TIFF24: J Stevens & Breton Lalama Talk “Really Happy Someday”
This review was originally posted on Film Obsessive.
Who are we when our voice does not match up with our image of ourselves? It’s a dilemma that many people face, but even more so when your voice is your livelihood. In director J Stevens’ Really Happy Someday, premiering at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, Z (Breton Lalama) is a transman at a crossroads. He has dreams of making it on Broadway, but since starting testosterone, his voice is not what it once was. Now, he must figure out how to return to the thing that he loves.
Before the premiere of Really Happy Someday, lead actor and co-writer, Breton Lalama, and director and co-writer, J Stevens, sat down with Film Obsessive’s News Editor, Tina Kakadelis, to talk about their chance meeting, their personal definition of representation, and their dream musical theater role. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Film Obsessive: Hey, J and Breton! I want to start with how you both met each other. I read that it was just a chance encounter on the street which sounds fascinating. So what street? And is there a plaque immortalizing this meeting?
Breton Lalama: (laughs) Maybe on Monday [after the premiere].
J Stevens: Erected on the corner. It’s right by the CTV Building. I was there yesterday, and I was like, this is where we met. We do owe it a little bit to my partner, who also is the editor on this film, Perrie Voss, because she had started following Breton on Instagram. Or they had started following each other. One day she goes, I think you should follow this person, Breton, like the crackers on Instagram I think you would like them. So I knew of Breton. And then, yeah, one day we were both on our way to work in an area of the city we’re not normally in. I was walking across the street to an edit session and we talked for 45 seconds. The rest is history. That was Breton’s 1 year on testosterone anniversary. He posted a bunch of stories about his vocal transition and I just was like, Whoa, this is such a nuanced element of a story that’s like super interesting to me as a filmmaker and a storyteller. Something I thought we hadn’t seen before. Then, I just DM’d Breton I said, hey, any chance you would want to make a feature film with me co-write it and star in it? We had met for 45 seconds, and I had never watched a single clip of Breton acting before, but I didn’t care. I was like, this person’s sparkly.
Breton Lalama: I opened my phone, and I remember I had had a talent crash on Jay forever, and just wanted to be in this person’s orbit, like, socially and professionally. I saw this message, and I I said out loud, what the fuck? It was a big yes, for me. It really did feel super kismet, like one of those things of time and place. I was working at Soul Pepper and I liked to bike to work along the water, but it was super windy that day, so I randomly ended up going a different way. Then, the stop light stopped, and this person crossed the street What if the light hadn’t stopped then? What if it wasn’t windy? Truly, it is one of those stories.
Yeah, you need to make like a Sliding Doors remake about it.
Breton Lalama: (laughs) Yeah, let me know.
J Stevens: (laughs) We’ll put it in the works.
You shot the film over the course of a year, which, logistically, sounds like a bit of a nightmare. Can you talk a little bit about the logistics, and then maybe some unexpected positive or negative side effects of getting to shoot that long for this character’s journey.
J Stevens: It was pretty clear to Breton and I from the start that it was the only way to make this film. We knew we wanted it to represent a period of time, so trying to do it and fake it in a couple of weeks like you normally would have to do with a film felt wrong to both of us. We weren’t exactly sure how long it was gonna take us, but we were like, how about every couple of months we come back and shoot more of this story?
We had an outline script. From the beginning, we really knew how the movie was gonna begin, how it was gonna end, and then thought we knew where we were gonna go in the middle. We kept it that way so that we could stay open to what we were learning, both as filmmakers and just in our own journeys. We knew that if we completely flushed the script out that we would be more precious about it and probably not be willing to make big changes. We stayed really open, but it did mean that we were in development, pre-production, production, post production all at once because we were editing as we went. It could be a lot at times. That’s for sure. We were a small team, so I was also doing a lot of the producer roles like emails with actor and stuff like that. It was a lot all at once, but I’m so glad that we did it in that way, and I think it’s a stronger film because of it.
I so love working with Breton because he’s like an open book, and I remember the script greatly changed for one portion of it because he just sent me this voice note one day about being frustrated with where he was at, and not being where he thought he was going to be months into this filming. Then I was like, I think we need to put this in the film.
Breton Lalama: Yeah, you don’t know how your voice is gonna change. Everyone’s is different. There’s a little more starting to come out now about trans men and vocal transition, but when we were doing it, there was really nothing except stories we had from other community members who’d been there. I had hopes and dreams and I also had expectations based on what I’d heard from other Trans guys. And it didn’t happen that way.
I’m coming up to three and a half years now on testosterone, and, in the last 6 months, my voice has settled into a place where I can work professionally. For some guys that happens in two years or a year and a half. It was really tricky and vulnerable to not be in control of that. I’m so glad J allowed the openness and the space for that to get captured in real time, because I think that’s what you need to see when you’re there. The fact that is that it’s awful and it’s gonna be okay.
Breton, the film does follow a bit of your actual life and J mentioned the voicemail you sent. How do you balance keeping your personal life private and not necessarily putting it on the screen? Or, do you feel like for this specific experience, the personal and the private just blend together out of necessity for other people?
Breton Lalama: That’s a really funny thing that keeps coming up. A lot of people think it’s a doc and it’s not. It’s all scripted. I am very different from Z. Obviously, we’re both trans guys and we’re both navigating our voices. For me, I never find a character or create a character. It’s always going to some compartment of myself and really expanding that part. You go into the angsty corner and really put down roots there for a minute.
I think there was great catharsis in getting to really inhabit this struggle honestly because it made it feel like everything that I was going through was worthwhile. I was saying to J the other day, I realized I don’t really have any memories from early transition except filming. I think that says a lot. I think it was a really hard time and getting to be in those states vulnerably with someone I so loved and trusted, knowing that it was all for a reason really helped me get through it.
As far as keeping a line between me and character, I think that’s just a constant kind of practice of making boundaries for yourself. When you’re an actor, you gotta have little practices around how to turn off the character at the end of the day.
Courtesy of TIFF
J Stevens: I just want to add one thing. The film was inspired by things that have happened in our lives, but it is a fictionalization. The characters are fictionalized and we would purposely remove situations that felt too close and change them. I was like Breton. I never want you to look at this after the fact and go like, oh, this is too close. We definitely made sure to put some separation there.
Breton Lalama: I’ve never yelled at my vocal teacher. (laughs) I don’t think maybe she would correct me on that. But yeah, it very much is a character. I understand how it feels like it could not be fictionalized. I think we both perceive that, as a as a great compliment.
J Stevens: Yes, I think it’s a testament to our actors and their performances.
I thought it was really interesting that your main inspirations were Beach Rats, Fish Tank, and Rat Catcher, none of which I would put in the same sentence as musical theater. Can you talk a little bit about blending the maximalism of what most people think of musical theater with these much more intimate stories from a director’s point of view?
J Stevens: I think it’s a sneaky musical movie. Or it’s like a musical movie for non musical lovers. I am a musical nerd. RENT is how I realized I was gay because I saw Maureen and Joanne kiss. I’m obsessed with musicals. To have “On My Own” [from Les Misérables] in this film is like…I still watch it, and I go, really?! They gave us the rights? I’m shocked and so excited.
For me, it was about observing this character. It was important for it to just feel observational, intimate, but to just make it about the honesty of the struggle and the voice versus a big performance number. If the music felt right for the story, that’s when we were putting it in.
In 2020, J, you directed a short film that I had previously seen and then it was so fun to connect the dots. Cons and Pros, right? You described the short as “heist cinema,” and the way that you’re talking about “On My Own” feels like you consider it to be a heist as well. There’s something that’s still with where we are in terms of representation and diversity, that queer and trans stories just inherently feel little bit of like heist cinema, in a way.
J Stevens: What an interesting comparison! I would never put those two together. I love it. I don’t know if I think of Really Happy Someday as a heist, but I think of it as sneaking into people’s homes and changing their perceptions. How do we Trojan horse this? This film, with its logline, doesn’t really Trojan horse the queerness and the transness, but I hope in the approach that it just like takes the guard away that a lot of people can have when when they’re watching content they might have different views on. With Slow Pitch, I made a ridiculous mockumentary about a queer, slow pitch team, because I was like people won’t even realize that they’re watching this all-queer, mainly female, but also some trans characters. I love that aspect of it. Not necessarily heisty, but also you have to get a bit scrappy when you’re dealing with lower budgets and maybe that’s where the heist feeling seeks seeps through.
Courtesy of TIFF
A question for both of you going back to representation. It’s this word that we throw around all the time, and I feel like its definition has become just like a checkbox, not necessarily something meaningful. What does representation mean to both of you personally? What is something that you keep in mind when you are telling these honest stories that are good, genuine representation?
Breton Lalama: Just coming in with the loaded questions, Tina. I love it, thank you. To me, representation means just being a guy, doing a job. It means not having to be representative of a community. That’s an impossible burden for anyone to handle. It means just getting to show up like anyone in a majority gets to show up to their job and do the thing. That’s what it means.
Physically, I actually found a note in my notes app from several years ago. I was coming home from some night shoot, and the note said, “it is exhausting being the stand in for what you stand for.” I saw that and I was like, damn little boy. Representation means showing up to set with a nervous system that isn’t on high alert which allows you to do better work. That actually allows you to tell the truth. The irony of it is, it’s really hard to authentically represent your truth when you are the only example of that in your workspace.
I say this a lot, but I think humans are the stories we tell ourselves and we can only tell ourselves stories that are in our kind of collective lexicon. So in that sense, to me, representation means allowing people to kind of shift the horizon line of what they think is possible for themselves and for each other.
J Stevens: I so feel that. For me, what I think about when I’m writing something or directing something, is if the viewer that will feel seen in watching the film. I don’t make it for anyone else. I think this film has universal appeal because everyone can understand what it is to fight to be the authentic version of yourself.
I keep the viewer in mind of like, who will feel less alone because of my work? Who will feel like tomorrow is possible because they’re watching this? That’s what I try to put at the forefront of it and not worry about broad representation. Because you can’t. You just have to tell the singular story and approach it from that place.
That was beautifully said, both of you. I know it’s a it’s a hard question. So I’m gonna go easy now. Your screening is tomorrow. Do you have your outfits picked out? Are you ready? Are you excited? Tell me all your feelings about it.
Breton Lalama: (laughs) What kind of gay would I be if I didn’t have my outfit picked out, Tina? You can quote that.
(laughing) I shouldn’t have asked, I should’ve known.
J Stevens: I may or may not have a spreadsheet.
Breton Lalama: You do?!
J Stevens: Yeah, my partner Perrie and I made a spreadsheet because there’s a lot going on. You think you have enough outfit, then you do it in a spreadsheet, and you’re like, I need four more. But yes, we have tomorrow’s outfit planned and feeling very excited.
That’s awesome. I love a spreadsheet. My last very quick question. Another light one. We’re gonna end on a good note, Breton. I know that you are not the biggest musical theater fan, but…
J Stevens: Oh, Breton loves them! Breton loves them.
Breton Lalama: Okay. I don’t love consuming musicals, but I love certain musicals, and I love them when I’m in them.
courtesy of TIFF
So, for both of you then. What is your dream musical theater role? Gender and age don’t matter.
Breton Lalama: Oh, my God!
J Stevens: Mark in RENT. I want to play Mark in RENT.
That was also a dream of young teenage me as well, so I get it.
Breton Lalama: Oh, God! My mind is racing.
Hardest question of the day. I know, I’m so sorry.
Breton Lalama: Next to Normal. I’m drawing a blank. The main guy.
Oh, Aaron Tveit’s role?
Breton Lalama: Yes, honestly, anything Aaron has played, I probably want to play. I would die to play Fiero or Bach in Wicked. Genuinely, I could just talk about this for hours.
It’s Jamie fromThe Last 5 Yearsfor me.
J Stevens: My dream.
Man, the song from The Last 5 Years…I’m drawing a blank. The one about him being mad that he’s married.
Breton Lalama: (singing) Hey, kid, good morning.
No, not that one. The faster paced one.
Breton Lalama: Oh, where he’s talking about his hand?
Yes! “A Miracle Would Happen!” When I sing that song in the car, I’m a star.
J Stevens: I’m such a star in my car. No one else needs to hear it, though. I also just need to put this out there, and now that she’s the lead of Wicked, it’s harder, but to direct Cynthia Erivo, I think I would perish. I saw her in The Color Purple on Broadway. I just bawled. I need to put it into the universe. Cynthia Erivo, I want to work with you.
Breton Lalama: Me too!
And I can’t wait to interview all of you when you do this project.
J Stevens: Great! You can come on set. We’ll do it and it’ll be great.
Well, thank you both so much. Congratultations on the movie, both of you. It’s it’s really lovely.
J Stevens: This was so fun. Thank you!
Breton Lalama: Yeah, have a great day!
Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Letterboxd, and YouTube.