From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. You can also hear the show at KCRW.com.

My guest, director, and once upon a time, writer and actor, John

Cameron Mitchell, makes films that are basically about the fight to heal. It so happens that his first

film, an adaptation of his show, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, was about that. Certainly his follow-up film,

short bust dealt with that, and was really, I think, the first of the major post-9-11 films to deal

with that subject emotionally his newest film the adaptation of the play rabbit hole does that as well

first of all john welcome back to the show thank you no one has identified my three films in that way

i like that well it makes a lot of sense though at least to me i mean did you're you've never thought

about them that way before.

No, I guess I thought of it, the thing that, you know, most people are like, it's outrageous.

You're doing this film.

It's a, you know, huge departure, which, you know, it is in style, but it isn't in tone, like you're saying, or in theme.

And I guess I thought of it more as uh it is about

healing but it's all three are about uh people who are uh trapped in a sort of emotional prison

uh they happen to most of them be feminine identified people, who are real freaks

and are chipping their way at the prison wall to get out

and to, you know, take someone's hand.

I think one of the reasons people call this a departure,

it's your first film with movie stars,

Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart.

Yeah, that was the strangest thing about it, because in a way they were... with movie stars, Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart. Yeah.

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