Twists in family's surprise story

Paul McKerrow was an all-American boy. Raised in Montana, he was the quarterback for his high school football team, which is as close to being idolised as many small-town Americans come.

He was also his class president, the valedictorian of his year in 1985 and voted most likely to succeed by classmates. He was tall and ruggedly good-looking. He had it made and great things were expected of him.

So it was with some trepidation that McKerrow attended his 20-year high school reunion as Kimberly Reed, a lesbian film-maker who'd had gender reassignment to become a woman.

"It was very emotional. I wanted it to go smoothly. People get freaked out enough by going to their high school reunion. But having a new gender is a big surprise for a lot of people," Reed said.

Yet she found her worries were unfounded. Defying the preconceptions that surround many people's views of small-town America, she was welcomed home with open arms.

"It has been really great. It really was easy. That became the surprise," she said.

Reed has made a documentary about her story, which has become a major hit on the American film festival circuit.

The movie, Prodigal Sons, is being released in New York in two weeks and has already won plaudits from the critics for its painful and honest depiction of Reed's experience, as well as that of her family, especially her brother, Marc.

It has been called exceptional by the Village Voice and superb by the San Francisco Chronicle and has won nine awards.

Reed said she had always felt uncomfortable growing up as a boy, even though she clearly excelled at traditional male activities such as American football.

She used to spend many hours in libraries looking for information that would help explain her feelings.

"I really tried to suppress it during my school years. But it was something that I knew was going on for as long as I can remember," she said.

Reed finally went to university in San Francisco. In the more liberated environment of the West Coast, she came to decide she was a woman born in a man's body.

Gradually her identity as a woman began to emerge and she started spending part of her time as Paul and part as Kim. Eventually Kim came out fully and had gender reassignment and became a lesbian, living and working in the film industry as a woman.

When Kim returned to Montana, first for the death of her father and then for her high-school reunion, it seemed like a natural subject for a documentary.

But Prodigal Sons is not just about Kim's shifting identity. In its examination of her family and the changes time can bring, it also tells the heart-rending and surprising story of Marc, Kim's brother.

Marc, who was adopted, suffered serious brain damage in a car accident when he was 21. He also attended the same reunion (although older than Kim, he was held back a year) with a different identity from personality changes the crash caused, leaving him reliant on medication and prone to temper tantrums.

But perhaps the film's most stunning identity change is Marc's quest to find his real parents. To the amazement of everybody, Marc discovered his real mother was the daughter of film-maker Orson Welles and actress Rita Hayworth.

That discovery fundamentally altered the way the two siblings perceived each other.

"Marc always envied my genes. Now I am envying his," laughed Kim.

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