No Ordinary Man

A documentary by Aisling Chin-Yee and Chase Joynt. Streaming on VIFF Connect from Friday (April 9) to May 6.

There’s a lot of talk about the importance of representation on screen, but No Ordinary Man sets out to vividly capture the emotional impact of recognizing aspects of one’s own story in the life of another.

The documentary profiles Billy Tipton, an American jazz musician active from the '30s to the '70s who was outed as a trans man upon his death in 1989.

Tipton’s story quickly became a prurient tabloid fixture. His widow and adopted children, previously unaware their loved one was trans, were grilled about intimate family details on daytime TV. He also became a cult figure among trans and queer people.

No Ordinary Man covers the main biographical points of his life (though his music gets short shrift) with help from archival footage, but mainly trans historians and Tipton admirers including Marquise Vilsón, Susan Stryker, C.Riley Snorton, and Thomas Page McBee.

Although Tipton’s life has been documented—thoroughly at times, but often insensitively—his voice has been largely absent.

To suggest what it might have been like to be closeted and trans in decades past, writer Amos Mac and the directors hold auditions with trans actors for re-enactments.

Not unlike Kitty Green’s Casting JonBenet or Robert Greene’s Bisbee '17, the filmmakers chronicle the recreation process in order to tease out greater emotional truths, but also material realities that persist. The scenes of the actors discussing what resonated are poignant and telling.

It’s an increasingly familiar yet effective documentary conceit that makes No Ordinary Man as much about the present as the past.