Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
'Hedwig' isn't particularly based on me, but I think that it is autobiographical in terms of emotion.
It's cool when frat boys say, 'Yeah, 'Hedwig!' I'd like to see that same thing happen with 'Shortbus.'
I really want as many people as possible to relate to something, without compromising or dumbing down.
If I wanted to make a lot of money with 'Hedwig,' I could have spent all my time on it. But that's boring.
We're all weirdly single, middle-aged women with too much money who look to fill the void with too much shopping.
Chaos is the natural state, and theater tries to make sense of it, but it's got to be a little messy to be believable.
I would love for 'Hedwig' to be in every tiny shopping mall so every freakish kid like I was can have a broadening experience.
The first rock stars were incredibly theatrical. Little Richard and Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley - they were theater artists.
Some people end up becoming just a conservator of the one thing they did and making sure they get their merch out and all that.
The things that interest me are less to do with perhaps finding myself and more to do with surviving and mercy and forgiveness.
It seems like there'd be no Donald Trump without the internet, first of all. He's a tweeter, which is basically just a bullhorn.
I remember seeing a stage version of Plato's 'Symposium' and being really moved because it was written by a man rather than a culture.
There's nothing more Broadway than 'Hedwig.' It's very family-friendly. There's innuendo and stuff, but not more than you'd see on TV.
Queerness isn't just Lady Gaga and overpriced drinks and fauxhawks. It's James Baldwin and Bea Arthur and Gertrude Stein and Gore Vidal.
My favorite model of success is when people say, 'Nobody bought that first Velvet Underground album, but everyone who did started a band.'
I guess historically, drag queens were imitating movie stars and luminaries. It's kind of nice to have a movie star imitating a drag queen.
You can make serious pop, you know? There was a time when the best movies were the most popular, and I keep thinking that can happen again.
I think as far as themes, 'Hedwig' is about what music meant to you as a kid and how rock n' roll can save you; that is definitely part of it.
We spend so much of our early lives trying to figure out who we really are. And we spend the rest of our lives preparing ourselves to let it go.
I certainly wanted Hedwig's world to be one where identification and categories are fluid, changing, and confusing, as they are, really, in life.
I thought, 'O.K., if I'm a valuable person and an independent entity, then I don't have to worry about what people think of me. I can reach out now.'
New York is so unique, and you are not always encouraged to consider the people in the city your neighbors because of the fast pace and surface anonymity.
People know what 'Hedwig' is now, and that's wonderful. It's not the same as being swamped for being on 'The Big Bang Theory,' but it's much more comfortable.
I don't regret anything, because I feel better every year, and if I'd done something different, maybe I wouldn't. I'm more of a whole person, the older I get.
There is such a reluctance to address sex as an inherent part of the human experience in this country... The true perversion to me is crushing it and hiding it.
I always think that in some way, art is the best tool we have to prepare for death. It's like a sculpture that you can interpret differently every time you look at it.
You get all these French directors who have all these pretty, vacuous stars of their movies - from Jean Seberg on - who have become iconic but were never really good actors.
I went to theater school at Northwestern, and I was quite conservative. Reagan at the time seemed quite revolutionary, or at least a rock star: He was radical and kind of punk rock.
I've obviously always been aware of actor-oriented films, being an actor. Altman and Cassavetes were really strong. And then I realized their structures were quite fascinating, too.
Compared to other liberal cities like San Francisco and Amsterdam, New Yorkers are always trying to do something, make art or love or money or whatever, and they have this phobia about standing still.
I like the fact that it's like The Ramones. You just have to change your name, and you're a Ramone. You just have to put the wig on, and you're Hedwig. Women have played it. Gay men, straight men, you know.
My mom was a little weepy. My dad was very logical about it. Once they realized you can't change, they wanted to know that you can be happy and be gay. Once they realized that, they were very cool about it.
I am just touched at how strongly the real Hed-heads feel. It feels different from other kinds of devotees; maybe it's the way I felt with certain bands when I was a kid. It feels like a band more than a play.
I actually came out the year that AIDS hit the front pages. So there was this mixed feeling about it - excitement that life's finally begun, but it was completely tied up with mortality and danger and politics.
I remember being afraid of doing drag when I was younger because I didn't really like my feminine side - most gay guys at some point are told that that's the worst part of you, so that becomes a negative thing.
I've seen things change and people forget: the history of Berlin, the history of queer struggle, the history of AIDS, the history of New York changing from an artistic powerhouse to more of a financial one now.
'Hedwig' is not autobiographical, but what she goes through is clearly a big metaphor. She doesn't want to be what she is, but she comes to an understanding that what happened to her has actually made her whole.
If you go for the money first and try to think of what other people want to see, you change your original inspiration and perhaps put out something that's less original and less personal and maybe less satisfying.
Obviously, when you get into larger budgets, you have less of that freedom, and I just - I'm not a person that tends to make stories for those larger budgets. To me, it's not much fun to have that kind of pressure.
It's just odd that something as essential in life as sex has been flattened out in mainstream cinema - and in art cinema. Even in art movies, sex always seems to be treated negatively. Why does it always end in disaster?
I always wonder about psychopaths, just because they have no empathy, does that necessarily mean they enjoy being cruel? Because we all know people who seem to have no empathy that we work with; they're not necessarily cruel.
I know what it's like to audition, so it's important that everybody who auditions, even if I know right off they're not right for it, has a good experience. So I'll never just have someone do one pass at it and say "Thank you".
I have seen so few films in which the sex felt really respected by the filmmaker. Hollywood too often shies away from it or makes adolescent jokes about it... Sex is only connected to the negative because people are scared of it.
I like making art that's useful to people who have a harder road. Art is a tool to get through it; it's a tool to prepare for the worst. By envisioning it in an artistic context, you can make sense of it before and after it happens.
'Hedwig' was pretty much all the things I wanted to do that other people said I probably shouldn't do: drag, punk rock, stand-up comedy... You know, combine them all in a thing that's supremely uncommercial from the objective point of view.
I quickly found that I didn't really fit into 'gay culture,' as identified by many gay people, and that it can be just as confining as straight culture, not least in the way that bisexual people are told that 'they can't make up their mind.'
Some people go off to an ashram or they, you know, have a midlife crisis and buy a sports car. For me, I do 'Hedwig,' and I see it's a midlife crisis maybe, and I see what's next. And it's a good trampoline, maybe, into the next part of my life.
Nothing is a calling card. Everything is what you do. If you do it in order to get somewhere else, you're not actually doing it. If you're thinking, 'What is the weird thing I want to make with my friends?' money and other things will come later.
You're on Facebook, and you're supposed to know your sexual orientation at 13... Nobody really knows what's going on at that time, and people seem to... know stuff, or they have to act like they do, and they make decisions before they really need to.
What's interesting is that some of the things I'm interested in talking about is a story which has to do with the second half of your life, which can be told through Hedwig's voice because she's older. If the timeline is consistent, she's as old as me.