Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

I heart Hedwig

02:43 / 19.12.04

How can you not love this rockstar? Why haven't we adopted Hedwig & the Angry Inch as Donnie Darko's sister movie?

02:44 / 19.12.04

Gah! Not that Hedwig!

03:11 / 19.12.04

(Jennifer Coolidge, aka Stiffler's Mom)

06:02 / 19.12.04

I named my imagesetter (a 500lb, $100k printer, sort of) Hedwig because when we first got it it malfunctioned constntly. That way I could walk into my office first thing each day and spit, "Fuck you, Ms. Hedwig!"

I really don't know why I haven't bought this movie yet, it is so fucking incredible. And the music! The writing!

11:55 / 19.12.04

I posted about this movie a long time ago but the thread died rather quickly.

16:45 / 19.12.04

Yeah, I saw that and it was good, but I felt it needed to be revisited from a slightly different angle. Or not.

XXII:X:II = XXX

06:44 / 20.12.04

If that date comes to pass you ought to film it for posterity, or at very least Pay-Per-View.

I love the film oodles, but in its transition from stage to screen what I thought was its greatest shade of meaning was lost, in that it would seem to be implied from the play that Hedwig and Tommy Gnosis are in fact one and the same being. The whole union of souls into a single, complete being is the reconciliation of anima and animus into a balanced, fully-realized entity. The epiphany is that Hedwig has been looking for completion from without for so long when what s/he needed was to love hirself. Hir hostility to Yitzhak isn't really at Yitzhak; it's at hirself, of which Yitzhak is just an inverted reflection.

Qalyn, do you have the DVD? I love the cut scenes with Andrea Martin's internally-implanted cell phone, which of course fucks up and she can't turn it off.

/+,

09:20 / 20.12.04

I don't own it, but I've seen it.

That gnostic stuff is still in the movie... which is why I think it makes a strong companion piece to Donnie Darko.

Regrettable Juvenilia

17:45 / 21.12.04

It's one of the all-time great rock'n'roll movies, although a lot of rock'n'roll squares will never get that.

02:54 / 23.12.04

I saw this when it first came out off-Broadway; I was a volunteer usher on its second night of previews when no one knew it would be a hit. The cast was going vocal warm-ups nervously at the last minute and going over scenes as I sat in my chair. Then I was given the task of keeping the press out til they were finished cleaning up the theater - they were behind on schedule (the press was supposed to be let in at 7 pm and it was now 7:30 pm and running) and the theater had just been renovated, it was a former club (the Jane Street Theater) and Hedwig was its first show as an off-B'way theater. I remember being amazed that they were still like cleaning dust off seats and doing warm-ups til the last minute, then they let the press in and started the show. It all seemed very ramshackle and last-minute to me, like a high school production.

But then the show started, and I was blown away. However, I didn't think it would become as big a hit as it did.

I made sure to volunteer usher again (seeing the show for free both times, of course) a week later to see it again, and months later it became a word of mouth hit and celebrities started coming.

The movie is terrific and really almost perfectly captures the feeling of what it was like to sit in a theater and watch the show. The soundtracks (both the theater cast album and the movie soundtrack) are primo.

11:05 / 24.12.04

I procured the soundtrack long before I saw the movie and love it dearly. Yes, I heart Hedwig.

13:34 / 27.12.04

the best part of this movie has to be the salad bar. absolutely kills me every time i see it.

14:27 / 27.12.04

Not that Hedwig either...

I also have a terrible crush on Michael Pitt (Tommy Gnosis)...mmmmm....

XXII:X:II = XXX

06:07 / 28.12.04

Ah, Michael Pitt... he puts me in mind of the lyrics from Zappa's "Punky's Whips":

Punky, Punky,
Give me your lips
To die on...
I promise not to cum in your mouth!

/+,

19:36 / 28.12.04

I brought my personal copy over to a friend's house last night. They had never seen or heard of it.

Huh? Yes, that's right.

Anyway, we watched the film from the big giant rock they have been living under.

Of course they loved it, and I was more than happy to share this marvelous film with them.

I do love giving Hed whenever I can.

D Terminator XXXIII

17:40 / 15.05.05

Caught this on a night too far, far late. And loved it absolutely. One big heart out from me too.

21:30 / 15.05.05

Thr stage show is makes far more sense, and is more outrageous live. The night I saw3 it my friend got grinded in the face by the tasselly crotch of dear Hedwig. Noy only are the songs pitch-perfect glam parodies but the variation afforded by the live show gives almost a pot history of the rock that Headwig listens to in his oven, a rockabilly Sugarddady made my day at the time.

Tom Tit's Tot: A Girl!

22:04 / 15.05.05

I saw the stage show and the film, actually missed a stand-up show by Margaret Cho in order to see the stage show. I'll never forgive my friend for convincing me to see Hedwig and miss Cho.

I understand why people like it, but it felt very hollow to me in many ways. Not bad, but not good either. The performances were all fine and such, though.

Possibly it's because I didn't like the music. I do hate pop-glam-rock type music.

09:21 / 16.05.05

The stage show is, I think, a little more reliant on innuendo. The fab direction of the movie opens it all out a little. For what it's worth, I LOVE em' both, but the film is the one I'd track down first...