Mitchell: 'It's punk to turn off your phone'
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- John Cameron Mitchell is bringing 'I'm Afraid of Americans: A Bowie Song Cycle' and a punk masterclass to Australia, with dates at Melbourne international film festival (21 August), Sydney's Festival of Dangerous Ideas (22–23 August), the Enmore Theatre (6 September) and Melbourne's Recital Centre (9 September).
- Mitchell told the Guardian the Minneapolis population resisting ICE raids represents 'neo-punk,' defining punk as 'facing the ugliness to get through it' rather than 'a hairstyle you saw on TikTok.'
- Mitchell argued turning off your phone is 'punk,' saying digital mediation shrinks attention span, reduces empathy, and that growing distrust of AI makes ditching phones 'even more' justified.
- David Bowie once asked Mitchell to consider a stage adaptation of Ziggy Stardust, which Mitchell declined after a decade of Hedwig and now calls his biggest career regret: 'Why didn't I just fucking do it? It's David Bowie.'
- Mitchell described Pete Hegseth as 'an avatar of the manosphere' whose 'deep lack of empathy seems to be a plus in the Elon Musk world,' and said he'd fight him with 'giant plastic hands – not to hurt him, just to slap him until he's silly.'
- Mitchell suffered a hairline fracture falling off stage during Oh, Mary! on Broadway, where he performs eight shows a week, but returned two days later because 'the show must go on.'
Why it matters: With eight Broadway shows a week and a 25th-anniversary Hedwig screening on the Australia itinerary, Mitchell's August–September run gives an already-prominent platform to a politically explicit punk philosophy — naming ICE resistance in Minneapolis as a model and calling out Hegseth's 'manosphere' persona as its antithesis.
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