By Harry Haun
20 Dec 2010

	Director John Cameron Mitchell with Nicole Kidman on the set of "Rabbit Hole"
	photo by JoJo Whilden

Mitchell, who starred on Broadway in Big River and The Secret Garden, doesn't believe his sharp right turn into accessible family drama from the "Hedwig" crowd will rattle the auteurists too much. "Auteur doesn't necessarily mean you're branding yourself with a certain style," he says. "It's that your vision is perhaps more pure. In this case, I'm working on someone else's script. For me, it felt like what I always did as an actor, which is approach another script and tailor it for myself and serve it. My favorite directors, apart from the idiosyncratic ones like Cassavetes and Fellini, are those like Sidney Lumet, who can do 'Dog Day Afternoon' or 'Network' or 'Murder on the Orient Express.' How different can those films be?"

He credits his arrival at this new venue to agent-persistence: "I have an agent who's been trying hard to get me to do projects I didn't particularly want to do. I have said no a lot since 'Hedwig' — actually more directing-wise than writing-wise — because I was old enough to know that I don't want to spend years on something that I didn't love, and this was the first thing that made me want to drop everything and do it."

There was another reason the project spoke so personally to him: "When I was a teenager, I lost a brother, and all the feelings came up in the screenplay. At the time — 1977, when I was 14 and he was four, the same age as the child in the film — we weren't supposed to talk about it. There wasn't a lot of grief counseling. We had religion, and it was about moving on and letting go before you were really ready to. Books and stories helped me through. So I thought now it was time to look into that.

	Tyne Daly and Cynthia Nixon in the 2006 Broadway production of Rabbit Hole
	photo by Joan Marcus

"I realized when I read David's script that it was some unfinished business for me — to think about what had happened to me and maybe work through some stuff while working on this beautiful piece. It was really wonderful to work with these virtuoso actors because, as they did their scenes, I felt like I was in the scenes with them and feeling behind the camera all the things they were feeling in front. It allowed me to release stuff. Of course, that's the point of work like this. That's the point of art."

For the time being, Mitchell is staying behind the camera: "I'm in the middle of producing an animated feature, 'The Ruined Cast,' directed by Dash Shaw, the guy who did the comic book art for 'Rabbit Hole.' It's going to be an adult sci-fi."

But the actor in him dies hard: "We're still trying to figure out a way to get 'Hedwig' on Broadway, which has a lot of obstacles." (The show was an Off-Broadway smash, of course.)

Lindsay-Abaire is Broadway-bound — specifically, the Samuel J. Friedman where his Good People bows March 3, with Frances McDormand, Tate Donovan, Estelle Parsons and Becky Ann Baker.

"I'm going out to L.A. next week to promote the movie — there's all that gauntlet stuff you have to do — but once I'm in rehearsal, I'm in rehearsal." That will be on Jan. 4.

"Good People is about a neighborhood in South Boston where I'm from — I've never written about my hometown, ever — and it's about a working-class woman who has had minimum-wage jobs her entire life and never been able to escape that life. In the course of the play, she finds out that a guy she grew up with who escaped the neighborhood has gone on to become a successful doctor. She sorta insinuates herself into his life in order to escape her circumstance. In a line, it's about the myth in America that anyone can accomplish anything if they just work hard enough."

The Friedman was called the Biltmore when Lindsay-Abaire made his Broadway debut there in 2006. Previously known for his kinky comedies Off-Broadway (Fuddy Meers, Kimberly Akimbo, Wonder of the World), he did an abrupt about-face and daringly turned on the dark with Rabbit Hole.

"It's a mournful story," he readily allows. "It's about loss, but I also hope it's about . . . hope. I hope that it's about people desperately trying to reconnect and finding their way back to each other. That's what I think it's about, ultimately."

View the trailer: