Take 79 - Actor, Director, Producer John Cameron Mitchell, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Joe Exotic

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Any of us who've been in it for long enough, our entire career has been littered with jobs that we didn't get, projects that we thought were gonna go for shore, dozens of unproduced scripts littering for all of us are running into both major and minor failures in home with every single day.

SPEAKER_03 1:03

Screaming into the Hollywood Abyss is brought to you by Scriptation at the Emmy.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

It sounds awful when you say it. Let somebody with a more charming accent do this bit. Screaming into the Hollywood Abyss is brought to you by Scriptation, the Emmy Award-winning app for anyone that reads scripts. Makes notes, organise them into layers, and save hours of time by automatically transferring those notes into new script revisions. Stiffer listeners can get a free month of Scriptation by going to scriptation.com backslash Stiffer. Now that's how you do it, Noah. Welcome back to Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, a podcast about rejection, failure, and adversity in the entertainment industry. I am, as ever, your English non-entertainment co-host, Dan Rutstein.

SPEAKER_03 1:52

And this week I am still your industry co-host, Noah Epson. Today I'm excited to have on actor, playwright, screenwriter, and director John Cameron Mitchell on the podcast, best known as the writer, director, and star of the 2001 film Headwig in the Angry Inch. More recently, they portrayed the role of Joe Exotic in the Peacock Limited series, Joe vs. Carol. They have also directed Rabbit Hole, starring Nicole Kidman, and acted in Girls Final, The Good Fight, Mozart in the Jungle, The Upcoming Sandman, and many, many others. Welcome, John.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

So there are very different types of rejection and failure in acting, in directing, in producing, in writing. We're happy to discuss any and all. Do you want to start on the in front of the camera or behind the camera with your rejection failure questions?

SPEAKER_00 2:52

I guess acting, you know, I went to Northwestern University and I was doing writing, directing, acting there. It was, I was always encouraged to do do whatever and not simplify uh my uh resume. And and uh I guess polymath was the order of the day. And that's how I still feel. I don't feel like any one thing I enjoy at all. Um acting kind of popped up at a certain point uh in Chicago in the early 80s. Chicago was kind of an epicenter of pop culture, like with the John Hughes movies, and also of real art, you know, with things like Steppenwolf Theater, who's really, you know, they were the royal court of you know of the uh 70s in Britain, but you know, that that was the hottest theater happening um at that time. Malkovich and others people came out of there. So I had a lot of great teachers, a lot of gurus, uh role models, mentors who would give me good advice. And often it was different advice than what kids get today, which is do whatever it takes to get those clicks, meaning terms like selling out or terms like art for art's sake, don't really compute anymore with young people. You know, it's like, what are you talking about? I'm 10, I've got my uh YouTube channel, and I'm about to sign a contract to live in a content house. Um I, you know, I guess I could sublet at a content house, but all of that is a little odd to me. And but from the beginning, I knew there was commerce and I knew I knew there was things you wanted to do. And sometimes they intersected, but not that often. So I would do, you know, interest interesting theater uh when I lived in New York and LA, and then pay the bills by doing TV stuff and films. Um, and sometimes there'd be something that was really good that was very popular, uh, certain Broadway plays. Um, but early on, I was flown out to LA from Chicago as a young, you know, somewhat good-looking kid who could act decently at age 19 by Gary Coleman, you know, of different Strokes Fames manager, Vic Perillo, which I always thought was a great name for a manager. Vic Perillo here. And he, you know, I went and met all the cool uh casting directors and um and nothing happened. But soon after that, I started auditioning and I was kind of cast in the Breakfast Club, you know, the John Hughes movie. Um, and it was all these different actors, Joan Cusack, John Cusack, all these pre-star hot Chicago performers. Then he lost the financing and went on to do 16 Candles and used those actors for for um Breakfast Club when he finally got the money for that. And at the time I was crushed, and so there were certain roles that I was runner-up for. Um The Nerdy Guy in the Breakfast Club, uh, the young Wesley Crusher in Star Trek The Next Generations. Uh, there was a film called uh what was it? It was it made Patrick Sway, not Patrick Swayze. Um he was the guy in Grey's Anatomy. Dempsey. Dempsey, very nice guy, runner up for a film he did with uh the guy who did uh Field of Dreams, uh Phil uh I forget his name. Very nice guy. But all of these things really were crushing at the time. And later I'm so glad they didn't happen because I wouldn't have done the things I'm most proud of. It took all of those little rejections um to go, well, I guess I'm just gonna make my own stuff. You know, I was working, I was making a living, I never had to do a money job, uh survival job. Um, the only time I took a job outside of acting was doing box office for a film festival. And I had two films in that festival. You know what I mean? It was it was a crazy situation where I was young enough, white enough, good looking enough, could play straight enough, even though I wasn't really in the closet. But I, you know, it was at that time you were encouraged not to come out too publicly because there were a lot of homophobes and they wouldn't see you. Oh, well, if you're gay, how can you play a straight character? And you know, of course, this I I really bridled against that. It was the time, it was the time of AIDS, and being in the closet felt very cowardly. So, pretty much from the beginning, I was I was out, um, at least at work. Um, and I wasn't famous enough, famous enough for it to be, you know, a well-known thing, until I did a play called uh The Destiny of Me, which was a sequel to The Normal Heart by Larry Kramer, which was a big success in New York. And I was suddenly had an article about me in the New York Times, and I I came out, I just felt it was really embarrassing to be in the closet. You're playing a gay guy and you're gay. Why wouldn't you talk about it? Um, so that that's an example of something I probably wouldn't have done if I got Breakfast Club. If I'd been on a tenured track, a tenure brat pack track, if you think about it, from that point on. I think I was probably a little too educated to stay in such a brat pack if I was ever allowed in, because I would be bored. Um, you know, my heroes were Samuel Beckett and Nabakov and and uh you know Sam Shepherd. And these weren't necessarily household names in in Hollywood when I lived in LA. Um, but there was a straight, and I excuse me for babbling, but all of these little rejections led to the stuff that I care about most, like Headbig and the Angry Inch, like Shortbust, like um even Joe versus Carol, which I, you know, I just played Joe Exotic, came out of these left field off-center uh roles and projects that I directed.

SPEAKER_03 8:53

You mentioned um I have a lot of questions actually, but I'm gonna focus on this because you brought it up. You mentioned coming out in the 80s and that it affected uh, you know, that other actors, like let's say Brackpack actors, whatever, people that you were coming up with, that it might have affected their careers to come out because they weren't getting uh different types of roles, and yet you decided to come out. Do you think it affected you at the time? Do you think it changed the directory of your career at all coming out in the 80s when you did before many actors were comfortable doing so?

SPEAKER_00 9:24

I think it would have been would have been harder for someone who was famous coming coming out, mostly, and that's to do with the movie stardom as opposed to acting, which is two different things. And stars are generally, or at least by that point, were generally people that other people wanted to fuck. Their careers were based on their fuckability or their crushability. It wasn't really based on their talent, it was based on their looks, it was based on slotting into a certain category of actor. Oh, you're the hot, you know, nerdy girl, you're the gothic girl, Ali Sheedy, you you fit into this. And I was not known, so I could play anything. Um, there was so it I didn't know how it affected me. And and at the same time, I didn't want to work with someone who wouldn't have cast me because I was gay, say in a straight role. I just would wouldn't want to. Interestingly, I had two events around that time in the 80s, late 80s, that kind of also defined me and and had to do with my sexuality. One was I was in a film directed by the head of New Line Cinema, Bob Shea. And I had weird connections with New Line. I was in Freddie's Nightmares TV show, which was um, I was, you know, which was Mike DeLuca was part of, who ended up becoming the head of production at Newline that eventually did Hedvig. You know, Paul Rosselli, who was Stephen Trask, my composer from Hedvig, he was working there too. Uh, his uncle worked there. There were weird connections with with Newline. And I I went into an audition for this film, Book of Love, that Bob Shea directed. He he was the head of a studio, but he wanted to direct a film. Very unusual. And I hadn't really read it before I got in there. And I looked at the sides, and it was the character was horribly written in a in a very stereotypical and mismatched stereotypes of gay characters. He was not only a pedophile, he was also into SM, and then he was this, and it was it was just like a mess and really horrible offensive. So I I John Caramitchell next, I kind of went in, I was like, what the hell? And Bob said, Do you what do you think of the script? And I and I hadn't read the whole script. I said, Well, I have to say these this character is quite homophobically written. He said, No, it's homoerotic. And I said, Well, there are other words to begin with homo that don't always such as homogenous, homo sapien. He said, Well, explain it to me. And I said, Well, and I explained why it not only was offensive, but it was a mixed metaphor offensive. You know, if it was a black character written in the 30s, he would have been eating a watermelon, fried chicken, you know, with a straight razor in his fro. You know, it was just like every horrible, it was just ridiculous. And I actually liked playing with stereotypes, but this was not the time for it. And it was middle of AIDS, and it was just another horribly written gay character, so people could laugh and make fun of them. And he said, Well, how would you do it if the character wasn't gay? And I said, Well, everything he says is a stereotype. I sort of did it and walked away. And then later he rewrote it um and cast me. And it was too much of a teen comedy for it to be a positive gay character at that point in 1988. So he just made him straight. And 15 years later, I had run screaming to New York because I was having a lot of these kind of events, and New York just felt different. Um, it was more about the work than the glam of it. And I was doing uh Hedwig and the Angry Inch off-Broadway, which was not doing great, but it was a success destime, which I translate from the French as yes, but can you eat it? You know, that's what success destined means. But everybody that was cool wanted to see it. Everyone who hated musicals wanted to see it, and you know, Tim Burton and Forest Whitaker and Danny DeVito and Glenn Close and David Bowie and Lou Reed were showing up, and it was very heady. And then Bob Shea came and he had always appreciated me being direct with him, but without being sc uh screamy. And he said, and with tears in his eyes, he said, I want to help you make this film. I want you to direct it, you to star in it, and I'm gonna finance it to the tune of six million dollars. Because 15 years earlier, I had said to him, I think this script could be better when it comes to the queerness that you're talking about. So that was strangely an example of something that I thought was gonna be a fail that through creative engagement or or constructive engagement led to uh me making the thing that I'm most proud of in my life. You know, the same year in '88, I starred in my first movie called it was aptly called Misplaced, where I played a Polish violinist coming over to America. And later the editor said, when I came up on the dailies, the director who I was kind of playing, a Polish guy, saw an earring hole in my ear, and he said, I didn't know John was gay. The editor was like, A, what are you talking about? This is an earring hole. B, what difference does it make? And he's like, Well, I'm not gay, and he's playing me. The editor's just like, just shut up. This he's doing a great job, get on with it. And I only heard about this later. So it may be that I lost roles because I was openly gay or perceived as gay, but again, I was so incensed by that kind of behavior and so much of the cowardice in my my uh colleague actor friends of staying in the closet, shaking, quivering, that I was like, fuck you. You know, I'm gonna do my thing. Cast me if you want to. If you don't, I'm gonna go write my own thing, which I never would have done if I was working all the time, if I had become a star, if I was straight. All the things that I care about most have happened because of adversity and because it was different.

SPEAKER_03 16:02

Speaking of writing, I mean, this you're fascinating because we've had writers who were actors and then became writers, and then we've had writers who became directors or directors. We've had many multi-hyphenates, but mostly in two areas, right? You you come in at least four or five areas, you are multi, multi-multi-hyphenated. And all of these uh categories of people in the arts, in what we do in entertainment, deal with a lot of failure. Writers deal with a lot of failure, actors deal with a lot of failure. I want to ask you a very specific question. In what field that you actually engage, and you were you're working at the highest level on all of them, but like in what side of things do you think you've received the most sort of painful and failure and failure rejection? And is there a particular story that stands out to you in your career where something did not go right and it still sort of sits in your mind?

SPEAKER_00 16:53

Well, it's interesting because Hedvig is a bit of a failure of a character, you know, she calls herself internationally ignored song stylist, barely standing before you. And I'm always been fascinated by the so-called flops, the failures, the misfits, the lone, the losers. And I sing to them, you know, in Hedvig, the song at Midnight Radio. And I I guess I always inured myself to the rejection of an audition being rejected by just doing the best I possibly could. And it was it was their loss. I I really always felt that way. Um, I did my job, and I also understand there's a lot of reasons people don't get cast, they're not famous enough, not just because they're not good, they don't look a certain way. I've been a director, I understand that too. When I'm auditioning people, I'm very sensitive to the actress's feelings. I always want them to give it another shot, even if I know I'm not going to cast them, so we can interact because you never know if you'll work with them again. And it's just civil to give someone a good experience in audition and to honor their effort. If they don't make an effort, fuck them. Um but people who hold their, you know, pull their weight, I admire fully. And I'm always helping people if you know with their own projects, if you know, if I can. I made a film called Shortbus, where all the actors had real sex, you know. And interestingly, I went on a date recently, and the guy's like, I'm making a uh a kind of a web series about an OnlyFans sex worker starring an OnlyFans sex worker, and we're gonna show it on OnlyFans. You know, we're gonna actually tell a story through the so-called porn site uh that's ongoing, and they subscribe the same way they do to a sex worker, you know, to a porn guy. And I was like, great, how can I help you? Um and so for me, I've had flops all through it. Hedwig was a floppy character, but we never made any money. You know, the film was a flop. We lost millions. Bob She's like, I don't care, I'm proud of this film. Lord of the Rings came out the same year, he's fine. Uh, and the film found its way through word of mouth, through the DVD. All of my films and plays were not financial successes. I got them on. Um they never made their full fully made their money back, including the ones that made us splash, like Short of Us. Rabbit Hole didn't do that well. You know, it was a bad time to release. We did it at Christmas, you know. I had a great experience with Nicole Kidman. The worst flop was my last film, How to Talk to Girls at Parties, which maybe you know, 15 years earlier, people would have gone to see. Now that kind of movie, people don't rush to go see it. They either have to be packed with stars or they have to be a TV series. Um, once in a while, a film will break through that's a small film, but as you know, it's not the time. Small films, they're not in vogue right now because of streaming. Um, that was a bummer. We brought it to Cannes, but I was in, I was ready. You know, it's like I was ready for anything. I was proud of the experience we had, I was proud of the film. I wanted to give everyone a good time at Cannes. We had a huge punk rock dance party concert, uh, you know, on the beach at Cannes. You know, I didn't, I don't read reviews till maybe years later. I think one review said it was the worst film ever made, which I thought that's something to go in a poster. Uh I like that. But I was I it didn't none of those things hurt my feelings. Generally, a lot of the reviewers were these were kind of uh middle-aged uh straight guys who thought they knew what punk was. And you know, this was a fantasy. It's punks versus aliens, for Christ's sake. We're not making a documentary about sex pistols. Um, this is our fairy tale, love story between punks and aliens. And uh since then, you know, young people have found it. And I'm very much uh we'll figure it, we'll people will discover it later, kind of guy. Hedwig was never a success up front. The only time we actually were traditionally successful with it was Broadway. You know, thir twenty five years out or thirty years after we started it. So to me, there's different kinds of success. There's financial, critical, popular, and The people you like like it. That's that's the one I really care about. People you appreciate, people whose taste you like like it. And those aren't necessarily the masses of theater goers or film goers, the critics, or the accountants. To me, I remain somewhat under the radar. I can walk down the street, a couple people give me a nod, thank you. But I fucked my way to the middle, and I'm very happy here. I don't want to go any higher or lower. I'm paying my bills, I'm doing what I like. I'm working on a fictional podcast series now called Cancellation Island about a rehab for canceled people, you know? Which is another which is another I, you know, I'm ready, I'm prepared to be canceled because I've been so and maybe you can't be canceled unless you're really famous. It's like you can't be assassinated if you're known, you can just be murdered.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

So you you you refreshingly don't seem to uh care about uh upsetting people and you know negative reviews and so on, which is obviously great. Um at what point there must have been a point early in your career where you know you're working your way up where you do, you worry about that sort of thing. So did you become this way because you're now successful? So actually it doesn't matter because you know you can get work where you want, you can write your own thing. What was the tipping point from sort of worrying about all of this external noise and becoming very comfortable with what you're doing?

SPEAKER_00 23:38

I think it's because I started with these mentors in Chicago who set me on the right path. There was an amazing teacher named Frank Galotti who brought Stuck and Wolf Productions to Broadway, he's well known in the theater world, who was teaching me about Beckett and Nabokov. And five years after I was studying Beckett, a mutual mutual friend of mine who was in the film Shortbus, who was a friend of Samuel Beckett, and I had coffee with Samuel Beckett. When you've had coffee with Samuel Beckett, not getting into he's not that into you, eight, is not a big deal. Do you know what I'm saying? I had great models. Another uh mentor was Meshach Taylor, who was a this uh actor who came out of David Mammoth's theater group in Chicago, and I played Huck Finn to his gym at uh the uh Goodman Theater, and he was in designing women and remember that horrible film Mannequin, you know, with Andrew McCarthy and um a mannequin comes to life, and Mishach played the black queen on that. So he was setting me up. He was like, This is how ALA works, you're in Chicago, watch out for that. So he was kind of giving me the robes, and then the third mentor was Barry Miller. Now, Barry Miller was very hot around 1980. He was the kid in Saturday Fever who jumped off the bridge, and then he went on to play uh the Puerto Rican uh comic in fame, which was a big film for me. He was in The Chosen, he was in Peggy's Who got married, and for about five years, he was in everything, and he was the he was like the Bob Dylan actor. He looked a little like Bob Dylan, he didn't give a shit, and he was great. And he said, Don't do anything that feels wrong to your heart, to your not just your brain, but to your heart, and walk away, and then you are you are yourself, and they don't have power over you. And saying no to something that doesn't feel right gives you a sense you have a sense of morality, a sense of quality, a sense of integrity. That doesn't mean saying no to everybody, but I remember going in for some stupid teen comedy, I think it was called Vamp in the 80s, and Jeff Greenberg, a wonderful casting director who did Cheers and Fraser. I went in, I said, Jeff, I don't think I can do this. I didn't even know him, you know. But I just was peer to peer. I looked at, I said, I mean, look at this, look at these signs, it's terrible. I know you didn't write it, Jeff, but I have to. I'm sorry, I got I I gotta bail out of this, right? I hope you don't mind. He's like, No actor has ever said that to me. Let's be friends, and that was always my way. It was let's be human here, let's call a spade a spade, let's not pretend this is great. It could be entertaining, you know, and I've certainly done jobs for to pay the bills, not things that felt disgusting or wrong, but you know, I've done less than amazing things too, but it's always because I had the other thing to pay for the Hedvig, the short bus, the podcast I'm doing now, the album I made, the concert tour I'm doing. So keeping in your mind clarity, this is don't pretend it's good when it's not, but do your job well on that shitty thing. And then pay for the pay for the kids, pay for the other project. Have the the two things going on. I mean, they always have that comment: one for them, one for you. Once in a while, they're both they're good and they're successful and and lucrative. I'm really proud of Joe versus Carol, for example. I was really happy with that experience and with that performance.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

So it's interesting. I've heard this sort of one for them, one for you principle. And obviously, for you, it does seem very much like there's certain things you really care about and you really want to work on. Does that mean obviously to an extent you can maybe control them more because they're things that you're either self-financing or writing yourself? But presumably when there's something that you care about and somebody doesn't let you do it. So this isn't about how it's reviewed, but it's actually, you know, the streaming service on a network says no, or you know, the direct director you want to work with can't do it. Does that make it worse because you're sort of saving yourself for these special ones? And then when external factors stop you making your special one, does that make it more painful to you to move on from?

SPEAKER_00 28:28

It does, but no writing is wasted. You know, I've written things that never saw the light of day. I've developed series with people like Hulu and HBO that which were killed off, and they still own them. You know, that's the pain of those development deals, you know, because they pay you and they own them. And sloppy seconds are not that attractive to people to buy it off of them. And it was a bummer because two of those things that I cared about a lot, but it's never wasted, it goes into other work, that line, that character, that theme, that metaphor. No writing is wasted if you're doing it right, you know, if you mean it. And whenever I do something mainstream, even a money gig, I'll still give it my all, you know. My mom was uh had Alzheimer's and I couldn't afford to take care of her and had to borrow money for the first time a few years ago. And then the TV series Shrill came along. You know, I had a friend who said to me, John, it's time for you to tell your agent that you're ready to be a regular on a TV show. You play the coroner in the procedural, you take the brain out of the brain pan, make a snarky remark, and cash the check. That's the recurring, that's the regular role you want. The coroner. You don't have to work that much. Cash the check, make your own thing. And suddenly that job came off as soon as I told my agent, it came over, came across the desk immediately. It was shrill, and it turned out to be a good show. And so I'm not gonna half-ass it. I still want to make that character as good as it can be, but it wasn't my baby. I was happy to work with those people, AD Bryant, you know, fantastic cast. Um, and I will never short shrift, you know, uh what I think of as a money job, but I also uh it's not it's not my baby. And in those shows, I'll meet people who I'll work with on other things. So I'm doing a show now called City on Fire for Apple, uh, where I play the the uh villain. And I said, I love it. You know, it's a pot boiler, it's a it's a noir, and uh it's a period piece, 2003. I said, Oh my goodness, how will you find the clothing? Um, and I'm playing nothing but a just the most evil Bond villain. And as I was reading it, I was like, it's a bit of a Bond villain. Do you think I should? And they're like, and I was like, all right, I'm going in. I'm going all the way Bond villain. And I'm saying things like, I hate loose ends, and there's no end looser than you, Mr. Chaos. Um, and I can I enjoy that too. But I can also go home, work on my own thing, and not feel like it's the only thing in the world. It's when you think that job or that rejection is the only thing in the world, is when it hurts. Yes, when it's your heart job, when it's the thing, your love labor of love, and it's rejected, that's hard. But it's almost easier than the one you don't care about that's rejected, because it's still your baby. You know, the worst thing is when someone steals your baby. I mean, I've never had that experience because I don't work on that kind of level of money. It tends to be a lot of money when when people steal. So that's why I try to keep the overhead low, fuck my way to the lower middle, things like that. But with uh with things that your baby, you can always do it in another form. You know, I made I wrote a musical uh series that I saw as a uh I saw as a TV series called Anthem Homunculus about a guy who has a brain tumor and is crowdfunding his care. And he's just online, five people are online with him, and he's telling his life story, and he periodically has hallucinations about his loved ones who are dead, sing songs with them, or flashbacks, and it was way too esoteric for you know the streamers. So another company was like, let's make it as a podcast. It was a very expensive podcast, but Glenn Close, Cynthia Revo, Patty Lupone, Marion Cotiar, they could do their whole season in three days. They were all on my series. I wrote songs for everybody, Dennis O'Hare, who I went to college with, and Foster, you know, played William Burroughs. I wrote the first screen, the first draft at William Burroughs' house in Kansas. It was a dream project. No one heard it. I don't care. It's the best thing I ever made. And we actually made money on it, which is weird, even though no one heard it. So that's an example of something you were rejected by Hollywood. Oh, I'll make it with puppets. You know, as a creator and director, there's always a way to tell that story. This other guy is making his thing on OnlyFans. Work with what you got.

SPEAKER_03 33:41

Only fans is an amazing story.

SPEAKER_00 33:43

Isn't that crazy?

SPEAKER_03 33:44

I have a hypothetical question. We've asked this before, but I think you're gonna have a very interesting answer to this because you've already sort of spoken to it. And this is looking forward, this is looking to the future. You are presented with two offers and you kind of have a glimpse into what these the directions that these projects are gonna go. One is the very commercial, you you you have like a uh you're gonna be this like you know, the star or the number two on a big network TV show, and it's gonna go for 15 years and it's gonna pay all the bills that you can ever imagine for the rest of your life, or you're gonna create that show as the writer. Okay. Um, or on the other hand, you know, you have another passionate personal project, you're you're writing your heart, maybe gonna break even. Maybe we'll find an audience in five years, but you really told the story that you wanted to tell. Which which direction, which which path do you pick?

SPEAKER_00 34:34

I think you can do both. I really do. I'd much rather do the break-even for the pleasure of my soul. I also see the casualties of people who only go for the other option. Um, and LA is lousy with them. And these aren't bad people, and these aren't untalented people. These are people who have bought into what 10-year-olds now see as the system, which is brand yourself, get as many clicks as possible, more people mean success, not the quality of it, quantity means success. And I've never heard of the term selling out because I'm I'm 10 and I'm already marketing myself. When you start with that point of view, the more common point of view, you are going to be disappointed. You are going to be crushed at some point. If you're living in a fucking content house, what is the content? Your smooth skin, you know, you're you know, you're drunk and said something funny and probably offensive. Is this something you want to sustain you for the rest of your life? These memories, they're great for the moment. You're 18, whatever, you're in a content house. Get the fuck out of the content house, save the money and make the thing you want to do. Otherwise, you're just I'm a dealist celebrity. Get me out of here, and that's all that's left, which leads directly to drinking too much, too much plastic surgery and depression. Directly. Unless you got your family and you got a good head on your shoulders, and you got your kids to take care of, and the things that balance you, your theater company, whatever it is, as well as that, you are going to go insane and kill yourself. And if you don't, you're too stupid to know that that's an option.

SPEAKER_01 36:36

You've sort of uh unfortunately, we're at the stage of the podcast where we're down to our final question. And you've sort of answered it a bit while answering Noah's question, but just for the sake of consistency, we have to ask it the correct way. So um, if you could give a single piece of advice to somebody wanting to enter the industry, um and obviously you're in sort of four or five different parts of the industry, so you can choose which bits of it you want to give the advice in. Um apart from I guess don't join a content house, which you've given three times now, I think is good advice. What other single piece of advice would you give to somebody?

SPEAKER_00 37:15

It's to not think in terms of industry. Um, it's it's it's leading you down a path of you are a cog in an assembly line. When you when your own uh house is in order, um, meaning you know what you love, you know what you'd like to make, you can compromise when it comes to budgets and forms, finding your way of working, whether it's a novel, a screenplay, all of these things some would say is is part of some industry, but the industry is outside of you. The Supreme Court says corporations are people. Think of yourself as a corporation if you must. Um, and what what is the profit you want? Is it happiness? Is it to make something you're extremely proud of? Is to make something to lift someone up out of their depression? Is it just to pay the bills for your kids? These are all valid things, but concentrate on the ones that are important. Um and know that when you're with Peter is is paying for that, and Paul is getting. You know, with one hand you're giving and the other hand you're taking. If you're only giving and only taking, there's an imbalance. So my answer, my short answer is don't think of it as an industry, think of it as what you want to do, how those industries outside you can help you do those things. If they can't, move on, and then you're not trapped in that industry. We all know the people who got the mortgage too early and can't do something they care about because they have to pay the bills and they have to pay for their kids' college. That is a compromise. You know, I didn't have to have kids, I had a rent stabilized apartment in New York, which was probably more had more effect on my career than anything on my life. My cheap rent. If in that town you can't make that stuff you want to make that makes you happy, go to a different town, seek out a different industry to interact with. Don't get trapped in it.

SPEAKER_01 39:34

Fantastic. Well, fascinating answer. So, John Cameron Cameron Mitchell, actor, playwright, screenwriter, director. And guru, obviously. Guru and a man who secretly does want to be in a content. Cancelled. I want to be cancelled. Thank you very much for being part of the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 39:56

You're welcome. Such a pleasure.

SPEAKER_03 40:04

Well, that's a wrap on this episode of Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss. As always, it's this episode was brought to you by Scriptation, the screen writing and annotation software that at the very least has made my life easier and will make your life easier as well. Uh, we'd like to thank our wives who put up with us recording these episodes in our offices and basements and closets and bathrooms and anywhere we need a little space to record an interview. And of course, we want to thank James who provided us with the great intro and outro music.

SPEAKER_01 40:37

Uh, if you want to find us on social media, you can find Noah at NFLin on Twitter, tweeting a variety of writer-based nonsense and terrible puns and occasionally begging for sponsorship. Uh, if you want more refined tweets, mostly about football and whiskey, you can find me at Dan Rustin. If you're interested in buying a copy of Scriptastin, if you go to www.scriptasting.com backslash stiffer, S-I-T-H-A, you'll receive a special discount. Thank you very much for listening. As always, we appreciate you. Uh please give us any feedback, mostly positive stuff about me, and we will see you next week.

SPEAKER_03 41:23

And if you do say a negative thing about Dan, there is a chance I might buy you a free copy of Scriptation.