Page 7 - Pop History: John Waters Pt I

Episode Date: January 21, 2020

We kick off our history on the Pope of Trash, John Waters, by exploring his childhood, the creation of the Dreamlanders and his early films.    Listen to Pop History free on Spotify!   Can't get enough Page 7? Support us on our Patreon page and get weekly bonus Patreon-exclusive content! Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of Page 7 ad-free.Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey guys, it's Jackie from page seven. I'm here to let y'all know that you can listen to page seven for free on Spotify. You can download all the episodes with a free account. And guess it would? All last podcast network episodes are already over there. Swanj, J-Mosey on your butts down to the Spotify app. And listen to page seven for free on Spotify to get new episodes as soon as they come out. Because I want to get them hot out of the oven so I can burn my...

mouth. The prince of puke. The king of schlock. Sulton of slees, the baron of bad taste, the pope of trash. We're talking about Holden like that. I'm definitely. It's me. My character from Roundtable. We are talking about the one, the only John Waters. And we are talking about the beginning of John Waters. Prolific. Prolific works of art. It was difficult for me to say it. Hey guys, I'm Jackie. He's talking about John Waters today.

I'm holding, and I just want to give a warning out there. If the John Waters you know is essentially like hairspray and on, this is part one of John Waters, there are a very obscene subject matter we're going to be talking about. If that sort of stuff upsets you, things like rape, pedophilia, shit eating, we're going to get into it because that is the John Waters of the first half of his career. And in a sense, I love it. And in another sense, I know that there's a... no way this shit could happen in today's age.

And how inappropriate it is. And Natalie. I'm Natalie. And if you are offended by musicals, then this is the episode for you. You don't want to listen to the second one. If you like fecal things. Man, no judgment. The thing is, though, so I mean, of course we got to talk about.

We got to do our gush part of John Waters. Sure. I've seen, or I have thought I have seen, or I have seen parts of all of the these movies before. But the thing is that these are the kind of movies at the beginning. We're talking about up through the trilogy of trash. The thing is, these are the kind of movies that I would watch when I was blackout drunk at a friend's house. When I was on whatever I would decide to be on for that night and you put that on and you hit, like, you just like zone in and out of different scenes of it. Just being like, what the fuck is happening? I think that's what

they intended, really. That's exactly what they were. I think that's the exact way that he wanted people to be watching these movies, as well as over the past two days, I have watched almost all of the movies that we are talking about today, and I have been having weird dreams. Because when you watch them all the way through, you also realize, no, it is just as, it doesn't make any sense. That's a lot. It's a lot.

It's somebody who loves John Waters. That is a lot. A lot of times. Taking at one night, yeah. There's a lot. I will say what, I watch Female Trouble. last night and by the end of it, I literally was thinking, uh, yeah, I think, like, like, if divine just walks in with a gun and shoots me, like, that's just my reality now.

Like, she's, that's just what happens now because I'm in living in a John Waters world at this point. Yeah. And I'll probably thank her for it, you know? It's, it's, it transports you into a different place. Also, though, like, it is, it is trashy on purpose. And one of the things that maybe wasn't specifically on purpose back in the day, but makes it even more trashier.

I feel like now, the sound is fucking horrible because they didn't have. a lot to work with. They were very self-funded, very low budgets. Although I will say, we'll talk about this later on, now that the Criterion Collection is re-putting out a lot of these movies, even John Waters himself has said, Criterion collection has been putting out a bunch of them. And even John Waters has said, you know, I didn't realize all of the things that had been picked up on all of the mics and everything that had been included in this. You see background things that he didn't even realize were there. He's like, wow, we probably should have paid a little bit more attention to what we were doing because it's so crisp.

But it adds to it. And what I was going to say is the sound is so shitty. And then everyone's just screaming at each other at the top of their lungs for an hour and 40 minutes when it comes in female trouble. And that just bad sound with just constant yelling just puts you in a mental space that is like, am I being tortured right now? Do I love this? Is this? I finally understand what people used to say about early roundtable days. Because it, We watched Desperate Living. Jeff and I watched it the second we got off of, like, traveling for two days. So you're already kind of half-tripping.

I was kind of half-tripping. And it was, I paused it about 25 minutes in. And I was like, have they been screaming? They are just screaming, right? Every single character is non-stop screaming. Right. It's just an assault on all of your senses. And I remember the first time I ever saw any John Waters.

I was in about fourth or fifth grade. I was at my friend's house. and their mother was watched. The crybaby was just in the middle. It was in the section where the little kids are, they're like being put for sale at the orphanage. They're behind the glass. Oh, yeah.

And I just remember looking at watching this movie kind of out of the corner of my eye and just was going like, something's wrong with this. There's something just, there's something off about it. But I bet you never forgot it though. Well, now cry babies, I realize at this point that is one of his softness. movies. And I love Cry Baby. It's one of my favorite movies. And sidebar, one of the only times that Johnny Depp has ever made my loins fire. He's like this bad boy coming right off of 21 Jump Street. I'm actually, I'm really excited. I've already been doing research for episode

two. And there's like a really good interview between John Waters and Johnny Depp. Like he's fresh off of 21 Jump Street. It is so fascinating. And I have not seen Crybaby. And it's a good thing. We're talking about it next week or the next episode because I have time to watch all of that stuff. And what's funny too, Natalie, bringing up his later films, I did want to say that back in the day when I was in Murder Fist and Roundtable and everything and younger in New York and my 20s,

all I wanted was the early stuff. I didn't care at all about hairspray or anything. Because we made a lot of this kind of, in the same sense, our comedy was a John Waters spin-off, and I didn't realize it until now. It was so resident. Oh, last night, I found myself laughing at incredibly inappropriate stuff.

Like, I would net with, I was glad I was alone. I was glad Lexi wasn't even there because I was like just cackling at just the most inappropriate. And that's the point, right? That's the point. It's funny. It's all supposed to be comedy. Yeah, we all have a seed of darkness within us. And we'll talk about his delineation between bad, bad trash and good bad trash.

And I think the little known secret about John Waters, especially his earlier films, he is legitimately fucking a funny writer. And this all has a sheen of disgustingness. everyone's screaming at each other, everything, you know, and we haven't even mentioned the word divine yet, which I just fell in love with her over this past week. I just, she is just absolutely incredible. But, yeah, and now, doing the research, now that I'm older, I'm super excited for the second part of this episode, because I get to go watch, I'm actually way more interested in seeing hairspray and crybaby in all those movies again. It is interesting that you said now that we're older, I think that watching all of these now,

looking back at a time when we were also considered I mean we still are fucking weirdos and we always wanted to try to find, I know it's crazy tried to find our own niche in this world and now looking at it from an older perspective as like man I identify completely with what John Waters was doing in this and now that he is also when you read because he does tours

he does one man shows he does a lot of radio interviews The way John Waters talks about his early work and I feel the same way that we talk about murder fist of just like, man, really couldn't let that stuff fly now, but I stand by what we did. I stand by how many people would walk out. I stand by how many people would say that they would get nauseous by what we did

because at the time we thought that it was underground comedy. It is sort of what comedy and art, they revolve around sort of pushing boundaries and testing boundaries and sometimes upsetting people because then you find out what we're, if you're playing it safe all the time, you're never going to make anything good. Also, you know, I think the big secret with John Waters,

if you've only seen his earlier stuff, especially is that he's got an incredible taste in film. He's got an incredible knowledge of both high and lowbrow film. You've got all these little nods. You've got divine reading these really highbrow, French cinema magazines in these scenes where she's just screaming about you know, where she's this, and then she just breaks a chair over her daughter. Like, it's just, it's so funny.

The child abuse is real in a lot of these things. Oh, yeah. Especially in watching it and reading now through the fact that it was so shocking to me to learn that John Waters had a fairly normal American upbringing. I was so blown away. I was like, oh, he must have gone through some ridiculous bullshit to have created this kind of work. And now he realizing it's like, no, no, no, he just made exactly what he always wanted to see on the screen. When he spent all that time, he loved B movies.

He loved going out of his way to like use binoculars and watch movies he wasn't supposed to be watching on drive-in theater screens and things like that. Because he wasn't allowed to see it and it wasn't in his world. So he went out of his way to not only find everything like that he could, but also to make everything like that he could. Yeah. And also same with Divine. They grew up in similar households. And they were both like upper middle class kids, but they were fucking weirdos. You could not not be a weirdo if you were that level of a weirdo.

And they just were and they didn't know how to function in that society. And there was a lot of good kind of background with that. If you watch the documentary, I am Divine, which obviously is about Divine over Tom Waters. But they grew up in the same time and they grew up. We worked together on so many different projects. So he kind of gets like a little bit of an idea of their childhood. And also I just wanted to throw out there, we were kind of talking about the pronouns of Divine. Back then, I don't think it was a little more nebulous.

Which is he. But he is a he generally is the consensus and Divine is a character that he plays. So but if we screw it up, we apologize. But he is a man and he identified as a man. But he played divine. And every piece of research I read, it said he, he, he. Maybe that's just dated. I'm pretty sure that's because.

He openly has said that he identified as a man. He was a man. He was playing a role. He was doing this thing. And so spectacularly. So I should also mention, now that we're getting into a little bit of the early childhood of John Waters, there's also the element of being born or raised rather Roman Catholic. And that is a big part.

And he always even said it was actually important for him to grow up normal and with all these rules. because that's how he learned what rules to break. And it was, it was, you know, having that knowledge. And again, I think that you find a complete parallel to the idea that he was also really into, like, very film buffy cinema, you know? Because, again, he's watching this incredible stuff, and then he knows how to make trash out of it, you know?

And especially he grew up in Lutherville, which is, like, 20 minutes outside of Baltimore proper. So he's in the suburbs. He's in the suburbs growing up Roman Catholic. Like also apparently his mom was obsessed with Queen Elizabeth and that they also, that people in the neighborhood referred to as the Queen of Lutherville. And that's how he learned of what good taste was and the difference of like you said of what rules to break. And that is something that he has said in many interviews. And I love that idea that he was given the proper foundation to know how to break it all down with a slam jammer.

And he said he was always essentially. odd. He said about his early childhood. My mother told me the story that in kindergarten, I would come home and tell her about this weird kid in my class who drew only with black crayons and didn't speak to other kids. I talked about it so much that my mother brought it up with the teacher who said, what? That's your son. I was really creating a character for myself and I always had a secret world. There's this other story that he said. And I love this because there's a scene, I believe it was in female trouble, honestly in my brain and I apologize, they all kind of run together. I think it was in female trouble where the little girl, quote, unquote, was pretending to be in a car accident.

She kept squirting ketchup all over the kind of pillow corpse next time. I have the exact quote because I wrote it down and made me laugh so hard. I was obsessed by car accidents. How many times have I told you to play car accident outside? So apparently this is based on John Waters' real life. He says, I was obsessed by car accidents and I quote, played car accidents. My mother would take me to junkyards and walk around with me. I'd be like, there's been a terrible one over here.

Look at this. And I think now, what did the junkyard or junk man think? What is this little ghoul? I don't know what my mother thought. This wasn't in the Dr. Spock book of, what do you do if your kid is obsessed by car accidents? See, this is all just natural weirdoness. He's just a weirdo.

And it made me think, honestly, of when Holden always tell the story, about when you would dress up like a vampire and run out, jump out from behind parked cars to scare people. It was actually, I would hide in the bushes in front of my house. I would hide in the bushes in front of my house, dressed like a vampire. And when cars would pass, I would run out and try to like get as close to them as possible

before they drove past the house. Unfortunately, they were driving to what was a cul-de-sac was literally just to the left of my house. So this is just the same people over and over again. And I would see, and I was trying to see their reactions. And my dad actually had to sit me down.

And he was like, what you're doing is weird and I was like, what are you talking about? And he had to like explain the concept of weirdness to me. That in itself is going to make you weirder. Yes. If your father sits you down and says you're weird and then explains to you how you're different than other people. I feel like that that is my favorite part about John Waters' entire life is the fact that

his parents, they are the real MVP's of the situation. Because I will say, as someone that also had two parents that did the same kind of thing, where they never understood us. They didn't know why we did what we did, but you know what? They loved us and they supported us. My mom still has no idea what kind of comedy we used to make. She's never listened to an episode of any show I've ever done because she shouldn't. And it's the same way with John Watersworth's like he just kind of wanted to keep his parents separate from all of it.

But at the same time, almost all of his, they hated it. But they were the ones that would finance all of the early movies and give them, but they would give them like 200 bucks. And then like, all right, go make it. a movie and he would. If you really think about that time how truly bizarre he was. Yes. It is really something that they would in any way support it. A queer kid in 1960s suburb outside of Baltimore. I mean, good bless them because I think a lot of parents would have sent him away to a camp or something. Right, right. It's amazing. So I think they are the real MVP's and I want to say that that is awesome that even back then and that is something that continues hopefully to happen to this day.

I'm just like, you gotta accept how fucking weird your kids. As long as they're not like killing little animals or something. Just let them be weird. John Waters was as a child inspired to get into puppetry by a film called Lily about a naive French girl who gets to work at a carnival and a puppetry act interacting with the puppets. As she thinks they are real and she, he would perform violent adaptations of the already violent puppet show Punch and Judy at children's birthday parties. Essentially Punch and Judy were two puppets performed by one puppeteer. It originated in 16th century Italian comedian Del Arte and generally went as such. Punch's wife, Judy, asked him to look after their baby.

He fails at that. And then, right? The baby like dies. Yeah, and then she beats them. Yeah, then she beats them with a club. Punch and Judy in itself is such a bizarre concept. And I assume there's been like hundreds of theater majors who've done like a thesis on them. The whole thing is so weird.

It's just like this thing that lasted throughout the generations of this like domestic abuse situation. They were like fun fun for little kids to watch. And I think you could easily take out the words punch in Judy and describe this as a John Waters movie and people like, yeah. And then the cop comes over and he gets beat up to. And then the next person comes over and they get beat up to, you know what I mean?

And then the lobster puppet comes over and rapes the mom. Yes. I know. That's all right. And he said he apparently at the same time, John Waters staged a puppet show based on William Castle's 1959 horror film The Tingler. He was obsessed with,

the tingler. But what I think is very cute is that he included his siblings in this and he had his brother and his friend crawl underneath the seats to grab the legs of audience members, imitating the director's gimmicky screenings of, I guess it was more interactive. And that's William Castle that also did like House on Haunted Hill, which now I want to see the tingler because I've read now a couple things of John Walsh just talking about how much the tingler influenced him. And I guess that they would have similar like a Rocky Horror-esque type thing. watching the table. It was in the era. It was something that became sort of a

a go-to for a lot of horror directors where to get people into seats they would sort of do these like 4D like these rudimentary 4D situations. There's a really great documentary called American Grindhouse if you're interested in those kind of movies. Oh hell yeah. It really breaks down that whole era and it's fucking awesome. That's awesome. So I did all my William Castle stuff is again next episode because of the film polyester which has smellorama.

Where you have scratching stiff cards that come with the movie. With the criterion collection movie by the way. They come with the fancy Blu-ray now even. I kind of want to get it so I can play along. But he did a ton of fun stuff that's like on other one example is just a skeleton with like lit up red eyes

would fly over the audience during House on Haunted Hill at the very end and stuff like that. Yeah. And like oh my God, there's this one Gray Waters quote is you could just tell how excited he was about like how he went nuts on this one movie and just like if you they would pause the movie like halfway through

and if you were too afraid you could like walk down this like yellow carpet up to this special booth and get a card that says I'm a bonafide coward to leave the movie theater. You had to like announce to everybody that you were a coward. He was also

loved I think Wizard of Oz I totally get it because it's this really like lovely nostalgia a childhood thing, but also has all these dark underpinnings. He said, I was always drawn to forbidden subject matter in the very, very beginning. The Wizard of Oz opened me up because it was one of the first movies I ever saw. I'd opened me up to villainy, to screenwriting, to costumes, and great dialogue. I think the witch has great, great dialogue.

And I love that he was later deemed the Wizard of Odd. Yes, and he also said the only time in my life I was ever in drag was as the wicked witch of the West. it was to a children's birthday party, which I'm sure raised a few parents' eyebrows. I was maybe 10 years old. Is that really drag? I guess it is. But I didn't do it to be a woman.

I did it to have green skin, which, as you can see, is coming true at my age. Also at the same time, too, which I love is that he was apparently obsessed with Captain Hook. Nice. But specifically, Cyril Richards' version of Captain Hook, which when I read this, I had to say it because it was, in Mary Martin's version of Peter Pan, which I loved as a kid.

But what I love is that he said, if Margaret Hamilton was my showbiz, quote, mother in my 10-year-old mind, then Cyril Richard was definitely my father. All I knew then was that I was a budding clothes horse, and here was a character who knew how to dress, a real fashion plate. I didn't yet understand the word, Fop,

but I sure wanted to be one, even if I had to cut off one of my own hands to look that dash. Also, right around this time period, I got to interject with, he had a ghost story. Ah, yes, please. He had spoken about it on celebrity ghost stories, which is one of my favorite shows. And I feel like we should only do pop histories on people who've been on celebrity ghost stories. Well, you know, we'll talk about that.

But so he experienced this ghost phenomenon during Boy Scout. trip out into the forest. And so there was a lot of psychological things going on for him at that point because he was a young boy going out to the woods with a little bit older boys. So, you know, he wasn't having like sexual awakenings, but

he may have been, he was excited to do it, yeah. And so he was out there in the middle of the night with all these campers. And he said when he kind of walked away from the rest of the crowd, there was like a light that came up and shone down from the

the top of the force and kind of floated down towards his face. And then he said, it was a face of an older man and it had an odor, oddly an odor of powdered sugar. It looked at me and I saw an older man's face and it was familiar. It wasn't hostile and it looked at me kind of understanding, but I should have been screaming. I don't know why I wasn't completely freaked out by it. I was raised a Catholic, so was this a guardian angel? I believe in the basic goodness of people, but maybe there are mean spirits which some of those counselors were and they don't get to have a guardian angel. Hell yeah. Weirdly brought me a calmness. And then it's when I saw Robin the counselor. He walked up next to me and I saw the look of terror on his face. Suddenly the teeth popped out one by one. Not all

of them but bang, bang, bang like that referencing the ghost face that he saw. Yeah. And Robin was freaked and he felt terror. I didn't feel terror. And I kind of knew that. that I would never be frightened again of anything. But when I looked in Robin's face, I knew that he would never not be afraid. Yeah. I love him. I love watching him talk.

He's so, I'm sucked into him. And it's just such a John Waters ghost experience. It was just the floating disembodied head of an old man whose teeth popped out. That smelled like powdered sugar. Yeah. And then he real, this was his guardian angel, I guess, to let him know that he's never going to be afraid of anything again.

and it also destroyed the counselor's life in the same moment. So it really, it worked out for him. Fuck yeah. He was also, this is another John Waters fact that does not surprise me at all in the least. He was obsessed with Little Richard in his early years and shoplifted a copy of the song Lucille at 11 years old. He said, I've wished I could somehow climb into Little Richard's body, hook up his heart and vocal cords to my own, and switch identities. And of course, he also has that. Yeah, he's kept that pencil lip stash that Little Richard had as well that he drew with an eyeliner.

I never realized that was because of Little Richard, but that is his, that's Little Richard's mustache. Yeah, he said, not many white men I knew had that look, so I grew it in honor of Little Richard. And he said, I just thought he was so alarming. He scared my parents. Which is why he, and it's sad, though, did you read the interview later on that he finally got an interview with John Watt. Like, John Waters finally got an interview with Little Richard. Oh, and it went very badly, yeah. And it went very poorly. Little Richard had gone against saying that like being openly gay

and he'd like stay like you got even more religious than he used to be. And it was kind of a, it seemed a bit of a disaster. And that's just putting it in a quick. You never want to meet your heroes. Yeah, you never want to meet your heroes. This is also around the time that you mentioned earlier where he was going to drive in theaters and watching these trashy films with binoculars.

And he also greatly, I think this definitely feeds into Crybaby and a lot of his work. super admired a dude who lived across the street that owned a sick hot rod. He was and was fascinated with, quote, drapes or greasers, the leather jacket wearing working class muscle car kids of the 50s and 60s. He ends up graduating from boys Latin school in Maryland. I feel like we haven't mentioned this more strongly, just how important Baltimore is, the city of Baltimore is, to all of John Waters' work.

He's filmed so much of his stuff there. The culture of the city is inherent for him, especially the counterculture that arose around his teens. His grandmother gave him an 8mm camera and started shooting silent films with all these counterculture buddies in and around Baltimore. They would secretly screen them in a Baltimore church which started drawing a counterculture audience through word of mouth. Which I think this is also the beginning of he would do this with a lot of the premieres, except for one, which I believe was desperate living, that he premiered inside of a prison. but a lot of times he would show his movies in churches at night because I think that since he was a good, quote, good Catholic

and the churches he would go in and kind of plead his case, they wouldn't stop him because no one was there watching the movies. So a lot of the movies that no way would ever been able to have been played at any kind of movie theater, he would show at churches. I think they would have just peaked in once or twice just to check on what was going on in there. You think? He ends up

This actually surprised me a little bit. He attended NYU, but only for a short time because unsurprisingly, he and his buddies were caught smoking weed on the grounds of the school, so he returned to Baltimore. Was he expelled?

Yes. I think they dry, yeah, they kicked him out. He was expelled. And also at the same time, he said, I lived by stealing textbooks and selling them back to bookstores. When I got kicked out,

I went home, NYU recommended extensive psychiatric treatment. If they did that nowadays, there'd be like four students at NYU. Oh. Oh yeah. And NYU hadn't even seen his first proper short film that he made after that,

hagging a black leather jacket, which would have more than alarmed them. It was screened only once in a coffee shop, but later got a proper exhibition as part of a traveling photography show. The plot, according to Wikipedia, I loved, by the way, just verbatim copy and pacing plots from IMDB or Wikipedia because they're just so funny sounding in a, like, clinical website plot breakdown. Okay, a black man and a white girl named Mona Montgomery are white. on a rooftop. He courts her by carrying her around in a trash can and chooses a Ku Klux Klanzman to perform the wedding. The wedding guests are played by people dressed in early pop influence costumes such as American flags and tinfoil. Mary Vivian Pierce does a dance known as the Bodie Green. That's the synopsis. And I love this around the same time that he was talking about is early early movies. And he said, my early films look terrible. I didn't know what I was doing. I learned when I was doing it. I never went to film school.

I didn't learn from porn or anything. I just learned how to turn on the camera. That was hard enough. But if you liked those early films, you said they were primitive. If you hated them, you said they were amateurish. It's the same word. They didn't even have vocals. It was just music over these.

Like, you didn't even have proper sound during this stuff. I also just love, and I want to note, this is one of many examples of these films later being showed in art exhibitions and being treated in this more high art. Yeah, and I love that. That's one of my favorite things is just this juxtaposition of this trash stuff that also is just elevated through hard work and genius and he's said in so many words in so many different times that when people pull it apart as it is like these early stuff as like, this is high art. He laughs. Because he's like, I wasn't trying to say anything.

Trying to like break down the symbolism and everything. He's like, bitch, I don't know. They were just having fun. It really was just them having fun. Definitely Roman Candles feels like that. A hodgepodge of scenes, including a priest-drinking beer, a woman being attacked with an electric fan, and a drag queen riding a motorcycle.

It was only shown a few times, was never commercially released, and the soundtrack was played on a tape recorder in the room and featured radio advertisements, rock songs, and this is my favorite press conferences with Lee Harvey Oswald's mother was part of the soundtrack. This is also the first film to star his childhood, friend Harris Glenn Milstead and also his muse and also known as Divine. Let's get into it. God, I love this person so much. I mean, Divine is the best. Divine lived six houses away from Waters growing up.

So they didn't really know each other a whole heck of a lot, but he did definitely see him all the time around the school. Seems even more of a conservative upbringing. Upper middle class Baptists, very socially conservative, his parents. And this is, he was born in 1945 growing up in Baltimore. Devine referred to himself as, quote, your American spoiled brat. It was given most anything he wanted, including food, which led to being overweight.

And I think adds to the performances, especially in the beginning of female trouble and the Christmas scene and all of that. Because she... I want my cha-cha shoes. He is so good at being a fucking annoying child as a grown man dressed a woman. When he takes, I think he's pink flamingos,

when Divine takes out a gun, You have been convicted of assholeism. I wrote that just random divine quotes that I just fell in love with. Yes, so many. And of course, because he had a bit of a feminine quality about himself and he was overweight, he was heavily bullied in high school. Devine said, they used to wait for me every day to beat me up after school and to point to the point where I was quite black and blue and afraid to say anything because they had threatened my life and it was very bad. You know, finally one day I had to go for a physical to the doctor. And when I disrobed, I mean, it was quite obvious that something terrible was happening to me.

And finally, I broke down after a lot of questioning and told them what the problem was. And they called my parents in. When they saw what I looked like, they were quite hysterical. And we had the police at the school and the kids were expelled. And it was quite an ugly situation, which made me even more unpopular with their friends and the other people. Yowza. I mean, so many people have gone through that as a child. Oh, yeah.

I mean, I've talked about this before. I mean, God damn. Before I was a bully, just, yeah. They really don't like a fat person when you're in middle school. And then a feminine man. They don't like anything that's different.

Yes. It's bad. But if you want to check out the documentary, I am divine, they go deeper into the upbringing of Divine and John Waters. It's really great to, they also show kind of the uprise of what you're about to get into

with the film crew. But it's also, it's really sad because his mom is actually on the documentary. and this poor fucking woman was really just trying to understand this weird child that she created because she was this upper middle class kind of just blonde woman

who was worried about her place in society and she was taking him to all these doctors and they were like telling her stuff like, oh, your son has got a case of feminist disease? Disease, yeah. And really basically just they didn't want to say he was,

was gay probably, which still also is a weird thing for a doctor to diagnose your child, but she was just, you know, they had a falling out later on in life and she really, like, you can tell how much she regrets that, but she just, like, again, like John Waters' parents, she didn't know what the fuck to do with this kid.

She was trying, but yeah, so I Am Divine is a really good look into the upbringing. I am, I have to make it a mission, I have not seen that and you are making me really badly once. Where can we find that? Where did you watch it? Did you bootleg it Or did you get it somewhere? No, no, you can, I think it was just on iTunes. You get it illegally?

No, no. No, I think it's just on iTunes or Amazon Prime or something. Yeah, but shock. I didn't, I mean, I guess it has everything, but all of the movies are rentable on Amazon. Except for pink flamingo. What? I don't know why. Maybe the shit eating.

Yeah, but at the same time, why didn't they stop when Divine got raped by 15-foot lobster for eight minutes straight? Because I don't know. I mean. No, I think it. I could. I couldn't find, like I would find little clips of it and I finally found a version that was dubbed over in Russian that also had like English subtitles. So I watched that. Wow, that just adds another level.

I think John Waters could have done that easily. Oh, yeah. Put the movie out in Russian with some titles. So Devine takes a job at a flower shop and had an interest in horticulture at a young age. Devine said I was very uptight about my weight and about the way I looked. And I always wanted to look like everyone else. And finally my junior year, like when I was 16, I feel like so much so much of John Waters and Divine just resonates to me so much, especially my childhood. When I was like 16 and in high school is when I started hanging out with John and everyone else that I got the confidence together to go out.

And at 17, his parents sent him to therapy where he came. And I think that's what you just mentioned, right, Natalie. And that's where he came to terms with his attraction to both men and women. But yeah, but they weren't, they weren't, you know, it wasn't a therapy session where they were like trying to get him. to embrace that. No, no, no, no, no, no. They just, you got, you got waggy wrist syndrome. The funny thing about therapy is whenever anyone is like,

you really need to seek therapy, you really need to do it. The never result is never the person's wish, I feel. You know what I mean? Like the result is always like, you're the, I found out brat therapy, you're the fucking problem. Especially back then where another thing his mom did was take him to a doctor to put him on a diet because she didn't know what to do. because she was just giving him all the food he wanted

so crazy that he put on weight. But then, so the doctor just gave him pills, which he didn't want to take, which I was just speed. It's got to be speed. The doctor was just giving him drugs to, like, be thinner. The early 60s were a different time. Yeah, but at the same time, that's not true.

I knew people in high school that were given diet pills. Yeah, totally. So then he went to beauty school in 1963 to learn hairstyling, which led to jobs at local, salons with a specialty in, of course, beehives and other upswept dues. But this time, hold it in this time

this really, he wasn't called Divine yet. He was going by his given name and he was not doing the drag yet. Harris. He was going by Glenn. Yeah, Glenn is his middle name. So this period he wasn't being called Divine or anything. He was Glenn to everyone. What's awesome is that this is around the time though, which I think is cool

because in the same vein that we have all known each other and have been working to for what seems like a million years. They did this same thing where I read this whole interview by Mink Stole, who we will talk about later. She's part of the Dreamlanders, which is part of John Waters' crew of friends that are all in these early movies.

And she said, I met John when I was 18, and that fall I met Divine. My memory is that I met Divine at a party. I was stoned on acid. He was draped in a sheet and playing with his Yorkie. But there's also a scene like that in the first movie movie that we did, it was 50 years ago. My memories are a little messed up. But I do remember that when I fell in with these people, as you say, I thought, oh my God, this is fabulous.

We had certain shared anti-values. We just clicked. And I think that's a fun because they were so young and doing a bunch of drugs together. And the fact that you can just throw your life away by being that young and doing that many years, I did lots of drugs way too young. And instead, they decided to use this momentum to put it into creating weird as fuck content. I bet you guys already that only 10 years on could think back and can't remember if something you did was a sketch for Murphus or just a part of you guys right. Or it was a thousand percent. It's just it's also just so much more admirable to me because it was easy for us to rebel in these ways because they established that. It was really hard for them. This was even before. for the hippie dropout, drop in movement. You know what I mean?

Or drop out, tune in, whatever that. Everybody's doing acid and stuff. These people were on the forefront, and I love that they weren't just fucking off. They were creating art. They were in the scene. And of course, I feel like this happens to a lot of, like, people who were raised well in a household that ended up becoming counterculture. Glenn becomes unemployed after the beauty school stuff and the hairstyling job for a bit.

And his parents supported his lavish lifestyle, including clothes, cars, and parties, where he hosted Dunn up as his favorite celebrity, Elizabeth Taylor. So I love that too. He just came back and was just like, well, fuck it. Mom and Dad, you're going to pay for a lot of parties for me. And they just did. And they did.

And that's when he, around this time, he's meeting David Lockery, Carol Wernig, and all these people through John Waters. And this is when all the Dreamlanders are actually forming during these years. They're all hanging out at a beatnik bar called Matrix, which used to be a French restaurant. and I believe it is a historical site now in Baltimore, which is amazing. And it was John Waters around this time who gave Glenn his new name, Divine, with the catchphrase, the most beautiful woman in the world, almost.

I love that John Waters says about Divine. Divine wasn't anything like Divine. He didn't want to be a woman. He wanted to be a monster. He wanted to be Godzilla, not Miss America. So fucking cool. Which at this time period, too, all of the drag queens that did exist were trying to be women. They were trying to look, at least this is what it was saying, like, what, how they felt about the drag culture at them. Yes.

Is that it was a lot of men that wanted to look like the pristine, hot, what the ideal woman was at the time. And they wanted to abolish that idea. They were like, oh, these drag queens are too square. Yes. We need to make it cooler. Yeah. In a time when drag queens were not accepted in any way. Yeah. I love too that even, um, John Waters said like, what drag queen would want to look like that? And I feel like now, Divine has paved the way Trixie Mattel, I feel like heavily inspired. So many. You've also got that Netflix show where they're doing horrific drag, all, like distorted drag. It's really, he paved the way for so many more interesting avenues. Oh, yeah.

Also, I couldn't help but notice during female trouble, Divine at points would aggressively grab his breasts. And I was like, that's what Jackie does when she's trying to be a sex monster. I do it all the time. I'm grabbing them right now. Yeah, you are. I will say there were a lot of times that I was like, I wonder where Divine got that dress. Because in a lot of these movies,

even though sometimes, yes, as Divine, she would come off as a monster a lot, you know, no matter what was happening in a lot of scenes. But at the same time, it makes somewhat sense that Divine went to beauty school because her hair always looked amazing. I know that they were wigs, but still, quaffed wigs.

And even though they had absolutely no budget, she always looked great. Yeah. And a lot of, in John Waters' early stuff, they talked about in I'm Divine, they really wanted Divine to look like Jane Mansfield, like that sort of bombshell. Inflated Jane Mansfield, Devine said, was what John Waters wanted. And also, of course, it's ironic that he would say, this is Glenn talking, that he would say, the most beautiful woman in the world turns out to be a man.

Yeah, and really, that was this sort of like triple subversive thing where they weren't. going for the Jane Mansfield look, which is already kind of edgy, but then also saying, like, this is not the ideal body type for this kind of person, and we're kind of pushing against that boundary as well. And also, Jane Mansfield is fucking badass,

and that would be a cool pop history. And if you guys didn't know, fun fact, her daughter is Mariska Hargitay on SVO. Oh, I did not know that. Also, a lot of Divine's look is heavily attributed to their very good friends. in Van Smith, who was the makeup and costume designer for all of Waters' movies. And also sometimes prop and, like, environment provider as well.

Devine said of Van, he's the one that said, go in the bathroom, shave your head halfway back, and pluck all your eyebrows out. So, I mean, you really have to trust people. I went in the bathroom and did this. She described the makeup as beauty gone berserk, quote unquote, and quote unquote, similar to Kabuki style makeup, which I think is fascinating. Waters said, when I was young, drag queens were square. You just already said this in so many words.

They wanted to be Miss America, and those pretty drag queens hated Divine. He'd show up with fake scars on his face, carrying a chainsawed stuff. Love it so much. They didn't know how to deal with that. But almost every drag queen today is like Divine. Even if you hate my movies, he made drag queens more hip and more cool and more cutting edge. Drag queens didn't want to be their mothers anymore. Hell yeah.

I mean, it's amazing. It's such like a punk rock energy. I just love it so much. reminds me of Wendy O Williams, who's a punk rock and roll goddess, who's my dog is named after, but she did the same shit where she would go on stage with a chainsaw and just have clothes pins on her nipples. And that is sort of that. I could see Wendy doing that.

Yeah, totally. She does at home. You miss it. So let's talk a little bit more about some of the Dreamlanders. There's too many to name, I think, at this point. We got to get to Mondo Trashow as first and the movies afterwards in this episode. I will just say Dreamlanders came from the production company. John Waters had Dreamland productions.

Many of the OG Dreamlanders were the quote, bad suburban kids he knew in Tosin and Lutherville. Suburb of Baltimore, including... It's Towson. Sorry, it's Towson because that's where I went to college. Oh, nice. Oh, God. Was that a nightmare? No, it was awesome.

It was fucking great. Yeah. For some reason, I always think, like, John Waters is the one who makes me like Baltimore. I just, like, I've been a couple times and I'm just like this fucking place. We actually, right, where they had Dreamland Studios is in Fell's Point and Holden You went there with me before. Years back, we went to Fell's Point for drinks when you were touring Calman with the last podcast. Oh, awesome.

That's fucking rad. And also, again, back to when you were talking about how, like, Baltimore is such a central part of not only the Dreamlanders, but all of John Waters' movies as well. When in the Mink Stole conversation, she said, I suppose Baltimore is a bit like us. Baltimore has always been an outsider city. It has an inferiority complex. It measures itself against other places. when they read out the national weather, they talk about Washington and Philadelphia

and they just skip over Baltimore. We get overlooked a lot. And I think the essence of Baltimore is exactly what they were trying to really convey with all of their work together. And they being Bob Skidmore, Mark, Isherwood, Mary Vivian Pierce, David Lockery, so many, they were all brought together

apparently through the downtown Baltimore gay scene. There was also Waters Art Director, Vincent Paranio. in the lobster rape scene. His first gig was building that lobster for the film, and he had rented an industrial space that was once a bakery to use as a cheap studio and living space for him and seven other artists,

which was known as the Hollywood Bakery. And these were the Fells Point Dreamlanders and included Mink Stoll, George Figgs, Bob Adams, Susan Lowe, Paul Swift, Chris Mason, and Peter Coper. And Mary and Vivian Pierce and Mink Stoll are the only two of all the Dreamlanders that have appeared in every single one of Waters' feature-length films.

Hell yeah. His next short film was called Eat Your Makeup, and it is his first film shot on a 16-millimeter camera and had more of a narrative. And here it is, as described by probably on TV. More of a narrative. A deranged nanny kidnaps young girls and forces them to model themselves to death

in front of her boyfriend and their insane friend circle. And Devine during all this is fantasizing that she's Jackie Kennedy and relives the JFK assassination in her head. What I love... Finally a storyline. This is the first film that John Waters made with Divine.

And John Waters said about it. The first real thing was him as Jackie Kennedy and Eat Your Makeup. His mother found the bloody Jackie Kennedy outfit in the boot of his car and said, what is this? And Divine said, I am Jackie Kennedy.

His mother just changed the subject. She didn't know what to say. What this woman's thinking? What's going through her head during all this? And Eat Your Makeup has only been screened. once and it was in John Waters' local church. Nice. That's so fucking great. So let's

talk about the early dirty feature films starting with Mondo Trasho. This has very little dialogue but there is dialogue it stars Mary and Vivian Pierce David Lockery, Divine and Mink Stole. The film features Pierce getting seduced and later foot molested

by a hippie degenerate. You know. While she fantasizes about being Cinearlla. So this though, so Mando Trashireche uses little dialogue and it tells his entire story through music. So this turned out to be its undoing, however. John Waters admitted that he couldn't afford the rights to all the songs he used, so he simply used the songs without paying the fees,

which is why Mondo Trasho has been kept out of print. He also later said he does regret making this film a feature. He feels it should have been a short, that it was too long, that, you know, it isn't until... I'm sure it was. I'm certain. I like this while they were shooting Mondo Trasho, John Waters and the other Dreamlanders

were arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit in decent exposure because they were filming a scene on John Hopkins University's campus and it featured a naked hitchhiker in a convertible. I like the idea of having to conspire like they all got together and

we're gonna make them naked. We're gonna get moved. Here's everybody. Here's the conclusion to Mondo Trashow. Divine later hits her, I believe that is Mary and Vivian Pierce with her car and later takes her to Dr. Cotehanger

who amputates her feet and replaces them with bird-like monster feet which she can tap together to transport around Baltimore. I really want to go back and watch this one. I can't find it. If you can find it, please send it to me. I want to talk to you because I'm going to make it

a mission. You saw multiple maniacs. I did not watch multiple maniacs. Jackie, his first quote-unquote talkie, again featuring Divine Mary Vivian Pierce, David Lockery, and Mink's Soul, as well as Edith Massey, George Figgs, and Cookie Mueller. Multiple Maniac has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It has grossed six times its original budget. It's made over $33,000 on a $5,000 budget.

And I will say, John Waters has said he paid his father back with interest later on for these films that were funded by him. It is Well, I would say it's upsetting It's definitely all in black Well, do you want to read what it's about? Yeah, yeah, what is theopsis? Let me give you the breakdown And she, Jaggie sent me a little video of her

Enduring the lobster rape scene at the end, spoiler alert And it really does. I really laughed a lot. So this is about a traveling side show freaks Whose free shows end in the slaughter of the audience It's filled, which actually is a little similar to female trouble. It's filled with rape and murder as well as religious themes,

Lady Divine finds a new lover named Mink, who shoves a rosary up her ass in a church pew. She certainly does. While describing the stations of the cross, Lady Divine later kills and eats the internal organs of her ex-lover, Mr. David, and then is raped by a giant lobster named Lopstora, which, of course, already mentioned this.

This was Vincent Periano's entry to working with water, was building the law, which is an oppressive lobster. It's great. And also, I would like to mention if people who haven't seen these movies, if they're interested in there, but they're a little worried, there is obviously, as we're stating, a lot of rape and assault and stuff, but it's not done in a, like, in a really realistic way. It's so cartoonish. Unless you have had an experience with, like, a huge lobster assaulting me, then maybe don't watch this. But I will say, Divine somehow plays a magic trick on the audience by making some of, at least some of these rapes actually comically funny.

and I hate to say it. I feel like I'm going to get burned at the cross for saying that I loud. But like it is, you just want, I don't know. It's just. They were making comedies.

Yeah. It's Villion. It is definitely underground, very dark comedies. And in fact, John Waters had said that this is the, um, his take on a horror movie,

on a horror, dark comedy movie. Yeah. And, uh, I have to say, I think possibly my favorite part, I,

it's that, so as Divine is eating the internal organs, of these people that she had just murdered. It's a long scene of her eating them. Then she gets raped by lobster. But then afterwards, she is foaming at the mouth and she's stalking down the sidewalks. She's going like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then a bunch of people are like following her and like a bunch of kids are throwing things at her and she's going, the scene is so long. And then finally a bunch of dudes with guns come out and they just keep zeroing in on divine scenes. It's just like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then she's gunned down in the street to the tune of America the Beautiful. Yes.

And it's, as someone that it's like, I feel like if it was trying to say something, I'd be like, oh, okay, but it wasn't. It wasn't. It's such ridiculous bullshit. I think female trouble, and we'll get into this when we get to that movie, I think that movie actually does say something. And I think it was way ahead of its time of what it has to say. I don't think he started saying anything until that movie, though. Yeah, it does, but it doesn't put it does.

It does remind me a little bit. bit of David Lynch's earliest stuff, which is just, it could just be like a stew of images. Oh, my God, please. But also, you get all this shit from it, even if they didn't have like a fucking scripted out idea of what the symbolism was going to mean. And what's great is that this movie was actually revived by criterion as well. So that's why we were able to see it because it was kind of put, it was very difficult to be able to find.

But this is again another testament to his parents That while they filmed the cavalcade of perversion Which was rough on their parents on his parents lawn Yeah and afterwards he they she invited everybody to come in including divine And they're all bloody and one of them was wearing a bathing suit and carrying an axe And his mother just served them all tea as if princess die had come over I gotta say that I think is going to be my marker for success for the rest of my life is to make such a cacophony of noise

in a movie, just assault on the senses that you trick the criterion collection into putting the movie. John Wards, I think even himself can't believe it. Yeah, he's like blown away. This question of how long, someone asked, how long did it take to make? And his response was, I was on LSD. I don't remember.

This was the first movie I made with dialogue Where my characters could speak And we would shoot it when we had money I wrote it as we went along It took eight or nine days I love that he just wrote it as they kept going Which I will say, I know It shows

But I watched it stoned it alone And I laughed a lot Yeah We does help His influence he said for the lobster Came from this Well in Provincetown this summer Someone said

That acid must have been pretty good in the 70s. And it's a fair comment. Because I wrote the lobster scene in Provincetown, and there was a very popular postcard of a giant boiled lobster in the sky over the beach. And while tripping, I did think of that for the rapes scene. It's also people that we would, you know,

we definitely had a sketch that a friend of ours had to build with PVC pipes a big vagina that people would have to come out of with like curtains around the, this PVC frame, looking at that lobster, impressive. That must,

it did a great job using that. And I think it makes sense of why the scene is so long because, you know what, if I spent that much time making something like that, you're going to fucking use the hell of it.

You got to get your money's worth. All right, let's get into it. Our final stretch here with the Trash Trilogy and the first film is definitely the most popular of the Trash trilogy. and that would be pink flamingos.

Definitely the most notorious. Yes, easily, easily. And it had the tagline and exercise in poor taste. Water said, even people who think they've seen everything are sort of stunned by it. They may hate it, but they can't not talk about it. That was the point.

It was a terrorist act against the tyranny of good taste. It was the 9-11 of business. Continue to say it was a form of rebellion and a chance to go against the spirit of the age. It was a chance to confront the mainstream. But, you know, it was also just a lot of fun. And if I hadn't made my movies,

the early films in Pink Flamingos, somebody would have. Hell yeah. You know, it was made for $10,000, but it grossed $7 million. Well, a lot of that is because it ended up just, like, sliding into this situation that came about alongside Pink Flamingos, and that would be the, quote, midnight movie,

only being shown at that time, and this was largely in the Elgin Theater in New York City. El Topo was the first, I believe, Midnight Movie, and this replaced it in theaters. El Topa done by Joradovsky. It's, again, it's very psychedelic. It's this big, crazy art house film. This, a lot more trashier even than that. And, yeah, and it just grew slowly in popularity, and first with the downtown gay scene, but expanded far past that. I love the, I was reading some interview in John Waters, like, watch the,

trailer for Pink Flamingos, they show zero footage from the film and the whole thing, it's kind of, it's like the first paranormal activity style trailer, it was only people's reactions to how disgusting and vile and, you know, and it was so great. And because,

especially because, spoiler alert, Divine Eats dog shit, we'll talk more about it at the very end of the film for seemingly no reason. No reason whatsoever. To the tune of look at that doggy in the window. So you're left with actually, apparently there is a reason when John Waters was asked, why does she eat dog shit in the end?

It's real dog shit, by the way. It is real dog shit. He said, I wanted it to have a happy ending. What is it? Why? Why? What do you mean? And even in the movie to just push it further and further.

Waters even says in a narration, the real thing. The real thing. Devine said, I followed that dog around for three hours, just zooming in on his asshole, until it shats so she could eat the stuff. She said, I love this anecdote about the situation. I had mouth washing things, and I brushed my teeth and gargled. Anyway, I went home and I was sitting there. Then I started to worry.

So I called the hospital, and I said, imitating a woman. Oh, hello. This is Mrs. Johnson. Do you want to do it? Do it. Oh, hello. This is Mrs. Johnson. And my son just ate dog duty.

And what should I do? And she said, well, how old is your son? And I said, well, he's 24 years old. What? Well, then the nurse said, some maniacs on the phone here. So she said, well, you just have to watch his mouth out and, you know, do all this. She said, but feel his stomach every day because he could get what was called the, you know, like a worm. And every day I was feeling my stomach to see.

Finally one day it got hard. I thought, oh, my God, I've got it. But I didn't have anything. So I was very lucky. But she suggested that I get rid of the dog. I just, why, it's like, is that any less weird to call and say your 24-year-old son? Just say you ate it. Was that how old Glenn was it?

I guess. I think it's one too, because also apparently during the filming of pink flamingos, Divine was arrested for theft, and she reportedly just tried to get out of the charges by claiming that it was a part of method acting for pink flamingos, but I think that she still got charged. It was a rough shoot. The trailer set was described as, I quote, hippie commune and the living quarters were a farmhouse without hot water.

It was so bad that Divine would get up in Baltimore before sunrise, get into makeup before being driven to Phoenix, Maryland to get to the set. I think these kind of movies, it's conducive to living and squalor. Like you can't have like a comfortable set and then make pink flamingos. Right. No. Yeah, no. It just doesn't work that way.

It's like making like a really gross indie horror. You can't. Well, and it's like, for. example, during Desper Living, and I think that this is kind of fun, that John Waters did use the people of Baltimore, and he used them to his advantage of not having to pay them and to get away with things and making it work that someone that worked on Desperate Living said, in order to get people to populate the town of Mortville, which is in Desperate Living, Waters would get school buses and take them to Fell's Point. Fill up the buses with Winoes. He would promise them a free lunch and would take him out to the farm. that one of the goons of the movie lived on and would just kind of drop them there, give them lunch, give them some booze, and they just had fun all day.

But he would kind of trick people into going with him. Yeah, that's also what, you know, murderous hillbilly families do. But he was being nice. He was being nice. Also, I should give the description here. Babs Johnson, played by Divine, is proud to be, quote, the filthiest person alive,

who goes up against the criminal duo, The Marbles, who tries to outdo her reputation. And it was said to have established what art students would call the Baltimore aesthetic, a, quote, homemade technicolor look due to large amounts of indoor paint and makeup, along with ballroom drag show pageantry and 50s rock and roll kitsch. It is a must-see if you're interested in the early films of John Waters. It is just unbelievable. It is just such a landmark.

Just get the DVD, by the way, because it is weirdly difficult to find. It is. It is hard to find. Also, if anybody's on the fence about watching it, it's not hyperbole. It is one of the grossest things you'll ever watch. But it is watchable. It is fun to watch.

It's not just to make you feel like shit. Like, you do laugh through it and it's very silly. I think it's also, I think the grossest thing about it for me is Edith Massey's character when she's in the pen eating the eggs. That is gross. I am so disgusted by that. Eggs. Honestly, Edith Massey, I feel like is not discussed enough.

We haven't been discussed. We're going to talk about her in female trouble because holy shit, dude. And, oh my God, her in Desperate Living as Queen Carlotta, I will say as someone that has played, as try, I have tried to be this level of truly disgusting many times on stage. And I have never been able to capture what she can capture. She is vial. You're not. You're too pretty, Jackie.

I don't even know, but I think it's just, it's the great of her voice. It's the, it's just, I know every inch of this woman's breasts and pussy. Yes. And it's crazy. Also, before we get off Pink Flamagos, I don't know if you can find this version of it anymore, but there is like a director's like extended cut, which is you don't need for this movie. I don't want that. If anybody has seen the one that I've seen, which is there's a scene where a dude makes his asshole dance.

Yes, you told me about this. I was like, I'm glad I haven't seen that. I did not make this up. And somebody has to tell me they've also seen this version of Gipomagos. And I don't even know how to explain to you what I mean by his asshole dances, but it does. Unbelievable. All right. Now let's get into female trouble.

This film is just fucking crazy. I watched it last night. It's still living with me. He was only 25 when he wrote, produced and shot the film for $25,000 on the streets of Baltimore. He was only 25. You guys, we're an hour in. There's still like just so much. I know much career.

This is even just a drop in the bucket of his career. Right. He dedicated this film to the Manson family's Charles Tex Watson, who Waters visited in prison and inspired the theme of, quote, crime is beauty in the film. There is a wooden toy helicopter in the movie that Watson made for Waters. And he has since expressed guilt for using the murders in a jokey way without any sensitivity towards the victims or their families. So there is a little bit of realization later on.

But I will say I do feel like I was saying this before. I felt like it was ahead of its time in the sense that, you know, I really do think that nowadays we do, of course, have the element of mass murderers as celebrity that we're still grappling with in this country. It is a very fascinating thing to talk about mixing those two things. I don't think it was as prevalent of a concept back then. And that's why I feel like this was the first time he had something to say. And it was the first time that he, you know,

got a little into that, into some later themes, I feel like, like, explores. Such as even in, I'm pretty sure Cecil B. Demented, which we'll talk about the next episode. So, Betty Hurst.

French author Jean-Gene, also once said, quote, crime is beauty, and Jeanne was a big influence on waters in general. The synopsis is thus. A spoiled schoolgirl, played by Divine. Man. Runs away from home, gets pregnant while hitchhiking. Which also the whole gets pregnant while hitchhiking.

That scene is long. There is, it's a lot of, I think it's consensual sex. It starts weirdly, seemingly not, and then it sort of becomes consensual while she's also stealing his wallet. Yeah. During the sex, it's ridiculous. And ends up as a fashion model for a pair of beauticians who like to photograph women committing crimes. This leaves out so many things, an acid attack on the model, a nightclub act that turns murderous, strangling of her daughter, sexual assault, child abuse. abuse, just so much stuff.

And of course, we already mentioned Edith Massey, right? Her turn in this is amazing. She gets her hand lopped off as Aunt Ida. Oh yeah. And like, just that costume and that leather like, just... Man, I actually kind of want one.

Yeah. Because I will say, it's got to hurt when you have pulls on that tight against like, as a very big woman myself, when you have those strings cutting into your thighs, It was like this leather stringy outfit that left not a whole lot to the imagination. It's got to hurt.

That's got to hurt anyone. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Also, I love this. Divine performed his own stunts, including doing flips on a trampoline during his nightclub act, which is such an amazing scene. I was just laughing so hard. So the fact of doing things for real, John Waters said, I was into the reality thing before reality TV happened,

like having Divine eat shit in pink flamingo. and it's hard to top that. But the scene where Divine is playing Earl Peterson in female trouble and Mink comes to visit him, he pukes on her. I wanted Divine to puke for real, but he couldn't. So he gave him Epicac and he still couldn't puke. It's on the bonus footage.

It's really hard to watch. And I did not watch the bonus footage of watching a person desperately trying to force himself to throw up. But even just thinking about that makes my stomach turn a little bit. Yeah, I can pass on that. I don't really need to ever see. see that for any reason.

Also, that's just like kind of at the same time. That's just like what jackass did. Yeah. And there is you know, later on he does a movie John Waters does a movie with Johnny Knoxville and he talks about like how

I appreciate the respect that they both have for each other because, you know, John Waters walked so Johnny Knoxville could run. Waters said about Divine's performance since the character turns from teenage delinquent to mugger to prostitute to unwed mother.

child abuser, fashion model, nightclub entertainer, murderess, and jailbird. I felt at last. Devine had a role she could sink her teeth into. Man. That see-through wedding dress. I loved the see-thru. So she's wearing this white see-thru wedding dress,

and you just see this huge muff. And it's pretty much all you see, you just see breasts and a big bowl of hair. Big old bush. Man, there is so much, although I will say, there's a lot of sex in it. There's a lot of... And it is mostly sex.

Most of his movies are sex. Yeah. And you see penis. Yeah. Even his lateh stuff is very horny. Oh yeah. Yeah. Waters said all my humor is based on nervous reactions

to anxiety provoking situations. So I wanted the ideals rather than the action of female trouble to be horrifying. Yeah. And I love just... It happens over and over again, so it's probably not the best, like, in terms of good writing,

but you're constantly just have Divine just so excited to be this fashion model and just taking pictures and then someone comes in to ruin that moment and then she's just immediately pissed off and screaming at them and for some reason it never got old. There is something that Divide

because obviously as we discussed divine didn't have any training of any sort but he had such a charisma on screen and on stage. He is captivating to watch. Well, when I love to, which is completely against absolutely everything you will ever learn

an acting school. Mink Stoll had talked about acting with Divine and she said he was a very generous actor. If he was having dialogue with me, he would look at me and not cheat to the camera and made it really easy to work with him. Although I had to work very hard because he was so

visually staggering. If I wasn't strong, I wasn't going to be seen at all. But I think it's very fun where it's like she's saying, good on him that he would look at me in a scene. Isn't that nice? And then he wouldn't stare into the camera like everybody else. And of course you've got that ending with the electric chair.

Waters speaks about how amazing it was that he was allowed to bring an electric chair into a prison. He at the time weren't using capital punishment in that way. He was also very much an anti-capital punishment activist and worked that into the film at a time when it was largely being debated in the U.S. And he said, when we film female trouble, the death penalty still existed, but they had the gas chamber, not the electric chair. What was amazing was that the warden at the prison where we filmed let us bring in the electric and I even wrote down a few lines that are probably terrible. I love one. Disgustingly,

the daughter, Divine's daughter, who is not the daughter of the man she's having sex with because she takes a new husband. He's like, come here, baby, and suck Daddy's dick. And she's like, I wouldn't suck your dick if it was suffocating you. I had oxygen in your balls, which I love.

The whole digeruny, the whole diggeruny sequence, that song when she's walking down the street with all the people staring, which I feel like we're just normal Baltimore more street people. Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. Bup and Pussies is a violation of jail rules.

I think what I love to is that knowing, and you can see, they didn't have permits to film anywhere. They were just filming in public. That or you could see where John Waters would like kind of hide behind something as he's shooting, where it's like, oh, you guys didn't ask permission. They never asked permission to do whatever the fuck they wanted to do. They do talk about that in the I'm Define documentary where, um, They intentionally, they wanted the actual reactions of people walking around when Divider was walking the street.

Because they didn't know what to make of this situation. Yes, the reactions are so good. I love that whole sequence. It's just her dancing around the street to this great perfect song. And it just was one of my highlights of watching it. But hey, we're going to close it out with the final film of the Trash Trilogy before we end for today. And of course, you know, this will be one part of a two-parter. We have so many movies.

I can't wait to rewatch this week. But let's go, let's get into a desperate living. Desperate living, a neurotic society woman murders her husband with the help of her maid. Which also by the help, by the way, murders her husband because her maid sits on his face with her pussy and then makes him, he suffocates to death. That's the beginning of the movie. So they go on the lamb, escape to Mortville, a homeless community ruled over by a fascist queen. Queen Carlotta is true. truly disgusting.

Do you know who plays Queen Marlotta? Edith Massey. Of course. And her tits her out the entire time and she just, I'm a bit of my week, Ravis. And she fills the entire town with babies. It was shot on a 26-acre farm.

The exterior sets were largely constructed from plywood and trash found around Baltimore. The cast and crew were too much for the farm septic system. Heavy rains almost washed away the set. Other conditions like that, just made this a very difficult shoot yet again. Interiors were filmed in a warehouse, which also was unheeded.

Also, Peter Copper, who played one of the goons in it, which the goons so funny. They are just, like, wearing, like, copper hats with black mesh tank tops on and really tight leather pants, and all of them are hard the entire time. And it was actually his farm that they were shooting on, and he said that all of the catering consisted of Wonderbread and Salami. and in watching this movie, it's already truly disgusting. And thinking about how much that they probably, not only did they eat a lot of salami,

but I bet they all smelled like salami. Or at least it looks like they smelled like salami. Yeah, it does definitely look like they smell like salami. Yeah, it was just a rough time. And that makes sense. He's probably getting to the point where he's like, I think it's time to go mainstream. This is a nightmare.

Yeah. It was Waters' first film that used original music. And Divine actually had to, other commitments and therefore was unable to be in this one so his role went to susan low it was also the first film without david lockery because and this makes me so sad to know he had developed a bad pcp addiction and then passed away not long after the film came out and i love david lockery's work he died at 32 years old because of pcp addiction that is a that is an intense addiction to have yes she was great but at the same time was he on pc through all of it which that's that's got to be difficult

Apparently Waters read an autobiography by a performer named Liz Renee and loved it so much he offered her the lead role in Desperate Living. Now, Liz Renee, who is great in this? And I watched a long interview with her as well. And it was just, that woman has had a sad life. Yes. And her talking about her environment around making this movie was honestly rougher to watch than the movie itself. I will say that she wasn't having a very good time with one of the husbands she had been with at that point in time. How was she in the film?

She was great. She, I mean, I really think that she was completely nude through most of it. And she was in a relationship with another, with Mole, who was, Mole is one of the more disgusting characters. And they were in a lesbian relationship together and they fucked a lot. And then at the end of it, Mole, spoiler alert, goes, like, she wins, she wins the lottery. So she goes to town to get her money. And then at knife point, she forces a doctor.

to give her a sex change by cutting off his dick and sewing the dick onto herself. And then when she shows up to Muffy, who's played by Liz Renee, and she goes, I got what you want. I got what you want. She's like, no, I hate it, I hate it. So then she takes the dick, again, I apologize,

takes the dick and cuts it off herself with a scissor and they throw it outside and then a bunch of dogs take it. And, wow. I mean, if that's not art, I don't know what is. Well, on that note, I think that just about covers our part one on John Waters. I wrote down the quote, I'm so hungry, I could eat cancer. Next week, we will watch him go mainstream.

We'll look at the success of hairspray. Later, the musical hairspray with a bit of a crossover because of John Travolta. And we also have, what else? Crybaby, I'm so excited to talk about. Johnny Debt's first feature film and the one that gave Natalie's. Natalie, a loyne attack. We've got so many fun things to talk about. Serial mom, which I'm very excited.

Serial mom's wonderful. Cicill be demented. Oh, yeah. I'm really excited about next week's episode. Pecker. Wait, Peckers. Yeah. Pecker. Yeah. Pecker.

But we had to do this. We had to give our big ups, our respect to John Waters, because we learned a lot about him. And, you know, I definitely see the movies in a different light. I don't think it makes it any easier to digest. But I would say if you want to have, like, a great night after you've eaten because I definitely one of the times I think it was during desperate living I was

eating dinner and I had to stop the movie so that I could continue my dinner. Don't do that. So, but it is a fun thing to watch with a group of people. I watched some of them with my roommates and they're just like, we all laughed through the entire thing. Had they seen any, were they familiar? One of them had not and the other one had. So it was

fun to bring this to someone for the first time. So amazing. All right, well I think that is our episode and yeah, thank you so much for joining us. We'll be back next week with more. Also, we are excited to announce that on what was the date again, Jackie? February 14th.

Yeah, February 14th. We are going Spotify exclusive episodes are currently available on Spotify. Spotify is free and you can download episodes offline listening with a free account. Listen to pop history on Spotify and download or subscribe to the podcast in order to get those dropping on you as soon as they come out. Also, check us out on patreon.com forward slash p page seven. No, you're not sorry, patreon.com slash page seven podcast, seventh number. And we've got our talking TVs.

We've got our other fun stuff on there. Thank you guys so much for joining us. My name is Jackie Zabrowski. You can follow me on Instagram at Jack Thatworm. You can also follow me on Spotify because I have a lot of really dumb playlist. Yeah, same. And you can also catch me on Twitch.tv. Forward slash Holdenaders Ho.

Jackie joins me weekly to do Jackanese on Friday nights. Get it, get it, get it, Natalie. You can follow me at the Natty Jean on all the bullshit. We love you guys and we'll talk to you next week. Bye. Bye-bye. This show is made possible by listeners like you. Thanks to our ad sponsors, you can support our shows by supporting them.

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