How Shortbus was born

Conversation with controversial director John Cameron Mitchell, who gives a graphic glimpse into the soul.

Sensitive people hold on to your seats, for you are about to take the ride of your life on “Shortbus”. The movie opens with some very hard scenes, literally. Yes, they’re really doing it, and no, this isn’t porn. It is deeper than that; sex is merely a route through which the characters channel their fears, frustrations and ultimately love.
Sofia (Sook-Yin-Lee), a sex therapist, is in search of The Big O, which Severin (Lindsay Beamish) the dominatrix will help her find, James (Paul Dawson) is seeking to feel the love that his boyfriend Jamie (PJ DeBoy) has for him, but ultimately, he’s on a quest for his own self. They all meet at the Shortbus, a club where sex is part of the scene but human emotions and intellect are what this place is about. As the movie goes along, the sexual element becomes secondary and John Cameron Mitchell gives a graphic glimpse into the soul.
We met up with the controversial director at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

How did you get the idea for this very unusual film?
Well, it’s a collection of ideas because we created it through improvisation. So all the actors had their own ideas. But at the beginning of this project, I had seen a lot of films that had been using sex. Most of them seemed to be very negative – sex with negativity.

Catholic guilt?
I guess so. I mean, there’s all kinds of guilt. I didn’t want to make an erotic film, but I wanted to see how sex could be revealing of other parts of the characters’ lives. It’s metaphoric language. And I know that if we were going to be very explicit about it, the actors would have to feel trust. That’s another reason we created it through improvisation. So I cast the actors first - I avoided stars and people who were worried about their careers – and through improvisational workshops, we created the characters and much of the story together, and then I wrote the script. We worked for two-and-a-half years.

Did the actors improvise on camera as well, within the limits of the script structure, of course?
Yeah, every scene was highly structured. But I told them they could never do the same twice line-wise, but they still had to do the exact same beats in order – paraphrases, really, which helped them a lot and kept them much more real. Cassavetes would often do that. Things were pretty much written but on the day, they could say it however they wanted. That kept it more fresh.

Did any of the actors every freak out at any point?
There were nerves about things that weren’t sexual, like emotional scenes.

Did you do research in places like the Shortbus?
A friend of mine had a salon that was like that. It’s kind of an amalgamation of different places that I know. And the place where we shot was a queer arts’ collective, and they would have sex sometimes and performances.

All of the people in “Shortbus” are what “normal” people would consider as outcasts.
I think they all consider themselves with “special needs.” I was in a shortbus at one time…