Twenty-five years after Hedwig and the Angry Inch first exploded onto screens, its creator, writer, director, and star John Cameron Mitchell is bringing the film—and its companion piece Shortbus—back to the big screen in 4K for a special anniversary celebration at Dallas’s historic Texas Theater. In a wide-ranging conversation with AMFM Magazine Managing Editor Paul Salfen, Mitchell reflected on the film’s unlikely longevity, its roots in the AIDS crisis and punk defiance, the spiritual nature of the current tour, and why he believes the next generation needs less cancel culture and more real-world making, connection, and yes—getting laid.
The timing feels right. Mitchell, an Army brat who spent formative years moving between Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, is bringing the 25th-anniversary Hedwig experience home. The Dallas stop features a full screening of the film in 4K, a costume contest, acoustic performances, and a Q&A. The following afternoon at 2 p.m., the Texas Theater will screen Shortbus. “Come on down if you don’t bring your parents,” Mitchell joked. “You can… but you’ve been warned.”
Looking back at a quarter-century of Hedwig, Mitchell is struck by how the film has functioned less as a commercial product and more as a passport. “It was never a moneymaker. It was never commercial. It could never be on Broadway at the time. It could never be up for an Oscar because of what it was about,” he said. “People forget the Oscars aren’t the best films of the year. They’re the ones that have money behind them for a campaign.” Yet the film gave him something more valuable: community. “I can go into any country and meet people who love the film… a community not one that existed before me, but the one that I created.”
That community includes people with Hedwig tattoos who tell him the film changed their lives. Mitchell contrasts this with more celebrated recent films. “Do people have tattoos of Argo? Do they say Oppenheimer changed my life? Barbie? They might be entertaining, fun, or informative… but they’re not necessarily going to change your life. I like to make things that change people’s lives.” His favorite compliment is not simply “it changed my life,” but “it made me want to do something new… not to imitate you, but to be inspired by you to make my own thing.”
Mitchell is clear-eyed about the conditions that produced Hedwig. The film, he said, “was born in the fire of AIDS—the anger, the fury, realizing that people were going to leave us behind to die just because of who they thought we were. Hundreds of thousands of people died around the world before our government even thought about it. That lack of trust informed what I made, which was in its nature, punk.” Punk, for him, is not a style but “a reaction to the powers that be… a way of working outside of systems that you’re taught.”
He sees a parallel urgency today. “We’re now in a time of a kind of slow-boiling fascism again, which sadly but fortunately is good for things like punk.” His advice to young people is direct: stop canceling each other long enough to learn what punk actually means—making things outside the system, including the systems of social media and surveillance. “DIY—doing it yourself rather than the tools that come from commercial systems—will lift your spirits as well as help your neighborhood.” He is equally blunt about another generational issue: “Gen Z is not getting laid. I understand why—too much porn, too many screens, too much COVID. If you’ve been watching porn for five years before you have sex… can we just be here now instead of in your mind in the past?”
The conversation turned to Shortbus, which Mitchell described as a deliberately freer creative experience after the intensity of making Hedwig. One memorable moment came during preparation for the film’s orgy sequence. An actor challenged him: if the cast was going to push boundaries for the audience, then Mitchell himself had to appear in the film having sex—and not just any sex. “You have to either get fucked up the ass or you have to eat some pussy.” Mitchell’s response: “I’ve never been to that restaurant, so I’m going to try that.” The resulting shot made it into the film. “It was a wonderful experience, even though there was nothing erotic about it for me. It was more of a dare.” He added with a laugh that his mother “would have been delighted I finally got with a woman—but not in that way.”
Asked for advice for emerging storytellers, Mitchell kept it practical and expansive. “Any story can be told for any budget… You might just have to write it. You might have to make a puppet show. You might have to do stop-motion animation.” The goal, he said, should be usefulness and sincerity rather than commercial calculation. The current anniversary tour, which began as a practical way to pay bills, has become something deeper. “It has become a bit of a spiritual journey—meeting all these people who for 25 years and more were affected by Hedwig, who showed it to their kids, who bonded with their partner, who made their own work.”
Mitchell is currently writing a memoir titled A Heart Held Outside the Body and considering a Patreon for the first time. He is developing a play about the surrealist artist Claude Cahun, who used her art to resist the Nazi occupation, as well as films about Allen Ginsberg in 1968 and AIDS activist Peter Staley. He will speak at Australia’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas alongside a member of Pussy Riot and is set to direct Hedwig in Japan. He is also proud of two recent audio projects: the fictional podcast Anthem: Homunculus (featuring Glenn Close, Cynthia Erivo, Laurie Anderson, and Patti LuPone) and Cancellation Island, in which Holly Hunter’s character runs a rehab for canceled people.
Before leaving Dallas, Mitchell plans to reconnect with childhood friends—including Stacy, whose hair originally inspired Hedwig’s look—and with Hedwig music producer Tim O’Heir, who lives in the area. He may also look up old acquaintances from the Polyphonic Spree. The Texas heat, he admitted, is less appealing. “I’m coming from Victoria, BC, so I’m not looking forward to the heat… I’ll probably have to sadly stay inside a lot.” Still, he will be writing during the days and performing at night.
For Mitchell, the ultimate antidepressant remains simple: make something. A story. A garden. Mutual aid in your neighborhood. “Do what you can in your small way. Not just money, but making an alternative.” In a culture he sees as increasingly matrix-like—young people afraid to speak, living through screens, feeling prematurely old—he insists on presence, imagination, and the freedom to create outside the approved systems.
Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Shortbus screen this weekend at the Texas Theater in Dallas. Costume contest encouraged. Parents optional. You’ve been warned.
