JOHN CAMERON MITCHELL

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.

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 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 went to a very small Catholic school. It wasn't an easy place to be growing up gay.

I quickly found that I didn't really fit into 'gay culture,' as identified by many gay people, and that it can be just as confining as straight culture, not least in the way that bisexual people are told that 'they can't make up their mind.'

The people that were most interesting were always questioning the status quo.

The best things happen in the dark.

I've obviously always been aware of actor-oriented films, being an actor. Altman and Cassavetes were really strong. And then I realized their structures were quite fascinating, too.

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.

I come from the theater, and there is a real collaborative history there.

I like the fact that it's like The Ramones. You just have to change your name, and you're a Ramone. You just have to put the wig on, and you're Hedwig. Women have played it. Gay men, straight men, you know.

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.

My favorite model of success is when people say, 'Nobody bought that first Velvet Underground album, but everyone who did started a band.'

Obviously, when you get into larger budgets, you have less of that freedom, and I just - I'm not a person that tends to make stories for those larger budgets. To me, it's not much fun to have that kind of pressure.

There are a lot of silly projects out there.

'Hedwig' isn't particularly based on me, but I think that it is autobiographical in terms of emotion.

I sometimes buy albums that I don't like now, but that I know I will like. Coming out was the same thing. In high school, I thought, 'I know I'm going to have to deal with this, but I'm not confident enough now.' But when I finally did, my whole life changed.

Isn't it funny - why is it called a tennis bracelet? It doesn't seem very tennis, does it?

Acceptance and assimilation, you know, breeds mediocrity and perhaps an even more sheep-like conformism in terms of what kind of music you're supposed to listen to if you're gay... What are you supposed to look like? What's your body supposed to look like?

Having been an actor in Hollywood for a certain amount of time, I always felt a pressure to be sort of a neutral person. 'Don't do anything to your hair. Don't tell them your age. Don't tell them you're gay. Don't tell them anything that could limit you, specify you as a person.' I always hated that, actually moved out of L.A. because of that.

I'd like to do some female roles again.

I certainly wanted Hedwig's world to be one where identification and categories are fluid, changing, and confusing, as they are, really, in life.

I remember seeing a stage version of Plato's 'Symposium' and being really moved because it was written by a man rather than a culture.

I've avoided situations where I wouldn't have creative freedom.

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.