I’ve been asking myself why I made my film’s main character a man (well, he’s an alien, but he’s in a man’s body). Nothing against men, just all my other scripts are from a woman’s perspective.

I’ve been interrogating this in myself because every time I think of changing him out of the masculine perspective, the story loses its grip for me.

For me, it doesn’t work without this detail.

It’s a story about a man becoming very human, and feeling very deeply and complicatedly and unabashedly and without resolution.

He and his female counterpart have no sexual chemistry, no hint of romance. They’re just two people meeting each other where they are.

And then I was reading bell hooks this morning and she offered this in the chapter about pop culture (full quote below): “there needs to be more feminist work that specifically addresses males.”

And I thought, oh.

And in this chapter, hooks calls up Good Will Hunting as a positive framework of masculinity, so I rewatched the scenes that I haven’t seen in like 27 years and again thought, oh.

So I think I’ve found a new layer to investigate in this script.

Are there any other literary or cinematic depictions that come to your mind which critically consider progressive masculine identities within the struggle of patriarchy?

Would love to think more on this.