When writer-director John Cameron Mitchell completed his 2001 film Hedwig and the Angry Inch, he wanted to show sex as a normal part of life.
Today, the filmmaker goes one step further in his latest film Shortbus, which was shot in New York and is featured in the Cannes Film Festival this week. His actors have actual sex in the scenes, according to the Hollywood Reporter Friday.
Mitchell says he wants his actors to explore sex as a cinematic language rather than as erotic or titillating. His goal is to show that sex isn't ugly or dirty, but a part of life and a "small act of resistance against Bush and the America we live in because it's trying to remind people of good
things about America and New York," he says.
While other such movies have used actual sex, they involved dramatic themes as opposed to Mitchell's feature film comedy which deals with characters who meet weekly in an underground salon for food, talk and sex.
"It's kind of a Woody Allen movie, but sex is involved."
But finding funding was his first obstacle. Despite receiving no interest from major studios or other Hollywood production houses, Mitchell was able to get financing from individual investors, Fortissimo Films and Q Television, a gay-oriented cable channel.
Having worked in the industry for some time, Mitchell realized that in order to make his movie a reality, he had to forgo the usual casting agents for his actors who would engage in actual sex.
Mitchell approached a number of alternative weeklies and magazines around the country and was interviewed about the project. He went on to ask readers interested in participating in the film to send in 10-minute videotapes where they talk about a particularly emotionally important sexual experience.
Mitchell received about 500 submissions of which he called back 40 people before he chose nine for the movie.
But Mitchell wasn't done yet. He conducted improvisational classes for these fledgling actors over the next two-and-a-half years as an effort to make the actors learn their characters and make them real.
Eventually, the sex scenes were shot, but not with a lot of apprehension from the actors and a lot of Viagra.
Although the film has only been shown to investors, friends and others, Mitchell says he's gotten mixed responses. Some were disturbed by the emotional relationships while others were nonplussed by the sex scenes.
Meanwhile, Mitchell plans to secure a distribution deal for the movie at Cannes where buzz about the movie is just beginning.
