Unsung Heroes: The Animation of 'Hedwig and the Angry Inch'

Hey everybody. Michael C here from Serious Film. I wasn't necessarily feeling it when I sat down to write this week's column so I went searching for a subject I couldn't help but get enthusiastic about. Five minutes after I pulled Hedwig down off the DVD shelf and Presto I can't type fast enough. 

When the movie musical experienced a mini-renaissance at the start of the last decade I doubt I was the only one to notice a disturbing trend. For some of these broadway adaptations it's as if appearing on the big screen required them to apologize for being musicals. Chicago couldn’t do a number without first cutting to a close up of Rene Zellweger’s retinas to assure everyone that all the strange singin' and dancin' was in her imagination. When Dreamgirls’ characters ventured offstage, as in “Steppin' to the Bad Side”, it's cut as if they’re hoping no one will notice it is the characters singing and is not just a song on the soundtrack.

Even when movies were unapologetic about being musicals, like Sweeney Todd, the movie's advertisements went to great lengths to conceal its Broadway roots. The tagline on the Sweeney’s poster should have been “Stephen who?”

During this time period, one of the movies that defied this trend was John Cameron Mitchell's Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001). I remember working in a movie theater the day the poster arrived. No ticket buyers for this were going to be surprised when the characters burst into song. 

Hedwig embraced the rock musical. It wanted to squeeze every last drop of joy, pathos, wit, and fun out of it. Like Cabaret, it was logical to construct the story around a series of stage performances, but within that structure Mitchell stripped it down and decorated it like a punk teenager graffitiing his text books with Sharpie. The star/director throws in everything from split-screens to follow-the-bouncing-ball sing-alongs (with the occasional *ahem* car wash) but I think his most brilliant movie was to hire animator Emily Hubley to create a short film to accompany the song "The Origin of Love". With lesser material the addition of all these elements might seem like flash over substance, clutter for the sake of it, but the songwriting here is so strong that it can support grand gestures. 

Hubley's scaled down, hand drawn animation is a perfect fit for Hedwig's cheap, trailer park punk aesthetic. A more polished animation style would have stuck out horribly. It's simplicity allows it to add a bit of dazzle and underline the substance of the piece all without distracting from what's really important, namely, the character of Hedwig and what this all means to her. When the song climaxes with Hedwig singing directly into the camera until the animation gradually takes over half the screen it's easy to miss how well this technique works because of how surprisingly moving it is.

I don't know exactly how else to praise Hubley's work except to say that it is just plain beautiful. Origin of Love is my favorite song from Hedwig (which places high in my favorites from musicals in general) and as strong as Mitchell's performance of it is, he was right to conclude it deserved something extra. 

Team Experience: Swim with Mermaids, Ride on Gaga

This week I asked the contributing Film Experience team how they felt about Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and I also wanted to gauge whether we had any Little Monsters in our midst via Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" droppings.

You refused to see Pirates 4. What would ever bring you back to this franchise?

Michael: It's hard to imagine what could bring me back to the franchise at this point, (I feel like I only just got done sitting through At World's End) but a a 90 minute running time would be a step in the right direction.

Andreas: If Disney ever wants me to shell out for another Pirates movie, they'll have to go down a really surprising route, like selling it as "Andrei Rublev on the high seas." Or maybe they could introduce interesting characters! Some outrageous twist like that. What if they solved all their problems by just making Pirates 5 into Dead Man 2? They could bring in Jim Jarmusch to guest-direct, and use William Blake quotes for all of Jack Sparrow's dialogue!

Craig: Can they get all the sequels over with in one go and amalgamate the whole lot: The Hungover Kung-Fu Transformers of the Caribbean in the City of the Deathly Hallows Parts 2, 3 & 4 will be showing near you THIS SUMMER! Either that or they just cast the muppets instead of Depp, Cruz and company. I could easily do with another Muppets Treasure Island, thanks.

You saw Pirates 4. What did you think of the Mermaids?

Jose: The mermaids were truly preposterous! Where were their nice sea shell bras and their fuzzy crab and fish friends?

Although on the bright side, if it hadn't been for Syrena, we wouldn't have had a chance to see Sam Claflin shirtless. Is it only me or should Pé have played the queen of the mermaids instead of being stuck with that crappy character?

Kurt: It's such a shrug of a movie. That said, I liked the mermaids -- collectively, they were one of the film's very few inspired elements. The mermaid attack was the first action sequence I actually paid attention to. The depiction is neither totally accurate nor blasphemous. Just a new interpretation. And thank god for it.

What if Lady Gaga's "Borth This Way" was a movie?

Who should ride her cyborg self?

Andreas: I imagine Born This Way: The Movie as a cross between The Terminator, Showgirls, and Un Chien Andalou, but with extra preachiness thrown in. To be honest, I've always wanted Gaga to branch out into large-scale filmmaking just on the basis of the "Bad Romance" music video, so if she made exactly that, I'd be perfectly happy. The weirder, the better.

Jose: It would be a freaking Heavy Metal like extravaganza. Only two passengers should ever ride Gaga: Hedwig (from the Angry Inch)... 

...and  the Governator himself. Can you imagine those two in an action movie together?

Though you didn't ask who are they chasing/is chasing them  but I'll answer. There is only one being who can do that: Madonna. She needs to find the one camp movie role to make her a cinema icon.

Craig:  The Gaga videos to date, all strung together, are like a kind of movie anyway, aren't they? But if Born This Way were a movie it would be directed by Alan Smithee. Burn (rubber), baby, burn! Edward Furlong would clearly have to ride on Gaga's mutant-motorcycle. And Gaga herself would have to talk in a weird robo-Austrian-motor dialect. Doesn't she already do that in some of her songs anyway? It's part of her charm.

Kurt: If Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" were a movie, it would, of course be Labyrinth 2, and on the back of Gaga's cyborg motorcycle would ride David Bowie's Jareth, clad in his signature wig and junk-hugging leggings. Together, Gaga and Jareth would rule over their combined armies of little monsters, and anyone who spoke against their doubly strong maze of fabulousness would be swiftly tossed into the Bog of Eternal Stench.

YOUR TURN

• Who would you pay to see riding on Gaga's mutant-cycle?
• Do you prefer your mermaids carnivorous or sweet and tuneful?

Take Three: Michael Pitt

Craig here with Take Three. Today: Michael Pitt

Take One: Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001)
Pitt’s weedy teenage wannabe rock imp Tommy Gnosis (The Jesus freak army brat formerly known as Tommy Speck – then, very nearly, Tommy Ache) got to grapple with Hedwig’s Angry Inch in unconventionally inventive ways back in 2001. John Cameron Mitchell’s slip-up-operation rock opera, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, was like nothing else on screen at the time. If you could avert your eyes from internationally ignored “icon” Hedwig’s shining beacon of starlight, then hidden in the flared remnants, and on the sidelines, was Pitt’s Tommy. He was initially willing to dote on her every word but eventually reluctant to acknowledge his own sneaky appropriation of her back catalogue. He became the big star; Hedwig toured the fish restaurants of America.

Pitt does the naive, overtly adoring rock moppet well. He also does the non-committal, dull-eyed whiner-singer act capably, too. In short: he nailed being a half-hearted androgynous songster on the head. His game karaoke portrayal was a bizarre squishing together of Iggy Pop, Kurt Cobain and Marc Bolan and it made for a perfect contrast with Mitchell’s gender mis-reassigned glamzilla. Pitt had the “gee shucks” drippiness down to a tee early on and the moody insouciance of a fast-rising pin-up later in the film. Pitt’s occassionally been compared to Leonardo DiCaprio (they look faintly alike), but he was destined for less starry vehicles. Hedwig was his first substantial role after a few bit parts in some notable movies, setting the left of mainstream tone.

Take Two: Funny Games US (2008)
Pitt put his baby-faced Buscemi looks to ominous use in Michael Haneke’s close-to-replica  American remake of his own 1997 violent image treatise Funny Games. I’m not this particular remake’s biggest admirer, but I’ll stunt the bile flow and focus on the matter at hand, the one stand-out aspect: Pitt’s performance, which was remarkable for its blandly creepy conviction. Brady Corbet’s less assertive Peter was fine. But Pitt, as fourth-wall-breaking smiling Paul, had the film – just like the terrorised family at its centre – under his thumb with his politely negotiated terror. He was the sociopathic preppy-styled ringleader; a blond, blank-eyed menace.

Pitt brings out the duplicity innate in his character through careful use of body language and an array of insincere facial expressions (a slyness you can also see in his Murder by Numbers and Boardwalk Empire roles). Rid of his floppy-fringed slacker locks and the pouting hipster tics of other films, with hair slicked down in Aryan tidiness and his lips curled into a smug half-smile respectively, he projects just the right amount of playful goading. He fleshes out what was essentially a second-hand scolding message character. By the time he’s playing God – and, by proxy, director – by rewinding the action to fit his own murderous MO, Pitt has quite literally won his not actually all that funny game. Without him, Haneke’s lofty polemic loses something integrally dark.

Take Three: Last Days (2005)
He certainly looked like teen spirit. And he certainly sounded like teen spirit. But whether he really, truly smelled like teen spirit is open for debate. Pitt played jaded and degraded rock icon Blake, a rather transparent stand-in for Kurt Cobain, in the third entry in Gus Van Sant’s loose death tetralogy. (Gerry, Elephant and, slightly less a part of the gang, Paranoid Park being the others.) Some folks got terribly roiled up by “their” favoured generational spokesperson being portrayed in such an irregular fashion, other folks went with Van Sant’s tonic poem and embraced his loose interpretation of a famous life self-terminated too early. Although Blake was our main focus, Pitt ensured we weren’t privy to everything his portrayal represented. I’m Not There was used for Todd Haynes’ experimental Dylan biopic, but it’s a more apt title for this portrait of rock iconicity. Or He’s Barely Audible.

Pitt achieves a lot by doing little on screen: stumbling his way around his crumbling mansion with a shotgun, mumbling his way around a conversation with a pair of Mormon callers, looking fed up when Kim Gordon pops in for a chat, playing hide-and-seek with Asia Argento, making himself scarce when Lukas Haas and co. drop by unannounced, sharing a moment of tender clarity with a mini clowder of stray kittens. He draws attention by shielding himself from us; we barely see his face. When we do see his face, it’s a blank slate - a pale, unkempt presentation of incoherent mannerisms. It’s kind of Method acting, but kind of not. (Stripped Method? Method Undone?) It's the shuffling, vaporous presence itself that makes an impact. Portrayed this way, Blake is always a scruffy enigma, there to curiously mull over or ignore as we see fit.

Thre more key films for the taking: The Dreamers (2003), The Village (2004), Silk (2007)