Creature

Director Parris Patton's documentary focuses on Kyle Dean, a shy young North Carolina guy who journeys to the West Coast in a quest to change his gender and become "Stacey Hollywood," the woman he feels he was always meant to be. The most ironic aspect of the whole story is that, despite being embraced by the West Hollywood drag queen community, Stacey is mugged and raped while there; he/she actually seems more accepted by the people of his/her North Carolina community, who are as supportive as they can be given their fundamentalist Christian faith (Stacey's father professes that he'll fight to the death to support Stacey's right to be who she wants, even though he doesn't believe she'll be able to get into Heaven). A clubgoer in "liberal" L.A., meanwhile, equates homosexuality with Satan-worshipping. Patton, who used to direct videos for the Artist Then Known as Prince, has created an interesting document, but it's still an incomplete one. We never do find out if Stacey is successful in attaining the final stage of the sex-change operation, i.e. the actual surgical procedure. One also has to wonder about the mechanics of the relationship between the still-male-at-the-crotch Stacey and her young Latino boyfriend, who professes not to be gay. Watching the time-lapse transformation from Kyle to Stacey is fascinating, especially given that both are good-looking by conventional gender standards. Still, most viewers require a little more substance than the mostly skin-deep imagery provided here.