The return of free love: queer auteur John Cameron Mitchell's new film Shortbus depicts graphic sex, but it's not porn--it's a political manifesto.

You've not fully experienced the national anthem until you've watched a naked guy warble it to another nude dude during a certain sex act that shall remain nameless here. That's what happens--plain as day, aided by several close-ups--midway through Shortbus, writer-director John Cameron Mitchell's genius, romantic, unapologetically sexual new film, when a male couple who are considering having an open relationship bring a cute young thing home for a threesome. The impromptu rendition of Francis Scott Key's nearly 200-year-old tribute to America comes at the young guy's request--he asks for some music to defuse the awkwardness of sex with strangers--but the singer's choice of material is so absurd that he and the boyfriend can't help but join in, and all three soon collapse into laughter, coitus interruptus.

While conservatives, if not most Americans, will surely be shocked by the no-holds-barred scene, to a certain sophisticated, progressive audience--sick of the Bush administration's divisive politics, blatant fearmongering, and policy disasters ranging from the mess in Iraq to the ongoing effort to pass a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage--the moment will be exhilarating. That's how it felt for me, a 28-year-old gay man who was in New York City on 9/11 and has watched in dismay as Republicans have wrung every last drop of political gain out of that tragedy (including calling my right to marry a threat to the nation). And that's how it felt for many of the people who attended the Shortbus press screening with me, jaded media and artistic types all, who burst into applause when the scene ended--the same reaction the scene received at this year's Cannes Film Festival (where the movie also received a prolonged standing ovation upon its conclusion). In an enthusiastically perverse manner, joining our nation's cherished "Star-spangled Banner" with a sex act that some would be repulsed by is a wonderfully inspired way to reclaim the basic American values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--at a time when reactionary forces would like to snatch them away from us.

"When I can get French people applauding the [U.S.] national anthem, it's progress," Mitchell says with a smile one September afternoon, reclining on a long gray couch after being photographed in a downtown Manhattan studio for this story. Then, turning serious, he adds, with an intent look in his eyes, "It's certainly no mistake that the film opens on the Statue of Liberty," referring to an extreme close-up of the icon's face before the camera pans out to reveal the statue in all her glory (and, a few scenes later, the footprints of the World Trade Center's twin towers). "It is a patriotic film, a reminder that America was the place where people who were persecuted came, who were looking for a place of their own where they could have freedom."

Which is not the case now, he says--and many would agree. "We are in an era where fear is being manipulated into political gain by the powers that be, and the terrorist, the immigrant, and the sexual minority are all considered equally dangerous by the Right." And that, Mitchell asserts (quoting an unlikely source perhaps), is "at the root of a great deal of pain, violence, and war. Yoko Ono said, If people were having better sex, there'd be less war. And studies have shown that societies that are afraid of sex are the ones with the most violence--sexual violence, domestic violence, and even war."

His film Shortbus is the answer to that. The highly anticipated follow-up to his her-alded 2001 debut, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, the Sundance double award winner about a German transsexual who wants to be an American rock star, Shortbus arrives in theaters just a month after the fifth anniversary of 9/11 with an unabashedly sex-positive message--and eyebrow-raising sex scenes that leave nothing to the imagination. (The tour de force opening montage that features a man and woman having sex in more positions than most straight people achieve in a lifetime, not to mention a gay guy who tries to pleasure himself orally, is a doozy!) The point? To limn the larger emotional and psychological dimensions of the characters' carnal encounters, revealing the meaning behind the orgasms while also demonstrating the power--literally--of personal pleasure. Bracingly original, with a fresh visual style that utilizes multiple cinematographic treatments, Shortbus is unlike any other American film that's come (pun intended) before.

It follows six young New Yorkers: the aforementioned gay male couple and their young partner in crime; another young man who lives across the street from the couple and often spies them having sex; a dominatrix whose primary human interaction occurs with her clients; and a sex therapist who's never had an orgasm. All are searching for different kinds of connection, but their story lines converge at a weekly underground "salon" called Shortbus, named after the abbreviated school bus reserved for "special" kids. Presided over by real-life New York City queer treasure Justin Bond (Kiki of the brilliant, demented cabaret act Kiki & Herb), who plays himself, the club boasts a quirky music and performance art scene on one side and a rollicking, polysexual orgy on the other--where guys and guys, girls and girls, and guys and girls (including Mitchell in a brief Hitchcockian cameo) get down. A banner that reads SEX NOT BOMBS hangs overhead. "September 11th, it's the only thing real that's ever happened to them," Bond says of the randy young revelers as he gives a tour of the salon to the sex therapist, Sofia (Sook-Yin Lee), who visits one night on the advice of the film's gay male couple, who are clients of hers. "It's just like the '60s, only with less hope."

Yet interestingly, despite the film's groundbreaking portrayal of sex, its creator doesn't regard Shortbus as all that innovative. "I don't think of it as an unusual film; I think of it as a rather traditional film in so many ways," Mitchell says, perhaps strategically, in his cool, Zen-like manner. "Certainly a lot of people have used sex before, and the structure of the film and the style of it isn't new." But, he allows, "what's unusual is sex is being used in a comprehensive way--where humor, emotion, and thought are all layers, rather than just one thin layer. I wasn't trying to turn anyone on. I was trying to reveal more about the character through the sex, because that's a revealing part of our lives. It's another paint in the paint box to be used in film.

"If people say this film is about sex, I say, No, it's what sex is about," he clarifies. "I am not against porn. I think porn is great, and someday I'd like to make a good porn film. But young people learn sex nowadays from porn rather than multiple sources--from life or friends or whatever. They become very insecure about how they look and they just don't enjoy it. They figure they have to do this and then follow it with being rimmed and then follow it with coming on someone's back. Sex is supposed to be surprising and spontaneous, and instead it's become another fucking marketing niche."

In Shortbus, he says, he tried to capture all the various aspects of any given sexual encounter, instead of reducing it to a simple libidinal exchange. "Think about the most emotional sexual experience you've had. It has all kinds of layers. To an outsider it might have looked

ridiculous and funny. You might have felt insecurity and tension. You might have remembered your parents or your first love. Let's respect sex a bit more in films and in life. Give it its due. Neither pornography nor Hollywood do that very well."

It's a perspective borne of personal experience--and steeped in New York's queer arts and nightlife scene, epitomized in the film by Bond's salon. "Shortbus is a utopian place, but it's based on the various places we've been to in real life," Mitchell says. The famous late-'90s rock and roll drag party Squeezebox, where Hedwig first took off, springs immediately to mind, as does a raucous, exhibitionist-heavy shindig called Foxy at the seedy East Village bar the Cock, which Bond was associated with. But I'm also reminded of a more informal house party known as CineSalon that was once held weekly by New York filmmaker, curator, and Mitchell friend Stephen Kent Jusick (who plays a salon concessions vendor in the movie). He would screen avant-garde movies in his Greenwich Village apartment every Wednesday--but the screenings weren't the only entertainment. I vividly remember once turning my head away from the show and seeing another show: a guy going down on a friend right next to me.

"Just to get people in the same room seems to be unusual for people who were weaned on the Internet," Mitchell says. "And you know, the best parties are always mixed-gender and -sexuality. Too many gay men in one room is very dangerous, and too many women in the room is not good. Shake it up, loosen up. There are people out there, especially young people, who are comfortable with all sexualities--men, women, trans. It's a big world, and to closet yourself into a gay ghetto may feel safe but ultimately makes you as square as your dad."

Square is an apt description for most of the American film industry, which steered clear of producing Shortbus for obvious reasons. Instead, the financing was put together over a period of years by the now-defunct Q Television channel in association with several private individuals. (The film was picked up for distribution by maverick indie ThinkFilm following its rousing success at Cannes in May.) At the same time, Mitchell and the cast indulged in a lengthy rehearsal period, including several weeks-long workshops during which everyone played theater games and engaged in dramatic exercises like holding imaginary press conferences in character. In between, Mitchell would refine the story lines and plot out the length of scenes so that the actors, who largely improvised their dialogue, would know how long to speak.

"I didn't really have a story," Mitchell says of the preproduction days back in 2003 and 2004, when Shortbus was still known as "The Sex Film Project." Knowing that established stars would never dream of being in such a controversial film requiring both vulnerability and nudity, Mitchell opted for unknowns, relying on showbiz listings and general media coverage to generate prospects. More than 500 people submitted personal videotapes describing-and sometimes enacting--their views on sex, and Mitchell and his casting director whittled them down to a select few. "I knew the actors would work best if the trust was built, and the best way to do that was for them to be cocreators of this story and then the characters," he says. "So we cast interesting people first and then we workshopped the story."

The beautiful film that resulted is as much a tribute to New York City as it is a political or cultural declaration. From the jazzy opening notes of the soundtrack to the blackout at film's end and every neurotic, transcendent sexual encounter in between--Shortbus is a swooning love letter to a city where a bohemian, anything-goes spirit still reigns, George Bush (and gentrification) be damned. "This is a celebration of the people I love in New York and their creativity and community spirit," says Mitchell, who is something of a guru to the downtown queer demimonde, shepherding pet projects into existence (like Jonathan Caouette's astonishing 2003 filmic memoir Tarnation, which Mitchell executive-produced) and providing overall moral support to scores of artistic friends. "A lot of the people who make cameos or are extras are radical theorists or New York artists and performers, and I just wanted to pack a lot of them in there," Mitchell says. Among them are such underground luminaries as drag king Murray Hill, Le Tigre band member JD Samson, Avenue Q playwright (and Jay Leno hater) Jeff Whitty, burlesque performers Dirty Martini and World Famous Bob, and many more names below the radar but no less talented.

"Alternative gay lifestyle--or queer, as I call it is alive and well. It's something to be shared and bring people into. Straight or gay, the more diversity the better. The artist community may be further out on the subway line," he says, alluding to rising rents that have forced more and more creative types to move out of downtown Manhattan to cheaper neighborhoods elsewhere, "but it's always going to be here. There will always be some place for the interesting people to go, the ones on the shortbus."

Or, as Bond puts it, eloquently summarizing the Shortbus worldview, "This film is such a beautiful expression of what New York can be like, a kind of living dream that can in fact be true at times. It's easy to criticize what a culture is, but it's not easy to give an example of an aspiration. We've come to trivialize sex, and this film shows that sexuality can be a way of deepening our understanding and our communication with each other. And by doing that, we can make our experience of life much more profound."