Pat Rocco | Changes / 1970

the general barbarism of us culture

by Douglas Messerli

 

Pat Rocco (director) Changes / 1970

 

Pat Rocco (1934-2018) was born as Pasquale Vincent Serrapica to an Italian-American family in Brooklyn, who as a singer and performer in televised talent shows because well-known in Southern California.

     Beginning in the 1960s, after working as a photographer of male nudes, he began making his own male erotic films, one of the earliest along with Bob Mizer who began selling gay nude films, often with erotic narratives at about this same time. But soon, as he films began to create attention for their positive portrayal of the gay community, he gradually began making documentaries about the Los Angeles gay community, including pride marches, gay protests, and some Hollywood figures, gradually becoming a gay activist who ultimately left his vast archive to the UCLA Film and Television Archive.

   Among his early documentaries was the 1970 filming by his Bizarre Productions company of Changes, an interview and open discussion of a transgender woman (described as “transsexual” in this broadcast) Jimmie Michaels before her later total transition into Jennifer Michaels.

     Although there is still something a little exploitative and approaching the tone of “Mono Cane”—the title of Rocco’s production company alone hints of the latter—and the use of the slightly overweight, sweaty William King as interviewer doesn’t always make for non-confrontational tone. Nonetheless, King asks basically straight-forward questions, particularly given how little was known about transgender behavior during this period, at a time where I still have older friends who insist that except perhaps for Christine Jorgensen, they had never even heard  someone transitioning from one gender to another, and certainly had never encountered such a person in their lives.

     Most importantly, Jimmie/Jennifer is an intelligent, soft-spoken woman who clearly can answer for herself and does most ably. She explains in a few quick sentences precisely what a “transsexual” being is (“A transsexual is one who desires to be the opposite sex, either a female to male or a male to a female”), and how she herself felt feminine even as a very young child, and by age six was recognized in her household as being more like a girl than a boy.

     Unfortunately, King keeps addressing her with the male pronouns. But his very next question gets right to the issue: “Tell me, do you consider yourself as a male or female?”

      Michaels is almost painfully honest: “Well, that’s pretty hard to say.” The majority of the time, she explains, she feels as a female and acts like a female, but there are times when, caught off guard or depressed, she doesn’t know what to do accept to attempt to gain societal acceptance by trying to be a little more masculine.

      Asked if she is going for the “full operation,” she posits that is her intention.  

    The next question moves closer to the issues of sexuality as opposed to gender: “Which do you prefer most, the company of men or of women.” Without missing a beat, Jimmie/Jennifer makes clear that most of the time he seeks out to company of women to share their perspective and interests, but she makes it quite clear she is not romantically interested in women, but in men, so she also likes the company of men when they are accepting of her difference. It might have been interesting to have her elaborate further on that, simply how she does master approaching men to whom she might be attracted who wouldn’t be so accepting of her. She does make clear that outside of her closest friends, the hecklers on the street usually say “What is this?” or they become obscene. She also talks about the cruelty of school children and the general barbarianism of US culture.

     Asked a rather stupid question, given her comments, whether she considers herself a homosexual, she quickly squelches that subject by suggesting that would be beside the point, since homosexuals love the same sex, whereas she, who sees herself a as woman, is attracted to men.

     One of the most interesting series of questions and answers helps us to perceive just how intelligent this transgender woman is. We recognize her clearly as a woman of true independence when she is asked, rather coarsely by Williams, “Tell me, do you prefer wearing women’s clothes?” He soon after specifies his query by asking “Dresses, bras, panties, the silk hose, or nylon hose? Girdles?”

     Refreshingly, at least from my point of view, Michaels answers: “I hate nylons. I hate girdles. I do not like to wear bras. I don’t necessarily like to wear dresses except now and then, I get this mad urge to do the town….But I really have no craving to flaunt, you know, with the makeup. I don’t like makeup. Or spending two hours in a beauty salon which is a complete waste of time.”

     Regarding the hormones she is already taking, she wittily comments: "If you think LSD is a trip, you should try taking hormones."

     Asked where her eventual goals might lead her, she answers that she, like so many other women, would like to get married, and although she cannot have children, they could adopt. This is, one must remember still the 1970s, and she imagines she might like to live in the suburbs, precisely the world where young gay men like myself wanted to escape.

    The big difference in this film is that once the interview is finished, the film doesn’t stop, but continues in a kind of idyll as Jimme/Jennifer walks down the Los Angeles streets almost literally “smelling the roses,” in this case the carnations from a flower vendor. She picks our a few and meanders, like all somewhat sentimental LGBTQ love stories, off into a local park. Stopping at a small stream, she even unbuttons her blouse and in semi-nudeness feels her breasts, welcoming her new gender with joy. Few films have been as generous and open-minded about a subject which even day is still highly controversial in conversative USA and is now an anathema even among some liberals. Why transgender individuals, who have already suffered so much from their sense of displacement of their bodies, taunted by their peers, lectured to and ignored by adults should be met with such complete cultural dismissal and horror by a large part of the population stymies the imagination.

     There would not be a movie as sympathetic to transsexual behavior until Doris Wishman.s 1977 movie, Let Me Die as a Woman.

 

Los Angeles, April 16, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (April 2026)