A love of liberty drove 'Shortbus'
John Cameron Mitchell wrote and directed perhaps the most sexually honest mainstream movie ever
THIS FRIDAY, John Cameron Mitchell's ``Shortbus" opens. It tells the story of a group of New Yorkers in a severe funk whose lives are loosely connected. They attended a weekly salon called Shortbus (so named for the smaller bus that comes to take the special-needs kids to school). Shortbus participants hail from various sexual orientations; they discourse, sing, swing from the ceilings, and have sex.
Mitchell, 43, found his unknown, nonprofessional cast, led by Sook-Yin Lee, Paul Dawson, and Lindsay Beamish, through an online open casting call. What came out of the collaboration was a sort of creative socialism: Everyone is an author of the film. Recently, during a ruminative conversation at a Back Bay restaurant, Mitchell said his aim was to normalize sex on film, to redeem it by showing it as you or I might have it, in all its fraught and average glory.
Here, the creator of both the off-Broadway sensation, ``Hedwig and the Angry Inch," and the ensuing 2001 movie, discusses puritanical America, the importance of happy endings, and why we need more sexual and emotional optimism in the George W. Bush era.
Q: We should get the sex part out of the way now. What about it were you wanting to put across in a movie?
A: When I was doing ``Hedwig," I was seeing a lot of European films in the late 1990s that were using real sex. Catherine Breillat and Patrice Chéreau. Dozens. And it was interesting and some of them were very good. But they were all very bleak and all very grim. It seemed like sex was more complicated than despair -- or just porn, which is at the other end of the spectrum.
Q: I'm assuming it was easier to pull this off with a cast of unseasoned actors than with stars.
A: I realized that the actors in this film would need to feel safe on such a project. And stars and professional actors never feel safe -- they're worried about how they're perceived. I wanted real artists that could work on it for years and not just drop in after some Hollywood project. We weren't looking for exhibitionists as much as people who were ready to be challenged as artists and be co-writers.
Q: Obviously, you had to beat the potential financers off with a stick.
A: You know, there were no stars, and people want to see their stars get [expletive]. They were already scared of the sex right away. ``Is this going to be on cable?" ``What about Blockbuster?" Of course, with
Q: Had other distribution alternatives occurred to you?
A: Video is not so much an alternative as an avenue. I was trying to be realistic about paying our investors back. I didn't think this thing was a museum piece. I want it to be a popular entertainment. In many ways, it's a pretty traditional story.
Q: But you understand that if the movie works, it's because the emotional aspect is as real as the sexual one.
A: I feel a little offended when people tell me, ``Oh, it's funny and emotional." If you thought ``Hedwig" was, why wouldn't you think this would be?
Q: Well, it's not surprising. It's just that the people don't couch the movie as an emotional experi-ence.
A: It doesn't matter how they couch it. It's just because it's sex, and that's a weird limitation in our society. Sex on film and sex outside people's lives is perceived as thin, emotionless, purely prurient, and -- for people who see French art films -- as ending in mutilation. This isn't a film that says free sex is going to save anybody, but it kind of says that more connected sex will help us. Busting out in a way that felt safe and of use to people, rather than being merely exhibitionistic, is a very important part of our mission.
Q: The movie feels anthemic in that way.
A: Good. We're tired of cynicism. We're tired of condemnation from the powers that be for sexual minorities and for people who are more open-minded about sexuality and gender. This is a pansexual story, but everyone shares a dissatisfaction with the status quo, culturally and politically, and an awareness of mortality that comes out of 9/11.
Q: You're a New Yorker. Where were you on 9/11?
A: I was out of town. I was alone in a house and got a hold of my boyfriend, luckily -- not that he would have been anywhere near the World Trade Center.
Q: But you wanted to connect with someone.
A: Yes. I wanted to be there very badly. But I couldn't get back for three weeks, and friends would just say, ``Stay away." I came to be very moved by the idea of America as a land of outcasts, people persecuted elsewhere who've come here, sometimes to save their own lives, sometimes to create a new community. And I haven't seen Bush mentioning that idea of America in the last six years.
Q: Is that why the Statue of Liberty looms so prominently in the film?
A: It's still a very powerful symbol for me. I could see it outside my window when I put on my makeup for ``Hedwig." We open the movie with that image. We have our version of the national anthem in the film, too.
Q: That song comes along at the right moment.
A: It does? Well, Morgan Freeman walked out when he saw it in Toronto. He might have had another date. We usually have at least one walkout at that point in the film. But it's patriotic in a very traditional sense that is very different from what Dick Cheney might call patriotic, which smacks of more of a Central American autocracy.
Q: Was there a filmmaking style you had in mind while you were conceiving ``Hedwig" and ``Shortbus"?
A: I just wanted everyone involved to be a partner. Every director's a bit of a benevolent dictator because they have the final say, but it's exhausting when you do all the work. The filmmakers I'm more attracted to are people like John Cassavetes, who had real passion for his characters. He guides his actors but lets them go. I just can't imagine Lars von Trier raising a glass with his actors.
Q: It's surprising that no one is making more movies that address the current mood.
A: I'd love to make a movie, like ``Network," that straddles this sense of political and cultural outrage and human emotions in a big way. How ripe are we right now for satire?
Q: ``Network" is a movie that saw the future. That movie is right now. I'm shocked that there isn't more of that now.
A: There is. It's on television. Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart are the highest form of political art we have. And because they have to keep generating stuff very quickly, it's not as honed as a film. But it has all the right elements and it's coming from the heart. It hits your sweet spot.
Q: Would you say the shortbus is a haven from a changing artistic moment?
A: In a way. New York is getting more and more expensive. Artists are being priced out. Young people are finding it harder to go there. I hope the film isn't a requiem for a certain artistic scene.
Q: Well, why shouldn't it be? It's like what scientists say about how burning down a forest encourages new growth.
A: That's why I hang out with a lot of young people now. People my own age are often too simple, jaded, set in their ways. I mean, in many ways I'm very set in my ways. Luckily, youth still has optimism. College audiences are still the best. And though I do feel older, I feed on that kind of enthusiasm. After the last election, so many people were so disillusioned. I feel like I've known more people who've committed suicide in the last five years than in my first 38. And I can't help but think that this state of fear and pessimism was the final straw. Politics alone probably won't make someone kill himself. But it doesn't help when it seems like the world is gripped in a fist of fear.
Q: Your characters aren't exactly happy.
A: But they're examining their lives, which makes them heroes in a small way. They find a little bit of hope. When filmmakers end their films on notes of despair I can't help but think they're being dishonest to themselves. In the very act of creation with a film, there's some hope.
Wesley Morris can be reached at w morris@globe.com. 
