Interview:
John Cameron Mitchell
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AW: Is music going to continue to be a big part of what you do?

JCM: Yeah. The guy I’m working with now, who’s co-writing this children’s thing, is a music guy. He’s involved with the Elephant Six Collective bands. They’re sort of an underground collective: Neutral Milk Hotel, and the Apples in Stereo. But he’s involved with them, and they’re very Brian Wilson, and Beatles, and very found-music oriented – in Athens, Georgia – so I’m really excited about that, and it will be very sound-oriented, about this blind woman who has this instrument that has all these taped pieces of her life on it. And I do want to do something with jazz. But you know, this explicit sex thing will probably be will very music-oriented.

AW: So what kind of other film projects do you want to do?

JCM: Well those two are the things I’m thinking about most. The sex thing – I’m totally approaching it from the fact that I haven’t seen explicit sex used in an artful way, apart from some recent French alienated sex, bad sex.

It just seems to denigrate sex, to use it as a shock treatment. It is unusual to see it used in a real way. But I think it can be used in a very erotic and funny way. I actually like porn movies a lot – I’m sort of a connoisseur of stuff that’s really good. But I wish it really was combined with real actors, real story, real emotion, and hilarity. I mean it’s quite hilarious, sex, often. So something with a story that has sex is very important – I probably won’t be able to write the story until I find the actors who would be able to do it, and who are good, and who probably won’t be professional actors, ‘cause they’ll be afraid for their career. But once I find the people, I think the story will develop from who they are, and through improvisation, and stuff. And it would be very video-oriented, and way low-budget. But I’m actually not worried so much about getting funding for something like that.

But just in film there’s much less sex than there was in the seventies in mainstream film. Movie rating is really still quite repressive. It’s only by accident that we got certain things in our trailer, even. You know, I have a joke about what I think about all of the people I’ve "come upon" in my travels; the lady didn’t get the joke, so we got it in the trailer. And she didn’t get "Bigger, longer, uncut" – they didn’t get it, luckily. And they didn’t get our tagline, "Get Hed." They didn’t get it. But they might have. A TV guy would have, because he would have got the joke, and then censored it, which I think is even more reprehensible than the old lady, because he pretends to think it’s funny, but then cuts it.

So I think that there’s a strange place for something like this that I’m talking about, but it will never be in theaters, but it will be available the way porn is, you know, on video and DVD, which is kind of fun, to really distribute it fully that way. ‘Cause I don’t really know of any really good films that are only distributed that way.

AW: How do you think some of the technology coming out is going to affect the projects that you’re working on?

JCM: The next thing I’m doing has a lot of digital animation or digital manipulation of live action. And as far as I know, it still takes as much time as hand-drawn animation, it’s just that it’s easier, and might be cheaper, but it still seems to take a lot of work. Which in a weird way is kind of strangely comforting, you know, that – ‘cause people, they keep saying, "You know, we’ll have digital actors from now on. Like eventually, we’ll have actual digital performance that will be controlled by the director."

That scares the shit out of me, because there’s no collaboration between two minds, there’s only one mind. And I think even in

film there’s gotta be more than one mind, otherwise it’s a painting. You know, maybe it is a film that’s a painting, but I don’t think of it as film. I appreciate the partnerships that I have with designers and actors.

"Hedwig" is unabashedly analog in many ways. We certainly used digital, you know, we used the Avid and we used a digital mixing system, which sure didn’t take any less time. In fact, because of the technical changes all the time we lost probably half of our work time-wise – we were mixing – but there was a certain flexibility. But I don’t necessarily see it being any better.

In fact, that you can do certain things faster, does that mean you can do them better? I don’t know. I still get a shortness of breath when I am surfing channels or surfing the Web. I start really breathing differently. My body actually doesn’t settle as my mouse is not settling. I can’t just get a grip, but I want to keep moving faster, but I’m not really absorbing where I am, unless, say, I’m moving on because of the ads, and I don’t wanna stay on that channel ‘cause I refuse to watch a commercial, so you end up on this hamster wheel until I just turn it off and walk away from it.

As most people, I think that there’s a love-hate relationship with the technology that’s coming through. The only thing that’s indubitable is that anyone, if they really want, can find what they want. Especially for kids who are trying to find someone who’s like-minded, and they’re living in a small town. And for every gay kid this completely changes the story. I can’t imagine how helpful it is for disabled kids, for anyone who is marginalized. It’s like, you’re gonna find at least ten freaks somewhere who feel the same way, and that is good. It’s just good. It’s hard to say some things are good or bad, but that’s good.

AW: Do you want to continue to do live performance as well?

JCM: I’ve definitely had it with "Hedwig." The other night I actually performed as myself at a rock club, and had a blast, just sort of jumped off the stage, and nobody caught me. I don’t know if they would have caught me if I was Hedwig. It’s gonna be a few years ‘til I get back into something, but periodically, I like to have that release.

AW: Where do you want to be in ten years?

JCM: I really don’t know what I’ll be working on. What I would like to be: probably with kids, with my boyfriend, and have a place in New York and somewhere else, and not have to worry about money. Not have to worry about being recognized too much – I got out of the acting, and that helps. When I was a kid I used to sort of imagine myself becoming a monk, because I was taught by monks. I don’t know, maybe I’ll be in some cheap chateau in the south of France, holding seminars or master classes or something.

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