Reverend's Interview: "Jimpa" Honors Our Community’s Pioneers

There may well be a “greatest generation” among older gay, bisexual or queer men and their allies. They witnessed and maybe even participated in the 1969 Stonewall riots. They participated in early marches for LGBTQ rights. They founded Pride parades and festivals. They endured the horrific early years of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and organized to challenge political leaders who refused to acknowledge the crisis. Some of them survived and continue to thrive, thankfully.

They have been our partners, friends and family members. A funny yet deeply moving new movie, Jimpa, celebrates these men. It will be available for streaming beginning March 24th following a limited theatrical release. I highly recommend it. 

Jimpa follows filmmaker Hannah (Oscar and Emmy Award winner Olivia Colman) as she takes her trans non-binary teenager Frances (Aud Mason-Hyde) to Amsterdam to visit their gay grandfather, lovingly known as “Jimpa” (two-time Tony Award winner and Oscar nominee John Lithgow). When Frances expresses a desire to stay with Jimpa for a year abroad, Hannah is forced to reconsider her parenting beliefs and the stories she has long told about her family. Meanwhile, Jimpa faces the difficulties of aging as a gay man in a generation that never expected to grow old, and Frances grapples with the disappointment of heroes falling short of their ideals.

Inspired by her own experiences as part of a queer family, this intimate film from acclaimed filmmaker Sophie Hyde is her most personal story yet. She is a founding member of Closer Productions and social impact company The Unquiet Collective. In 2022, Hyde directed Emma Thompson in the BAFTA and Golden Globe nominated comedy Good Luck to You, Leo Grande. Her debut feature drama 52 Tuesdays won the Directing Award at Sundance and the Crystal Bear at the Berlinale. She also directed and produced the feature comedy Animals, based on the novel of the same name by Emma Jane Unsworth. Hyde believes strongly in nurturing the voices of other filmmakers and therefore also works as a producer and EP on various projects including the Netflix original documentary The Dreamlife of Georgie Stone.

Reverend was privileged to speak with Hyde recently via Zoom while she was premiering her film in Amsterdam, where most of it was shot. Note: Some of her answers have been edited for length and/or clarity. 

Hello Sophie, how are you?

Hello Chris! I’m good. It’s getting a little dark here, so hopefully it’s ok for you to see me.

Yes, I can. Thanks for your time and thank you for Jimpa. I appreciated how it respects and honors not just your father but that whole generation of gay and queer men and their stories. How long was it, or how quickly was it, after your father’s passing that you started to think “Oh, I ought to make a movie or tell his story this way?”

I think my dad always wanted me to make a movie about him. In fact, he wanted me to make all sorts of movies about him totally different from this one. (laugh) It wasn’t long after he died that I kind of had this urge to put my child Aud and my dad in a room together and talk about the idea of being queer and being public about it, and knowing the attacks that are going to happen to you as well as the joy and things that you gain from it. I wished for that, especially as Aud got older. 

The idea (for the film) kind of came from that. But honestly, even when I was sitting by my dad’s bedside while he was dying, I remember thinking about the visuals of it; thinking about his tattoos, the cords in his arms, and the fact that he couldn’t speak to us. And I had this very strong urge, which is reflected in the film, to tell my dad his story as I knew it because I wasn’t sure if he remembered things. I went over and over telling his story, but I really didn’t know what that would turn into while it was happening. 

Interesting. What was it about John Lithgow in particular that told you “Ok, this is Jimpa; this is who I’m going to cast”?

You know, originally I was looking at Australian and British actors because I felt that would be relevant (Hyde and her father hail from Australia). I knew I needed someone who had a big-ish presence, which John has, and I needed someone who was going to be robustly ready to kind of leap, and John is that kind of actor. Coming from theater and comedy, I knew that he would be ready to make a fool of himself but also ready to just be deeply and kind of physically in something, and that was very important to me even though John has a very different physicality to what I was thinking of. Obviously, I think he’s an excellent actor and I’d seen a bunch of different things where he was in very different kinds of roles, which excited me.

Then we had a conversation, John and I, and his curiosity about my dad and about the characters that surrounded him was really cool. His history of working in theater and therefore his connection to and memory of AIDS was really significant. He lost a lot of friends and we had an amazing conversation about that too, which was a very important part of the texture (of the film) for me. It helped me a great deal, our conversation, because that felt like such a big lived experience to have. 

That’s great. And you know it really resonated with me, even though I’m younger, the depiction of the AIDS era and his experience. I was coming of age during the 1980’s and that was terrifying.

It was terrifying and I so often think “My God, do lots of people not actually know about this still?” We had COVID and we sort of didn’t look to gay men who made this amazing sort of peer response to a health crisis. We just ignored this amazing thing that happened. You know, I grew up with my dad and his friends so there was a lot of death around. It was such a significant thing. And there was all that fear- mongering in Australia and we had these really scary ads about AIDS. It’s still something that has made such a big difference in so many of our lives but I don’t think it’s spoken about a great deal.

No, not as much as it should be anyway. Similarly, in terms of casting, what was it about Olivia Colman that told you “Oh, I want her to play me!”

(Laughs) Who wouldn’t? I had to choose someone really brilliant and gorgeous and I just said, “You’ll do!” You know, when I was writing her character I kept saying to everyone “It could be anyone; she could be much older, much younger, it doesn’t matter.” For some reason, everyone else was much clearer than Hannah. I also wanted to leave a bit of space so that we could cast someone and they could bring something to it that I wasn’t aware of. But I also knew that we were leaning on a bit of the coldness of the character. She was a little bit unemotional at times and in some ways a little callous or an artist thinking about art, you know? 

I knew to make a film that resonated for people I needed an actor in that role that was quite warm. That putting an actor in that was very intellectual or felt like that would be too much. Olivia is just the warmest actor I can think of. So brilliant, so loving, and so I knew that there’s this whole layer of her that would be there and therefore all the other things would be kind of interesting underneath. She also has that kind of depth, of like other things are going on underneath. I really wanted her to play it but it was really hard to get it to her, so I was so excited when it finally happened.

What have been some of the reactions to the film at Rotterdam or Sundance or wherever it’s played thus far? What reactions have touched you or moved you the most?

It’s a very moving experience for me, taking the film out to film festivals and screenings. It can be overwhelming at times because afterwards people will come and talk to me and tell me their stories. It is very moving, but also I find people think they know certain things about me that aren’t always true and that’s a very interesting experience. People come to me with the ways that the film expresses things that have happened to them, but also the ways that they didn’t have the kind of family that’s in the film. I find those conversations deeply moving. 

The film also has an invitation to disagree, I think, inherent in it and so I’ve been shocked that some people really, really dislike it or dislike certain characters. People send me messages all the time that are like “My sister died” or “I came out at this time” or “My family rejected me,” really big things. We just tried to create something that had some real emotions in it and that we were very sincere about, and so when (audience members) come in with that kind of openness things come up for them about all sorts of parts of their lives. We actually have this beautiful companion project called The Queerest Parts of Us, and people can upload images and share stories about people or moments in their lives. We’ve only just started that but it’s amazing because we get more of those and that’s gorgeous. I’m just really amazed because I wanted to make a film where people had some space for themselves in it and that kind of happens. 

I primarily write for a Southern California audience and a big part of my readership is older, retired gay men in Palm Springs, and a lot of them are HIV positive or AIDS survivors themselves. Based on what you learned about your father and what’s in the film, do you have a special message to them or something you especially want them to know?

Yeah. You know, I’m going to start and see where it goes: I grew up in the era of the AIDS crisis and my dad was heavily involved. He ran the Victorian AIDS Council in Australia at a very critical moment and there was a lot of conflict. There was an amazing community response to the AIDS crisis, and I will never forget how difficult that was but also how people became peer supporters and looked after each other and are still friends now, many of the people that survived. I find that a remarkable thing that happened in terms of the various communities that were impacted.

My dad became HIV positive when I was a teenager and I thought that he was going to die, like we all went through. I thought “I’m going to have to nurse him to death soon,” you know.  And then the drugs all came in and people started to survive and my dad survived. I never thought that he would meet a child that I had, but then I had a child and my dad was there and they got to know each other. It was such an amazing thing, and I feel really lucky that I had my dad and the people that I still know from that generation and that era in my life because they’ve been very significant for me. 

But I also feel really sad that there were a lot of people that we lost, so many people. Culturally I feel really sad about that too, you know? The things that we lost that were being made and could have been talked about and could have happened. I wish that we were looking at that era more in terms of how we look after each other and treat each other. There’s something amazing about watching the people who survived. My dad and his friends would always be like “Oh no, we’ve got old people things now; I never thought we’d contend with old people things!” I think that’s gorgeous.

Reverend's Rating for Jimpa: B+

The Most Reverend Chris Carpenter is editor of Movie Dearest and chief contributor. He has been reviewing movies and theatre since 1996 and also contributes to Rage Monthly magazine (ragemonthly.com). He is a founding member and former Vice President of GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Critics (galeca.com) and currently serves as a nominating/voting member of its New York-based Theatre Wing. Reverend Carpenter has been an ordained minister since 1994.