Pop Culture

Two Sides Dragged into The Middle

The Canberra Times, 29 October 2001

In the 1949 comedy "I was a Male War Bride", Cary Grant played an Army officer whose wife smuggles him home by disguising him as a WAC. For the role, Grant busily trained himself to play a woman - absorbing himself in every gesture, mannerism and intonation - despite the protests of the director, Howard Hawks.

The story goes that, as they prepared to leave for a party, a desperate Hawks donned a WAC uniform and a wig, then shoved a cigar in his mouth and said gruffly, "Okay, let's go." Grant was so amused by this that he agreed to be as absurd and unconvincing as possible. That was comedy!

"A man in a dress is funny," says John Cameron Mitchell, "because it is implicitly about a man aiming to lose power, going down a step in social stature."

Mitchell should know. In "Hedwig and the Angry Inch", Mitchell is the latest in a long line of cinema drag queens, following the likes of Grant, Jack Lemmon, Dustin Hoffman and Robin Williams. Hedwig, however, is truly Mitchell's creation. He created the role for himself, and has played Hedwig, on and off, since the character debuted at a Soho rock club in 1988.

In the subsequent off-Broadway production, which Mitchell wrote and directed, Hedwig begins as an East German man, who has a half-successful sex change operation so he can marry a GI and escape to America. In the next few years, his/her husband leaves her for another boy, he/she becomes an "internationally ignored" rock performer, while a young protege steals her songs and becomes a superstar.

"In Hedwig, there are jokes and campy surfaces, but also a rather serious story about someone who feels that the pieces were ripped away from him, then realises that something new has emerged that involves masculine and feminine, weakness and strength, east and west. Hedwig is somewhere in the middle. She calls herself the wall. In the end, she notices she's more of a bridge."

In both theatre and cinema ("Hedwig" is his directorial debut), Mitchell is a highly individual talent, who influences are not so obvious. He cites
director/choreographer Bob Fosse ("Cabaret") for his licence to "play around with the musical genre". Regarding other drag movies, he is no fan of "The Rocky Horror Show", which he considers "too campy", and "kind of hated" the broad humour of "Some Like It Hot", recently voted America's all-time funniest movie. In his kind, friendly way, he admits that he didn't care for Australia's favourite drag film, "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert", though he thought Terence Stamp was "wonderful".

"I always loved the idea of drag and how it's used," he says. "It was used by the Greeks in a different way. Men played women in kabuki and Shakespeare. It's had a tragic as well as a comic side. I liked the drag queens that plumbed these depths."

For his part, Mitchell makes a far more convincing woman than Cary Grant - a catty performer, with a passing resemblance to Rachel Griffiths. Hedwig's costumes and make-up recall the days of glam rock, as do the songs (think early David Bowie), written by glam veteran Stephen Trask.

The drag doesn't end with Hedwig. Her band, the Angry Inch, is androgynous (including Trask, playing bandleader Skszp). Her second husband, Yitzhak, nurtures a secret desire to be a drag queen. In fact, Yitzhak is played by a woman, Miriam Shor, who also donned a beard each night for the off-Broadway show. "We had a roadie character when we first did Hedwig at clubs, but Stephen wanted a female back-up singer, so we just combined the male roadie with the female voice. I like the idea of a mirror image of Hedwig: a woman playing a man."

For a while in 1999, Hedwig and Yitzhak were both played by women, when Mitchell decided to take a break from acting and was replaced by former brat-packer Ally Sheedy (yes, she of "The Breakfast Club" and "War Games"). Mitchell loved the "tension" that a woman brought to the part, but Sheedy quit after five months. Mitchell had to play the woman again.

"I'm bored with it right now," he admits, "but when I first started doing it, it was very empowering. I was thrown into it because the only place where I could get a gig was in a drag club at the time when we were developing it, so I was pushed into doing the female character unexpectedly. I was forced to be a woman, to an extent, and it was great."

Even with all those live shows under his belt, the movie exhausted him . "I really didn't want to act in it, but I was the best person for the part," he laughs. "I was much more interested in directing, but realised I'd painted myself into a corner. I would never really do that again, because it distracted from the other jobs I had to do."

Still, it was preferable to using a "name" actor. "In a way, directors are hamstrung by having to use Hollywood stars. That's how they get their money, and I think that has ruined many a good film. New Line didn't force us to cast any stars, so I found it very relaxing. You do your best work when you don't have to worry about stars and their masseurs."

The Sundance Film Festival jury seems to have agreed, handing him the Directing Award. However, while there were no big-name stars in this film, Mitchell himself might be a boy to watch. After watching "Hedwig", he is certainly difficult to forget.