alr

Something Special AKA Willy Milly

Jenni Olson in Conversation with Maria San Filippo
Screening on Film
Directed by Paul Schneider.
With Pamela Adlon, Patty Duke, John Glover.
US, 1986, 35mm, color, 86 min.
French with English subtitles.
Print source: HFA

With an astounding plot premise offering unique pleasures for contemporary LGBTQ viewers, Something Special is a whimsical 80s teen comedy about a girl who becomes a boy. Pamela Adlon (Better Things) stars as Milly Niceman, whose wish to become a boy is fulfilled overnight when she discovers she's grown “a guy's thing down there.” When their parents insist they must now choose between being a boy or being a girl, they wisely quip, "Can't I be both?" After a crash course in maleness, Willy starts at a new high school where, of course, complications ensue. Pamela Adlon (née Segall) is uncannily butch and boyish as Willy/Milly, while Patty Duke and out gay actor John Glover are in fine form as their parents. Briefly released in 1986, Something Special quickly disappeared from view and has been virtually unseen since.

Part of film series

Read more

From the Jenni Olson Queer Film Collection

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

Melville et Cie.

Read more

Psychedelic Cinema

Read more

Hamaguchi Ryusuke, The World as Stage

Read more

Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith

Read more

The Shochiku Centennial Collection

Read more

António Campos and the Promise of Cinema Novo

Read more

Boston Punk Rewound / Unbound. The Arthur Freedman Collection

Read more

The Yugoslav Junction: Film and Internationalism in the SFRY, 1957 – 1988

Read more

The Night Watchman by Natalia Almada