THB #403: The Filthiest Academy Museum Installation Alive?

I am a John Waters person.

I’m from Baltimore. My godfather owned the Howard Theater downtown.

I first saw Pink Flamingos at the 8th St Playhouse in Manhattan, when it was still the 8th St Playhouse. This bit of extreme independent distribution led to Lord of The Rings, as PF was the first film distributed by New Line.

More than 50 years later, a tagged-on ending to the film remains one of the most significant moments in the history of cinema, as Babs Johnson assures us that she is the filthiest person alive.

Here is a link to watch the sequence in full on YouTube. The moment is age-restricted and YouTube won’t allow it to embedded.

They will allow me to embed Edie The Egg Lady, Babs’ mother, who obsesses on eggs and lives in her undergarments in a children’s playpen in the corner of their mobile home.

For me, this is the foundation of what John Waters brought to the table and his evolution - in many ways, the evolution of indie - from there.

Before Pink Flamingos, there was the (then) undistributed feature-length black & white duet of Mondo Trasho and Multiple Maniacs. After, there was Dawn Davenport and her Cha Cha Heels in Female Troubles.

Then, the one non-Divine feature in Waters’ feature history (while Divine was still alive), Desperate Living, in which Divine’s spot was filled by the cis-gendered female stripper and courtesan to Bugsy Siegel, Liz Renay.

Divine would return in the film that was really the peak of Waters’ career, even before it became a Broadway smash and a movie musical… Hairspray. The films following Hairspray, Serial Mom and Cry-Baby, would outgross their predecessor, with Waters’ first real movie stars in leads. But amazingly, John Waters has never directed a film that grossed over $9 million domestic. (IMDbPro would add that there was nothing over $10m worldwide… but I don’t trust most publicly recorded international box office history pre-1995 or so.)

The last 3 films of Waters’ post-Divine writing/directing career were a tribute to the singularity of John Waters. Pecker, Cecil B. Demented, and A Dirty Shame, the last being his biggest budget for a film in his career… a measly $15 million. Pecker was really his only film with a male lead, T2’s Edward Furlong, though it had a great cast of established, but can-be-campy actresses in close support (Christina Ricci, Martha Plimpton, Lili Taylor) and Patty Hearst to boot. Melanie Griffith had passed her box office window for Cecil B. Demented.

Earlier in 2002, up in Seattle, there was an out-of-town production of a new musical… Hairspray. The show was a hit in Seattle and launched on Broadway in August 2002, just 2 weeks before Cecil B Demented opened in theaters. Waters on stage, a 6-year-running Broadway smash with 13 Tony nominations and 3 wins. Waters at the movie, $2 million total after a Labor Day weekend opening.

The sensation of Hairspray: The Musical was likely the inspiration for those funding the $15 million, A Dirty Shame. A bit of a return to earlier Waters, the film was led by character-legend Tracey Ullman and the great, very skinny Selma Blair with a set of fake breasts that would overwhelm Russ Meyer. It grossed less than $2 million and effectively ended Waters’ career in feature films.

Waters has spent the last 20 years remaining busy and productive. Live performances, books, television and film appearances.

This is John Waters’ amazing journey. His early work is, dare I say it, as important as Kenneth Anger’s (whose work Waters knew and admired). In making films that were not just for his immediate community and film students, he went way beyond the silliest stereotypes of being young and gay and embracing drugs and mainstreamed the core normalcy of these things, making us laugh our asses off, but leaving more than I think we realized in our minds and hearts.

How can you fear Divine or any drag queen after watching her shoplift 2 steaks between her legs before fleeing the store as some pervy hetero guy creeps on her. This is the stuff of Bugs Bunny and Tex Avery, not some kind of Other to fear. Disgusting? Like a wolf’s eyes bulging 3 feet out of his head.

Like Will Ferrell’s comedy today, the is a deep kindness and sweetness underneath even the most extreme moments in Waters’ films.

The ultimate Waters joke - the one that changed cinema, a bit less than the Potemkin Steps but still significant - changes dramatically when Divine/Babs puts that fresh dog poop in her mouth, because she smiles so sweetly. She does the ultimate grotesque act… then smiles… then gags a bit… spits out some of the poop.. and then, smiles some more with her shit-stained teeth. She isn’t bragging. She is asking for love.

There is so much to take from the Water’s library, but I think it’s clear that Hairspray is the other giant landmark.

To start, it’s PG. The only other film with lighter rating than an R is Cry-Baby and it’s PG-13 rating. But you could easily see how Waters could have gone a little farther and Cry-Baby would make sense as an R. Hairspray was a natural PG… closing in on a G (glad it’s not that… but it could have been).

Hairspray is a happy memory of a bad time in Baltimore… when a teen could imagine that the racism was purely a moral issue and real blood wasn’t being spilled on the streets of Baltimore over the issue. (Similarly, it was dangerous to be gay on the streets of Baltimore back then… but Waters doesn’t make films about the brutality… he rises above with humor and love.) The Corny Collins Show was a fictionalization of the real Buddy Deane show. Velma Van Tussle was a caricature, up to her wig, but also very much a real part of Baltimore society (there are still more than a few of her). Motormouth Mabel was a symbol of a peaceful Black voice in a generation that rarely was allowed to be that proud and unassaulted.

But Waters is Waters and Tracy Turnblad of Hairspray was not really that different, at core, to Babs Johnson of Pink Flamingos. Babs wanted to make her mark by being the filthiest person alive, a silly, childish choice, but a distinct choice. Tracy loves Baltimore and has loving parents, but she too wants to make her mark and change the world. Tracy’s mom, Edna, played by Divine, has had the emotional and literal cha cha heels knocked off of her… meek, hard-working, loving, but without a spark. Tracy is making better choices than Babs, but one of them is awaking that passion again in Edna.

3 years after John Waters directed his last feature film in 2004, New Line, Waters’ first distributor, now a division of Warner Bros, released Hairspray the musical into theaters. Adam Shankman directed. John Travolta went into drag, as Edna, which was hugely risky for him (long rumored to be gay) and for the film, with Divine passed away and Harvey Fierstein’s Tony-winning turn left behind. Travolta should have been Oscar nominated. Shankman found a cast of new and veteran talent that made the film sing as the stage version had… even more so (though I am still pissed by the cutting of “Mama, I’m A Big Girl Now”).

So…

Here’s the part when I write about The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures’ “John Waters: Pope of Trash.”