TICKED OFF TRANNIES
WITH KNIVES

is playing New York City’s
TRIBECA Film Festival this weekend.

A group of transgender women are violently beaten and left for dead. After regaining their consciousness the violated vixens turn deadly divas and with their new-found confidence and courage, slice their way to vengeance.

They say any publicity is GOOD PUBLICITY! For those not paying attention, there’s been quite the firestorm in recent weeks surrounding Dallas filmmaker Israel Luna’s Ticked-Off Trannies With Knives and its inclusion in the Tribeca Film Festival.

Back in March, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation issued a “call to action” that the film be removed from the line-up because: “The film, its title and its marketing misrepresent the lives of transgender women and use grotesque, exploitative depictions of violence against transgender women.” To which Tribeca responded: GLAAD had its chance.

Luna told the Dallas Voice he was “puzzled” by the furor and that the low-budget, shot-in-Dallas-in-18-days film is nothing more than his homage to grindhouse cinema a la Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez: “We were just playing around and someone said I should do this with drag queens. That would be so much fun.”

Did GLAAD even see the film??

Krystal Summers, one of the stars of the comedy, has now weighed in on the debate. In a statement, the actor writes:

I am a transgender woman and one of the lead actors in “Ticked-Off Trannies With Knives.” Our film does not promote hate or violence against transgender women. It is not a documentary, but a work of fiction and a revenge fantasy. I would never partake in a project that made light of the appalling acts of hate that we, as transgender women, encounter nearly every day. I urge you not to judge the film based on a trailer, hearsay or the recent statements from GLAAD, which received a copy of our film in February, and for weeks, supported our filmmakers. In fact, GLAAD representatives advised our film’s producer, director and cast on how to describe our film to people. The transgender community is always asking that people not judge us by our exterior and take the time to look deeper – I hope that you will do the same with our film.

 

Perhaps the only marketing mistake with the film was using the real names of real victims. The complaints stem from the trailer’s mentioning by name murder victims Angie Zapata and Jorge Mercado. Says Luna in a statement, he did that to bring a “disturbing reality to my film about transgender violence.”

Q Cinema , the gay and lesbian film fest in Fort Worth, announced Ticked-Off Trannies would play there in June — its first screening down here following its Tribeca bow. But it’ll be marketed with a different trailer. The New York Times reported that Luna has deleted the names of the real-life dead: “It seems that the association between their brutal stories and the revenge/thriller content of the film in its entirety, has been difficult to connect,” he says.

I just got back from Dallas, and everyone was buzzing about the film! Israel has been busy doing interviews the last few days in New York. Everyone is New York has been buzzing about the movie!

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*On the eve of the world premiere of Ticked-Off Trannies With Knives at the Tribeca Film Festival, director Israel Luna announced Thursday that he would blur out some letters in the controversial film’s title treatment and many marketing materials effectively immediately, a decision reached with input from Academy Award–winning Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black. This was done because the word TRANNY is found so offensive by many.

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