Though Forrie J. Smith's screen time in Duncan Tucker's Oscar-nominated "Transamerica" was short, his dialogue in the scene acts as a catalyst for a critical moment for the film's protagonists. In the movie, a religious, conservative woman named Bree (Felicity Huffman), who is saving up for sex reassignment surgery, is compelled by her therapist to track down the son she unknowingly fathered while still in college.
Bree heads to New York to track down said son (Toby, played by Kevin Zegers), but since she is unable to explain the true nature of her relationship to her street-hustler son teen, she pretends to be a Christian case-worker who "specializes in converting sex workers to Jesus" (via Roger Ebert). The two embark on a cross-country journey back to L.A. and, along the way, stop at a roadside market in Arizona called Sammy's Wigwam.
Smith plays Sammy, who (rightly, unbeknownst to Toby) assumes the angsty teen is the woman's child, and when Toby swears at Bree, Smith's character chastises him. "You watch your mouth around your mother," Smith says, and Toby — who's only recently discovered that Bree is trans (but still doesn't know that she fathered him in her former life as "Stanley") — explodes. "She is not my mother," he fires back, "she's not anyone's mother, she's not even a real woman, she's got a d**k."
It's an important moment in developing the characters' relationship and vindicates Bree's fears (and her motivations for lying to Toby) while illustrating that the two very much already come off as a parent and child. It also kicks off a meaningful exchange between the two, wherein Bree's character defends her religious beliefs by saying that while her "body may be a work in progress," there is "nothing wrong with (her) soul." Smith's success following his role in "Transamerica" is further proof that sometimes it's more about quality and import than quantity when it comes to screen-time.
