26 Mar 2026

John Cameron Mitchell’s Closet Picks

The writer, director, and performer talks about how All That Jazz inspired the stylistic freedom of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, shares a moving story about After Life, and praises the versatility of filmmakers like Pier Paolo Pasolini and Sidney Lumet.

John Cameron Mitchell: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest

choices

12

9 single, 3 box sets

single films

9

chosen on their own

box sets

3

one choice, many films

films reached

34

the same visit, box sets opened

Criterion's own upload · on criterion.com

This visit as a strip, a cell for each choice: paler the older the film, indigo for a box set, which is one cell however many films it holds. The order is the order Criterion's own page lists them in, which is probably but not provably the order they came off the shelf.

1165 Cooley High 1975 SET The Wes Anderson Archive: Ten Films, Twenty-Five Years SET John Cassavetes: Five Films 1192 Moonage Daydream 2022 724 All That Jazz 1979 863 Multiple Maniacs 1970 1089 After Life 1998 947 Shampoo 1975 982 Hedwig and the Angry Inch 2001 SET Pasolini 101 1300 Network 1976 1293 Pee-wee’s Big Adventure 1985

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	Cooley High	Michael Schultz	1975	2
2	The Wes Anderson Archive: Ten Films, Twenty-Five Years box set, 10 films			7
3	John Cassavetes: Five Films box set, 6 films			30
4	Moonage Daydream	Brett Morgen	2022	1
5	All That Jazz	Bob Fosse	1979	18
6	Multiple Maniacs	John Waters	1970	3
7	After Life	Hirokazu Kore-eda	1998	7
8	Shampoo	Hal Ashby	1975	12
9	Hedwig and the Angry Inch	John Cameron Mitchell	2001	10
10	Pasolini 101 box set, 9 films			13
11	Network	Sidney Lumet	1976	2
12	Pee-wee’s Big Adventure	Tim Burton	1985	2

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1970 to 2022, box sets 1959 to 2021

John Cassavetes: Five Films

The Wes Anderson Archive: Ten Films, Twenty-Five Years

Pasolini 101

a single film, at its year a box set, across the years of its films the collection, by decade

The axis is the same 1920 to 2030 on every visit page, so a haul that stayed inside one decade looks like one. A box set is drawn across the years of the films inside it, which is a range of release dates and not a claim about the set. Nothing here is in the order the choices were made: displayed position moves film year by a fifth of one percent of its variance, which is not a slope worth drawing.

How long this haul is

Its 34films run 63.4 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

That is 316.8 minutes of film for each of its 12 choices, counting a box set as the one choice it was. Across the 375 visits with a complete total, the median is 136.4 minutes.

How unusual this haul was

Its 12 choices had been taken by 8.92 visits each on average, counting a box set as one thing. One of them has been taken by nobody else. The least-picked was Moonage Daydream, taken by this visit alone.

This visit reached the work of John Waters, through Multiple Maniacs, who has been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

One of the choices is their own: Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Left out of the lineage count, because reaching for yourself is not reaching for somebody else.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com