Boston – The openly gay (writer, director, producer, actor) John Cameron Mitchell did the almost impossible in 2001 – turned the smash off-Broadway musical “Hedwig & The Angry Inch” into a movie, which is now a cult classic – and created such a sensation that every character’s name from the production is able to roll off virtually any queen’s tongue.
“It’s not just the fags who came to ‘Hedwig,’ either on stage or at the theaters,” reveals Mitchell, when I improperly suggest and assume that it was the gays who made up much of the audiences at both the staged productions, which toured the country and the movie version.
“With ‘Hedwig,’ the audiences were diverse. Most of the fags were like ‘it’s not Madonna, so who gives a shit?’ We (the “Hedwig’ play and movie’s publicity machine) had to fight to get them.”
But once they got into their seats, they were immediately mesmerized by Mitchell’s transformation from good-looking, clean cut, all-American boy-next-door, to Hedwig/Hansel.
For the few who have not heard of nor seen “Hedwig,” Hedwig, born a boy named Hansel in East Berlin, fell in love with an American G.I. and underwent a sex-change operation in order to marry him and flee to the West. Unfortunately, nothing worked out quite as it was supposed to. Years later, Hedwig is leading her rock band on a tour of the U.S., telling her life story through a series of concerts at Bilgewater Inn seafood restaurants. Her tour dates coincide with those of arena-rock star Tommy Gnosis, a wide-eyed boy who once loved Hedwig… but then left with all her songs.
While “Hedwig” the movie is on DVD, (and is consistently doing brisk sales), for posterity sake, it is not “Hedwig & The Angry Inch” that John Cameron Mitchell and I are excited to be sitting and talking about in Boston, his last stop on a tiring, and stressful U.S. press tour.
We are chatting about his latest movie, “Shortbus,” a film like nothing you have ever seen before, nor will likely ever see again on the big screen – yes in your local neighborhood theater later this month.
“I am so stressed out over ‘Shortbus,'” Mitchell confides, in a suite at The Ritz Carlton. “I have worked so hard on this movie but I can’t even sleep through a full night. I take Ambien every night just to get five hours of sleep, if I am lucky.
Why all the stress and anxiety?
Quite simply, “Shortbus” is the first film to be released in United States theaters with such a large publicity push and with virtually unanimous critical acclaim (see Richard Corliss’s review in Time Magazine, www.wildaboutmovies.com, Manohla Dargis’ gushing rave review in The New York Times, Roger Ebert’s big thumb up, New York Newsday’s gushing, Newsweek Magazine’s explosion, New York Post, Los Angeles Times and so on and on and on…) that explores human sexuality (homo and hetero) in an unbelievably realistic manner – no holds barred.
What do you mean –no holds barred?
Spoiler alert begins!
Well, for starters, “Shortbus,” is the first feature film that will be released in commercial movie theaters that shows – in its first five minutes – a man beating off and then, with the help of some yoga tricks, positioning his penis into his mouth and ejaculating into his own mouth, (yes, I swear); a dominatrix beating the shit out of her heterosexual subject; a heterosexual couple fucking, the male cumming, his erect penis thrashing into his wife’s visible vagina, yet unable to make his wife cum – and, what we learn later, who has yet to ever cum in her life.
Again, that’s just the first five minutes.
Spoiler alert ends!
“It’s not about sex, though,” says Mitchell. And he, along with just about any and everyone who has seen “Shortbus,” would agree with him.
Although, Variety Magazine couldn’t be giddier with their headline: “Unquestionably the most sexually graphic American narrative feature ever made outside the porn industry.”
“‘Shortbus’ is a sensation. It’s not about sex but sexuality. Not about scoring but about living,” Roger Ebert, “The Chicago Sun Times.”
You must be asking the question: How on God’s green earth did John Cameron Mitchell get an entire cast to agree to participate, (for hardly any money), in such a sexually graphic, yet at the same time, heartbreaking, Academy Award caliber film?
“The process began three years ago,” says Mitchell, in the lobby of AMC Boston Common, where I am standing with him five minutes before I introduce him to a packed audience of 300 – 50/50% gay/straight.
“I posted a note on Craig’s List and asked aspiring or legitimate actors to send me a video tape, ten minutes or less, of their first and/or best real sexual encounter. I prefaced the ad with the fact that if they were chosen for any role, they would be compelled to appear nude and, perhaps, orgasmic, on screen.
“The response was overwhelming. After I selected the cast I was comfortable with and whom I thought would bring a lot to the movie, we began the process of creating characters. ‘Shortbus’ is not just a movie written by me. It was a collaborative process from beginning to end.”
And John Cameron Mitchell is not kidding.
While you watch the end credits of “Shortbus” you will see that the entire cast is credited with co-screenwriting nods.
Mitchell was so adamant about making everyone on the set feel comfortable, that during one of the film’s most eye-popping scenes – an orgy, in which more than 25 nude males and females are sucking, fucking, licking and kissing – he jumped in.
Just what was his position in the scene?
“I was one of the guys licking a pussy,” he says to me, matter-of-factly. This, a gay man, who had never had the desire to orally service a vagina before.
“Why did I do it? Well, first, all of the actors in the movie went above and beyond the call of duty and if I couldn’t jump in there and do something that I had never done before I think that would have been hypocritical. The actors actually said to me, ‘If we have to do things that we are not used to doing sexually, why don’t you?'”
And just what did JC Mitchell think of his tongue on the twat?
“Actually, it was tasty. But it was nothing that turned me on. I am very content with my boyfriend.”
While John Cameron Mitchell is hopeful, (as is every single person who has seen “Shortbus”), that the film is a box office sensation on the level of “Midnight Cowboy,” the Dustin Hoffman/Jon Voight film released in the late 1960s (and, notably, the only X-rated movie to win a Best Picture Oscar, to date), he is still worried.
“I didn’t make ‘Shortbus’ with a lottery payout in mind. In fact, to be brutally honest, I don’t give a shit if the movie is bootlegged. I just want as many people to see it as possible because the film has a message. I am more interested that people see the film, whether they pay to see it or not,” says Mitchell.
In fact, he goes back to “Hedwig” for a minute.
“When ‘Hedwig’ was released in theaters, and then on DVD, a lot of my friends and friends of friends had a litmus test. They gave “Hedwig” to their so-called friends and told them to watch it. And if they didn’t like it, they disowned them as friends.”
Mitchell is not sure if “Shortbus” is the same type of movie.
I, Tim Nasson, personally, who usually never takes a stand on a movie, especially while writing an interview with a cast member or director, has to say, I think it is a combination of last year’s two Best Films; “Brokeback Mountain,” and “Crash.”
Like “Brokeback Mountain,” “Shortbus” explores the torment that many, gay and straight and everything in between go through to finally find love. And like “Crash,” “Shortbus” brings together a cast of characters who have never met before, until the beginning of the movie, but by the end, have helped each other so much that their lives are changed exponentially, for the better.
Another usual no-no for me, during an interview feature is giving a movie a grade. This is an exception because it is so deserved. “Shortbus,” in my grade book, gets an A+.
And if there is any justice come Oscar time, John Cameron Mitchell will be nominated for a Best Director Academy Award and the film will be nominated for Best Screenplay and WIN the Best Cinematography Oscar.
If there was a category for Best Cast Ensemble, the cast of “Shortbus” would undoubtedly win the Oscar – as the cast of last year’s “Crash” would and should have.
It is high time to add a new category to the Oscars!
Go “Behind The Scenes” of “Shortbus”
Catch the “Shortbus” at a theater near you!
