Even though "Hedwig and The Angry Inch" is not autobiographical, she shares many things with her creators. "I moved around a lot as a kid," says Mitchell. "I was an Army brat and moved almost every year. My dad was once military commander of the occupied city of Berlin. So there's a sense of displacement and disorientation like I've always been on tour or something. 'Hedwig' is sort of a balm to that feeling of rootless-ness and homelessness. Plus I get to rock out and do drag for a while," he smiles. "I had never done drag before Hedwig." Trask also saw his experiences as a musician, come to life in "Hedwig." "The struggling musician side of Hedwig comes from me,' Trask laughs. "How she constantly turns back to her love for rock and roll music as inspiration even when things aren't going well. You know, the sad struggling musician who believes in the music and keeps on going."
Mitchell had always envisioned Hedwig on celluloid. "When I started writing it for stage, I actually saw it more cinematically. There were jokes, or visual cuts I had in mind. And I thought 'Oh it would be so much easier if we could just show an image, you know a picture is worth a thousand words,"' states Mitchell. He realizes now that the challenge of translating the images to prose for stage would later prove important for the script. "Conjuring up images through words really made me hone the words. I worked on them for years, polishing them, but now I can also go back to my original images in my head and slowly pare away some of the voice over," he says. "The play was in the form of a rock gig and the film is in the form of a rock tour. So the structure of the film is the band on tour mixed with flashbacks. The play was talking to the audience and then telling stories from memory," he explains. The film depicts what could only be referred to in the play, including such characters as the band's enthusiastic manager Phyllis Stein and the young rock star Tommy Gnosis. "The joys of live theater performance will never be duplicated in this film, but the film goes places the stage play never could," summarizes Mitchell.
When it comes to trying to label Hedwig And the Angry Inch in typical 'Hollywood speak,' most of the people involved are baffled. "It's always hard to explain it," says Mitchell. "Is it a Merchant-Ivory costume piece? Is it an action drama? Is it a romantic comedy? A romantic thriller? It does defy description and because of that I think it is a little more precious to me and to the people who like it." However, when pressed Mitchell does say that he "sometimes calls it a post-punk neo-glam rock musical." Or more precisely, "a character who goes on a quest to find out who he/she is and what that means.. .yes, I think an odyssey, may be best way to describe it," Mitchell finally admits.
Mitchell and Trask believed it was essential to retain the live rock music element of the play. "Stephen and I are in agreement that if rock and roll punk songs in a movie are lip-synched, the audience can become detached. You know right away that it's not real. In movies like Nashville and other Altman movies where he does a lot of live singing you tend to go with them more, you don't have that wall between you and the performer," declares Mitchell. Just as in the play, the songs in the film are the vehicles through which Hedwig reveals how she became who she is. "The monologues amplify the meanings of the songs," states Trask. Killer Films producer Katie Roumel adds, "The music from the off-Broadway show was incredible and everybody kept saying how each song was a hit."
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