Oliver Sunley explores the filthy world of John Waters…
When John Waters, the self-proclaimed “Sultan of Sleaze”, directed Hairspray he was shocked by the film’s enormous commercial success and found himself faced with a choice: continue making the trash films he’d always done or go mainstream? Hairspray had been awarded a PG rating and was being watched by the same people who’d denounced him as the antichrist of cinema. One family who saw it went to rent another one of his films the following morning, his magnum opus Pink Flamingos. The next day Waters got a call from his lawyer. The family were suing him.
Raised in Baltimore, Waters was exposed to the filthy from a young age. While other kids played with G.I Joes, John would reenact grisly accidents with his toy cars. His first move into entertainment, as a puppeteer at the age of seven, was short lived and he was quickly banned for his violent, bloodied versions of Punch and Judy at other children’s birthday parties. One day, waiting for the school bus, Waters met Glenn Milstead who would later be the 300-pound drag queen Divine. Divine became Waters’ muse, his Fernande Olivier, a make-up plastered monstrosity who would be the star of his most grotesque films and would later, after his death, be played by John Travolta in the 2007 remake of Hairspray.
With Divine on board, Waters put together a troupe of actors he named the Dreamlanders. None of them were professionals and comprised mostly of Waters friends, Baltimorean strippers and local art students but they lasted him throughout his career and many would appear in every film he’d make. With a budget of $2,200 borrowed from his parents, Waters shot his first feature Mondo Trasho, a road movie about woman run over and driven around Baltimore by Divine to visit the Virgin Mary. The entire crew was arrested on-set while shooting a scene in which Divine stops to pick up a naked hitchhiker but the film was eventually finished and screened in nearby coffee houses. As much of it was made up of musical sequences that Waters was unable to pay for, Mondo Trasho remains unreleased, a fact that doesn’t concern Waters who felt that his first film was too long and self-indulgent.
His next feature, Multiple Maniacs, was his first to be distributed in cinemas having been picked up by fledgling company New Line. Again using money borrowed from his parents, now $5,000, Waters regrouped the Dreamlanders to tell the story of Divine and his ascent into crime. The film wasn’t an enormous success in America but it set John up for Pink Flamingos, one of the most celebrated Midnight Movies. This time Divine, now living in a caravan with her mother, comes up against The Marbles, a couple who are horrified to learn that Divine has been titled “the filthiest person alive” by the newspapers and vow to steal the position from her. The Marbles themselves operate a heroin racket funded by their black market baby ring selling children to lesbian couples and, believing themselves to be far more deserving of the title, proceed to terrorize Divine.
The film became infamous for its final act; shot in one long take Divine follows a dog around town until it finally defecates on the street and she squats down to eat the feces. The scene saw people stumbling out of cinemas to be sick, only causing more to watch the film and see what all the fuss was about. Eventually, through word of mouth, Pink Flamingos became an enormous hit across America. The film played in Greenwich Village’s 1,200 seat Elgin Theatre seven nights a week for three years and in many other art house cinemas across the country, primarily on the back of reviews that called it “the sickest film ever made” and “a sceptic tank that has to be seen to be believed”, reviews which Waters proudly displayed on the film’s poster.
Although dogged with censorship problems (the film shows the death of a live chicken and features a cast of tramps who were tricked into acting with the promise of free food), Pink Flamingos was an incredible success and now features on several ‘best film of all time’ lists. The next few years saw Waters try to recapture the spirit of it with Female Trouble and Desperate Living. Pink Flamingos remained the benchmark but the two films did both manage to capture its essence and many believe Female Trouble to be the best of Waters’ films. Having disappeared for seven years, Waters returned with Hairspray and suddenly found his cult-status exploding into the mainstream.
What Waters did next is an interesting case study on a director’s reaction to sudden and unexpected commercial success. Since Hairspray, Waters has released only five films, none of which matched the same repugnant energy of his previous work. In part this was because of a newfound sense of professionalism. The shaky camerawork and sporadic narrative that gave the likes of Pink Flamingos a rough, dirty edge became clean and traditional. Waters now had studio bosses and production executives to answer to. He couldn’t turn up at a farm and film what he could get away with, there were forms to be signed, permission to be had. Even though his new films kept the sleaziness Waters was known for, it was much more toned down and more in the mould of a fratboy comedy. The feces-eating, chicken-killing days of the Dreamlanders were over.
Currently the only project in the works for Waters is a children’s Christmas film with the working title Fruitcake, a project which has become increasingly difficult to put together over the years, making it seem likely that Waters may have already made his last film. His legacy is so ingrained in pop-culture though, from Divine inspired Ursula in The Little Mermaid to his own cameo in The Simpsons, that it’s left the Dreamlanders with a permanent stain on cinematic history. Waters credits himself with having made sleaze cool again and as the arbiter of tastelessness he’s happy to be blamed for the trash in pop culture today.
Oliver Sunley
