John Cameron Mitchell Quotes
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After the first 'Hedwig,' interestingly, I was offered to play Hamlet a couple of times.
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London is the English-speaking theatre capital.
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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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I'm an honorary old Jewish lady of the West Village.
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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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There are a lot of silly projects out there.
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I studied meditation, knowing it would be a huge new calming skill.
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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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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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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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Isn't it funny - why is it called a tennis bracelet? It doesn't seem very tennis, does it?
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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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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 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've avoided situations where I wouldn't have creative freedom.
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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 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 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 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.
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Our feet are planted in the real world, but we dance with angels and ghosts.
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Drag wasn't really on Broadway. It was considered low-class.
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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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Humor without sadness underneath it feels cheap and aggressive.