Mitchell Mania

In late September John Cameron Mitchell came to town to promote his controversial new film Shortbus. On top of a Thursday night screening and an all-day press junket on Friday, Mitchell squeezed in visits with friends he has made on his frequent visits to Portland over the past decade.
Best known for starring in the film and off-Broadway production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, the petite 43-year-old New Yorker looked vibrant despite his overbooked schedule. Looking at his strikingly youthful face made me wonder if Peter Pan or Dorian Gray have given him a few pointers.
Shortbus, which is bound to raise eyebrows with its scenes of explicit sexuality, follows a group of New Yorkers who converge at an underground sex salon called Shortbus.
With plans for a children’s film called Nigh and a Wizard of Oz-esque fantasy called Oskur Fishman, it looks like Mitchell’s upcoming directing efforts will steer away from sexual politics.
He spoke about Portland and Shortbus in the lobby of the 5th Avenue Suites:

Stephen Blair: You spend quite a bit of time in Portland, right?

John Cameron Mitchell: I do. I feel like I’ve been coming here for over ten years off and on. I just like the vibe. I would definitely want to move here if I was thrown out of New York, which could happen with the rents there being the way they are. And a lot of people are moving here from elsewhere that I know. They’ve just had it with San Francisco, New York, L.A. and Seattle. Some people say, “Oh leave us alone. We want Portland to be the way it is.” But I think every town needs a little new blood.

SB: What are your favorite spots in Portland?

JCM: It’s more about friends. I haven’t gone out much. I have a lot of filmmaker friends here. Gus Van Sant and Todd Haynes. I like the mixture of a little bit of hippie, a little bit of punk and a little bit of bookworm. It could use a little more pizzazz. But it has so much else that New York doesn’t have that I welcome. I actually worked on the script for Shortbus here. I came here for a month and wrote at the Three Friends Coffee Shop. It was a great place to work.

SB: I read that you that you didn’t want to work with big stars.

JCM: Well, stars don’t really have time to rehearse. They often want to but their schedules don’t allow it. They have a lot of handlers who want to justify their existence by creating obstacles and being gatekeepers. And stars are often very scared people because they have been shit on for so long and now they have the power and they sometimes assert themselves in inappropriate ways. Certainly not all of them. But there’s this baggage that comes with stars. I didn’t want to take the audience out of the movie by saying, “Oh, there’s Meg Ryan getting eaten out.” There’s no advantage to that with this kind of film.

SB: One of the things I really liked was how frank the sexuality was and how you integrated humor into the sex scenes.

JCM: In and of itself sex is a neutral thing. It’s what you do with it that’s interesting. I have no problem with porn. I have a problem with bad porn. But in this case because porn is so associated with sex on film I wanted my sex to be de-eroticized. And if you think about it 95% of the sex in Shortbus is unsuccessful and ridiculous and slightly desperate.
It’s funny how many people say, “It’s not what I expected. It’s more emotional and funnier than I expected.” I thought, “Isn’t that an odd statement?” Surely in their own lives sex is connected to emotions and vulnerability and humor. If it’s not, doesn’t that say something about your life? Or about American cinema because it doesn’t show that. Laughter is a way of diffusing tension about things we find irrational. A sense of humor is one of the top things that most people search for in a relationship. That’s what lasts. The bodies don’t.

SB: Are there other American films that you think are really honest about sex?

JCM: Well there’s honesty about sex without explicitness. There are lots of interesting movies about relationships coming out of American cinema. As far as being very explicit I can’t think of any that I liked that were American movies.
And very few movies outside America, too. There have been dozens of films that have used real sex in the last 10 years out of Europe. It’s a genre like musicals. But all of them are negative about sex. I understand it because the directors are working some shit out. Guilt. Abuse. And often they’re doing it in an honest and powerful way. A film like Catherine Breillat’s Fat Girl is brilliant. But that isn’t the kind of film that I wanted to make, though I admired it and was very affected by it. There’s so much darkness in the world. You’ve gotta have a little mercy.

SB: Are you hitting any distribution problems?

JCM: Well we thought we would. Cannes was our premiere. All the distributors were there. We were positive that no major studio would be involved with this because they’re all signatory MPAA. They’re sensitive to boycotts and all that. But we had twelve offers from independent distributors just in the U.S. alone.

SB: And you got a standing ovation at Cannes.

JCM: Yes, at 2:30 a.m. I had actually fallen asleep. It was a good way to wake up.

SB: How did you film the sex scenes?

JCM: I asked the actors what they wanted and they usually wanted minimal crew and the cinematographer. We tried to keep the cameras as far away as possible.

SB: Were the orgy scenes choreographed?

JCM: I put couples and partners in certain spots and they discussed sexual safety issues between themselves. Some were preexisting couples so that was already inherent in the relationship. Emotional safety was important too. I asked if they wanted me to leave the room, but they always wanted me right there instead of far away at a monitor.

SB: Did any of your actors get cold feet?

JCM: There were definitely nerves, but no one didn’t want to film a scene. We all worked through it. We had been working together for a long time. It was just a matter of talking through it or taking Viagra or whatever it took. It was usually more about “Can I perform?” rather than “Will I be seen?”

SB: Obviously Shortbus alone will not change our culture, but in the long run how can we arrive at a place in American society where we’re not so tied up about sex?

JCM: I have no idea. All I can do is make my little thing for a few people, and hopefully it will encourage other people to examine language of sex or any other thing that we as a culture are afraid of.