Monsieur Le Butch | JFI Online Shorts: June 2025
This month’s online short is “Monsieur Le Butch” directed by Jude Dry.
Jude Dry, 2020, United States, 12 minutes, English
About the film: Jude wants top surgery, Mom wants an “old lady pass” on the whole pronouns thing. As the two butt heads about gender, language, and body image at Monsieur le Butch’s al fresco salon, they both must navigate the hairy nature of being seen.
Watch a trailer and read an interview with the director below:
Hi Jude! Thanks so much for sharing your film with us. Can you situate us in your life in the period leading up to the production? What were some of the personal or creative motivations that energized you?
Jude Dry: During the early months of the pandemic, I found myself living with my parents in adulthood, trading the queer comforts of my Brooklyn social life for the serene isolation of a gorgeous Vermont summer. Like most Jewish mothers, mine has never been afraid to speak her mind, whether it’s about politics, Patti LuPone’s vibrato, or my personal life choices. Though I knew she was hilarious, she had always shied away from the camera. At the same time, I was ready to get top surgery and had begun the arduous process of choosing a surgeon and getting it covered by insurance. With my brilliant cinematographer Jacob Blumberg as a trusted collaborator, I realized I had a unique opportunity to document my relationship with my mother during this pivotal moment in my life.
What was it like working so closely with your mother on this project? Can you talk about the dynamics between you, especially around the idea of “upsetting each other.”
Jude: I think most Jewish families are comfortable with a certain amount of yelling that might put most other people on edge. While there’s no lack of love in my family, there’s also not a lot of tone policing. Watching the news is a full contact sport in my house. Even our jokes are kind of yelled across the dinner table. So when my mother and I discuss harder topics, like elective surgery on her “baby,” tensions are bound to arise. What I wasn’t quite expecting was the inherent tension in making her do something she didn’t want to do: Be in my movie.
The film straddles both narrative and documentary forms. How did you arrive at this narrative choice?
Jude: Jacob and I are both huge fans of hybrid documentary filmmakers like Caveh Zahedi and Kirsten Johnson. As a performer who is also interested in emotional truth-telling, I’m really excited by the idea of a hybrid narrative form. I would write lines for my mother — often verbatim things she had said — and she would say, “I never said that!” or “I would never say that!” On the first day of shooting, I told her she could use her own words if she wanted, expecting an ad-lib here and there. The next day, she came in with printed out pages of a scene she had completely re-written, which now concluded with a long monologue about her childhood pediatrician being a Nazi. While I was fuming, Jacob was filming. It ended up being the truest and funniest thing we shot, and we re-worked the entire edit around it.
How did you approach balancing humor with intimacy, especially in the more vulnerable moments?
Jude: I got lucky with a naturally hilarious scene partner in my mother. We’ve also had a few decades to hone our chemistry and rapport. The subject matter of the film may be vulnerable and tender, but we as people never approach even the heaviest topics without humor. That’s also a very Jewish quality, to laugh through the pain. At the same time, I needed to make this film to be able to address some of these harder topics more directly with my mother. She rose to the occasion, and it brought us closer.
About the Filmmaker: Jude Dry is a Senior Writer and Film Critic at IndieWire, where they cover film and television with a focus on LGBTQ representation. As an actor, Jude has appeared Off Broadway in Daryl Roth Productions’ “Dear Edwina,” and on film in Mathew Fifer’s “Cicada” and Shaina Feinberg’s “Dinette.”
“Monsieur Le Butch” is Jude’s directorial debut. They are currently adapting it into a feature film.
About JFI Online Shorts: JFI Online Shorts features one new short film each month from emerging and established filmmakers. Since 2009, JFI has showcased over 100 online shorts and garnered worldwide views over 2 million on the JFI Youtube channel. Learn more at www.jfi.org.
