With reissues of “Hairspray” and his self described “angriest movie,” “Desperate Living,” the Pope of Trash himself, John Waters, is looking back on dead dogs, filthy rats, and wondering why nobody invents original dances anymore.
Speaking to the Guardian, the American director recalls the day his 1988 comedy “Hairspray” received a family friendly rating rather than the harsher one he expected. He calls it a horrifying moment.
The Impossible
Before that, Waters, dubbed the Pope of Trash by novelist William S. Burroughs, was notorious for filming the unfilmable.
In “Eat Your Makeup,” he restaged the JFK assassination just five years after it happened, casting the boisterous character actor Divine as Jackie Kennedy.
He invented a blasphemous sexual act he called the “rosary job” in “Multiple Maniacs,” a film that also featured an assault by a giant lobster. Most stomach churning of all, in “Pink Flamingos” he convinced Divine to swallow real dog feces on camera.
Photo: Emily Anderson
A Family Film (?)
“Hairspray” isn’t short on eccentricities: there are gentle touches of symbolic ugliness, vomit at a fairground, a rat interrupting a moonlit date, plus the glorious image of Debbie Harry hiding a bomb under her beehive wig, and Divine in dual roles as a Baltimore housewife and a racist TV boss.
The result, according to Rolling Stone, was a family film that both the Bradys and the Mansons could love.
The Contemptuous Purr
Speaking to the Guardian from his home in the idyllic seaside town of Provincetown, Massachusetts, Waters still shudders remembering that first and only R rated film. He admits he was afraid his fans would turn on him.
The 80 year old provocateur has his camera off for the morning video call with the British paper, but his voice is loud enough to feel like he’s right in the room: the languid drawl, the high notes of mock comic outrage, a contemptuous purr that suggests pursed lips.
When the Guardian’s Ryan Gilbey asks him to describe his appearance, feeling a bit like someone on the other end of phone sex in one of his films, Waters happily obliges, describing a turtleneck, trousers, and Paul Smith socks.
He Couldn’t Find Funding
Although Waters stays busy writing books and touring with his live spoken word show, he hasn’t directed a film since 2004’s “A Dirty Shame,” his comedy about sexual hysteria in a small town.
A few years ago he failed to raise funding for an adaptation of his melancholy novel “Liarmouth,” despite Aubrey Plaza’s involvement, and no new films are currently in the works.
Luckily, then, there are the old films. The boutique label Criterion has released “Hairspray” on Blu-ray with full extras, along with the vulgar but delightful 1977 adult fairy tale “Desperate Living,” set in Mortville, a criminal ghetto ruled by the mad Queen Carlotta (played by the wonderfully comic Edith Massey).
The Ticket Into the Mainstream
“Hairspray” marked Waters’s unexpected entry into mainstream Hollywood, paving the way for sharp but non threatening comedies with genuine stars: Johnny Depp (“Cry-Baby”), Kathleen Turner (“Serial Mom”), and Christina Ricci (“Pecker”).
It also inspired a Broadway musical that won several Tony Awards in 2003, as well as a second film adaptation starring John Travolta in 2007.
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The Relationship With Divine
“Desperate Living,” on the other hand, remains the weak point of his filmography. He admits it didn’t do well when it came out.
Divine’s absence may have had something to do with that. She had originally been cast as an enraged lesbian who undergoes both a phalloplasty and an abortion, but was ultimately tied up with theater work.
Waters suspects Divine also wanted some distance from him, to prove how good an actor she really was.
A Cult of Horror
It may be shockingly funny, but “Desperate Living” feels heavier and less playful than much of Waters’s other work. He calls it his angriest film, and his ugliest, for no particular reason.
What about the scene where a car runs over a dog? Waters protests that it wasn’t as disgusting as it seemed, noting he’d sourced the animal from a hospital lab freezer.
It was already dead, he says, and it made it into the movie. What comes to mind more is that the dog hadn’t fully thawed, so pieces stuck to the axle and had to be painstakingly removed for a second take.
He admits, with a deep laugh, that’s true too, calling it the glamorous world of filmmaking.
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His Relationship With Drugs
“Desperate Living” was also the first of his films written without the help of marijuana.
Most people, he notes, get hooked on cocaine or something similar once they find success. He, on the other hand, quit drugs the moment success arrived, because he wanted to keep working without distraction.
He’s tried everything. He says he hated heroin, all that itching and scratching, and jokes that at least he isn’t a jazz musician so he never needed it. He reserves particular scorn for ecstasy, saying a drug that makes you love everyone just isn’t for him.
“Every Word”
In 2019, President Trump described Baltimore, Waters’s hometown, as a disgusting, rodent and rat infested mess, sparking a sharp response from the director, who said he’d take Baltimore’s rats and roaches over Washington’s lies and racism any day.
It doesn’t take much effort now to draw parallels between the current US president and Queen Carlotta, who casually insults her subjects and issues arbitrary decrees, declaring that every word she utters must be treated as an immediate proclamation.
Carlotta’s plan to inoculate Mortville’s residents with rabies even echoes the current administration’s indifferent stance on public health. Waters exclaims in disbelief over Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s cabinet appointment, then breaks into a mocking chant about how many kids with Covid he’s killed.
Is there anything Waters wouldn’t joke about? He says Israel and the whole situation is one subject he won’t touch, calling it a lost cause even to try. But he says he always pushes right up to the edge of what can’t be mocked, since in all his films he mocks things he loves, not things he hates, which he says is why he’s gotten away with it for 60 years.
“Desperate Living” and “Hairspray” are released by Criterion on July 20.
With information from theguardian.com
