Hedwig and the Angry Inch

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Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Hedwig movie poster
Directed by John Cameron Mitchell
Produced by Amy Henkels
Pamela Koffler
Katie Roumel
Mark Tusk
Christine Vachon
Written by John Cameron Mitchell (play; screenplay)
Stephen Trask (play music & lyrics)
Starring John Cameron Mitchell
Michael Pitt
Miriam Shor
Stephen Trask
Theodore Liscinski
Rob Campbell
Distributed by A-Film Distribution
Release date(s) 19 January 2001
Running time 95 minutes
Language English
IMDb profile

Hedwig and the Angry Inch is an off-Broadway musical theater play (1998) and film (2001) about a fictional rock and roll band fronted by an East German transsexual singer. The text is by John Cameron Mitchell and the music and lyrics are by Stephen Trask; the performance rights for the show have recently been made public, allowing for several touring and DIY amateur productions world-wide. The play won a Village Voice Obie Award and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Musical. The film won the Best Director and Audience Awards at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, Best Directorial Debut from the National Board of Review and the L.A. Film Critics, and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy for Mitchell.

The story draws on Mitchell's life as the son of an Army General who once commanded the U.S. sector of occupied West Berlin. The character of Hedwig was originally inspired by a German woman, a divorced U.S. Army wife who was a Mitchell family babysitter who moonlighted as a prostitute at her Junction City, Kansas trailer park home. Hedwig continues the tradition of numerous pioneering punk rock drag queens like Jayne County (a transgender proto-queercore rocker), and Vaginal Davis (an avant-garde performance artist, underground film auteur, and punk rock musician). The music is steeped in the androgynous 70's glam rock era of David Bowie (who produced the Los Angeles production of the show), and early punk godfathers Lou Reed and Iggy Pop. The show was workshopped by Mitchell, Trask and the band Cheater (Jack Steeb, Chris Weilding, Dave McKinley and Scott Bilbrey) at New York's famed drag-rock Squeezebox Club, as well as Fez Nightclub and Westbeth Theater Center before opening Off-Broadway at the Jane Street Theater on February 14, 1998. The Jane Street was located in the ballroom of the Hotel Riverview which once housed the surviving crew of the Titanic (a fact which figured in the original production).

Contents

[edit] Plot synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Hansel, a German "slip of a girly-boy" who loves philosophy and rock music, is stuck in East Berlin until he meets Luther, a U.S. soldier. Luther falls in love with Hansel and the two decide to marry. This plan will allow Hansel to leave communist East Germany for the democratic West. However, in order to be married, the couple must consist of a man and a woman. Hansel's mother Hedwig gives her child her name and passport and finds a doctor to perform a sex change. The operation is botched, however, and her surgically constructed vagina heals closed, leaving Hansel — now Hedwig — with a dysfunctional one-inch mound of flesh between her legs, "with a scar running down it like a sideways grimace on an eyeless face."

Hedwig goes to live in Junction City, Kansas as Luther's wife. On their first wedding anniversary, Luther leaves Hedwig for another man. That same day, it is announced that the Berlin Wall has fallen and Germany will reunite.

Hedwig recovers from the separation by forming a rock band composed of Korean-born Army wives which she names "The Angry Inch." (The guitarist, Kwahng-Yi, is played by Sook-Yin Lee who stars in Mitchell's 2006 film Shortbus.) Hedwig befriends a shy and misunderstood Christian teenager Tommy Speck, with whom she writes some songs. (Speck is played by Michael Pitt in the film; in the play, the actor playing Hedwig plays the role of Tommy as well as most of the other characters in the piece.) Hedwig gives him the stage name "Tommy Gnosis," but he later leaves her and goes on to become a wildly-successful rock star with the songs Hedwig wrote alone and with him. "Internationally ignored" Hedwig and her Angry Inch are forced to support themselves by playing coffee bar chains and strip mall dives. In the film, these gigs are played at a seafood chain restaurant called Bilgewaters.

Throughout the film, Hedwig refers to Aristophanes' speech in Plato's Symposium. This myth, retold by Hedwig in the song "The Origin of Love," explains that human beings were once round, two-headed, four-armed, and four-legged beings. Angry gods split these early humans in two, leaving the separated people to forever long for their other half. Hedwig believes that Tommy is her soulmate and that she cannot be whole without him. She feels driven to either reunite with him or destroy him.

Tommy's interpretation of the book of Genesis (he sees Eve's eating of the apple from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil as a positive, knowledge-seeking act) and his identification as Hedwig with Eve as the knowledge-giver is inspired by heretical Christian Gnostic philosophy, specifically from the first-century Gospel of Thomas, (thus his nom-de-rock, Tommy Gnosis). Passages from Plato's "Symposium" and the Gospel of Thomas are included in the Dramatist Play Service publication of the play.

[edit] Analysis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

There is debate as to whether this musical is about a transsexual woman or a drag queen, a male or a female. Many people consider Hedwig to be a transsexual because she had gender reassignment surgery. However, the operation does not result in a distinctly female or male genital structure, and her reasons for undergoing it are largely situational (a means to escape East Germany via marriage) rather than being related to an innate gender identity. Hedwig herself seems rather ambivalent about her gender status, but in the song Wig in a Box she does refer to "the woman I've become," suggesting that she regards herself as female at that point in the story. At the story's end, when Hedwig has shed her female garments and seems to be embracing an androgynously masculine persona, the character still sings of herself alongside notable female rock figures ("Here's to Patti, and Tina, and Yoko, Aretha, and Nona, and Nico and me"; from "Midnight Radio"). However, the variety of physical and mental signs of sex and gender and the lack among them of any clear-cut, definite answer as to Hedwig's identity may also be accepted as just that: nonbinary gender, androgyny, sexual ambiguity. (See also genderfuck.)

The character of Hedwig began as a drag character of Mitchell's, loosely based on a babysitter he knew as a teenager in Germany. (In fact, the character of Tommy is more closely based on Mitchell himself, as the son of a soldier, growing up gay, isolated, confused, deeply Roman Catholic and steeped in mythology.) Some people consider Hedwig a symbol of queer identity, as a figure of gender variation and freedom to choose an identity according to one's heart's desire. Hedwig's second spouse and bandmate, an aspiring drag queen named Yitzhak (who is played by a woman, Miriam Shor, in both the stage and film versions), also reflects this theme. In the stage version and final edit of the film it is unclear whether Yitzhak is male or female; in the film's DVD commentary, the cinematographer calls a kiss between Hedwig and Yitzhak the movie's "heterosexual moment," to which Mitchell responds that this isn't necessarily so, since Yitzhak's gender is never specified. A deleted scene on the DVD release shows Hedwig meeting Yitzhak in a drag show in Eastern Europe; this scene makes it clear that Yitzhak is a drag queen performing under the name "Krystal Nacht, the Last Jewess of the Balkans," and that Hedwig has forced Yitzhak to abandon his drag persona. This scene was presumably deleted to make the genders of both characters and their relationship more ambiguous. However, even in the final edit, it becomes clear that during the course of the film a frustrated Yitzhak takes on a masculine role purely for Hedwig's sake, and when finally allowed to appear as a glamorous drag queen at the end, is at last fulfilled.

The play and film have rather different endings, and both have led to many interpretations by critics and fans. The play ends with Hedwig and Tommy seeming to merge into one person, with some suggestion that perhaps they were the same person all along. As for the film, it takes even more of a turn into surrealism after Hedwig and Tommy's car crash, and it's difficult to say if the events depicted are literally occurring, if Hedwig is imagining them, or if something else is happening. One interpretation has it that Hedwig (and possibly Tommy) were killed in the crash and that everything after the crash is flashing through Hedwig's mind as she dies. There is a certain logic to this; after the crash, there is a montage of Hedwig's dreams seemingly coming true (she achieves fame, she is acknowledged as the writer of Tommy's hit songs, etc.), followed by a scene where she appears in one of the much-despised Bilgewaters restaurants and sings a song raging about her tragic life, perhaps feeling one last stab of bitterness in the final moments of her existence. She laments how her various relationships have taken parts of her, but goes on to assert that she has reconstructed herself, sewn up in bits and pieces as an exquisite corpse that still shows the impact of those she has known. After this, Hedwig finds herself in a vast, black, empty concert hall, where Tommy and Hedwig share a loving but tearful goodbye, after which Tommy slips away into the darkness, leaving Hedwig alone. Then Hedwig is surprised to find herself abruptly transported to a gleaming white (heavenly?) concert hall, and she performs the joyous, reflective "Midnight Radio" for an appreciative crowd. Her feminine clothing and faux breasts stripped away, she hands her wig over to a grateful Yitzhak, who immediately transforms into the glamorous drag queen he always wanted to be while he was trapped in Hedwig's shadow. The crowd carries Yitzhak away from Hedwig — another symbolic farewell — and the next we see of Hedwig, she is naked and staggering away from us down a dark wet alley (some have likened it to a birth canal) that feeds into a busy city street. We see her tattoo (which illustrates the story of "The Origin of Love" with a Taoist-inspired symbol of two half-faces) magically morphing into a single, whole face. Hedwig reaches the curb, looks both ways, crosses the street and disappears.

In interviews, Mitchell has referred to the character moving on to a new and more integrated life after the events of the film, which (depending on one's view of death) suggests that the death interpretation might not be the intended one.

[edit] Song list

[edit] Song covers

In 2003, Chris Slusarenko's Off Records released an album called Wig in a Box, a charity tribute album which also included new material adding to the mythology of Hedwig. Performers included Frank Black, The Breeders (some say this project led to the reunion of the 80's rock band The Pixies), Yoko Ono with Yo La Tengo, Sleater-Kinney with Fred Schneider, Jonathan Richman, Rufus Wainwright, Polyphonic Spree, Imperial Teen, Cyndi Lauper with The Minus Five and Robin Hitchcock. The profits of this album benefitted The Hetrick-Martin Institute, home of the Harvey Milk School, a New York City public school for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth who have experienced discrimination and sometimes violence in other public schools or at home and are at risk of not completing their secondary education.

The band Type O Negative covered "Angry Inch" on their 2003 album Life Is Killing Me.

Meat Loaf covered "Tear Me Down" that same year on his album Couldn't Have Said It Better, adapting some of the lyrics (notably the spoken section about the Berlin Wall) so that the song is instead about Texas and Meat Loaf's own life. Trask, who composed the music for Hedwig, was much influenced by Meat Loaf's albums growing up. A deleted scene on the Hedwig DVD acknowledges the debt in a roundabout way, as we overhear Hedwig's manager Phyllis Stein (Andrea Martin) arguing about the band's sound on the phone: "Meatloaf? Bowie!"

One of the Bonus tracks of Damn Skippy, "Pirate In A Box" by Lemon Demon, is a parody of Wig In a Box.

Ben Jelen covered Hedwig's version of "Wicked Little Town" on his 2004 album Give It All Away.

[edit] Miscellaneous information

Mitchell eventually grew rather tired of performing the character, and when he was promoting the film he told LA Weekly he felt like now she was all grown up, he was shopping around for a college to put her in, and he was ready to let her go.

Fans of the play and film refer to themselves as "Hedheads."

The film has spawned a small, Rocky Horror-like cult following, with midnight screenings, or "shadowcasts," where fans dress up as the characters and sometimes act out the dialogue or talk back to the screen.

The song vocals for the film were mostly recorded "live," as they were performed during the shoot, in order to capture the intensity of a live performance.

In the DVD commentary, Mitchell mentions that Pitt was somewhat uncomfortable with their prolonged kissing scene, complaining about being scratched by Mitchell's stubble among other things. Mitchell complained about Pitt consuming onion and garlic directly before shooting the scene.

Many notable actors have played Hedwig onstage, including the Tony award-winning actor Michael Cerveris, former Brat Pack member Ally Sheedy, Rent star Anthony Rapp, respected stage/film actor Matt McGrath, and the glam-rocker son of sixties folk-rock composer Donovan, Donovan Leitch.

The name of Hedwig's aggressive manager, Phyllis Stein, is a pun on the word philistine.

Mitchell and Trask originally intended for Hedwig to sing a German glam rendition of You Light Up My Life, but when the rights proved too expensive, the song Midnight Radio was composed instead.

In order to look like a transsexual, Mitchell had to shave constantly during the course of the film, often using an electric razor between shots while still in full makeup.

The film's DVD features several deleted scenes, mostly expanding on the characters around Hedwig. We learn more about Yitzhak (he was once a drag queen called "Krystal Nacht," a pun on Kristallnacht) and how he met Hedwig. We also learn that Hedwig's manager, Phyllis Stein, has had a cell phone surgically implanted in a tooth. She gets hit in the head with a dryer door and she is unable to hang up the phone. Rob Campbell, whom Hedwig has just yelled at for putting her bra in the dryer, attempts to help Phyllis hang her phone backup by pressing on her teeth.

In the scene where Hedwig and the Angry Inch are in a hotel room in New York, Theodore Liscinski, who plays the character of Jacek the guitarist, is getting his butt and chest shaved.

In one scene in the film Hedwig and the band are performing at the "Menses Fair," a parody of then popular Lilith Fair, but at pathetic sub-stage near the Port-A-Janes.

Karen Hines, infamous Canadian clown and actress, appeared in both the stage and film versions of Hedwig.

P.J. Deboy, later a star of Mitchell's Shortbus, is the extra wearing dreadlocks in the scene where Hedwig is drunk on a pile of tires.

[edit] External links

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[edit] References

John Cameron Mitchell (Director). Hedwig and the Angry Inch [DVD]. New Line Home Entertainment.

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