On January 13th, 2022 I awaited the Brown Line train on my way to work. I’ve been burnt out on music lately and haven’t desired to listen to any of my usual favorites, so instead, I chose a podcast. I’m no stranger to podcasts, but I have only one or two I listen to frequently. Wanting to venture out I picked a podcast that I’d never listened to before and thought I might enjoy. I settled on The ION Pod, a conversational podcast between two formerly-anonymous bros who talk about the various happenings in the New York film scene. The episode I listened to was entitled “Ep 21: Actors with Betsey Brown” from February 2022, an episode I chose specifically because I’ve seen Betsey in two other films that I enjoyed and wanted to hear her talk about the film that, at the time, she was in the process of making. That film is Actors.
After listening to the podcast for a bit I decided to go onto Betsey’s Instagram page, just to see what a girl like her was up to. To my surprise, the link in her bio was for the Music Box Theatre here in Chicago (one of my favorite theaters in the city), and to my greater surprise, they were going to be screening Betsey Brown’s Actors for one night only. For those not in “the know,” this came as a shock because Betsey has yet to find a distributor for Actors and it has only been shown at select screenings at select theaters, primarily in New York and Los Angeles. Knowing this might be the only time I, or anyone for that matter, may be able to see the film I snatched up two tickets for my boyfriend and myself. To be honest, I was incredibly excited to see this movie. Flashforward a mere three days and it wasn’t until I saw a bit of scattered Twitter drama that I found out my screening of Actors at the Music Box was canceled. I checked my email, and, much to my chagrin what I saw online was true: Actors would not be screened at the Music Box, nor would it be rescheduled, and if I wanted my full refund I’d have to call the box office. Well, I called the box office just now and it went straight to voicemail, so with no movie and no money, all I have left is to be angry.
Betsey Brown isn’t afraid of transgressive filmmaking, and perhaps Actors was destined to stir up a bit of controversy. I’ve seen Betsey perform in two other films: Assholes, directed by her brother Peter Vack, about a pair of recovering addicts who fall in love and relapse on amyl nitrate poppers only to (spoiler alert!) unleash a demon out of their anus, and The Scary of Sixty-First directed by Dasha Nekrasova, a film about two girls who inadvertently move into an apartment formerly owned by Jeffrey Epstein and fall down a rabbit hole of conspiracy (also, incidentally, one of my favorite films of 2021). Betsey is an indie-film actress, she hasn’t yet become beholden to the sanitizing power of mainstream Hollywood, so she’s allowed to take risks, she’s allowed to make things that push boundaries, and clearly, she has. Betsey’s main collaborator is her brother whom I’ve already mentioned, Peter Vack. While Betsey is newer to the acting game, Peter has been acting since 1996 and has been featured in things like As The World Turns, Homeland, and the 2019 psychological horror film starring Octavia Spencer Ma. Peter not only directed Assholes, but stars opposite Betsey in Actors, and it is their relationship and rivalry that makes up the crux of the film.
Per the description for Actors on Letterboxd: “In this satirical docu-fiction hybrid, actor-filmmaker Peter Vack (Assholes) decides to re-identify as female to maintain relevance in the art and entertainment world. This horrifies Peter’s sister (writer-director Betsey Brown) and makes her spiral deep into a mania of sibling rivalry as she desperately searches for her own artistic voice. A provocative cautionary tale of white cis male fragility and the lengths some will go to keep their seat at the table.” Based on the description alone, you might see how this film could ruffle some feathers. The idea that someone would transition genders for attention alone isn’t an easy idea to get into, but I don’t think it’s supposed to be easy, or even a fun one. Despite the transgressive nature of the film’s premise, I still have a bit of a hard time coming to terms with the backlash the film received, the controversy surrounding it, and (christ almighty) how the film got labeled “fascist.”
Note: Now before I embark on this next part, I want to make it abundantly clear that I have not seen this movie, barely anyone in the whole world has seen this movie. This is not a Disney movie that has gotten a wide release across the globe, this is not even an A24 indie flick that has gotten a limited release in select theaters across the country. This film has been shown at some festivals in other countries, and at incredibly few screenings, as I said earlier, in New York and LA. The amount of people who have actually seen this movie is probably somewhere, and I’m being very generous here, around 1000, but probably closer to 500. There is not so much as a trailer for this movie, there is only a written premise and maybe three promotional stills from the film available for the general public. I say this all to stress that this is not a movie 99.99% of people have seen, including myself.
The dramatis personae of the Actors controversy would perhaps not even begin were it not for Mike Crumplar, AKA “Crumps.” Crumps is a fellow, albeit far more consistent and successful, Substack-er and writer, whose writings mainly focus on the Downtown New York art scene, one that he views himself as ideologically opposed to. While I wouldn’t consider myself a “fan” of Crumps per se, I have read some of his more popular articles, and I would be lying if I said that his commitment to Substack writing wasn’t partly responsible for my own measly corner of the internet’s existence. One of his most infamous pieces is his April 2022 review of Betsey Brown’s Actors, a review that, even after reading it a few times, I still find to be hyperbolic and overdramatic. From my research (almost none at all) it was Crumps himself who catapulted the word “fascist” into popularity in the world of leftist media criticism. In his most popular piece, entitled “My Own Dimes Square Fascist Humiliation Ritual,” he doubles down, nay quadruples down, on his critique of the Downtown New York art scene as fascist, as well as his critique of Actors as such. Funnily enough, Mike Crumplar’s own fascist humiliation ritual was at the hands of Betsey Brown and Peter Vack yet again.
I don’t want to hammer down on Mike Crumplar, he’s not necessarily my “problem,” my issue is with the term he throws around all willy-nilly: “fascist.” Fascist… A big word, “fascism,” doesn’t really conjure up pleasant images, does it? But I suppose, if used in the right context, it conjures up the exact sort of images it’s supposed to. I have been vocal about my distaste for Chicago’s cyclist population (I was literally struck by one just the other day while walking down the sidewalk), and I have, on more than one occasion called them the “Cyclist Mafia.” I’m not an idiot, I don’t call them the Cyclist Mafia for no reason, I call them that to conjure up images of bicycle-riding Italians in suits riding down the streets with lead pipes ready to bash your kneecaps in. In the same way I call the annoying cyclists who purposefully hit me while I walk down the sidewalk the Cyclist Mafia, so too does Mike Crumplar call the members of the Downtown New York art scene, in particular Peter Vack and Betsey Brown, fascists.
The problem with a critique as outlandish as “fascist” is that it accuses you of a myriad of heinous abstractions, but leaves little room for you to dispute. “Oh, you don’t think that Actors is a fascist film? You must be a fascist yourself.” You can argue with plenty of labels put on you, but when someone labels you, and I’m not being hyperbolic here, the art world’s version of Hitler, what is there even to say in return? It’s almost childish the way the word “fascism” gets thrown around in conversations related to Actors and Betsey and Peter’s work because it is just so big a word. Having seen some of their previous work, “politically incorrect,” “inappropriate,” even, and I believe this to be uncharitable, “reactionary” might all be better words to describe the likes of what Betsey and Peter are doing. But to see someone, with their full chest, put the director of an indie film into, again, the same list as fucking Adolf Hitler… well, that’s just laughable.
But we’re nearly a year out from Crumps’ review of Actors, and it’s been five months since his Own Personal Special Hitler Hell Party Extravaganza, or whatever, and now we’re in January of 2023. It’s a new year, I haven’t read a Crumps piece in months, and Actors is finally coming to Chicago for one night only! But there are dreams that cannot be, and there are storms we cannot weather. On January 16, 2022, Twitter user @kyrandwhisper tweeted out an email that they had written to the Music Box Theatre in regards to their programming of Actors. Within the email, kyrandwhisper writes that “[a]s has been well documented by Mike Crumplar,” Betsey Brown and Peter Vack are “fascists” and “anti-trans bigots.” They go on to say that the screening of this movie would lead the theater down a slippery slope to screening Matt Walsh’s anti-trans movie What is a Woman? and Tucker Carlson’s movie about George Soros.
Reactions poured in from both sides, Jane Schoenbrun, indie director of We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, quote-tweeted kyrandwhisper’s post saying, “This movie is transphobic and reeks of violence. I pulled my film from fests that were playing it. Hey @musicboxtheatre this is a bad look,” while former Betsey Brown collaborator and member of the Downtown New York art scene Dasha Nekrasova tweeted “Ridiculous and disappointing that @musicboxtheatre would pull their screening of Actors citing baseless accusations of “transphobia” and “fascism” - shameful lack of integrity and respect for filmmakers.”
As you can see, people on both sides of the issue mentioned transphobia, which I can understand on a surface level given the film’s basic premise, but even in the Crumps review of the film he mentions Betsey saying to him, “Peter’s character is not trans, but a cis man, and that reading it as a trans statement misunderstands the film’s scope.” From my understanding, this film has nothing to do with taking a stance on trans people, but rather a stance on the lengths cisgendered people will go to get attention, including exploiting the trans identity. It’s a critique of the privileged and non-marginalized, not the opposite. It is also interesting to note that, while I do not know if either kyrandwhisper or Jane Schoenbrun have actually seen the film, I was made aware that Jane did publicize the crowdfund for the movie under its original name.
Mike Crumplar himself even got in on the action, replying to user @VlRTUALBOY saying, “If it’s so important that the world sees Betsey’s Actors then she’d release the thing on YouTube and let everyone decide its merits for themselves, none of these venues’ approval necessary[...]” But that’s not really the point, is it? Betsey could very well release the film on YouTube (personally I’d find that a bit déclassé), but why would she? She got her film to be screened for one night only at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago, “Chicago’s venue for independent, foreign, cult and classic films” (their words), and they took that from her based on the words of Mike Crumplar who has deliberately inflated the supposed “harm” this movie could cause by labeling it fascist. Call me crazy, but I don’t think that one screening of an indie movie in one of liberal Chicago’s most liberal neighborhoods is really going to sway anyone’s political compass to move toward the ultra-right.
I didn’t get involved in any tweeting on behalf of Actors. For one because who am I but a disgruntled would-be moviegoer? And also because personally, I feel that the pen that allows me to type two-thousand words is mightier than the pen that only lets me tweet 200 characters. But I am upset. I’m pretty fucking pissed. I don’t know if Actors is transphobic, I don’t know if Actors is violent, I don’t even know if Actors is fascist because I won’t get to see the damn movie. Instead of trusting the very small group of people who would actually get to see the movie to make their own decisions and form their own opinions on the film, the Music Box Theatre has instead allowed for a perhaps even smaller group of people to make a decision on what is and isn’t okay to be seen by the public. And, I’m sorry, but there is some irony in the fact that the ones calling the film fascist are the same ones demanding it to be censored…
I like the Music Box Theatre, or at least I liked it for quite some time. I saw Rocky Horror Picture Show there for the first time live, I saw The Scary of Sixty-First (another film from the dreaded fascistic Downtown New York art scene) there just over a year ago, and only a few months ago I saw Marcel the Shell with Shoes On and opined to my boyfriend at the theater bar about how we should see more movies there. What the cancellation of Actors shows to me is that the Music Box Theatre is actually not Chicago’s premier venue for independent cinema (because what is independent cinema if not boundary-pushing and transgressive?), it’s not the art-house theater it thinks itself to be, and that if you want to make a film that pushes boundaries and might ruffle some feathers, you probably won’t be able to show it at the Music Box, even for one night.
Originally I was planning on making this article a review, my first post of 2023: a review of a film you will probably never get the chance to see in theaters. But Actors won’t be rescheduled, at least not at the Music Box, so now I can only hope that someone else in this big city has the balls to take a chance on a movie that maybe everyone in the whole world might not love or agree with. If all else fails hopefully at least the Music Box will answer the fucking phone so I can get my goddamn refund.
Good day, everyone<3
Ha! I was going to ask if you got your refund.