Hedwig and the Angry Inch [Criterion Collection]

"A transgendered would-be rock star shares the strange but heart-tugging story of her life with the patrons of a cut-rate seafood restaurant in this wildly outrageous comedy based on John Cameron Mitchell's successful off-off-Broadway revue. Hedwig (Mitchell) began life as Hansel, a boy growing up in East Germany at the height of the Cold War. Abused by his father and told horrible stories about the nature of love by his mother, Hansel took solace in American rock & roll he heard on the radio. As a teenager, Hansel fell in love with Luther (Maurice Dean Wint), an American soldier who was willing to marry Hansel and take him to America -- under the condition he get a sex-change operation. Hansel, however, suffered a severe setback on the road to freedom when the surgeon flubbed the job, turning Hansel into Hedwig, an hermaphrodite. Needless to say, the marriage is doomed to failure, and the mostly (but not entirely) female Hedwig finds herself living in squalor in a Kansas trailer park as she tries to put together a rock & roll band. Hedwig befriends Tommy Gnosis (Michael Pitt), a fellow musician, and soon Hedwig becomes both lover and mentor to the ambitious young rocker. However, Hedwig soon finds out just how ambitious Tommy is -- he steals Hedwig's songs and uses them to springboard a career as a top-selling rock act. As Tommy mounts a sold-out tour of America's biggest venues, Hedwig and her band shadow them on the road, playing each night in a different location of the nationwide seafood chain, Bilgewaters. Hedwig and the Angry Inch also features Andrea Martin as Hedwig's long-suffering agent; noted alternative rock band Girls Against Boys contributed to the soundtrack."