By the time you read this, there’s a good chance that I’ll be out to a nearby retailer purchasing Elliot Page’s memoir “Pageboy.” Today is the official release date and I have been eagerly anticipating adding it to my collection. While I am not one to collect autobiographies, there is something special about Page’s story. It’s something more than the powerful story of his public transition into his authentic self. This is maybe a bit selfish, but he’s an artist that I have had a fondness for going back to high school and someone who I have really connected with over the years. There aren’t a lot of artists who remind me of my high school years, especially positively, but this one means a lot.
To not bury the lead, I will start by saying that at 18, I had a crush on Page. There was something immediately cool about him from the first time that I saw him. He was the outsider, the cool indie actor who didn’t play your typical leading roles. He was the type of person I wish that I was friends with, able to check in on and see how life was treating them. It wasn’t a popular notion among male presenting individuals of the time. Most found Juno (2007) annoying and the thought of being stuck with its pregnant protagonist for 18 years seemed like a nightmare. I used to carry the DVD around with me and some people in my friend group would suggest that the movie made them feel dumb (they gave The Love Guru (2008) a positive review, so I don’t know what they think dumb means). For years, Juno was the punching bag in pop culture, but it didn’t stop me. I became the Page fan, the one who followed every release on the E.P.O. fan website. His success meant a lot to me, and I think it spoke to my openness about it that for years that was one of my defining features in college.
I think it’s something that we all go through as a teenager. We find identities that we long to connect with and form an attachment that is unlike any artist we’ll ever discover a decade later. Because of that, Page remains special. He was someone who I admired and loved his awkwardness. He was “The Tiny Canadian” who did juggling tricks during Craig Ferguson interviews. They were one of the first people I followed on Twitter. While Page has grown more selective in what he posts, there’s still some encouragement in knowing he’s still there living his best life. I wish that I could smile as much as he does. Then again, whatever regiment he’s on has gotten him a body I’m sure many are envious of.
So where did this all start? I was in Senior Year of high school in 2007 and experiencing the highs and lows that come with that time. It was a period of taking an Economics class where the teacher left the TV on before session started. Ironically, I remember nothing from the actual lectures, but I did learn how to increase my clapping twofold because of a news story. It was during Winter Break that I had the formative experience. I hadn’t really developed an interest in independent film yet, though Little Miss Sunshine (2006) had begun the dominoes the year prior. Reading copies of Los Angeles Times during Journalism class, I became aware of Juno as something mythic. It was a down on their luck director (Jason Reitman) teaming with a former stripper turned screenwriter (Diablo Cody) to make a film starring one of the more off-kilter Canadian exports (Page). Better yet, Roger Ebert had called it his film of the year.
Juno is hard to understand through a contemporary lens without knowing how radical its success was. Films soundtracked by Kimya Dawson weren’t supposed to gross $230+ million. The language thrown over its orange-striped marketing was either the most rejuvenating dialogue you saw in 2007 or the most annoying. This was considered “twee,” the stuff that felt unnatural though I’d argue it’s necessary to the emotional growth of Juno as a character. Still, I was coming off of Superbad (2007) that August and had a soft spot for Michael Cera. More than Page at the time, I went for Paulie Bleeker… the biggest dweeb in the whole film. What was this film? It was life changing, basically. It’s one that altered my worldview altogether. There would be days where I’d just text dialogue to a friend in a quest to see who remembered the plot more.
And then there was Page, my quintessential outsider. Juno MacGuff spoke in ways that felt rebellious, where a story of adoption clashed with a modernist sense of life. Where else was one going to get candid on gore movies and Sonic Youth? She was simultaneously esoteric and somehow the realest teenager I had ever seen. It didn’t matter that she was pregnant. She still evoked a coolness that far exceeded the world around her. Maybe it was a self-involved type, but she still longed for acceptance even as she had to find new ways to protect herself. The culmination set to The Moldy Peaches eventually lead to someone showing up to my school’s poetry reading and writing an acoustic song saying “We liked The Moldy Peaches before Juno.” It took me a while to love the soundtrack, but eventually, I embraced its technique and wanted more.
It's the film that very much introduced me to greater worlds. I followed Page’s Oscar campaign, even the accompanying Barbara Walters interview, and rooted for her. I kept another friend updated on the Oscars in hopes that we’d be celebrating. When people asked me why I liked Page so much I just said that they made me feel inspired. It was something people poked fun at, and to some extent, I’d imagine it’s the lasting character trait certain people have for me. Then again, obsessing over every update will do that to you.
I haven’t been as hard-lined to updates as the years have gone on, though Page has remained someone I’m consistently rooting for. I would eventually go back and watch their earlier work and found myself even more enraptured by Hard Candy (2005) and this sense of confidence that came from what I now notice as a male version of revenge fantasy. We had a few sweet years ahead, as Whip It (2009) proved to be a masterpiece on par with Juno. I even went to an advanced preview of it where I got a t-shirt. There was also Inception (2010) which I saw four times in theaters and quickly obsessed over its framework – figuring things out poorly. By the time of Super (2011), I was so entrenched that I drove from Long Beach to Santa Monica on opening day just to see it. I listened to Steve Agee’s podcast just to hear Page talk about their love of Sarah Silverman, or even the random Doug Loves Movies appearances. Many more movies would follow from there, but they barely feel worth diving into the minutiae.
There’s a lot to unpack with Page’s career as things go on. Because of films like Juno and Hard Candy, there was this typecasting as the younger woman who fell in love with older but wiser men. Sometimes, like in Smart People (2008), it made absolutely no sense. But even then, there was this growing belief that he was queer. Even in Whip It, there were queer undertones that, when not acted upon, frustrated many. That is why I think it’s important to note how different things felt in 2014 when he came out as a lesbian. There was a certain freedom that came with his announcement. The relief when a room clapped at the Human Rights Campaign event is one of those images seared into my brain. Imagine being so happy and accepted by others. I haven’t watched a lot of HRC-related speeches, but this was two years after Lana Wachowski’s own coming out as a trans woman and remains one of my favorite speeches in general.
I think subliminally something was unveiling itself to me. I wasn’t homophobic, but the idea of queerness was a complicated topic for an early 20’s me given societal expectations of the time. I was happy for Page. Even then, there were the comments that people could assume he was a lesbian. Thankfully, my response was to allow people to come to terms with things on their own time. Alas, it would be much longer before he came out as Elliot Page and became the most public transmasc celebrity on Earth. I regret not getting the Time Magazine with that story (somehow fell conveniently outside of my subscription period) but I still remember feeling overwhelmed by his Oprah Winfrey interview. Even the way that The Umbrella Academy handled this change is very sweet and simple, finding Page discussing about how he longs to look in a mirror and see the right reflection.
From there, it all began to make sense in a different way. Whether or not it was intentional, everything had been “coded” leading up to this point. On the one hand, films like Freeheld (2015), Peacock (2010), and Days of Mercy (2017) felt like starts to Page making queer cinema they were actually interested in, but I think even in the films I had obsessed over there were clues. At this point, who hasn’t seen the “I Wear Boy’s Underwear” picture in relation to his story? There’s other moments in media I can read into, but for now I’ll just focus on one trend I saw play out in the most subtle of ways.
Once you notice how many films feature Page saying the line “I’m not that type of girl” or some variant, it becomes hard not to notice. It’s there in Hard Candy, Whip It, and Juno. There is this defiance of femininity that Page has always included somewhere in the subtext. During a recent marathon of his work, I noticed that theme no matter how different the stories were. It was the subconscious slowly rising to the surface, creating a sense of what was so appealing about Page this whole time. Even in the most heteronormative vehicles imaginable, there was a queer coding of someone struggling to be their authentic self.
It's maybe why I like The Tracey Fragments (2007) so much. Along with this rhetoric, it’s arguably one of the most dysphoric films I have seen. Not so much directly in the transgender way, but the way that the frame is struggling to make sense of dozens of actions at once speaks to a mind looking for clarity. The eye jumps to several frames within the frame, trying to make sense. Together, it’s not a beautiful tapestry. Separately, they tell a greater story of life. It’s chaotic, noisy, and sometimes incomprehensible, but I’m attracted to it because there is something greater there. Page has always had that going for them. They sometimes reveled in making avant-garde cinema, pushing discomfort forward in efforts to understand greater truths. There was always a need to find a greater truth.
I don’t write all of this to suggest that “I knew” about Page years before anyone else. I don’t want to apply this as anything but film theory of how art speaks to me. Juno has its own language and slowly strips away its pop culture references to find authentic emotion. Inception eventually finds a way for most to escape the dream and embrace reality. Maybe this was all the biggest coincidence in the world.
As adulthood goes, Page maybe isn’t as central to my orbit these days. I’ve changed significantly in that time, though I’ve never forgotten his impact on my life 16 years ago. It was a moment that had a seismic change, making me see everything a bit differently. I wasn’t entirely sure why, but everything clicked immediately. Whereas most people made fun of me for it, I held onto the hope that I could be Page’s friend, to have him close by to make sure he was okay. His evolution in the past decade especially has been heartwarming and makes me admire him more. He’s far more outspoken and passionate than I am, and I credit him for using his platform responsibly. Maybe one day I’ll be able to search through my own jumbled mess of thoughts and find a greater truth.
For now, I’m eagerly looking forward to “Pageboy.” I don’t care if it’s a juicy tell-all. What I want is that reminder of who he is and why I always liked him. He was so honest and vulnerable even in 2007, where he felt fine making fun of saying “You know” too much during interviews. Maybe some more revelations will come to life that makes me connect with him more. Until I find out what that is, I’m fine just enjoying his work and appreciating the special language he shares with us.
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