DIRTY DOZEN
John Cameron Mitchell takes Playboy.com's 12-question sex-amination.

Actor-director John Cameron Mitchell lets his mind wander places few men want theirs to go. The predicament of Hedwig -- the glam rock/punk hero(ine) he first portrayed in a New York nightclub, brought to off-Broadway in Hedwig and the Angry Inch and now re-created on the big screen -- is a case in point. Born in East Berlin, the young man agrees to a sex-change operation so that he can marry and escape Germany to live in America. The surgery is botched, leaving the new Hedwig with "a Barbie-doll crotch" -- the angry inch of the title -- and acute feelings of isolation.

A glam-rock meditation on gender identity and finding one's other half, Hedwig and the Angry Inch was a sensation off-Broadway in 1998, earning a Rocky Horror-esque throng of loyalists, dubbed the "Hed-heads," who attended show after show. In January, Broadway veteran Mitchell received the Sundance Dramatic Directing Award and the Dramatic Audience Award for the film version of Hedwig. Mitchell wrote and stars in the film, in which Hedwig grapples with big questions -- is she a man or a woman? gay or straight? -- on the road to finding peace in her altered skin. On the eve of the August 3 release of the film, we thought it only fair to throw our own most invasive quiz at Hedwig's gay creator. Mitchell, 38, dished the dirt on his sexual encounter with a groupie, the celebrity with whom he'd most like to have sex and the film he hopes to make next. (A hint: Don't expect to find this one at your local Blockbuster.)

1. How old were you when you lost your virginity, and what were the circumstances?

John Cameron Mitchell: Well, how do you define virginity? It's easier perhaps with a woman to define losing her virginity than a guy, right? The first time I had a sexual experience with another person was not till I was 18 -- so I've been making up for it ever since. It was at a speech tournament tour in Roswell, New Mexico, in a large double bed with a very cute Mexican-American guy in the tournament.

2. What celebrity would you most like to have sex with?

JCM: [Blues guitarist] Jonny Lang is my fantasy. I'd like to suck his toe ring off.

3. Ever had sex with a fan or groupie?

JCM: Yes. It was actually a fan of my work on Broadway. A few years ago I met a nice guy who said he used to jerk off in high school listening to my voice on The Secret Garden: The Original Broadway Cast Album. I told him, "This is your lucky day," and his early fantasies were subsequently fulfilled.

4. Ever get an erection onstage?

JCM: No, but then I've never sneezed onstage either.

5. Ever have a three- or more-some?

JCM: I've had a handful of three-ways over the years. They don't work unless everybody's into everyone else equally. Probably they're best among strangers. Once I fooled around with a bunch of Spanish teenagers in Madrid. It was a bit of an attention-span puzzle and was sexier in retrospect.

6. Any nicknames for your penis?

JCM: When I was little, our family would call a penis an "uh-uh" -- as in "no."

7. Where's the most unusual place you've had sex? And what were the circumstances?

JCM: In the late Eighties, I had sex at night in Dornoch Cathedral in the Highlands of Scotland with a nice Scottish goth. His family lived nearby but they were so religious we couldn't fool around in the house. Oh, you know where it was? It was actually the cathedral where Madonna's baby was baptized.

8. What's the best time of day or night to have sex?

JCM: Night's better. I can't jerk off in the morning -- the orgasm is weak. Sex needs some warming up for me.

9. Most people you've slept with in a day, or a week?

JCM: Day, probably two [people]. Week? Maybe three, in my youth.

10. Are you into one-night stands?

JCM: Sometimes, if there's instant excitement and trust. Like an excellent first conversation.

11. Do you like to watch?

JCM: I do. The next movie that I want to do will have tons of explicit sex. It will be a real story that's moving and funny, and, unlike some of those art films that have explicit sex right now, like Romance -- which seemed to be empty, alienated sex -- this will have fun sex. But it probably will never be in the theater. It'll probably have to be distributed on video like porn.

12. Ever videotape yourself having sex?

JCM: No, but there are some photos out there somewhere!

by Samantha Bornemann
Published 08.01
at Playboy.com



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