One of the cuts
I made you sit through
was probably 3 hours long.
Hi, my name is Sam Feder
and I'm the director and co-producer of Disclosure.
My name is Laverne Cox.
I'm the executive producer of Disclosure
and here's what was left on the cutting room floor.
The more you see trans people being supported
and loved in film and television,
you know, the more it will endear you
to make sure that the trans people in your life,
you know, are supported and loved
and uplifted to affirm their humanity.
There's so many amazing things that I'm devastated
that are not in the final cut of Disclosure.
You know we were able to trim a lot of scenes down
but some scenes would really lose the impact
by trimming them down, and this one scene comes to mind
that we had to get rid of entirely.
where we looked at 3 episode arc in All in the Family.
I feel like I have to say that Norman Lear
did such, and continues to do, such groundbreaking television.
And he tackled a number of progressive issues on his show
including sexual orientation and gender.
There's a character named "Beverly Lasalle"
who Archie Bunker meets in his taxi,
she's choking and Archie gives her
mouth to mouth resuscitation.
Oh I'm Beverly Lasalle, is your husband home?
Mr. Bunker saved my life this morning.
Oh! You're the one!
Well come on in!
Beverly was in Archie's cab and choked or something
and he gave her mouth to mouth resuscitation
and then she comes to thank him.
Are you in show business?
Yes.
I'm a female impersonator.
She says "Mr." and she identifies as a female impersonator,
she identifies that her profession is as such.
And Edith doesn't actually understand what that means.
Who can imitate a female better than a lady?
And Archie comes out and they talk
and then just in this really kind of weird moment–
Why don't you call me "Mr."
The, sort of, trope of the wig coming off for the big reveal
and the superous laughter from the audience,
was one way that sort of,
folks disclosed,
in least in films, I don't know if that ever happens
like that in real life.
You never know, life is strange.
You never know.
It may be that has happened in real life somewhere.
But it's definitely happened a lot on camera.
That moment, to disclose who she really is.
In that context, was meant to be a joke
and it was also meant to shock Archie
and Archie Bunker was a bigot, across the board.
The interesting about it, that Nick says just so beautifully,
is that it feels like they kinda got you know,
trans women, drag queens and female impersonators confused.
While typical of its time,
I think that the show was a little confused
about whether or not Beverly was a drag queen
or a female impersonator or a trans woman.
What really mattered was that, she was a character
audiences loved.
To me you are like a sister,
no I mean brother, oh well, both rolled into one.
What I loved about this clip
is what Zackary Drucker said about it.
And I know something's good when I am like,
"Damn why didn't I think of that!"
It's ultimately about,
"Does a trans person deserve to live?"
Cause' there's a moment where Meathead says
"Would you have saved 'him' if you knew that 'he' was a guy?"
And that becomes a question right?
Dumb question because I didn't know.
Yeah, but if you had known what would you have done?
That's so troubling and so condescending
to be like this man is in a position
where he's deciding if the trans person should live or die.
Yes, yes, all right!
I would of saved the man, yes!
Even if I'd've known he was a trans person,
but in that case I would've blew into him through my hat.
But that a straight white man, cis white man,
gets to be the arbiter of our existence,
just like, stopped me in my tracks and it was just like
"Woah."
That layer that Zackary brought to it,
and that's like that this trans way of seeing that
is really meaningful.
We have all these sort of, guttural reactions
and we know something doesn't feel right
but sometimes we don't always have the framing
and that was one of those moments.
It's like I knew that the sort of conflation
of trans-ness and female impersonation and drag
didn't feel right and I knew that the fact
that she died didn't feel right.
Unfortunately, falling back into this
trope of tragedy for trans characters–
I mean everything was going so good for him
and then somebody had to kill him.
Yeah just because he was different.
Beverly is murdered in a mugging.
It's just, it's really sad when she dies you know,
Edith's performance is stunning and it's beautiful,
but she dies.
But she dies.
The way I feel today,
I may not go to church
ever.
Even in a comedy.
You know there were so many gems,
so many beautiful stories,
I mean we collected I think over 600 television titles
and over 400 film titles.
There's so much material and so many voices
of so many people that we weren't able include.
I would've loved to included more documentaries
because in the same way that the talk shows
and the reality TV are in constant dialogue
with film and television.
I think documentaries are as well.
I think they all give signals to each other
of how to talk about trans lives,
and as much as Hollywood has done a disservice,
I think there are a lot of documentaries
that have as well.
Just this idea of ethnography and this idea of like
the filmmaker not having a perspective.
Now we're critical of that
but I think for a really long time
people sort of assumed that like,
the documentarian could be sort of neutral.
Now we understand that that's not a thing really.
But I think that,
the levels and the levels of exploitation, it's deep.
The way trans people have been represented on screen
have suggested that we don't exist.
And yet, here I am.
Disclosure is now on Netflix.