Interview with John Cameron Mitchell

JCM: Films that I love that aren’t as well known. There is an Emir Kusturica film called “Time of the Gypsies” that is a beautiful film, not on DVD. There is a five-hour version of it that I think was originally done for Yugoslav television before the wars and it’s only available on a Russian DVD with some guy yelling the translation in Russian over the sound track, which is I think the way they do it for independent films in Russia.

One guy does all the characters and just yells over the top of the mix. So that would be an incredible one to see come out here with subtitles in English. And I noticed they have the five-hour version of Fanny and Alexander on Criterion that was originally on television, also which I think is fantastic. I love that film.

There is a film that New York Video put out. I think it’s in print already ---which is an Iranian film by Mohsen Makhmalbaf who did the film Kandahar. This film is called “A Moment of Innocence” and it’s my favorite Iranian film---incredible film. Makhmalbaf, when he was a teenager, was an Islamic militant against the shah at the time. And he had this plan to steal a gun from a cop on a beat. And ...

JCM: Films that I love that aren’t as well known. There is an Emir Kusturica film called “Time of the Gypsies” that is a beautiful film, not on DVD. There is a five-hour version of it that I think was originally done for Yugoslav television before the wars and it’s only available on a Russian DVD with some guy yelling the translation in Russian over the sound track, which is I think the way they do it for independent films in Russia.

One guy does all the characters and just yells over the top of the mix. So that would be an incredible one to see come out here with subtitles in English. And I noticed they have the five-hour version of Fanny and Alexander on Criterion that was originally on television, also which I think is fantastic. I love that film.

There is a film that New York Video put out. I think it’s in print already ---which is an Iranian film by Mohsen Makhmalbaf who did the film Kandahar. This film is called “A Moment of Innocence” and it’s my favorite Iranian film---incredible film. Makhmalbaf, when he was a teenager, was an Islamic militant against the shah at the time. And he had this plan to steal a gun from a cop on a beat. And he had a female accomplice who would walk by everyday to sort of start flirting with him and then he did it and it all went wrong and he ended up stabbing the policeman and going to jail. 20 years later he is a famous filmmaker and a guy comes up to his door, knocks on the door and, “Can I talk to you dad?” he says to a little girl. And the little girl gets the film-maker. He says, “Don’t you recognize me? I am the policeman you stabbed. I want to be in one of your films. You owe me”.

My favorite Fellini film, “Nights of Cabiria”---which really influenced “Hedwig” and “Shortbus”. You know the mixture of comedy and sexuality and music and a sense of melancholy in fairytale over all. And, may be, I would throw in “Nashville”---Barbara Outland’s great film. And “The Conversation".

I guess there is also the definition of independent. But I think someone that really still qualifies is probably the father of American independent film, John Cassavetes. His best film was, “A Woman Under the Influence”, which I remember from the first time I saw it in the Paris theatre in New York. It just infuriated me. I mean, it kind of knocked me on my ass, but pissed me off, as I don’t need to know all that about those characters. I really don’t need to know that much. It’s too much, it’s too real, it’s too powerful. I wasn’t ready for it, but I couldn’t forget it. So it took the second and third time that I saw it to really feel it and understand its form and really be blown away by it.

And I showed it to all my actors when we are developing “Shortbus” to show them how collaboration could happen between the actors and director. So that still is one of my top five films. It’s Cassavetes’ whole example---the way he conducted his career and the way he worked. He is still a model for me and for many young filmmakers. One of his films, “Love Streams” is not out on DVD and that’s one that when TLA video closed here, I rushed over to pick over its bones and was like, “Tear out the DVD of “Love Streams” or the VHS of “Love Streams” and they are like, “Yeah nobody has asked for that.” But that’s one that actually came out on Cannon. Cannon put it out when they were looking for some credibility.

I would say that Robert Altman had an outsized influence on my work. I think it was the way that he explored genre in his own very personal way---always trying something new. He was probably the most---apart from Cassavetes---the most truly independent filmmaker---who worked for long periods of time and probably did more films the way he wanted to than any other American filmmaker. He always had control over his productions; was a fighter and a hero who was difficult to work with, but actors and his creative collaborators loved him. I also think that some people who are less sanguine than I would say there is nothing original. There are only seven stories. To me that’s very reductive, fatalistic and boring. The Beatles listened to Muddy Waters and then Chuck Berry and made their covers of those songs and then from that and their musical background and their Indian influences, made something new. You know, if it’s coming through your eyes, through your fingers, through your laptop, through you, it’s original. If you are being honest about your feelings about what actually is important to you, the more original it becomes. While at the same time, having done your homework and seeing what has been done and how well it’s been done and even how badly it’s been done. I thought in college that they should teach classics but also terrible things to show why they are different. Because when you are a kid you don’t know why Beckett or Arthur Miller is any good because you haven’t seen anything or read anything else. I think you should learn from other people’s mistakes too. Know your enemy---narratively as well as in other parts of your life---the things you want to avoid. So I believe there is all kinds of history that has to be preserved in terms of film.

“Shortbus” is a strange but not a completely unusual process of creating a film through improvisation. Spike Lee creates all of his films and his plays----he has a very vague idea of the script, he casts interesting actors and then they go in for a long period of time and do a lot of improvising and come to a set script. In our case, we borrowed a little bit from Spike Lee, a little bit from Cassavetes, even Altman where I had again a vague sense of New York, Downtown, Post 9/11, pre-black out. There would be a salon, you know an underground gathering place and it would be a mixture of sexualities and then you explore the stories through the sex that the characters have. So we have an open website audition call, to avoid the agents because of the sex. And we just opened it up. I did press in different venues and I solicited interviews with the Voice type publications and said, “I have this website”. Half a million people hit the website; 500 audition tapes were sent in and it became very clear who was intelligent, who was interesting, funny--you know, a diversity of sexualities and genders. We brought them in, 40 of them, for call-backs in New York. We had a good time, had a party for them and then we chose nine final actors, but no plot. We had no story yet. But in the audition process I was trying to get ideas. These guys are couples. When she was young it was hard for her to have an orgasm. Ah---there is a story. So I really took the story from the actors’ lives; exaggerated stuff, asked them what was interesting to them, told them what was interesting to me. They chose their characters names and back-stories. I would read them into a story, called a screenplay, and then we slowly honed it for two and a half years till we shot it. We had our first five-week workshop April 2003. Right after that I had enough material to start our first draft. So the next few months were spent just working on a first draft. It’s very sprawling, too many characters, too many ideas----which is a great, great place to start. So very quickly I had something to work with and you know it’s a great way to work. You never had that blank page, you know the horror that a writer has---because you have always got great stuff that the actors have come up with. It’s almost more about renewing the way and putting it together in a way that’s more coherent. So really, what we did with that, I think, was more of what I borrowed from Cassavetes. I told the actors that I would fire them if they ever did the lines as written and I found that they all had different experiences in working on film. But, like Cassavetes could put his wife Gena Rowlands in a scene with his mother, you know--Ms. Cassavetes in “Women Are The Influence” and you couldn’t tell who is the real actor. The fireworks were there. The way that happened is that he created an environment where they had a structure to the scene, but they never had to do it exactly the same way twice. So a mom and a daughter-in-law can somehow meet in the middle in a very common reality. I encouraged my actors to, I mean I demanded that they, never go with their lines. And when we would rehearse we would just read it silently and then put it away and do it from memory. Then if they skipped some beats I would say, “Oh, just look at the script” when we skipped that beat, so they end up with every beat in the scene, i.e. every line, every movement. But every time we did it, it was slightly different because they never learned it. In that way you could never over-rehearse---it was always something new. I had hit them with some spins, you know, for example I would say, “Alright, start with the beat that the scene begins with and end with the end beat, but I want you to throw everything away in between and see how you get there a different way. So we would do this in rehearsal and in shooting. The way we rehearsed was exactly the way we shot, we just happened to have a crew around when we did it. One of the actors was feeling uncomfortable that she was a female actor and about the impending nudity of the scene and just suggested that in rehearsal I and my assistant and the cameraman, all the actors, everyone was nude in the same room. And instantly I think, “Would I have auditioned for this film?” I don’t think I would have. But I felt like there needed to be a gesture of solidarity there. So we all took our clothes off and we were all a little nervous at first and then just like at the sauna, or whatever, you get over it very quickly. And when you have these 16 hours shoot days, trust me, it’s the last thing you are thinking about. Later she also said, “John if we have to do something like this, this open, then you should do something you have never done”. So I am not in the film except in a couple of cameos. And I actually performed oral sex on a woman for the first time and on camera so I can prove it to my mother.

More to come...