It might be self-serving of us to suggest they publicize their films, and in a way, we empathize with their reclusion; Larry Wachowski has been the subject of sex-change and dominatrix-dating speculation since a feminized version of himself — earrings, plucked eyebrows, manicure — showed up on the Matrix Revolutions red carpet in Cannes five years ago with mistress Ilsa Strix (née Karen Winslow) on his arm. The siblings later sneaked into the New York premiere of V For Vendetta (which they wrote and co-produced), and last week in Los Angeles they went positively presidential with subterfuge at the debut of Speed Racer. "They did not do the red-carpet press line at the Nokia Theatre on Saturday, and were well-camouflaged during the after-party," wrote Borys Kit in The Hollywood Reporter. "Photographers were sworn to secrecy as to their whereabouts, and Warner Bros. assigned handlers the mission of keeping journalists off the scent."

Like it matters; the Wachowskis haven't granted an interview in the decade since The Matrix, deferring to mega-producer and de facto representative Joel Silver and their casts to flog their work publicly. Their crews sign non-disclosure agreements. The duo's contracts entitle them to a luxury rarer than final cut — an opt-out provision shielding them from the promotion of their films. It's Stanley Kubrick/Terrence Malick/Eric Rohmer stuff, but with one crucial exception: Their films aren't that good.

Or at least they haven't been in nearly 10 years; Speed Racer is no different. But what is good about it are the things to which only they can speak — the practice of reinventing the source cartoon, the relationship of vision to execution, the extraordinary scene transitions eschewing cuts for something closer to a scrolling-head montage (like "bullet-time," you just have to see it), or, on the most basic of levels, directing a standout cast (and even a goddamned monkey) against one green-screen backdrop after another. Unlike Iron Man or Warners' even more anticipated summer offering The Dark Knight, the brands work in concert with personalities to acquire traction. Emile Hirsch's abstract praises are not enough.

Warner Bros. faced the similar scenario with Kubrick for nearly three decades, covering the director's final five films from A Clockwork Orange through Eyes Wide Shut. Obviously, his death in March 1999 put a pretty irrevocable kibosh on promoting the latter film, but he did speak out from time to time about the intervening work; his daughter Vivian's behind-the-scenes documentary about The Shining was a broadcast TV event in 1980, and he did a few select interviews in 1987 on behalf of Full Metal Jacket. Moreover, he was always involved with people — actors, writers, other filmmakers — and his 15 years of work prior to his British exile in the late '60s had installed him permanently among the world cinema vanguard.

Not so for the Wachowskis, a couple of ex-carpenters from Chicago whose one-two dynamos Bound and The Matrix boosted expectations from 1996 to 1999. Their work since has lapsed into the type of indulgence that further evokes itself in those clauses guaranteeing their immunity to press, and by extension, their audience. That audience has had nothing to latch onto for too long now; no taut narratives, no singular parallel universes and certainly no visual benchmarks that can and/or should speak for themselves. Their self-containment borders on alienating, their aloofness sharing breath with its conjoined twin, arrogance.

As the most public recluses working today (and at the highest budgets), their godfather Silver can only buy the Wachowskis their privacy for so long — especially as another of their putatively visionary summer efforts meets diminishing returns in a culture craving voices with faces and faces with names. If the Viral Era has taught us anything, it's that every mystery needs a payoff, and you have to earn your mystique if you expect to exploit it.

[Photo Credits: Wireimage, Getty]

On Wednesday, I had lovely chats with people at the sound studio in Germany where the Wachowskis have been making the live action version of the Japanese cartoon "Speed Racer." The folks I spoke to got quite a kick out of the whole thing.

I asked one man in building operations, "Have you seen Larry lately? Does he have breasts now, as rumored? Is he wearing a dress, wondering if it's making him look fat?"

Laughter. "He looked like a man to me," was the response.

And what about this Lana business? Said one woman who worked in the "Speed Racer" office: "On the call sheets, it still says Larry. There's no Lana." She laughed too. [...]

Finally, I did speak with Joel Silver, who executive produces the W Brothers' movies.

"It's all untrue," he reconfirmed for me. "They just don't do interviews, so people make things up."

Hopefully, the assertions of Wachowski's Speed Racer collaborators will be sufficient to quash the rumor before it's disseminated any further. But if the public's untoward fascination with the director's genitals persists and the gossip continues to circulate, Wachowski's media-shy penis may ultimately have no choice but to break its suspicious silence on the controversy by sitting down with Diane Sawyer to let the world know its longtime relationship with Larry is still intact.

• No Sex Change for 'Matrix' Director Larry Wachowski [Fox 411]
• Previously: Catching Up With Larry Wachowski. Or Lana Wachowski. We're Not Exactly Sure. [Defamer]

The duo will now just be known as "The Wachowskis", dropping the "brothers" part of their name. It is expected that Larry, now called Lana, will actually speak to the press about this for the first time, but not until after the Speed Racer film is out. The current feeling is that his sex change could hurt the family image the Speed Racer film is going for.

It is also expected that Andy will do all the press for the Speed Racer film, with Larry/Lana staying in the background for the above reason.

Dateline NBC is still rumored to have exclusivity of Larry/Lana's first public interview, but it has to be on his terms, not theirs.

If you find any of this reported update confusing, now would probably be a good time to review last January's illuminating Rolling Stone piece on Wachowski's personal life. But with Speed Racer still so far away, we'll have to wait months to see how the Warner Bros. publicity department rises to the challenge of dealing with a delicate situation; while we hope that they'd have the understanding to support their collaborator in an air-clearing TV appearance like the one rumored above, we realize that the far more likely scenario involves the studios sending their potential PR liability on an all-expenses-paid vacation until the movie's had a profitable run, explaining her (or his, you know, depending) conspicous absence from various promotional obligations with a press release asking the media to respect the privacy of Wachowski's genitals during this difficult time.

UPDATE: Larry Wachowski is still a man, reports Fox's Roger Friedman.

• Larry Wachowski's sex change is complete, first photo emerges! [Rated-M via Cinematical]

That same year, Larry, together with his brother, reluctantly showed up at the Screen Actors Guild building on Wilshire Boulevard to testify at a SAG arbitration hearing. Marcus Chong, whose character of Tank had been written out of the sequels after a bitter dispute over money, claimed he had been unfairly treated during salary negotiations for the Matrix sequels.

For the hearing, Larry dressed entirely in black and was constantly shadowed by a team of four beefy, stone-faced, black-clad bodyguards, because Chong had allegedly made threats against the brothers. "They created their own movie set," one observer recalled, who remembered the arbitrator, an old SAG hand, shaking his head at all the drama.

The Larry Wachowski who appeared that day shocked Chong: a decidedly feminine-looking man, with porcelain skin and rosy cheeks, a far cry from the balding, masculine six-footer from Chicago he'd known on the set in Australia. "His face looked like it was melting," says Chong, "and he had a head of hair like Raquel Welch."

We'll say this for SAG: They can put on one hell of a show. While Writer's Guild arbitrations are often nap-inducing affairs pitting one balding white guy against another over who thought to put Pamela Anderson in a bookstore first, the SAG disputes come off as Wagnerian spectacles of the absurd, with Wachowski's 6-foot hormone-induced bombshell creation the undisputed star of the show.

• The Mystery of Larry Wachowski [RollingStone.com]
• Previously: Warner Bros. Keeps Quiet On Contents Of Larry Wachowski s Pants [Defamer]