GLR May-June 2024

there. His parents were supportive of his creative endeavors, de spite occasionally being horrified by them, and some of his ear liest films were shot at their home. His father even helped him create some props, including a narcotics-dispensing vending ma chine for the short film Eat Your Makeup (1968). Waters made his first film, the short Hag in a Black Leather Jacket , in 1964. His last, the feature-length ADirty Shame , was made in 2004. In total, he’s written and directed sixteen films over his forty-year career, twelve of them fea ture-length, and all them have included actors and designers

of fetishists and a sex scene in a church involving Divine, a rosary, and visions of the life of Christ. And, in Desperate Liv ing , a dog eats a dismembered penis and prisoners eat maggots. The film ends with a cannibalistic feast. But beginning with 1981’s Polyester , Waters reduced the shock value and tried another approach. Its plot does include murder, a violent foot fetishist, and teenage abortion, but Poly ester , a parodic homage to Douglas Sirk-style women’s films, is much less graphic than his previous movies. Also unlike his previous movies, which were X-rated or unrated, Polyester re

from Baltimore. His childhood friend Mary Vivian Pearce has appeared in every Waters film, with lead roles in Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble . Waters dressed and styled Pearce to look like 1940s actress Jean Har low, but far more famous than Pearce was Waters’ muse, whom he envisioned as Jayne Mansfield and named after a charac ter in a Jean Genet novel: Divine.

ceived an R rating and wider distribution. Critics took note of this new approach, with Janet Maslin writing in The New York Times that Polyester ’s “comic vision is so con trolled and steady that Mr. Waters need not rely so heavily on the grotesque touches that make his other films such perennial favorites on the weekend Midnight Movie circuit. Here’s one that can just as well be shown in

It’s been a long, strange trip to mainstream acceptance for Waters, who was dubbed the “Pope of Trash” by William S. Burroughs in 1986.

Born Harris Glenn Milstead, Divine befriended Waters dur ing high school and appeared in several of his early shorts. Wa ters soon made Divine his preferred leading lady and gave him starring roles in Multiple Maniacs (1970), Pink Flamingos , Fe male Trouble , Polyester (1981), and Hairspray (1988). Divine became notorious for the shocking things he did in Waters’ early films, like eating that infamous dog poop, being raped by a giant lobster, and bouncing on a trampoline while shoving dead fish in his crotch. (Note that Divine identified as male and used he/him pronouns.) Divine used his notoriety to launch a main stream show business career, but unfortunately it was cut short. The night before he was to start filming a recurring role on the popular sitcom Married with Children , Divine died of a heart at tack at age 42. Divine’s death was a huge emotional shock for Waters, but he continued on and made five more feature films. Much like Divine, Waters used his own notoriety to go mainstream and at tract bigger-name actors to his films. This process began even before Divine’s death, with 1950s heartthrob Tab Hunter star ring in Polyester as Divine’s love interest, and Debbie Harry, Sonny Bono, and Jerry Stiller appearing in Hairspray . These performers may not have been the biggest Hollywood stars, but they were still better known than Waters’ usual stable of Balti more actors. After Divine’s death, Waters began to attract and cast even bigger stars in his movies: Johnny Depp in Crybaby (1990), Kathleen Turner in Serial Mom (1994), and Melanie Griffith in Cecil B. Demented (2000). In minor roles, he cast cult figures like rocker Iggy Pop, celebrity hostage Patty Hearst, and Warhol superstar Joe Dallesandro. Waters didn’t ask any of these actors to eat dog poop or have sex involving live poultry, but that’s because his style began to change after Desperate Living (1977). His films of the 1960s and ’70s were deliberately made to shock audiences. In addi tion to the disturbing scenes in his well-known movies like Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble , Eat Your Makeup includes a re-creation of the JFK assassination with Divine as Jackie Kennedy, while Multiple Maniacs features a carnival sideshow Peter Muise is author of Legends and Lore of the North Shore (2014) and Witches and Warlocks of Massachusetts (2021).

the daytime.” The film did feature Odorama, a scratch-n-sniff promotional gimmick with scents like skunk and flatulence, but Polyester was a big step towards mainstream acceptance. Most of his subsequent films took the same approach by tackling con troversial subjects, but in a relatively acceptable way. As John Waters: Pope of Trash points out, certain themes and topics run through all of Waters’ work, from his first shorts to his more mainstream features. His later films may be less overtly shocking, but they are still easily recognized as “John “Five decades of exuberance, defiance, solidarity, heartbreak and metamorphosis from artists who have reimagined how we think about gender and sexuality.” – The New York Times

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