Join filmmakers Harry Dodge, Silas Howard, and Steak House for special 4K restoration screenings of By Hook or By Crook, their timeless fable of two working-class, trans/butch grifters. As we wrote in our 2022 Outfest review, the film is
an essential missing link in cinema’s buddy-film genre. In the words of co-writer/co-director Howard, the film started out as a “a gritty, bad-cop action movie. The script was fun, but in the end lacked soul. [Dodge and I] started all over again, giving ourselves permission to go at it from a more personal angle, to write about things that really mattered to us.”*
Shy (Howard), at loose ends since the death of his father and loss of the family home, escapes to San Francisco with romantic notions of a “life of crime.” Saving Valentine (Dodge) from a street beating that may have been staged by its victim, the two—plus Val’s girlfriend Billie (Stanya Kahn)—embark on a series of survival break-ins and stick-ups, all the while on the lookout for Val’s birth mother. Giving a key performance of early twenty-first century American film, Dodge pinballs between joyous abandon and heartbreaking vulnerability, a bebop riff searching for its elusive home chord.
The film has been digitally restored in 4K by the Academy Film Archive and UCLA Film & Television Archive in conjunction with Frameline, Outfest, Steakhaus Productions, Inc., and the Sundance Institute. The film was remastered using the latest technology with improved color correction to achieve the filmmakers’ original cinematic vision.
Distributed by Altered Innocence, this restoration release marks a unique story of three crucial trans/queer/butch LGBTQ+ filmmakers struggling to deftly navigate—over thirty years—success and pressure in the worlds of art and film as trans and non-binary artists, the vagaries of Hollywood and the indie film world as their underdog debut film gripped the national consciousness upon its release, and the sweet pressure they felt as the film’s historic and critical stature has grown over the years. The restoration of By Hook or By Crook celebrates the years of struggle and success they have endured.
See info and links below for screening details.
BY HOOK OR BY CROOK
Written and directed by Harry Dodge and Silas Howard
Produced by Steak House
4K Restoration
June 12–18
June 12 Q & A moderated by Guinevere Turner
June 13 Q & A moderated by Lío Mehiel
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Avenue (at 2nd Street), New York City
anthologyfilmarchives.org/filmscreenings
June 16 Q & A moderated by Vera Drew
Vidiots
4884 North Eagle Rock Boulevard, Los Angeles
vidiotsfoundation.org/by-hook-or-by-crook
Additional restoration screenings across North America include:
June 17–21
Northwest Film Forum
1515 12th Avenue, Seattle
nwfilmforum.org/by-hook-or-by-crook-4k-restoration
June 26–July 2
Gene Siskel Film Center
164 North State Street, downtown Chicago
siskelfilmcenter.org/hook-or-crook
See: alteredinnocence.net
*Silas Howard quotation from the British Film Institute’s 2023 program notes for By Hook or By Crook.
Also see Filmmaker Magazine’s 2022 interview with Howard and Dodge:
filmmakermagazine.com/interview-silas-howard-harry-dodge
Harry Dodge and Silas Howard, By Hook or By Crook (2001, restoration premiere 2024), from top: Silas Howard (left) and Harry Dodge; Dodge, Stanya Kahn, and Howard; By Hook or By Crook restoration poster; Carina Gia and Howard; Dodge and Howard.
Photos courtesy and © Altered Innocence.
