BS Summary: This article contains 31 faulty reasoning types, including Biased Writer Voice, Hasty Generalization, and Negativity Bias, with Politically Left Leaning Bias as the most egregious example at 14.3% saturation with 336 hits. Analysis detected 3,316 faulty-reasoning hits from 2,356 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 50.6% and a BS Rank of 50% (9,546 of 18,899 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 50.50% of the article peer group.
It’s been 25 years since the release of "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," the film adaptation of John Cameron Mitchell’s off-Broadway glam punk opus of the same name.
Now, the film is being revisited by its creator, who will be in Phoenix on Monday, August 3, at The Van Buren as part of the "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" 25th Anniversary Tour.
Fans can expect an interactive screening of the film, an in-person conversation and Q&A with Mitchell and an acoustic performance of songs from the musical.
Also, there will be an opportunity to put on some makeup, turn on the tape deck and put the wig back on your head with a "Hedwig" costume contest, with prizes from the Punk Rock Museum and the Criterion Collection.
The film follows the titular Hedwig (played by Mitchell), a sardonic, gender-bending punk singer from war-torn Berlin who flees communism, band breakups and abusive relationships – both romantic and musical.
Along the way, she and her band tour the Midwest, ripping through Bowie and Lou Reed-inspired songs full of innuendo to audiences at seafood restaurants, one-person music festival side stages and dingy nightclubs.
While the term “cult classic” is sometimes used, that label often gets applied to the “so bad it’s good” genre, which is decidedly not the case with Hedwig (a recent Criterion re-release speaks to its importance in the canon of excellent and subversive filmmaking).
In fact, Hedwig, in Mitchell’s interpretation, is a musical that defies easy labeling.
It exists in the conversation of queer films, but it is not expressly about being queer.
It is both crass and cerebral, camp and Criterion, fiercely uncompromising and tongue firmly in cheek.
It exists as a meditation on trauma and survival through the lens of glam rock, wrapped up and sold with a smirk and Mitchell’s high heels and booming tenor in one of the most physically demanding roles ever captured on film.
Mitchell, fresh off his run as Mary Lincoln on Cole Escola’s Broadway smash "Oh, Mary!", took time to talk to Hedwig, being creative in the face of fascism, becoming David Byrne’s muse, and much more from his home in New Orleans.
Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Phoenix New Times: Are you hibernating now that "Oh, Mary!"
is done?
That seemed like … a lot.
John Cameron Mitchell: I am resting a bit, and trying desperately to get back to my writing and working on a new play and memoir and try not to do anything else, and not get distracted.
Are you sharing any of the memoir’s anecdotes about "Hedwig" on this tour?
People can ask whatever they want.
I’m not a super “prepare” type of person.
I’m ready, but then it’s time to improvise.
There’s stories, sometimes a Q and A, a music set about half an hour with a guitarist and a meet-n-greet, and it’s really just a nice celebration of how far "Hedwig" has come and also how much it affected people, which in a way is still so unexpected.
When we first made it, it was for us.
There was no way it could be on Broadway or be up for Oscars.
It was too different for its more conservative time in 2001, and that freed us up to make something unique.
We didn’t have to change it to be mainstream because mainstream didn’t want us anyway.
So we allowed it to become what it was and people found it over time, usually DVDs, friends telling each other, sometimes screenings like this.
Drag is so ubiquitous on Broadway now.
I know that must make you proud, because of how hard you worked to infuse your art, especially "Hedwig," with it.
Is it bittersweet to see what was fringe 25 years ago be so popular today?
No, things change.
They take their time.
Sometimes you wish it would happen faster.
You know, drag, strangely, is very Broadway.
It’s been popular in a mainstream way in Britain and Australia, for example, and even Canada.
We in the U.S. are behind when it comes to things like that, but someone has to be the first to push through and be the first to punch a hole in the dark.
Those people aren’t necessarily reaping financial benefits, but that’s OK.
I’d rather be 10 people’s favorite thing than a million people’s so-so thing.
I grew up in the rural South, and "Hedwig" had a reputation for being a “banned” movie that could turn people “gay” according to the youth ministers in our church, so congratulations on that.
I grew up very Catholic.
My mom was a super-Catholic, and I guess it’s the same in Protestant churches?
There’s always that ceremony where the priest or minister or whoever shakes everyone’s hand at the door at the end of the service.
We are leaving the service and she introduces me to the priest, who leans over and whispers in my ear, ‘How did you get away with "Shortbus," you naughty boy?’
So, you know, It’s like in some ways, I’m a modern Catholic priest — like the one I wanted.
You do espouse the kindness of punk.
I saw David Byrne a few weeks ago —
What an incredible show.
It was!
And your anecdote about, “Love and kindness are forms of resistance, of punk” was the centerpiece of his show.
It was incredible.
I’ve gotten to meet him a few times, but I saw him before his show in Detroit.
He was very sweet about it and he checked in with me about it and made sure I was good with that.
He has aged so well, and he is so kind.
He’s on the spectrum but he laughs about it.
It’s not the same as a narcissist.
David’s trying to interact, and the world is a little bit harder for him.
He has a heart that’s bigger than anyone’s for the world.
But he can only express it through music sometimes.
He’s a wonderful guide and he remains young because he remains curious.
I saw him at Jazzfest and he easily could have had a driver or Uber take him to the show, but he chose to ride his bike to the gig because he wants to experience the city and the people.
Revisiting Hedwig, are you still learning from her?
It’s amazing that it is delightfully resilient, and timeless maybe?
In a time when specifically queer and trans people are being scapegoated again.
The immigrant and the queer people are the default scapegoat during times like these.
People leap to attack them first.
So we’re back to the 1950s.
So in this time of slow-moving fascism, we find out what we are made of under this sort of pressure.
Some of us are just trying to survive, and sadly, this type of fascism has fucked with people’s ability to live and cost of living.
The arrogant moves of a war and tariffs, and the king-like decisions that often destroy a country’s morality as well as their economy.
So we are finding out what is going on here.
We still have an electoral system, so we can still change things, but we are seeing someone knock down as many institutions as they can to never be able to go back.
The money we spent on helping shut down HIV in Africa, for example, and saving 25 million people has been cut and that will rebound on us.
So, anyway, I think Hedwig has always had a role in reflecting the culture of the moment.
Since we are scapegoats again, I am encouraging productions with very obviously gender nonconforming people to take on the role.
I don’t think the character needs to be played by a trans or even a queer person.
I’ve even known people who are cis or straight who played (Hedwig) and it opened them up in another way or transitioned in some other way — bisexual or whatever, nonbinary.
It’s a gift to be able to play because it changes you and to restrict who gets to play it is against its own philosophy.
We are an identity of one, and we have the option of developing on our own or we have the option of being forced into categories like Hedwig was.
So to me, I am encouraging trans and nonbinary actors to really go for Hedwig because they weren’t allowed to be in the acting schools until more recently.
So we’ve had generations of people who didn’t fit in who could have been brilliant artists.
It’s a fucking outrage.
I love that it remains something that can be rediscovered by new generations, and not get canceled, because it isn’t an identity story — it’s a story of recovering from trauma.
It’s a hypothesis that we are all in effect androgenous, nonbinary, whatever you want to call it, and our clumsy human interactions with that process can lead to trauma and tears and violence.
Hedwig is moving through that time and ultimately triumphing and letting the audience know they can take their own path.
You have mentioned the importance, on almost a moral or spiritual level, of the need for human beings to create as an act of punk or rebellion.
How does that factor into your revisiting of "Hedwig"?
To me, yes, "Hedwig" will always be a weapon for good — for kindness, for transgression, into the light, not just to shock or destroy.
That’s what punk was originally, a way to shatter the establishment to allow a fairer, more egalitarian, anti-capitalist, creative class to come forward out of wherever.
Not just people who had money or could afford a guitar.
It happened in art and music, the Dada Period, which I am writing about as well with my new concept, and the Surrealists.
These kinds of rebellions in art come up periodically.
They come out of frustration — in their case, war.
Some of the best art comes out of conflict, so perhaps now is a time.
It’s also combined with AI, which feels like a threat to our very soul, in a way.
But that doesn’t scare me as much, because AI will never have its heart broken.
It can only simulate it.
Funny enough, we did an AI search last night for names for what my memoir should be called, even though I already had my title, just to compare.
They were pretty bad, but there was one that made us laugh: “Glitter in the Wound.”
Thanks, Chat GPT.
But these things are tools.
Just like Bowie used to cut up newspapers and scatter the words to see what would come out of them — just like tea leaves.
We can do the same with AI, or the I Ching, we can do the same with the tarot.
These are all things that are tools.
I don’t want to ignore AI, but it doesn’t encroach on my art.
However, I also see its danger when it comes to other worlds where AI will replace jobs.
AI can easily make a Lifetime movie script, because they’re so shitty. but you know, maybe let it.
Maybe it will force people to get more creative.
Unfortunately, that’s the equivalent of making sausages — someone gets paid, it’s a job, and then if that happens, that job goes away.
You are in New Orleans, and you have famously said that New Orleans is a “city in drag.”
How has the city shaped your creativity?
Well, the politics for one.
The governor is messing with us now, taking away our only Black representative, and the election was already happening and he stopped it.
It’s just a huge power grab, and we have a recall against him, but what a toadie.
One thing about this city is it can’t be bowed.
He’s even banned drag — imagine doing that in New Orleans?
Everyone would be out in drag.
New Orleans, we’re our own thing.
We are the best of America.
And We’re also the sphincter of America, too, at the end of the Mississippi.
It’s kind of toxic, it’s very fertile, it’s messy, it’s falling apart.
And yet, as we know, the anus is a very important part of our body, releasing toxins and pleasure.
It’s a pleasure town.
I love that.
But there is an honesty and beauty in this city, in its unbowed determination to not change, for better and for worse.
Phoenix has a bit of that.
We live in 110-degree heat.
We’re resilient.
It’s not for everyone.
I lived in Albuquerque as a kid for a minute.
That interesting desert, Southwest thing was always compelling.
My favorite thing about it was that, being a military kid, being exposed to so many places and people, race and gender, there was always a big mix, so I never quite understood why people would freak out about things like that.
If you look close, in the desert, you are going to find beauty, just like in a lot of places.
Although Arizona has more MAGA assholes these days …
That’s why I am still patriotic about an America that I grew up with, which is the place where the misfits would come.
There’s many Americas, many of which I don’t subscribe to, and many that I am repelled by.
But this idea that we are better together; we are better with different stories and places behind us, we are about ingenuity and figuring it out.
Sometimes the goal isn’t my goal, but the way that people try to figure it out, working together — I like that.
To me, America should be a mixed party.
Those are always the best.
I don’t know if that comes from New Orleans, from theater, from my military upbringing, but it is deeply a part of me.
Please, what have you got to bring to the party?
If everything and everyone is the same, I’m bored and going to leave.
"Hedwig and the Angry Inch" 25th anniversary event: 7 p.m.
Monday, Aug.
3.
The Van Buren, 400 W.
Van Buren St.
Tickets start at $60.
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