Documentary filmmaking came serendipitously early in Sally Rubin’s life. While growing up in Boston—“where documentary film was very much kind of in the zeitgeist there,” they say in our interview below—Rubin’s high school offered classes in documentary filmmaking. “I was both creative and an activist and [had] sort of an entrepreneurial spirit, and you need those things, you know, to be a social-issue documentary filmmaker.” This exposure coupled with their coming out as queer at the age of fifteen inspired a curiosity about the people around them and a desire to “use the documentary lens as a way to explore other people’s lives and communities.”
With Mama Has a Mustache Rubin turns their lens inward and into their own community. They are a gender nonconforming documentary filmmaker and parent to a seven year-old daughter, whose friends, incidentally, are also children of people who identify outside of the gender binary. “I’m very engaged with her and her world, and I noticed that she and her friends say both really funny things but also really wise.”
Indeed, Mama Has a Mustache is comprised of audio clips of Rubin’s interviews with children in their community between the ages of five and ten, juxtaposed with clip-art and mixed media animation. The film is undoubtedly a creative triumph in the way it is joyful and intimate, innocent and profound, fun and deeply resonant, shining a light on a community that is currently and disproportionately threatened and hurt by ignorance and harmful legislations across the US, while also embracing the viewer with hope. “Nobody feels like they’re being lectured to [with this film], you know, and there’s some ways we’re sort of not trying to get anything right. It’s really just: what do kids think? Let’s listen to them.”
Before we get into the film, I wonder if you might talk about your own filmmaking journey? Where did it all start for you?
I grew up in Boston where documentary film was very much kind of in the zeitgeist there. WGBH was a major PBS station, so I sort of knew about documentaries. I went to a great high school that had a documentary class, believe it or not. And, yeah, I was already sort of interested in documentary; my dad had brought home a video camera, so I started shooting little versions of nonfiction films from the time I was about 12 years old. And then, during college, I continued my work in documentary, made a documentary thesis film called Throw Like a Girl, which was about the value of sports for girls and women. And then, after that, I started working in documentary film. I got a great job as an associate producer on a frontline show. And after that, I applied to film school, I got my masters at Stanford in documentary film, and then the rest is history. I worked in distribution for a while, then I became a documentary editor, and documentary professor, and, at a certain point along the way, I started to make my own films. And that’s it. I never really did anything else.
You kind of knew early on that this was what you wanted to do.
Yeah, it was a really good fit for me. You know, I was both creative and an activist and [had] sort of an entrepreneurial spirit, and you need those things, you know, to be a social-issue documentary filmmaker. Also, I’m lucky enough to have sort of grown up at a time—and, really, launching my career at a time—in the early 2000s when documentary was just booming. You know, ever since Bowling for Columbine, and even The Blair Witch Project, funnily enough, which was a mockumentary, but you know—and Survivor [and] reality TV was becoming a thing. I think it really helped that that was what I was launching my career [alongside], actually.
What inspired you to make Mama Has a Mustache? More specifically, how did you come up with this approach of interviewing kids?
I came out as queer when I was maybe 15. And I was also becoming a documentary filmmaker around that time, shortly after that, and I was just really curious about people and sort of using the documentary lens as a way to explore other people’s lives and communities that I basically didn’t have access to. And, you know, especially after my last film, Hillbilly, which was really long, really serious, took a lot of money and a lot of years to make, I was just excited to try something totally new. I was ready to finally sort of turn the lens on my own community and experience. And I really wanted to try a genre that I knew nothing about, so not cinéma vérité, not survey or essay-style documentary—just something totally, totally new. And animation was, you know, that piece, so I knew that I wanted to incorporate animation.
I have a seven year old daughter. I’m very engaged with her and her world, and I noticed that she and her friends say both really funny things, but also really wise. And I was interested to explore that, you know, in a film. And, actually, the timing of it worked out because COVID had just hit. So, doing something that was totally animated that was driven only by audio made production a lot easier. I didn’t face any production issues during COVID because I wasn’t in the field at all.
Did you feel any sort of pressure going into and exploring your community? With something that’s so personal and familiar to you, was there any pressure to “get it right” or to say something different? What was it like for you to approach this topic?
Yeah, that’s a good question. I think that’s partly why I sort of, for so many years, waited to go into LGBTQ+ themes in any of my films. And part it was—it wasn’t so much that I felt that I was worried about getting it right as much as so much else had already been done. I was curious about other topics. And I did want to do something new.
With this one, though—you know, I’m 44 now, I’ve developed a thick enough skin over the years of filmmaking that I kind of realized: look, people are going to like your film or they’re not, some people are going to have positive things to say and some people are going to criticize. And I think, as filmmakers, we have to just tell the stories that we’re passionate about and not worry so much about what other people are going to think.
And with this one, I definitely felt that there was a spirit of fun and play that I hoped would carry through to distribution and to the way that the film was received. Nobody feels like they’re being lectured to, you know, and there’s some ways we’re sort of, with the film, not really trying to get anything right. It’s really just: what do kids think? Let’s listen to them. I think that approach took the pressure off.
One thing I loved was the combination of animation and mixed media because it felt very joyful and innocent. How did you settle on this form for the documentary?
I definitely give a huge amount of credit to the film’s director of animation Max Strebel. He’s just a brilliant animator and hugely creative. I gave him so much autonomy. I mean, I had done the audio string-out, my editor Stacy Goldate helped me piece it together, and then, you know, I had some ideas for the approach to the animation. I really liked the idea, on a broad level, of using old media, old clip-art, and old media representations from the 50s and 60s—all those old commercials with those traditional housewives—and then taking those, cutting them up, and turning them on their head, literally putting a mustache on the face of some of those old representations. And then, I wanted it to feel like it was from the kid’s perspective and that you were sort of watching a collage of images that was happening from the kid’s [perspective] rather than what I was growing up [with].
I want to talk about that moment wherein one of the kids is talking about how they feel this freedom in having a transgender parent parent, and you juxtapose the audio with a clip of a kid twirling in a cape in golden hour—it was perfection! That was the moment where my heart broke into a million pieces. It was unexpectedly cathartic. My question is, in your conversations with the kids, what was your overall impression of the knowledge they brought to the table? And was there anything you learned from speaking with them?
I just was blown away. Anytime you go into a film, you have ideas of what people are going to say. And I did think that the kids would be open-minded. Most of the kids in the film were friends or family. That moment there in the sun, that’s my little nephew, twirling on my bed. That was, in fact, golden hour. You’re right.
Yeah, I knew that the kids would say things that were funny. And I knew that they would be, you know, pretty progressive, because these were kids from communities that are already sort of pretty woke around gender identity and parenting. But I did not know, first of all, how creative they’d be. Beatrice [in the film] talks about “MaDad” and draws someone who’s half-mom and half-dad as her impression of a gender nonconforming parent. And I really didn’t, on a visceral level, understand, until I had done the interviews, just how open and free the kids feel around their own gender. I think part of that’s the climate of today. Here we in 2021, and a lot has changed. And I think part of it, too, is that a lot of the kids in the film are really young—the kids are ages five to ten—so they just haven’t taken in too much of the morass that many of us go through within our own gender. To them, the world of genders is still a world of openness and play and exploration and fun.
Just last night, you know, my eight year old nephew—that same little boy who’s twirling on the bed [in the film] was over, and my daughter had pulled out a clip on earring. He grabbed the earring and put it on and he stood in front of the mirror—we have this like ten-foot mirror in my living room—and he just kind of sashayed up to it and he said, “Don’t I look pretty?” And it was so unladen from any, you know, baloney around what he should look like or things he should or shouldn’t say.
How important was it for you to make this film, particularly at a time when legislations across the US are threatening and harming the lives of those who don’t identify within the gender binary?
I definitely was aware of the legislation and the need for the film, although it was driven more by personal motivation and just feeling like: okay, clearly we’re on the cusp of some kind of change. And I wonder, from this place of such major change, what the next generation [thinks], how they’re thinking about gender—that was kind of my initial jumping-off point. It wasn’t until I started to have cuts of the film that I started to think, gosh, you know, maybe this really could help to shift the needle a little bit, especially in some of these states that have these, you know, continually repressive rules around gender. So I would say that social-impact motivation came a little later in the process.
HollyShorts is an incredible platform for indie filmmakers. What does it mean for you to have Mama Has a Mustache screen here?
Well, it’s so funny because I had just been driving by the Chinese Theatre a day before I heard from HollyShorts. I literally—I kid you not—drove by it, I saw it there, and I thought to myself: God, I would kill to have a movie play there, get a film in the Chinese Theatre. I didn’t know HollyShorts screens there. I had submitted and I was waiting to hear back, but I didn’t know that they screen there. So, it’s just a huge and very, very exciting [opportunity] that Mama Has a Mustache, this tiny idea, is going to be screening at the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. That is, like, epic.
What’s next for you?
Well, I’m hoping to build out. This was Mama Has a Mustache: Kids Talk Gender. I’m hoping to build this out into a little series with: Kids Talk Race, Kids Talk Religion, Kids Talk Politics, and Kids Talk Life and Death—and kind of use kids as a platform to broach these really difficult conversations that, you know, that carry so much stigma and that grownups are so clunky at having. So, that’s what’s next for me, trying to launch that effort and get more of these shorts off the ground. And then, we’ll see! I might be ready to go back to feature film land, but, right now, I’m really loving the short format.
You can follow the film on Instagram: @mamahasamustache
