Barbara Neri has worked to get her movie, Unlocking Desire, made for several years while dealing with the pandemic, writers’ and actors’ strikes, and her own busy schedule.

And she's still working on it.

"I've more than one thing going on, so it’s not the only iron in the fire,” said Neri, an Ann Arbor creative who has worked in dance, theater, performance art, and education in addition to being a writer, visual artist, and filmmaker. “I try not to think of the amount of time too much, because I think things will happen when they’re going to happen. … But it’s a wild ride. … Some projects take 10 years, so you just have to stay in the moment as much as possible. That’s really what I try to do, and enjoy the journey, enjoy each step.”

Unlocking Desire, which won the Marfa Film Festival's best screenplay award in 2017, tells the story of an institutionalized woman who believes she’s Blanche DuBois, Tennessee Williams’ tragic heroine from A Streetcar Named Desire. Blanche grows convinced that another inmate, Raoul, is Allan Grey, the young man she married as a teenager, and whom she later found in bed with another man.

In Williams’ play, Blanche’s reflexive disgust in the moment leads to Allan’s suicide, but in Unlocking Desire, Raoul is a gay man whose failed suicide attempt causes his wife to institutionalize him.

Neri’s story first came to life as a play, produced in Detroit in 2011, and promotional photo shoots at places mentioned in the script—specifically, Belle Isle and Dubois Street—contributed to Neri’s determination to translate Unlocking Desire for the screen.

“By making it a screenplay, those actually became locations,” said Neri. “It was really fun to take all these things that were only allusions [in the play] and make them real. I enjoyed that. And actually, it feels like maybe that’s what it was all along.”

Currently in pre-production, Unlocking Desire aims to begin filming soon, and Neri has made plans with three different budgets in mind, depending on how much money she can raise.

Neri will offer "a deep dive into what filmmaking is" when she discusses Unlocking Desire at Third Mind Books in Ann Arbor on Sunday, May 4, 3-5 pm. “The Unlocking Desire Film Project Experience” will feature a concept trailer and a few scenes filmed in Detroit. The event will also include an actor’s reading of excerpts from a Williams poem that Neri discovered in 2008 called “Kicks.”

“I was sitting in the Williams Research Center [in New Orleans] thinking to myself, ‘What the hell are you doing, taking on Tennessee Williams?’” Neri said, noting she’d already had the idea for her play in mind. “There was this one folder that was called Scattered Thoughts. And I thought, ‘What’s that?’ The librarian brought it out … and I looked through it. It looked like a poem, but it wasn’t in the right order. There was a page that was signed ‘Tennessee Williams, 1976.’ … I read through what was there, and [Williams] was revisiting the story of Blanche DuBois and Allan Grey. It blew my mind, and I thought, well, [Williams] did it! … It was like a sign. Like, OK, let’s go.”

Another impactful archival find involved Elia Kazan’s and Williams’ behind-the-scenes photographs of the 1951 film production of A Streetcar Named Desire, starring Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh. Neri will share several of these photos at her presentation, too, and talk about how they—and the censors who ultimately hampered the film by refusing to include mention of Allan’s homosexuality—helped shape Unlocking Desire.

So whether you’re curious about the project, or possibly want to be part of it—“We’re not fully cast, and I want as much diversity behind the camera as we have in front of it,” said Neri—you’re invited to hear about Neri’s long journey with her own Blanche.

“Forgiveness happens—not only for the two people in this institution but for the fictional characters who we never see together in [Williams’] play,” Neri said. “Allan is simply a shadow, a memory. So in some ways, [Unlocking Desire] is transformative of what Williams did. And we need that. Our culture needs to go back to the places of origin, stories of origin—and let’s change them. Let’s write a new story.”

Jenn McKee is a former staff arts reporter for The Ann Arbor News, where she primarily covered theater and film events, and also wrote general features and occasional articles on books and music. 

Barbara Neri will discuss "Unlocking Desire" at Third Mind Books, 118 East Washington Street, Ann Arbor, on Sunday, May 4, 3-5 pm.