‘Will & Harper’ Is the Latest Film to Show How Travel Can Help Us See Each Other

This is why we need to bring back Deleted Scenes.

Yeah! There was a lot of comedy that I unfortunately had to cut.

Beer and Pringles aside, what are your travel essentials?

I never eat it normally, but I need beef jerky on a road trip. And gorp: peanuts, raisins, M&Ms. Trail mix.

After that scene at the steakhouse in Amarillo, Texas, we see a form of violence that’s quite unique to the 21st century: online vitriol. I imagine that even before reading the tweets, the hostility was felt in the room. What was it like capturing that?

It was hard. We had let our guard down because we’d primarily been met with acceptance. Sometimes, love. When we went in, we thought “Oh, Will’s going to try to eat a 72-ounce steak in under an hour, this will be a funny adventure.” I didn’t realize they would be put up on a stage. Will surprised Harper with this Sherlock Holmes costume which added to the problem. But showing up in costumes to surprise each other is something they’ve been doing for decades. I was trying to work that into the film and never found an organic way to say it. But it gutted us. I think if you talk to any trans person, when you’re in a space that feels potentially unsafe, it’s like a threat assessment where you start to feel the room is off, which Harper and then all of us felt quickly. We left dinner early, which was when we became aware of the online, or as you said, subterranean hatred that people for whatever reason feel empowered and safe to do.

“Safe” from behind the screen.

Exactly. But it was important to include it. Because that is part of the trans experience. The worst thing I could have done is paint this it’s-all-sunshine-and-rainbows picture, because it’s not. That said, and I think Harper will agree with this, in general we were met mostly with acceptance, and that notion that it’s hard to hate up close was proven true over and over.

I love that line.

I think when we enter a space and look one another in the eye, as Harper once said to me, our resting place is kindness. And I believe that to be true as well.