'm sick and tired of Nazi jerks speaking out of their asses and breeding intolerance and hatred.

But that isn't really the issue at hand. The woman who wrote this letter is a bad mother for many reasons, and I wonder why she allows her children to roam the streets alone and read adult publications if they aren't old enough to know about life and all the things in it. It's not up to a newspaper to do a parent's job. Plus, advertising is what makes the world go 'round these days, so of course publications contain ads, and alternative adult publications are going to contain alternative adult ads!

If I had young children, I wouldn't let them out of my sight because there are far worse evils lurking in this world than a black-and-white ad for an escort hidden in the back of a newspaper. Christ almighty, most of the ads don't even have pictures!

I hope this woman also took time out of her prissy day to write letters to every television station, film studio, music industry executive and sales and marketing firm who have showcased or promoted transgendered people (while she let her children roam around wild and unattended), because I would rather have her wasting her time writing crappy, empty letters like the one she wrote to you than filling the minds of a young generation with prejudice and intolerance.

» Elle Ryker

Best support ACTRA

Screenwriter William Goldman famously wrote about Hollywood: "Nobody knows anything." I was therefore surprised at Kristian Gravenor's claim of having figured out why there are currently fewer American films being made in Montreal than we've grown accustomed to in recent years ["Lights, Camera, Inaction," Kristian Perspective, June 17]. As an actor working in English here, I feel the direct result of this downturn, but as an elected official at ACTRA, I find his reasons for it inaccurate and under-researched.

First of all, the APFTQ did make waves this winter, but a quick, informal survey of top U.S. studio executives done recently by our staff confirms that their antics haven't been a determining factor in where the Americans decide to shoot. The rising Canadian dollar is more of a disincentive to locate north of the border because it directly affects the producers' bottom line. It's always about the money. That's why those blockbusters come here in the first place. It's just prohibitively expensive to shoot behemoths like The Sum of All Fears or The Day After Tomorrow in L.A.

Second, there was no actors' strike in 2001, unless you're referring to the SAG/AFTRA commercials strike in the U.S., which actually brought more work to Canada. ACTRA has worked hard to maintain industry stability by always engaging in good-faith negotiations with producers in a timely and professional manner.

Also, I object to the term "procedural union hassles" used to describe ACTRA's policies governing the hiring of performers from outside our jurisdiction. Canadian actors are on a par with their peers in any country in the world in terms of talent and professionalism. If we didn't protect our members, their work opportunities would dry up quickly. Besides, if performers here weren't given preference of engagement on U.S. shoots, Canadians would never know that we had fine actors in this country. This is because the only way they get to see them anymore is in Hollywood movies and TV shows, since indigenous films have extremely limited access to U.S.-controlled movie screens in Canada, and our homegrown television prospects have been in a steady decline since 1999, when the CRTC relaxed their Canadian content rules to allow cheaper (read "reality") programming to replace fictionalized drama. If this is "asking for too much" then what would you have us do? Should we encourage all our members to move to Los Angeles and let the crippled, confused, underdeveloped yet still determined Canadian film and TV industry die a natural death?

Finally, anybody who knows anything about the movies knows that a good picture starts with a good script, and a lot of the films mentioned in the column didn't. They started as a vehicle for a star, as a genre picture, a special effects concept, a religious conceit, or all of the above combined. The point is, you can't blame Montreal for a bad Hollywood script.

So, while trying to formulate a theory about why Hollywood films made here "consistently suck," I would suggest it might be more helpful and insightful to get another perspective on a complex and volatile industry, I would suggest Gravenor give ACTRA Montreal a call.

» Matt Holland, President, ACTRA Montreal

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