No socially redeeming value or not, there's no denying that former low-budget-director-turned-Box-Office-sensation John Waters has become one of the more recognizable faces in modern cinema. Some thirty years after Waters burst on the film scene with such underground trash epics as Mondo Trasho (1969), Multiple Maniacs (1970), and Pink Flamingos (1972), it is apparent that this NYU film school drop-out who once bragged he'd "given bad taste a good name" has made a lasting impression on both Hollywood and pop culture.
How Waters rose from obscure avant-garde director to prominence in mainstream America is a compelling and thoroughly entertaining tale. But it's only half the story in Robrt Pena's irreverent biography Filthy: The Weird World of John Waters, which takes readers on a cultural exploration not only of Waters films, but also of the unique and sometimes disturbing world surrounding Waters himself. Predictably, it's a wild ride - one that includes journeys to the filmmaker's hometown ("the place where everyone is a grumpy housewife with a beehive or a drunken delinquent or a slovenly drag queen with a bad temper"); visits with a spiritual medium who claims to communicate with Divine, the 300-pound drag queen "star" of many of Waters early films; and interviews with the director's die-hard (read: obsessive) fans. Fortunately, interspersed among this insanity is sufficient film criticism to satisfy those readers who wish to learn about Waters' cinematic exploits as well as his personal ones.
To date, these include more than ten feature films, including Serial Mom (1994), and most recently, Cecil B. DeMented (2000). Pela examines each of Waters' films in various degrees of detail, paying particular attention to the director's earlier and more extreme offerings. Reflecting upon his initial releases, Waters admits, "We wanted to scare the world." And so he did, by creating depraved, though often humorous movies that riveted audiences and critics alike - that is, if they could stomach tem. "I knew, after I saw [Pink Flamingos] at its premiere in Baltimore, that I had something," Waters recalls. "People staggered out of the theater."
But while shocking theatrics (Pink Flamingos has been dubbed the "sickest film ever made") and gimmicks like "Oderama" (scratch-and-sniff cards handed out to patrons of Waters' 1977 film Polyester) may have launched Waters' career, it was the success of his more conventional (and tame by comparison) teen-angst comedies such as Hairspray (1988), Cry-Baby (1990), and Pecker (1998) that ultimately brought the director to the mainstream and has successfully kept him there. The irony is not lost on Pela, who writes, "As the world becomes trashier, Waters films [have] become sweeter."
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