Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.

It's Bullseye, I'm Jesse Thorn.

My guest is John Cameron Mitchell.

John is a director, a writer, an actor, and a singer.

He's directed the movie's short bus and rabbit hole.

He's acted on shows like Shrill and Girls.

But he's probably best known for HeadVig and the Angry Inch.

HeadVig, as it's known for short, started as a stage musical in the late 90s, then it

became a movie in 2001.

It was written by Mitchell and composer Stephen Trask.

It's a unique, difficult to describe story.

It follows an East German rock singer named HeadVig, played by Mitchell in both the stage

and movie versions.

HeadVig is assigned male at birth, falls in love with an American soldier, gets coerced

into having gender reassignment surgery, marries the soldier, moves to Kansas, loses the

soldier, and starts our own rock band.

And that is like the first act.

It's a story about queerness and identity, about the threads, rock, and punk music share

with other live performances like drag and cabaret and Broadway.

It is one of my all-time favorites if you haven't seen it, you should.

Lately, John Cameron Mitchell has gotten back to writing and recording new music.

He's put out an ongoing benefit called New American Dream, in which he collaborates with

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