Enigma is the latest documentary from prolific trans documentarian, Zackary Drucker (The Lady in the Dale, The Stroll) now streaming on HBO Max. It follows the lives of Amanda Lear and April Ashley, two women who got their start at Le Carrousel, a trans and drag cabaret in Paris during the 1950s and 1960s, The documentary covers the ways in which their lives dramatically diverged as they each gained notoriety. April lived a life of openness about her gender history while Amanda has maintained ambiguity about her past. This documentary is a powerful story, archiving trans people’s history across time and cultures, and paying tribute to people and friendships that shape us.
Dana Aliya Levinson, GLAAD’s Associate Director of Entertainment, sat down with director Zackary Drucker to hear the origin of the film, discuss the challenges of its telling, and pull wisdom from these women’s lives to apply today.
(This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.)
Dana Aliya Levinson: How did this documentary come to be and what was your relationship to both Amanda and April Ashley before setting out on this filmmaking journey?
Zackary Drucker: From the very beginning, I moved to New York City the day after I graduated high school. And I had a sense of myself as trans in a deep, internal way. I didn’t know any trans people, I didn’t have the name of a trans person. There were some folks out there in 2001, like Dana International. But Amanda [Lear] was the first person I landed on. The first friend I made in New York was a huge disco music fan, and she was obsessed with Amanda. And when I saw a photograph of her, I was amazed. She was the most beautiful woman in the world. And I hung this picture up on my wall. And very much looked to her as a possibility. And as I embarked on my own journey into womanhood, I learned about so many other legends in our community.
And I realized that Amanda was somewhat anomalous but she was similar in that the majority of women in her generation took a path of [assimilating]. Amanda’s anomalous because in one sense, she is the ultimate 60s girl, icon, girlfriend to numerous rock stars. And so she didn’t necessarily live a very private life. She takes this big swing to put herself out there, and on her own terms.
I came to April much later in the 2000s. Her biography, “The First Lady” was published, [and through it] I learned about Le Carrousel and her mentoring Amanda, which was a delightful discovery to find Amanda in that history. April set the precedent for being unashamed of her history. Her precedent is the one that survives today with pride, with those of us who stand confidently in our truth.
It’s a different path. I would never try to qualify the decisions that people make. But I think ultimately, April, Amanda, Bambi, Dolly, these women kind of encapsulate the myriad ways of surviving trans life in the 20th century. So I think, big picture, the film is sort of about sisterhood. It’s about our predecessors whose shoulders we stand on.
I’m curious to hear more about how all of these women made different choices around disclosure throughout their careers. How did you balance the documentarian’s lens and sensitivity around the fact that one of the two main participants has a less transparent history.
ZD: Delicate is the word for it. I mean, it’s definitely a risky endeavor for sure. And I feel led by complexity, by contradiction, by complex character-driven storytelling. And there are no perfect role models because there are no perfect people.
So I find Amanda extremely relatable and it’s a dubious pursuit for sure. How do you respect somebody while maintaining journalistic integrity? And it’s the place where anyone who self-invents runs up against reality. The details of Amanda’s life are well-documented … So, that part was less worrisome for me, right? And then how she frames it, how she tells her story is something else entirely. Everybody has a different relationship to storytelling. I feel like there’s such a tradition in certain cultures of embellishing, and extrapolating, and Salvador Dali is such an embodiment of that, and it’s very Mediterranean, it’s very Spanish to be like, tell the good story. Who cares if it’s true?
Especially trans women our age and older, it’s like we all know Amandas who are just like, “Oh, no, that never happened.” She’s a type. Her life is so unique in one way, and in another way she is kind of emblematic of women that we know.
One moment that really just cracked me up was when you were showing her all of the photos of her and Peke D’Oslo, where she’s scrolling through the photos that are clearly all of the same person saying, “That’s not me, that’s not me to the Peke ones, and that’s me, that’s me to the Amanda ones.”
ZD: Yes, yes. It was like I was realizing the limits of public versus private. It was fascinating.
The contrast between April Ashley and Amanda Lear, both in real life and in the documentary, is that April Ashley’s career imploded after being outed as trans. And Amanda Lear built her career on the mystique around her gender. She fueled the speculation because she gained from it. What you think that says about culture, navigating visibility and self authorship, especially for trans people.
ZD: Definitely. I mean, Amanda not being tethered to her origin story was very helpful because she really wasn’t responsible to anyone but herself, and she could be completely liberated in creating a persona. She had no responsibility to speak to the larger experience. So I think the hook of the film is you’re so curious about how denial operates in all of our lives, how all of us have something that we fail to recognize while everybody around us is able to see it. That’s what I started to think about in this film. And I’m always looking for the behavioral through-lines. For me, for the people around me, what are the things? We all live with the story that we can live with.
Also, in the cultural milieu of the time both Amanda Lear and April Ashley gained notoriety, I feel like we see some of those same dynamics today. How do you think the culture of fame and celebrity plays into this sort of elevation of, and I think exoticizing of trans people? Is it a cautionary tale in some ways for our time?
ZD: I think the last part of the film where I’m talking to Amanda, I’m learning in real time, which is very exposing because of course everybody’s witnessing it as they watch the movie now. But I realized, “Oh, she’ll never use this word that I’m using,” which is trans. I thought, “Wait, do I have to even use that word?” And now that there’s such an organized effort to disenfranchise us, to reverse rights that have been hard won, can we find a way to shape-shift into the future to potentially let go of the word trans because the right has it locked in their jaws?
We don’t know what the antidote is right now, but we have to find it, and the only way to find it is with creative problem solving. And artists are hardwired to look around the corner and to sometimes see through walls, and the best artists are able to look at what’s coming next.
So how it all plays out today is a great conversation, and I hope that this film unlocks solutions that people think deeply about where we’re coming from and how to counteract dehumanization and to do it with grace, to be as resilient as our predecessors and as brazen as them. I think that’s the challenge.
Of course we’ll never be able to alter the larger container of what’s happening sociopolitically because as we progress, so does the opposition. I think we have to be more coordinated and as strategic as our opposition, and that requires forgiveness. It requires putting small differences aside and accepting each other and accepting our interconnectedness. And I think ultimately the story is about sisterhood. As Morgan Page said [in the documentary], it’s about trans siblings. It’s about strength in numbers.
How do you think that dynamic is reflected around the respectability politics around being trans in the public eye today? Do you think anything’s changed or do you think it’s the same struggle?
ZD: I think sometimes it’s shocking how little things have changed. I haven’t seen that trans people benefit [from celebrity] in the same ways as non-trans celebrities. I think that we are vulnerable to the things that have always been vulnerabilities for minority celebrities. And it takes incredible fortitude to hang onto your sense of self amidst it all with everybody watching.
I think that’s the gag. How pockets of indignation will prevent all of us from moving forward and that humans are on a staggered timeline, and some of us are ostensibly living in the future while others are hanging on to the past. I don’t think April anticipated the consequences of her actions in 1960. She was unashamed of who she was and paid the price. Given an opportunity, you have to wonder if she would’ve taken a different path the way Amanda did. I think that April’s lack of opportunity justifies Amanda taking a different path because it’s a way to frame Amanda’s decision. We’re standing on the shoulders of a giant here and it will take all of us doing this work side-by-side in order to push this forward. I have hope that we’ll get there.
You deal with a lot of complicated characters and complicated lives in your work, many of them thorny trans women. Was there anything in particular about this story as a filmmaker that you felt particularly challenging to convey to the audience?
ZD: Well, I feel like a complicated woman myself. So if anything, these various protagonists unlock something within my own self-conception or my own identity. And complicated women are more interesting and more relatable as well.
I feel like so much of your work is really rooted in trans history and legacy. What can we learn from our elders in this current cultural moment?
ZD: We have to understand our value outside of capitalism and we have to bolster and reinforce each other and that is our survival mechanism. Regardless of who we are, for anybody reading this, our interconnectedness is the silver lining. In instances wherein we don’t know what to do, we can empty out the thoughts, we can just empty ourselves and listen, to receive messages from our predecessors, to receive the survival mechanisms of the past. That’s what I’ve always gotten out of my relationships with elders, that it’s critical to our survival to have intergenerational dialogues and sitting with somebody who’s decades ahead gives you a little peek at what’s to come. And it’s not easy. Life, nobody gets out alive.
This documentary highlights that trans people aren’t new; we’ve always existed. It especially struck me seeing so many elderly trans women gathered all together. I mean, emotionally, I was very moved by that. What do you hope audiences take away from this reminder of where we come from?
ZD: Yeah, I mean, it’s the most moving element. And the lasting impression of the film is these women in their 80s who have stood the test of time, who’ve been themselves against all odds and in many contexts for decades, for 50, 60 years who are still here to inspire us. The simple vision of seeing women in their 80s, just that alone, beyond what they’re saying, that alone just makes you think, “Oh, maybe I’m going to be in my 80s. What if I start living my life with that longevity in mind? What if I started thinking about my life as a long game instead of short-term reward and immediate goals?” What happens when you see your line, your path, way into the future?
So the last question I’ve got is, Zackary, you’re one of the most prolific trans documentarians of our time.
ZD: Oh my God, the lead, the lead-in.
What can we expect from you next and what do you want the world to take away from your work?
ZD: Well, I would be remiss not to say that HBO is a tremendous partner in all of this and that they have taken leaps with me to tell these stories. And without them and their partnership, it wouldn’t be possible. And I feel incredibly fortunate for the support I’ve had in telling these stories and I hope that I will continue to have that vote of confidence from the powers that be. I don’t know exactly what’s next. I’m developing a few different stories that I believe in. And for as long as I walk this earth I will be stepping in service of our community and telling stories along the way. I would very much like to be helpful to reinforce our collective survival and to evolve personally and professionally. I feel like we have our work cut out for us, but we’re up for it. We are made for this moment. We chose to be here. And we’re unprecedented people. They may be unprecedented times, but we’re unprecedented people.
Amen.
Watch the trailer below and stream Enigma on Max today.
