From 5 Minutes to Feature Film: Dickie Hearts Delivers the Much-Needed Deaf Rom-Com “Passengers”
TGDN Network’s Reporter Rikki Poynter took part in this year’s Seattle Deaf Film Festival. In a series of videos and articles, she’ll review several films and recently, she shared what the three-day film festival was like. In this review, Rikki Poynter looks at Dickie Hearts’ Passengers, a romantic comedy pilot about a Deaf gay man named Dale who is starting a new life in New York City after a difficult breakup.
How it all began
“Passengers” started as a five-minute short for the 2015 Easterseals Disability Film Challenge. The short film was written and produced by Dickie Hearts, who also plays the main character, Dale. Dale is a Deaf man who works as an Uber driver in LA. Throughout the original short film, various hearing passengers react to having a Deaf driver for the first time. However, Dale’s last passenger of the day is a Deaf man. They finish the day at a park together and eventually begin dating.
From 5 minutes to 55 minutes
In 2024, Hearts applied for and received money from the Adobe Foundation Alumni Grant, which he used to add to the film. However, he went in a different direction than the recent short film, mostly because after finishing the Easterseals short film, he moved to New York City, which is completely different from Los Angeles. Moreover, it had been a decade since he finished the short, so he had grown older and changed, and his film’s plot had to follow his development.
Heart’s main character, Dale, is now single, in a new city, and with a new career goal: he wants to work in the accessible tech space. He meets a hearing man named Wyatt, who has never met a Deaf person and knows nothing about Deaf culture or ASL. From there, a new romance is born.
A much-needed rom-com for the Deaf community
Passengers is a great mix of romance and comedy that ties in real-life situations Deaf people face regularly without turning it into a Deaf tragedy piece.
For instance, before a job interview with Microsoft, Dale heads to the coffee shop. As he waits for his coffee order, Wyatt, the hearing man and future love interest, verbally talks to Dale, not realizing he’s talking to a Deaf man. When Dale doesn’t respond, it creates this awkward moment where Wyatt feels like he’s being ignored. Eventually, he comes to realize Dale is Deaf when they accidentally run into each other in the shop, spilling coffee on Dale’s shirt. Dale signs in ASL and walks away, and that’s when Wyatt realizes Dale is Deaf.
Dale’s experience resonated deeply with me, because this happens all the time in real life. Hearing people try to talk to me in the store from behind, and I don’t notice it. Sometimes, they move on. Sometimes, they’re visibly frustrated and think I’m rude.
In another situation during a job interview, the interviewer treats Dale like a circus act, asking whether he can drive as a Deaf man and saying he once had a deaf dog, rather than focusing on Dale’s skills relevant to the job at hand.
Yet again, this keeps happening to Deaf people. Many Deaf people have received or seen comments from hearing people stating how dangerous it must be for Deaf people to drive. (Spoiler alert: it is not; statistics say we are much better drivers.)
Then we get down to the deaf-hearing relationship dynamic. Wyatt becomes interested in Dale, but knows zero ASL. Before their first date, Wyatt attempts to learn how to sign his name, and that’s about as far as his knowledge goes when they’re at dinner.
Watching this scene brought back flashbacks of a previous relationship for me. In my life, only two people have learned ASL for me: my first boyfriend and his best friend, two people who are no longer in my life. Some Deaf people are lucky enough to meet people who help bridge the gap, but most of my experiences, and those I’ve seen in others, seem to be the opposite.
My spirits were raised as we continued with the pilot, and Wyatt put in effort to learn the language and integrate into the Deaf community, which is the opposite of what we usually see in films. Regularly, it’s the Deaf person feeling lost in a group of hearing people.
The pilot ends with a cliffhanger
The central conflict of the love story arises when Dale meets Cliff, who knows ASL. A love triangle develops… and leaves us with a cliffhanger.
In real life, and this includes myself as well, some Deaf people say they could not see themselves dating hearing people and do not want to because of the toll it takes mentally and emotionally. It takes a lot of energy to be with someone who may or may not want to put in the effort to communicate with us, or to try to get them involved in the culture and community, as it’s such a big part of our lives.
Plans
During the post-screening discussion at SDFF, Hearts shared a possible plan to turn the film into a series. Since then, it has been decided that Passengers will take on a different format. Hearts wrote in an email, “Passengers was originally conceived as a mini-YouTube series, but then it turned into an award-winning one-hour pilot. Due to the positive responses from test screenings and international nominations and accolades, I am currently penning the conclusion of Passengers, which will be restructured into a full feature film rather than a second episode.” Hearts’ hard work has proven to be successful. “Passengers was an official selection at a few film festivals, and was awarded Gold three times by the Telly Awards (for Directing, Editing, and Series – DEI). It also closed out the Seattle Deaf Film Festival and was three-time nominated at Festival Clin d’Oeil, for Best Feature Film, Best Writing, and Best Actor.”
As a friend of Hearts for a decade, I’m so proud of him and everyone who worked on this, and now, we are left wondering how Passengers will end.
Watch Rikki’s full video review of “Passengers” Below
Image Credits: Passengers Film Stills
