I've been setting my Tivo to record a bunch of documentaries, but I really enjoyed Follow My Voice: with the Music of Hedwig, making its rounds on the Sundance Channel. It's a documentary about the making of an album recorded in tribute to the musical, Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Proceeds of the album are donated to an alternative high school for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered (oh and questioning -- let's throw everybody in there) high school students.
The movie cuts between a wide variety of artists (many I don't know, they look like my high school students from years ago) recording their version of Hedwig songs and scenes from the school lives of the students of the high school.
My favorite cuts in the movie of course are my favorite tracks from the original soundtrack, Wig in a Box and Wicked Little Town.
I remember being on a flight from Phoenix to Virginia, and I was listening to the Hedwig soundtrack on a portable CD player. The guy sitting next to me really wanted to talk (and, surprise, I prefer absolute mute conversation from takeoff to landing). He asked me what I was listening to, and when he didn't recognize "Hedwig" he asked what the music was about.
I guess my option at that time would have been to come up with something politically/socially/sexually neutral to say, but I was tired and a bit edgey after a bumpy takeoff in heavy rain, and my Xanax had really kicked in, and so I turned to him and said,
Hedwig the Angry Inch is the story of a young boy from (Germany?) who falls for an older man, and decides to have a sex change operation. Unable to afford a reputable surgeon, he is forced into the services of a (dentist? Veterinarian? I forgot now), who was not able to complete the surgery successfully. Hedwig is left with a one-inch remnant of his penis, but his lover still takes him to America. They live a minimal existence in a trailer park, and one day, the lover leaves Hedwig. The rest of the musical/movie is Hedwig's struggle to come to terms with his sexuality, his desire to be a successful rock musician, and his relationship with a sexually stunted younger man who steals his music and then becomes famous with it. In the end, though, Hedwig learns to accept and love himself, along with all of his "shortcomings" and learns to deal with "what he has to work with," and the Inch is angry no more, as is symbolized in the movie by Hedwig walking into the distance naked and unashamed.
I'm not sure which, but either the Xanax or I looked at him, wondering where this conversation could possibly be headed.
The guy stares at me during my entire spiel, and wordlessly turns to his newspaper, snapping the fold stiffly and dismissively, assuming I've made all that up just to piss him off.
The remainder of the flight was unremarkable. And very quiet.
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