'Cece's Interlude' Hits The Beacon With a Mockumentary on a Trans Woman, Viral Fame, and Control

Tee Jaehyung Park: You're the baby.

Alsea Diana: That's awesome. Because I feel like, of everyone who's done a Q & A or talked after the movie or whatever, no one has come from the angle of "…and I really identified with the baby."

TP: It's kind of a long story, but to nail it down, when I was writing the movie that was, I think, the lowest point of my life so far. I was going through a lot, so I was obsessively listening to Drake. That year, I hit 0.05% of the top Drake fans, according to Spotify. It was really unhealthy.

AD: From the beginning, that was a really important part of it. I'm a big fan of mockumentaries and bad found-footage horror movies. They're a pleasure of mine, and, in general, what I feel makes good mockumentaries that use the form in a way that genuinely contributes to the story being told, they're ones that highlight and lean into the in-universe logic of the fictional film being made.

If it's coming from a perspective of, this is Cece's story told through the mockumentary format, that just feels like a low-budget filmmaking crutch. Where, if it's coming from this angle of this is a character, Sophie-Anne, telling this story, to use the classic This Is Spinal Tap as an example. 

This movie is not supposed to be, like, this raw, representation-style piece of art. It's supposed to be very nuanced and interrogative of a lot of different things, in particular, agency in all forms. Not just bodily agency, but agency over one's image, agency over one's story, and how all of those things play together. It also allows us to get a lot of cynical jokes of our own off.

Also, one joke that no one ever catches is the title card at the very beginning that says it's funded by the Trans Narrative Funds and the Center for Asian Voices. Neither of those are real. The joke is supposed to be that Sophie-Anne got a bunch of grant money for trans stories and Asian stories — [even though] she is a white woman — to tell this predatory story about Cece.

TP: Not really — maybe a little bit. I'm not a trained actor. This movie came about because I knew I wanted to make my first feature no matter what, so I kind of built from that framework where it's a mockumentary because I have no money. The mockumentary format cuts out all the technical aspects and brings the cost down. From there, I was like, maybe I should act in it also because then I don't have to hire an actress. I go through a lot in the movie, so I kind of figured the best and cheapest way to get this done is if I just do it.

TP: I don't want to get into too much detail about the lowest part of my life, but I do feel like it was pretty significant, and I knew I had to get it out of my system. A big part of it was I wanted an avenue to be in front of my people. After a while of me inviting my friends to come hang out with me to talk about how sad I am or whatever, no one wanted to do that. So maybe I made a movie to get all of these feelings out of myself. And I do feel a lot better now. A big part of the movie is also that I wanted to make a movie about filmmaking.

TP: It's not that specific realm, but I was thinking a lot about reality TV and tabloid culture. 16 and Pregnant, Teen Mom, Farrah Abraham were all on the mood board. There's five pages of just collage of all these shitty tabloid images of 17-year-olds who are pregnant. That's so crazy to imagine. You're a kid, and then there's like, millions of people watching you. That was a big inspiration. And also, I watched a lot of Jerry Springer-type shows with trans women who get into various shenanigans. Because I imagine they are early lolcows, almost. It's — I'm laughing, but like, wow, I feel terrible doing that. So that kind of makes you interrogate yourself as a viewer and that's kind of the experience that we wanted to mimic with this movie.

AD: I feel very comfortable saying Jerry Springer is 10 times more ethical of a filmmaker and journalist than Sophie-Anne. There's so much more empathy from Jerry Springer than Sophie-Anne [laughs].

AD: That's like, the tension, right? It's like the Jerry Springer thing is, like, you're approaching things from this very outwardly exploitative way. But then he would always wrap the episodes up in this very empathetic way. He would do this weird, exploitative thing with a trans woman, and then at the end lecture the audience about how the humanity of this person is important, and this saga should resonate with all of us. Whereas Sophie-Anne is the opposite. She's approaching it from this [perspective] that's supposed to be woke and validating and liberal-ally kind of way and then by the end…

TP: That nightlife-y scene, I guess, that's just kind of what we're in. That kind of came more naturally.

AD: I feel like it feeds into the broader themes of agency and representation and—

TP: Image making!

AD: Yeah — and how, specifically trans women these days are kind of forced to do that. Almost every trans woman you meet has some sort of public-facing element that's supposed to support their survival. It's this evolution, you could say, of the trans-women-being-relegated-to-sex-work thing where so many trans women support themselves with OnlyFans. They support themselves with these nightlife things that are usually tied to economies of sex and drugs and entertainment that are not always the most supportive and healthy to what that person actually needs, but are what their survival depends on.

TP: We're doing this theatrical run on our own. We don't have a distribution company or anything like that. It has been hard, but it's been really fun because that means that we have to find the theaters on our own. … It feels super personal to set this up with small theaters around the country. And then being there in person and seeing everyone who wants to watch this movie, that's very underground. People are still coming and enjoying it. … It's been really special.

AD: It's been so nice to connect with other indie filmmakers in different scenes and build what feels like pure relationships. In a way that's harder to come by in the film world than in the DIY music scene or whatever, to be able to build those types of community connections with theaters, with other filmmakers, with audiences in different communities.