John Cameron Mitchell Quotes
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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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London is the English-speaking theatre capital.
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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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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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I've avoided situations where I wouldn't have creative freedom.
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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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I studied meditation, knowing it would be a huge new calming skill.
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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 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 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 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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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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It's cool when frat boys say, 'Yeah, 'Hedwig!' I'd like to see that same thing happen with 'Shortbus.'
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I quickly found that I didn't really fit into 'gay culture,' as identified by many gay people, and that it can be just as confining as straight culture, not least in the way that bisexual people are told that 'they can't make up their mind.'
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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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Isn't it funny - why is it called a tennis bracelet? It doesn't seem very tennis, does it?
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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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Our feet are planted in the real world, but we dance with angels and ghosts.
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There are a lot of silly projects out there.
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Drag wasn't really on Broadway. It was considered low-class.
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I'm all for information diets, which are helpful for the mood and for the art.
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Queerness isn't just Lady Gaga and overpriced drinks and fauxhawks. It's James Baldwin and Bea Arthur and Gertrude Stein and Gore Vidal.
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I think as far as themes, 'Hedwig' is about what music meant to you as a kid and how rock n' roll can save you; that is definitely part of it.
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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.