Reshaping portrayals with my film Stutterbug

Tuesday 18th February 2025

A man smiling, next to a film reel showing different scenes

Aidan and scenes from Stutterbug (courtesy Aidan Greene)

Stand up comedian Aidan Greene is challenging negative stammering representations with the short film he's looking to get made. Read all about it and find out how you can support it here.

How long do you have to wait before you can file a missing person's report? 24 hours, right? Wrong. If you believe someone you know is missing, call the police right now. Seriously, stop reading this article and call the police. I'll wait.

Why do people believe it's 24 hours? Because that's what they saw in movies. Screenwriters use this as a device to add tension and take the easy option away from our heroes.

Similarly, why do people believe if they fall into quicksand it means certain death? Because that's what they saw in movies. In reality, quicksand has no suction effects at all and is relatively harmless. I wish somebody told me that when I was 8. I spent far too much time worrying about falling into quicksand in rural Ireland.

Representation

Why do people believe that those who stutter are less intelligent, abused, anxious, shy, lying, or just faking it so nobody will suspect that they are secretly the villain? Because that's what they saw in movies. Movies written, acted and directed by people who do not stutter.

I have spent my entire life in love with film — so much so that I earned a master's degree in screenwriting. But as a person who stutters, film has not always loved me back. I grew up in the 90s, a decade in which Adam Sandler decided that stuttering was a comedy goldmine. In the playground I could see the influence it had. It was okay to mock my stutter because it was normalised in his film The Waterboy. Every portrayal I saw of stuttering was a mockery at best: A Fish Called Wanda, My Cousin Vinny, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Primal Fear and Die Hard With a Vengeance to name just a few.

I have spent my entire life in love with film... But as a person who stutters, film has not always loved me back.

Representation of stuttering in film and TV has improved over time. The King's Speech was a breakthrough movie, though unfortunately many viewers see it as an 'overcoming' narrative. The issue with this is that most people who stutter will never 'overcome' it. And why should they? I've been asked by many well-meaning people why I don't work on my stutter like in The King's Speech. Which is a fair question if you assume I have existed solely within a vacuum, never spoken to another human being, and not already spent a lifetime in speech therapy, including stints with The McGuire Programme. So, yes — as seductive and tidy a narrative of overcoming is, it is not the experience of many people with speech impediments.

For me, the best stuttering representation is in the film Rocket Science (2007), which doesn't feature near-fluent speech but instead celebrates dysfluency and acceptance. I'm also fond of portrayals of stuttering where it's never mentioned and somewhat irrelevant to the plot, such as in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood or IT: Chapter 1 (IT: Chapter 2, unfortunately, features Stephen King himself making a joke about stuttering). While I haven't seen it yet, the series The Penguin hired a stuttering consultant, which is a big step forward — though unfortunately it missed the opportunity to cast a stuttering actor.

Changing the narrative

If you can file a missing person's report whenever you want, why can't I simply be the stuttering representation I never had? That's why I wrote Stutterbug, a short comedy film about a stutterer whose desperate attempts to hide his stutter lead him to insult orphans, ruin his shot with his crush and commit a hate crime against her stuttering brother.

My aim with Stutterbug is to give the world an insight into what it's like living with a stutter — not how some fluent screenwriter imagines it.

Is it inspirational? Absolutely not. Does he overcome his stutter? Not even close. Is he faking the stutter so that he can sneak Voldemort into Hogwarts under his headscarf, like in the first Harry Potter movie? No, and I still can't believe people just accepted that.

My aim with Stutterbug is to give the world an insight into what it's like living with a stutter — not how some fluent screenwriter imagines it: as depressing, inspirational, or something to laugh at. I want to show how it really is — a normal part of life for at least 1% of the world. Every single incident in this short film has happened to me. Thankfully, not all in a 15-minute period.

A man looking frightened, looking at another man, who has his back to us

A scene from Aidan's film Stutterbug (courtesy Aidan Greene)

We're going to have not one, but two stuttering actors playing stuttering characters. STAMMA patron Scroobius Pip is attached to the project to play a stuttering character. We're also rounding out our production team with as many stutterers as possible.

To my knowledge, the last time a stuttering actor played a stuttering character was in 1937 when Joe Dougherty was fired as the voice of Porky Pig for, and you're not going to believe this, stuttering too much.

What we need now is funding. Stutterbug was a finalist in both the Virgin Media Discovers Film Fund and the Shore Scripts Short Film Fund but unfortunately missed out on the crucial funding. We are seeking the public's support to move into full production in the coming months.

Contributions will directly fund industry-standard wages for cast and crew, location and production design fees, professional equipment and post-production editing, and a soundtrack to bring the story to life.

Stutterbug isn't just a film; it's a chance to reshape how stuttering is portrayed in media.

Watch the proof-of-concept video (includes strong language) and support the project on my GoFundMe page.