John Waters
What are some of John Waters’s notable films?
What is significant about the film Hairspray?
What honors has John Waters received?
John Waters (born April 22, 1946, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter who is known for his boundary-pushing movies that repulsed many critics and viewers when he first came on the scene in the late 1960s but that are now seen as transgressive cult classics. With his subversive sense of humor and signature pencil mustache, Waters became a recognizable figure and has been honored with such titles as the “King of Filth,” “Pope of Trash,” and “King of Camp.” “I find humor in all the things that are terrible about America and things that people have anxiety about,” he told television host David Letterman in 1982. His films include Pink Flamingos (1972), Hairspray (1988), Serial Mom (1994), and A Dirty Shame (2004).
Early years
Waters was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to John and Patricia (Whitaker) Waters. He grew up in the suburb of Lutherville, Maryland, and had two younger sisters and a younger brother. His mother was a homemaker, and his father owned a commercial fire extinguisher business. Waters’s mother recalled that he liked villains from an early age, such as Captain Hook in Peter Pan and the witch in Snow White. Waters has described himself as a “weird child” who “drew only with black crayons and didn’t speak to other kids.” Raised a Roman Catholic, he told Trouble magazine in 2019, “I think my first rage came through that, and the first act of rebellion when you had to stand up and take the Legion of Decency pledge where we [say we] wouldn’t see any films condemned by the Catholic Church. I was about seven years old and I refused to take it.”
Waters’s parents supported his budding interest in making movies, and his grandmother got him an 8-millimeter movie camera. He used his parents’ house as the setting for his first movie in 1964, a 17-minute short called Hag in a Black Leather Jacket. “I’m a weird gay version of my father and I got my work ethic from him,” Waters told The Guardian in 2015. He recalled that even though his father was “horrified” by his son’s early movies, he loaned him money to make them. “And I paid him back with interest,” Waters said. His parents never discussed Waters’s sexuality, and he never officially came out as gay because he considered doing so “too corny.”
Making waves: From short films to Mondo Trasho
“I think being socially redeeming is so very boring.”—John Waters
Waters’s second film, a short called Roman Candles (1967), introduced several Baltimore-based actors who would become regulars in his films, including Mink Stole and the larger-than-life drag queen Divine. Born Nancy Paine Stoll and Harris Glenn Milstead, respectively, they were given their stage names by Waters. Divine, whose style Waters has described as “Godzilla and Elizabeth Taylor put together,” shared Waters’s taste for the utterly distasteful.
Waters’s next movie, a 45-minute, 16-millimeter, black-and-white film titled Eat Your Makeup (1968), was about a governess who kidnaps her young female charges and forces them to model for her boyfriend and friends. The film, which was never shown commercially, includes a fantasized reenactment of John F. Kennedy’s assassination with Divine playing Jacqueline Kennedy.
In 1969 Waters released Mondo Trasho, his first feature-length film. Made on a budget of $2,100, it follows a hit-and-run driver and her victim before, during, and after their collision. Among its shocking moments are a foot fetish scenario and a scene in which the Virgin Mary appears to Divine (who plays the driver) in a laundromat. While filming a scene involving a nude hitchhiker on the campus of Johns Hopkins University, Waters and his crew were reported to police and were charged with indecent exposure (the charges were eventually dropped). Mondo Trasho premiered at Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Baltimore. Reviews were positive, with the Los Angeles Free Press calling Divine “some sort of a discovery.” Waters later disavowed Mondo Trasho, however, saying that the 95-minute film had only 20 minutes of good footage.
The “Pope of Trash”: From Multiple Maniacs to Pink Flamingos and Polyester
Waters’s upped the ante of bad taste with two “celluloid atrocities” in 1970, Multiple Maniacs and The Diane Linkletter Story; the latter film is an exploitative account of the suicide of the daughter of real-life television host Art Linkletter. In 1972 Waters released what stands as one of his most infamous movies, Pink Flamingos, which features a grotesque scene showing Divine eating dog feces. Variety called it “one of the most vile, stupid and repulsive films ever made.”
Pink Flamingos was followed by Female Trouble (1974), Desperate Living (1977), and Polyester (1981). In all these films Waters savagely took on societal institutions and taboos. To promote Polyester he invented a scratch-and-sniff card called Odorama that audiences were expected to use to enhance their viewing experience of the film. Scents on the card included roses, smelly shoes, skunk spray, pizza, and flatulence. In 1986 Waters won praise from William S. Burroughs, author of the subversive novels Junkie (1953) and Naked Lunch (1959), who dubbed Waters the “Pope of Trash.”
Breakthrough: Hairspray
In 1988 Waters wrote and directed Hairspray, a musical comedy film set in 1962 Baltimore. Starring newcomer Ricki Lake as Tracy Turnblad, a chubby and chipper high-school student who aspires to become a dancer on a local TV show, the movie draws upon teen dance shows of the era such as the Philadelphia-based American Bandstand and Baltimore’s The Buddy Deane Show. Hairspray also starred Divine as Tracy’s mother, as well as Sonny Bono, Debbie Harry (of Blondie), Ruth Brown, Jerry Stiller, Ric Ocasek (of the Cars), and Pia Zadora. (Divine died of a heart attack at age 42 only a few weeks after the movie’s premiere.)
“I was not safe to like yet. Hairspray made me safe to like.”—John Waters
Unusual for a Waters film, Hairspray has a cheerful veneer and a happy ending involving the racial integration of the dance show. It was a surprise mainstream success, earning more than $6 million at the box office, yet it was still slyly subversive. In 2023 Waters told The Wrap, “You want people to agree with you? Make them laugh. They’ll listen.…Racists like Hairspray.…They don’t realize it’s making fun of them.”
In 2002 Hairspray was adapted into a wildly successful Broadway musical, starring Harvey Fierstein in Divine’s role. Waters told The New York Times that the only time his parents were not “mortified” by his work was at the musical’s opening night. “Harvey Fierstein’s mother came to them and said, ‘Didn’t we raise terrific sons?’ And my mother just started sobbing.”
Going more mainstream: Cry-Baby, Serial Mom, and later films
After Hairspray Waters’s films more often featured A-list stars as well as some offbeat casting choices. Cry-Baby (1990) starred Johnny Depp in the title role of a 1950s singing juvenile delinquent. The film’s supporting cast includes Stole, Lake, rocker Iggy Pop, former teen idol Troy Donahue, adult film star Traci Lords, and heiress-turned-leftist radical Patty Hearst. Waters called it his “dream cast,” telling the Orlando Sentinel, “I got everybody I wanted but Mother Teresa.”
Waters’s next movie, Serial Mom (1994), starred Kathleen Turner as the murderous titular character. His later films include Pecker (1998) and Cecil B. Demented (2000; in which an indie filmmaker and his crew kidnap a famous actress for their underground film), and A Dirty Shame (2004).
Books and honors
Waters has written several books, including his autobiography Shock Value (1981) and Role Models (2010), about the people who inspired him, such as playwright Tennessee Williams, St. Catherine of Siena, atheist activist Madalyn Murray O’Hair, singer Johnny Mathis, convicted Manson Family murderer Leslie Van Houten, rock-and-roller Little Richard, and clothing designer Rei Kawakubo. In 2014 he published Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America, about his experiences hitchhiking from his Baltimore home to his San Francisco co-op. In 2019 he wrote Mr. Know-It-All: The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder, and three years later he came out with his first novel, Liarmouth: A Feel-Bad Romance.
Waters’s work has mostly evaded mainstream approval in the form of film awards. However, Hairspray received Independent Spirit Award nominations for best director and screenplay and was a contender for the Grand Jury Prize at the 1988 Sundance Film Festival. In 1997 Waters was given a lifetime achievement award by the Chicago Underground Film Festival, and in 2004 he received the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation’s Stephen F. Kolzak Award, which recognizes entertainment figures who have raised visibility for the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023 Waters received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
American iconoclast
By the 21st century Waters’s early work was being reevaluated by critics. In 2022 Variety, the same publication that reviled Pink Flamingos in 1973, selected it as one of the 100 greatest movies of all time, ranking it ahead of such Oscar winners as The Graduate (1967) and Alien (1979). The entry for Pink Flamingos notes, “We’re here to tell you that Variety was wrong. John Waters’ ultimate midnight movie is, in fact, one of the funniest, most audacious and scandalously compelling films ever made. That’s because every moment in it is touched with a gleeful outlaw rageaholic danger too weirdly joyous to be faked.”
In 2023 Waters’s transformation from provocateur to national treasure became complete with an exhibit at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures called “John Waters: Pope of Trash.” The museum praised him as the “very definition of a self-made American iconoclast” who “never fails to push the boundaries of good taste and challenge traditional institutions with every artistic endeavor.” Waters viewed the embrace as a sign of a change in American culture. Reflecting on his earlier films, he told The New York Times in 2022, “And did any of them get nicer? No! They all got accepted over the years, which just meant American humor has changed for the better.”