John Cameron Mitchell Quotes
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Doing 'Hedwig' was so hard that I kind of burned out on acting.
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I did take comfort in the vespers and compline. I might have become a monk if I hadn't come out.
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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 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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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 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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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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I've avoided situations where I wouldn't have creative freedom.
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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've always liked a good joke that everybody can laugh at.
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I was brought up very Catholic, and the character of Tommy Gnosis got his name from there.
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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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I'm an honorary old Jewish lady of the West Village.
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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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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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It's cool when frat boys say, 'Yeah, 'Hedwig!' I'd like to see that same thing happen with 'Shortbus.'
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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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I guess historically, drag queens were imitating movie stars and luminaries. It's kind of nice to have a movie star imitating a drag queen.
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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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Our feet are planted in the real world, but we dance with angels and ghosts.
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User-comments culture is not useful for creating original work, I think.
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The think that we hung the film version all on was 'Hedwig' on tour. On stage, it's one theatre, one show. It just seemed natural to change it. In the film, we were able to go to flashback rather than have her talk to the audience. And we had the play to practice and to see where we had made mistakes.
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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.