Sook-Yin Lee with John Cameron Mitchell
About this episode
Sook-Yin Lee and John Cameron Mitchell discuss their careers and cultural impact.
On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got a couple of old friends who are both multi-hyphenates: film directors, actors, writers, musicians, and perhaps most importantly, opinionated rabble-rousers who’ve spent decades pushing at the edges of culture—especially sexual politics—and gleefully widening its scope. It’s John Cameron Mitchell and Sook-Yin Lee. Mitchell is perhaps best known for co-writing and starring in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, the late-'90s stage musical that became a cult-classic movie. It was the beginning of a career that has championed queerness and otherness, pushing those things into a mainstream that has sometimes been welcoming, but most times not so much. He followed Hedwig with Shortbus, whose frank depictions of sexuality were probably a little too intense for wider audiences. Mitchell has also done really interesting work as an actor in other people’s projects, including playing Tiger King Joe Exotic in a miniseries not too long ago. As you’ll hear in this chat, he’s working on a project about Alan Ginsberg in 1968, a time that should be more distant than it feels like at the moment. Mitchell is heading out on a Hedwig anniversary tour that will…
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