Film star and director John Cameron Mitchell spoke to College Hill students about love, sex, religion and the burdens of dressing in drag at the screening of his film "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," at the Rhode Island School of Design last night.
Mitchell came to Providence as part of a project to bring queer filmmakers to Brown's campus. The event was sponsored by the Queer Alliance, the department of modern culture and media and RISD's Straight and Gay Alliance.
"Hedwig and the Angry Inch" features the questionably transgender rock star Hedwig on a tour as he performs songs that tell his life story and express his struggle with his sexual identity. In the movie, Hedwig, played by Mitchell, confronts his insecurities as a self-described "girly boy" and his tense relationship with rock star Tommy Gnosis, his former protege and lover.
"I love 'Hedwig and the Angry Inch' ... and I'm really fascinated by John Cameron Mitchell and the roles he has played," said Queer Alliance Head Chair Katie Lamb '10, who first contacted Mitchell this summer. Mitchell's latest movie, "Shortbus," was screened last week.
Lamb said she hoped "people will take away something personal (from the movie) that, in turn, will also affect their relationships with other people."
Mitchell spoke briefly before the screening, warning the audience, "If I step out, just know it's because I'm bored with it."
After the movie, he spoke with audience members about his personal experiences both on and off the set.
The most difficult part of dressing in drag, Mitchell said, was "shaving, because I would shave and then it would grow back." After a while, he got lazy. "I was a half-assed drag queen," he said.
According to Mitchell, "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," which started out as a musical, was originally about Hedwig's rival and former lover Tommy Gnosis. However, the club where Mitchell and his band began to perform was a drag club, so he switched the focus to Hedwig, whose character was based on his family's babysitter.
Hedwig's transition from stage to screen came with changes to the script, Mitchell said. For example, at the end of the off-Broadway version, Hedwig rises above the stage and becomes Tommy, which leaves the audience wondering, "Is there even a Hedwig?" he said.
Mitchell said he was often told that he should play both Hedwig and Tommy in the film.
"But I don't want to make out with myself," he said. "Not that I liked making out with Michael Pitt."
Of his favorite celebrity kiss, Mitchell said, "The only person I auditioned that I was actually hot for was James Franco."
"And you know what? He was a much better kisser than Michael," he added.
A theme throughout the film is the search for one's other half. Hedwig's song "The Origin of Love" addresses this need for true love with a theory from Plato's Symposium, which maintains that each human had two adjoined bodies until the gods separated them.
"Something seems right about it, for us to need to find this soulmate," Mitchell said of the idea, adding that there are different ways to interpret Plato's theory. At the end of the film, for example, "an internal union has happened rather than with someone else."
When asked if he believes in love, Mitchell said, "Oh God. Not last week. It's a long story." He said that definitions of love vary and that he wants to know how many soulmates one could have.
Another audience member asked him why the last several minutes of his works end in music rather than narrative or dialogue. "I feel most of my movies should end with the Rosie O'Donnell line," he said, referencing O'Donnell's status as the last character with a spoken line in the movie. But on a more serious note he said, "When a character sings, it's because they're feeling so much they can't speak it anymore."
"It was interesting to watch the film and have my own interpretation and then hear the director's vision and interpretation," said Katie Wilson '12, an audience member.
Mitchell is currently working on a script based on his family and religion. "I grew up very conservative Catholic, as you can see," Mitchell said, adding, "If everything were cool when you were growing up, why do you make this kind of film?"
As it turns out, religion also figures into "Hedwig and the Angry Inch." Mitchell said he derived inspiration from Jesus' sayings that never made it into the Bible, such as, "If circumcision were beneficial, we'd be born circumcised," which presumably relates to Hedwig's hostility about his residual "angry inch." Mitchell said his favorite quote by Jesus is, "What you bring forth from within yourself will save you. What you do not bring forth will destroy you."
The filmmaker Hima B. will be on campus for a screening and discussion in Smith-Buonanno Hall Dec. 10.
