Showing at Time to Murder and Create Block October 5th, 2025 at 2:00 PM
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By Valerie Milano
Hollywood, CA (The Hollywood Times is proud to be a media partner of the Hollywood Queer Short Film Festival) 9/18/25 – The short film XY, co-written by J.L. Perkel and director Stephen Fleet, is as intimate as it is urgent. With its raw honesty and layered character work, the film takes aim at some of the most pressing issues facing the LGBTQ+ community today: identity, representation, and the violence that continues to haunt queer spaces in America.
When I sat down with Perkel and Fleet over Zoom, it quickly became clear how deeply personal this project is. Fleet, who came out at the age of 43, explained how the Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs had stirred a profound response in him: “It was a big life-changing event for me,” he shared, recalling the swirl of emotions and his desire to connect more closely with the community he had distanced himself from for so long.
Perkel, who both co-wrote and starred in the film, brought her own lived perspective as a trans woman into the creative process. “JL came in and really helped build the character, especially with authenticity around the trans experience,” Fleet noted. “It made the story feel three-dimensional.”
At just over twelve minutes, XY packs an emotional punch. The creative duo described the challenge of distilling heavy, sprawling subject matter, queer identity, American masculinity, loneliness, and gun violence, into a short format. Their solution was to focus on specificity. “The more specific we got about who these characters are,” Perkel explained, “the clearer the story became.”
That clarity shines through in the performances. One of the most memorable sequences is a one-take phone call between Perkel’s character and her mother. “There’s no cutting away,” Perkel told me. “It’s all in one take, and the emotions had to feel lived-in and true. It’s one of my proudest achievements as an actress.”
XY has already resonated strongly with festival audiences, especially within the trans community. Perkel recounted moments where trans women approached her after screenings to share how much the film spoke to them. “When they tell me, ‘Thank you for saying what I feel,’ that’s priceless. That’s when I knew we had made something meaningful.”
Fleet echoed this sentiment, recalling the thrill of watching the film on the big screen at Warner Brothers before its festival debut: “We made this to play well in theaters, and seeing it come alive with an audience was magical.”
Though XY stands powerfully on its own, both filmmakers are already thinking about expanding the narrative. They described plans for a feature-length version that would transform the short’s premise into a tense standoff in a queer nightclub, allowing for deeper exploration of character, media spectacle, and political context.
Beyond XY, Perkel is also at work on her own short film, with Fleet stepping in as producer and cinematographer, and she continues to pursue her comic book illustration project. Fleet, meanwhile, balances new creative ventures with his ongoing work on The Boys.
For now, XY remains a testament to the courage it takes to tell queer stories with authenticity, even when those stories navigate trauma, erasure, and violence. It’s a film that refuses to look away, and in doing so, invites audiences into a space of empathy, urgency, and resilience.
For more on the film, visit XYShortfilm.com.
View our interview with the film directors here:
