Shortbus driver John Cameron Mitchell

Every now and then, John Cameron Mitchell re-emerges in the news to emphasize that Shortbus--his long-awaited follow-up to 2001's Hedwig and the Angry Inch--is going to feature non-professional actors fucking. His motivation: Too few films address sexuality with any respect or sustained attention, devolving to either humor or fear or both. And to paraphrase H.L. Mencken, nobody ever went broke overestimating the prurience of the American moviegoer (except maybe Tartan Films, who at least got a nice Village Voice cover package out of 9 Songs).

Well, here we go again: In case you had forgotten him in the aftermath Kieran O'Brien's huge dick and Chloe Sevigny's blow-job technique, Mitchell just hit the wires from the banks of the East River with probably the most thoroughgoing Shortbus preview yet:

Regardless of what the actors are wearing on this day, it's what they're not wearing in much of the film that has generated all the early buzz. Four years after Mitchell put on a coifed blond wig and punk rock T-shirt as an East German transvestite singer in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, the director is pushing new boundaries with an unfiltered look at sexual relationships that promises to make The Brown Bunny and Mysterious Skin look tame by comparison.

Despite initial problems getting money for the project and the prospect of being slapped with an NC-17 rating, the 42-year-old filmmaker says he's unwilling to hold back on any of his vision — to depict (real) sex in as realistic a fashion as possible. ...

"This is an act of resistance," he says. "There is such a reluctance to address sex as an inherent part of the human experience in this country. ... The true perversion to me is crushing it and hiding it."

I can see Mitchell working here, but for about the 17th time in the last four years, I cannot help but wonder where representing the sexual act as "an inherent part of the human experience" intersects with the inherent legitimacy of the cinematic experience. Because, you know, Paul Provenza is adapting Everyone Poops, but is he going to feature 100 comics shitting? It brings to mind what seems like a burgeoning phenomenon assuming viewers can only fully understand experience by having its mechanics spelled out for them--people who are already intimately aware of its mechanics from their own personal lives. I mean, isn't the primary emotional function of cinema that viewers relate to the unreal? Isn't that what makes Hedwig so special? And doesn't anything that achieves "inherent" status ultimately reflect the mundane, or at least the predictable? It stops being art and starts being an art textbook or, worse yet, straight-ahead porn (which Mitchell has already disavowed).

Not that I do not enjoy porn--but I enjoy it because it does not hide behind a gimmick. If the idea is to visit art-house porn as some fresh cinematic frontier--yielding some deeper variation on all art's inverted arousal--then fine. We should just be honest about it. After all, Mitchell is totally right about America's sexual repression; however, if, as he says, he used non-professional actors because "stars don't have sex," how is Shortbus any further removed from the margins that withheld every semi-mainstream sex film that preceded it (and is sure to follow)? And what about Shortbus--beyond the outrageous promise of people really fucking--is going to resonate in the American communities and cultural swaths where that repression is worst?

Oh, jeez... I have no idea, and the movie won't be done until early next year. But for what it is worth, I have my sort-of-keen critical eye and a bottle of hand lotion ready to give it a fair shake. If only those amateurs could just fuck a little faster.