John Cameron Mitchell Quotes
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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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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'm an honorary old Jewish lady of the West Village.
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I always think that in some way, art is the best tool we have to prepare for death. It's like a sculpture that you can interpret differently every time you look at it.
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I sometimes buy albums that I don't like now, but that I know I will like. Coming out was the same thing. In high school, I thought, 'I know I'm going to have to deal with this, but I'm not confident enough now.' But when I finally did, my whole life changed.
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My mom was a little weepy. My dad was very logical about it. Once they realized you can't change, they wanted to know that you can be happy and be gay. Once they realized that, they were very cool about it.
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I remember seeing a stage version of Plato's 'Symposium' and being really moved because it was written by a man rather than a culture.
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I actually came out the year that AIDS hit the front pages. So there was this mixed feeling about it - excitement that life's finally begun, but it was completely tied up with mortality and danger and politics.
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My favorite model of success is when people say, 'Nobody bought that first Velvet Underground album, but everyone who did started a band.'
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I like making art that's useful to people who have a harder road. Art is a tool to get through it; it's a tool to prepare for the worst. By envisioning it in an artistic context, you can make sense of it before and after it happens.
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Drag wasn't really on Broadway. It was considered low-class.
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I've avoided situations where I wouldn't have creative freedom.
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You get all these French directors who have all these pretty, vacuous stars of their movies - from Jean Seberg on - who have become iconic but were never really good actors.
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I studied meditation, knowing it would be a huge new calming skill.
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Some people end up becoming just a conservator of the one thing they did and making sure they get their merch out and all that.
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Acceptance and assimilation, you know, breeds mediocrity and perhaps an even more sheep-like conformism in terms of what kind of music you're supposed to listen to if you're gay... What are you supposed to look like? What's your body supposed to look like?
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Isn't it funny - why is it called a tennis bracelet? It doesn't seem very tennis, does it?
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Having been an actor in Hollywood for a certain amount of time, I always felt a pressure to be sort of a neutral person. 'Don't do anything to your hair. Don't tell them your age. Don't tell them you're gay. Don't tell them anything that could limit you, specify you as a person.' I always hated that, actually moved out of L.A. because of that.
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It's cool when frat boys say, 'Yeah, 'Hedwig!' I'd like to see that same thing happen with 'Shortbus.'
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Humor without sadness underneath it feels cheap and aggressive.
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There are a lot of silly projects out there.
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I've always liked a good joke that everybody can laugh at.
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I'm all for information diets, which are helpful for the mood and for the art.
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I was brought up very Catholic, and the character of Tommy Gnosis got his name from there.