John Cameron Mitchell Quotes
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It's the weird thing that actors do: You jumped across that building because the scene required it.
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Anger is so constructive.
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'Hedwig' was pretty much all the things I wanted to do that other people said I probably shouldn't do: drag, punk rock, stand-up comedy... You know, combine them all in a thing that's supremely uncommercial from the objective point of view.
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I think I was scared of the drag thing, as a lot of gay boys are. It's sort of knocked out of you in junior high. I wouldn't find guys who were very feminine attractive. Then, doing 'Hedwig,' I got to be man and woman, really butch and really femme at the same time, and I realized, this is kind of the ideal.
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I thought, 'O.K., if I'm a valuable person and an independent entity, then I don't have to worry about what people think of me. I can reach out now.'
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As you get older, you treasure the beautiful things of the past but also see things more clearly.
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I come from the theater, and there is a real collaborative history there.
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I love a good party.
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I think things are dishonest if they're not aware of sadness.
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I don't regret anything, because I feel better every year, and if I'd done something different, maybe I wouldn't. I'm more of a whole person, the older I get.
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What's interesting is that some of the things I'm interested in talking about is a story which has to do with the second half of your life, which can be told through Hedwig's voice because she's older. If the timeline is consistent, she's as old as me.
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People know what 'Hedwig' is now, and that's wonderful. It's not the same as being swamped for being on 'The Big Bang Theory,' but it's much more comfortable.
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You can make serious pop, you know? There was a time when the best movies were the most popular, and I keep thinking that can happen again.
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We're all weirdly single, middle-aged women with too much money who look to fill the void with too much shopping.
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I've obviously always been aware of actor-oriented films, being an actor. Altman and Cassavetes were really strong. And then I realized their structures were quite fascinating, too.
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I walk out of my apartment, and St. Vincent's is standing there like a ghost ship. That was the ground zero of AIDS in New York: a conservative institution that quickly adapted to its unconventional patients and made heroic efforts to try and save them.
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London is the English-speaking theatre capital.
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The first rock stars were incredibly theatrical. Little Richard and Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley - they were theater artists.
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I went to a very small Catholic school. It wasn't an easy place to be growing up gay.
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Nothing is a calling card. Everything is what you do. If you do it in order to get somewhere else, you're not actually doing it. If you're thinking, 'What is the weird thing I want to make with my friends?' money and other things will come later.
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I really want as many people as possible to relate to something, without compromising or dumbing down.
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Growing up, it was uncool to admit that your family had any money. And then, instantly, money was cool. In Reagan's parlance, it was about freedom of the individual, which was freedom to be greedy... individual versus society. There was a weird seduction in that, which I still feel.
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I realized that theater was the perfect thing for me, in short bursts of intense community building.
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Doing 'Hedwig' was so hard that I kind of burned out on acting.