A biography for John Cameron Mitchellhasn’t been written yet.
“User-comments culture is not useful for creating original work, I think.”
“If you go for the money first and try to think of what other people want to see, you change your original inspiration and perhaps put out something that's less original and less personal and maybe less satisfying.”
“Chaos is the natural state, and theater tries to make sense of it, but it's got to be a little messy to be believable.”
“The people that were most interesting were always questioning the status quo.”
“Compared to other liberal cities like San Francisco and Amsterdam, New Yorkers are always trying to do something, make art or love or money or whatever, and they have this phobia about standing still.”
“It's the weird thing that actors do: You jumped across that building because the scene required it.”
“I've seen things change and people forget: the history of Berlin, the history of queer struggle, the history of AIDS, the history of New York changing from an artistic powerhouse to more of a financial one now.”
“I always think that in some way, art is the best tool we have to prepare for death. It's like a sculpture that you can interpret differently every time you look at it.”
“I remember my girlfriend dropped me for the guy I thought was really cute.”
“I'm all for information diets, which are helpful for the mood and for the art.”
“My favorite model of success is when people say, 'Nobody bought that first Velvet Underground album, but everyone who did started a band.'”
“Bob Fosse, even though he wasn't gay. He was certainly queer and had a huge effect on the 'Hedwig' film, as did Hal Ashby and Robert Altman, who had a weird butch queer feeling about him. His films almost flirted with camp but in an extremely realistic acting way.”
“I am just touched at how strongly the real Hed-heads feel. It feels different from other kinds of devotees; maybe it's the way I felt with certain bands when I was a kid. It feels like a band more than a play.”
“You're on Facebook, and you're supposed to know your sexual orientation at 13... Nobody really knows what's going on at that time, and people seem to... know stuff, or they have to act like they do, and they make decisions before they really need to.”
“Queerness isn't just Lady Gaga and overpriced drinks and fauxhawks. It's James Baldwin and Bea Arthur and Gertrude Stein and Gore Vidal.”
“I think it helped me like myself more, playing Hedwig.”
“Nowadays, the term 'selling out' doesn't exist anymore because everyone is trying to make a living.”
“The think that we hung the film version all on was 'Hedwig' on tour. On stage, it's one theatre, one show. It just seemed natural to change it. In the film, we were able to go to flashback rather than have her talk to the audience. And we had the play to practice and to see where we had made mistakes.”
“Oftentimes, experiencing tragedy very young can strangely give you a kind of equilibrium.”
“I love a good party.”