Page 7 - Pop History: John Waters Pt II

Episode Date: January 28, 2020

We wrap up our series on counter-culture icon John Waters.   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.

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Oh, guys. You know what, at least I will say we've made it to the other side of John Waters. Welcome to Pop History. John Waters Part 2. We've made it to the other side, but I dare say that I, as we've all watched all of the other John Waters movies that we did not discuss last time. And what a ride it's been. Yes. To really, I watched

them all in order. Where were we riding to? I guess. Mainstream land? Mainstream purgatory. And yet, no. I don't know. It's not. It's just like, it's so fun to watch someone get everything that he never necessarily

wanted, but also still say fuck you, fuck you, fuck you to everyone by doing things like cereal mom and Cecil be demented and just I'm obsessed with John Waters now. Yeah. I really always, I kind of always was, but this really reawoke a love of him. And I also watched some of those movies that I had never watched of his, because I've watched some of his movies 150 times and then other ones never times. Now that's not true. No, now we got a welcome. I'm Jackie Zabrowski. Welcome, Miss Natalie

Jean. Hello. And we've got old old Frankfurter in the corner. Yeah. Hi. It's me. Oh, Frankfurter. Hi, it is Holden-McNeely, and yeah, we've been through the gamut, and I have found new favorite John Waters movies this past week. Namely, really loved Crybaby

a lot. Oh, my favorite. It's my favorite. It's my very favorite. Yeah, and we'll get into more about what it is because at the end of the day, it's like, it's like it's my grease, you know what I mean? Oh, yes. It's grease on acid. Yeah, and it's just so, it's like Greece meets like a trauma high school movie. Is what I kept thinking.

Sure. You know, Class of Newcomb High meets Greece, especially with the over-the-top personifications, even more so than Greece. But the music is so great. I just love his sensibilities. his taste, his voice really shining through, especially in these later movies when it's not as much about trying to just be as gross and trashy as possible, which I do love.

But just seeing the, in a lot of ways, I feel like it made it even more of a stripped down John Waters like hairspray and things like that. I just feel like I got such a, I love seeing a director like his repertoire in terms of a mirror of his own personality. I feel like I know the man so well just by watching movie after movie. Yes, and how he grew. But he really, it was like Jackie, you were just saying to me before the show,

a lot of directors sort of like meld into the mainstream. As they get older, it gets a little bit more digestible. But it's almost like he hit the peak of mainstream with Crybaby and Hairspray. And then he just started ramping up even more crazy and over the top and gross. As he was getting more money for movies, as they were giving him money, he's like, fuck you guys. Yeah, you're going to give me money now.

Let's see what I'm going to do with it. And he still kept giving a middle finger to everything, but I will say, I don't know about you guys, but it has definitely affected my joking and my sensibilities over the past week or so because I have never made so many from Munda cheese jokes in my life. I've found myself going back to a time when we used to be

truly disgusting comedians and making just horrendous jokes. And out of nowhere, to people that don't realize that I'm in the process of being saturated in John Waters right now and they just look at me like I'm a fucking monster. Are you

coming out right now as a fart comedian? I never. I'll never be a fart comedian. But I will say I am now definitely obsessed with Divine. I know. It was and for me, and we're going to get into it, it's polyester. Yeah.

The jump between Desperate Living, which was the movie he did before Polyester, into polyester, I think, controversial opinion. Whoa. I think Polyester was my favorite of all the John Waters movies. Okay. All right. I think it was definitely my favorite. I was so shocked by it, and in watching the trailer for it, I was like, okay, I get

what this is going to be. But Divine was so great. in it. She was so good as a character of being exactly what John Waters wanted and needed that I feel like you can really see a difference in the movies that he made afterwards because, and I think that it was because he didn't have the presence of Devon. Yeah. And of someone that, I mean, he still had, you know, Mary Vivian Pierce still had he still had a lot of the Dreamlanders. Which I forgot she was in all of his movie. We will talk about Patty Hurst.

I just, I feel like there has to be something missing where all the years that we all did comedy together, I feel like it would be the same as if we tried to do murder fist without, like, if I tried to write something without Holden or if Holden tried to put something up on a stage without Henry or I or Ed or any of the people that we all did comedy with, because there's just an element that will forever be missing that even though the movie are amazing and you can fill in the void with other amazing people that choose and man he would get huge choices

huge actors to be in these later movies yes because people wanted to be in the later movies right but I think that there's just something missing because divine in Bollyessor divine in hairsprit hairsprit she is like such she's so charming in that movie I like

I want her to be my mom yes that's a wild arc to her performance in his films the whole initial thing with Divine was she was, again, we said what Godzilla meets Jane Mansfield. It was this monster fashion thing, this like crazy caricature thing. And then to see her in Hairspray be a mom that we all want to have. It's so crazy.

And it was fun that he also played the one by Glenn, right? When he played the bad guy at the end of the movie. It was so fun. With the fake teeth and really just like hit for the. For the stanzas, what is it? Stans? I was trying to make a sports thing. I don't know.

Sports thing. Hit for the stands. You got it. Yeah, let's ask us. We'll give you all the sports. Yep, you smack the pole and sock it to the big, big stands. Yeah, yeah, for sure. That's definitely a sports reverts.

The block man. I guess that's baseball? We got to just jump in. I'm going right past week because we do have a lot to talk about today. Absolutely. Because I feel like we could have done four episodes easily. I could do a whole episode. episode on Cry Baby alone.

I really could. I do want to, and I'm saying this, I'm saying this to all you guys that are listening right now, I would like to in the future revisit Hairspray and how it went from a movie into a musical, into the other movie. Yeah. That I want to see that spectrum.

So we'll get to that someday. What a charming piece of work that thing is. Before we get to Hairspray, though, of course, we got to go back to what you were talking about before Pollyester. set up the stage here too. On our last episode, if it's been a minute since you listen to it, he just finished putting out his quote-unquote trash trilogy. He went, I think as far as he could go,

at least at that point in his career, in terms of making the art house trash film that he'd been working on. He essentially perfected it in so many ways with that trilogy. And now he's going, quote-unquote, into the mainstream. Polyester, though, a fascinating artifact, because it really is in-between. both worlds in a lot of ways. It's part where he was and in a lot of ways where he was going.

Because it is such a hybrid of both of them because there are times that I was very weirdly into it as just a regular movie outside of a John Waters movie. You know what I were moments that I saw Divine shine as an actor too. And it's still truly abhorrent behaviors. So here's the IMTB synopsis. A suburban housewife's world falls apart when she finds that her pornographer husband is serially unfaithful to her. Her daughter is pregnant and her son is suspected of being a foot fetishist who's been breaking local women's feet. He's the stomper.

He's the stomper. It of course stars Divine across from X-teen Idol Tab Hunter. Who also performed the music in polyestered, the music and the main time. title was written by Debbie Harry, which again, all of these weird people that are in the Dreamlander scope. Yeah. There's so much Debbie Harry. I know.

And of course, this has the odorama gimmick, which entails viewers smelling what's on the screen via scratch and sniff cards as a tribute to William Castle. Now, we talked about William Castle in the last episode, but just to reiterate again, he would do weird promotional gimmicks, such as giving every customer's certificate for a $1,000 life insurance policy from Lloyds, of London in case they died during a viewing of the film macab we mentioned the

House on Haunted Hill Skeleton with Redlit Eyes that flew over the audience. That was called Emergo. So he did Odorama but so everything has to have a name. There was a movie called The Tingler. They attached vibrating motors to some of the seats for when the creature quote unquote got

loose in the audience at the end of the movie that was called Percepto. We need to do a whole William Castle. There's no way we can't. Anything from that era really Yes, all of the, it's so great. I didn't even know this stuff existed. For 13 ghosts filmed in Illusiono, each member of the audience got a handheld ghost viewer slash remover.

It was like a red lens, blue lens, glasses thing. This was my favorite though. And I mentioned it before, but I'll give you the quote because it's from John Waters. This was for a movie called Homicidal. There was a fright break in the movie, like a break, where you could decide whether or not you were too afraid to go on. and if you were too afraid to keep going, you had to do as follows. William Castle, this is a quote from John Waters.

William Castle simply went nuts. He came up with Cowards Corner, a yellow cardboard booth manned by a bewildered theater employee in the lobby. When the fright break was announced and you found out that you couldn't take it anymore, you had to leave your seat and in front of the entire audience follow yellow footsteps up the aisle, bathed in a yellow light before you reached Cowards Corner you crossed yellow lines

with the stenciled message Cowards Keep Walking I love it You passed a nurse in a yellow uniform Who would offer a blood pressure test All the while a recording was blaring Watch the chicken Watch him shiver in Cowards Corner

As the audience howled You had to go through one final indignity At Coward's Corner You were forced to sign a yellow card stating I am a but of coward. Okay, okay. You know what?

This is how you create mass shooters. Or it develops, if you're young enough, it's just a fetish. I think it's, or you can only come when, like, there's a nurse laughing at you. Also, I think it's kind of fun because John Waters' obsession with William Castle goes round full circle because in the show feud, which is about Betty Davis and the Joan Crawford feud between them, John Waters actually plays William Castle in it because. Because Castle was a director of Joan Crawford in a movie called Straight Jacket. So he got to also play William Castle as well.

Which is all, I thought for someone that is obsessy, you know, he's a huge fan of his. He said that he ended up, he got to meet his widow. He knows his daughter Terry. And it just has always inspired him to do all these insane gimmick. And I guess that was the, it went better than meeting Little Rich. Little Rich. For sure. He even said with the tingler, he would, he would seek.

out the chair that had the electric wiring on it so that he could, you know, get the true experience. Like, he was a devoted fan of this guy's gimmicks. So that's why he used the odorama and polyester, which every time Divine started sniffing on screen, it's like, oh, God. And then it's like, it was always something truly disgusting. But what's ridiculous is that this movie was still only rated R. And it was John Waters' first rated R movie, because the other movies were either X or NC17. And it was also Water's first use of the SteadyCam technology.

So it wasn't just him with his little camera following around people. And it really did show because I think I didn't realize how how jarring it was, the other movies of the camera always moving. But I think that added to how disgusted I was. Right, because you

got a real clear shot of stuff. Yes. Right. Yeah. Just like I talked about how the sound issues in the original movies just made me more nauseous as well. Yes. So Divine was really channeling Elizabeth Taylor in the movie that he really was trying to inspire sympathy instead of awe and identification rather than horror.

And it was the first time that Divine was truly trying to connect with an audience. And that is such a fun dynamic as well because usually he didn't give a fuck about anyone identifying with anything that he's doing because it's very difficult to. identify with that. He was trying to openly be like, I'm the weirdo. I'm the fucking filth, weirdo. But in this, I felt myself feeling for Divine through the entire movie. Yeah. And I imagine that that could just come because time had passed and Divine was older and wanted to actually, along with Don Waters, they were making an actual, not that the others were in actual movies, but this is something they're actually not just doing on a whim kind of. Right. It was the first

movie that ever had an actual budget, you know, and it was still shot in Maryland, so they saved a bunch of money shooting it in Maryland as well. And this is also the same year, too, when John Waters wrote his first book, Shock Value. Oh. So the memoir covered the making of classic midnight movies like Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble and chronicled his childhood in Baltimore. So as when he started writing, he says, that's what I really am. I'm a writer more than anything. That's how I could discover forbidden worlds. Life magazine corrupted me. Life magazine corrupted me because I read about beatniks and Tennessee Williams and drug addicts and homosexuals and everything.

So that's when he first read. He's got a lot of books out. Uh-huh. Well, he's a great lover of books. I mean, that's one of the big things about John Waters. He sports a collection of over 8,000 books. And one of the big meme quotes that he's put out in recent years is, if you go home with somebody and they don't have books, don't fuck them.

Don't sleep with people who don't read, which I love that quote. Which is wonderful and accurate. I agree. Also, I forgot to mention that in Mr. Know It All, which is a book of his that came out last year, he actually explained that polyester and the idea of odorama, not only was it inspired by William Castle, but it was also because of one critic's warning to readers about his earlier movies, if you ever see Waters' name on a marquee, walk on the other side of the street and hold your nose, which is why he wanted to do the odorama. He's like, oh, you want to smell it? You want to smell what we're doing here.

I mean, we'll let you smell it. That is a great advertisement for his movies. By the way, the smells included flatulence, gasoline, skunk, new car smell, and dirty shoes,

among others. So yeah, I guess before we move on to hairspray, Jackie, you said this was maybe your favorite from cramming all these movies. What about it?

Why do you think that is? I think it was because I felt for Divine so much and because it wasn't just like, look at this monster, look at all these monsters, even though they were all monsters in the movie, and it was very over the top. But it was just the entire time I felt bad for her.

I felt bad for all of the things that were happening to her, and that none of, she didn't deserve any of the, I mean, she was an alcoholic, like a ridiculous cartoonish version of an alcoholic. But she just kept begging for help. And when her husband leaves her in the beginning, four mink stole. who has white people dreads in it.

They have this ludicrous affair, but then they just like, they do things to torture her, like drive around in the neighborhood with a speaker, like a megaphone talking about how much she weighs and how much she drinks and publicly humiliating her,

calling her on the phone as if they're having sex and both of them like, ah, uh, into the phone just to haunt her? And it was just like, stop! Which is, again,

Then he does that in Serial Mom. Yes. Well, which there's, he does create characters. I love my pussy way. I love serial mom. He creates a lot of characters who have to go through a lot and you feel for them. They are tortured in his movies often. And it's an emotional torturing more than a physical lot of the time, which is really sometimes hard to watch.

And I think this is where he really turned into and leaned into, which now forever makes me think of Fred Durs, the fanatic, which I talked. about on talking TV. It's the anti-villain where you want bad things to happen to all these people because you're rooting for this person even though that person isn't technically great, but you still are rooting for them because it's like, but they

also had to go through a bunch of shit too. Yeah. And we're just going to say on air currently, Jackie is not comparing Fred Durst to John Waters. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, I just keep thinking about it. Just keep thinking about the fanatic, which also, please, watch the fanatic.

I would listen to a John Waters rap rock band. That's true. I would definitely, yeah. New metal, John Waters would be fantastic. All right, I am so excited to talk about hairspray. Can we please get into it? This is like one of my favorite films that I got to see this past week. And I will say confession alert, I had never seen the original hairspray before.

And I thought I had, but I realized very quickly into how, because of how much I was fucking loving it, that I had never really either. I think it was just something that would show up on TV from time to time and maybe see a little clip here and there but never had I actually sat down to watch it. But I was obsessed with the musical because as a fat theater girl, of course, I sang all the songs from the musical. I've seen it three or four times. I love the musical and I didn't realize, honestly,

that a lot of the songs weren't in this version of the movie. On the opposite, I saw the original a bunch of times and had never seen a musical, but I did end up watching it, Even though it's not directed by John Waters. He's in it for... But he still is the writer of it. He also shows up at the very beginning of the movie. Hell yeah.

As a flasher. That's wonderful. And he's so good in the original airspray as the psycho, hypnosis. Trying to make her not love a black man anymore. Just, oh, so, so good. Wasn't he shocking her just going black man? Yes, black man. Yes, yes.

It was so funny. It was such good satire. Talk about, you know, really a movie where he's really has something to say about race relations in America. It just wonderfully satirizes it. Of course, hairspray starring Ricky Lake. I believe this was her first Dreamlander appearance. Divine Debbie Harry crushing it. Yeah, I forgot she was in it.

And I was like, man, he gets all these cool cult icon people to just show up in his movie. What's fun about casting Ricky Lake, too, is that she had no idea who John Waters or divine was, knew nothing about it. And all that she had seen was that they were looking for, they put out a casting call, looking for a, quote, ample girl. And almost nobody showed up to it. Because at the time, no one wanted to see themselves as a bigger woman or say on paper, like, I could go in for a bigger woman's role. And weirdly enough, I still have issues with this today that just like, I look around the casting room when I go in for bigger women parts. And it's just like, these women are not bigger women.

Like what is, I just, I don't get what's going on here because it is still something that is, you know, problematic in our society. Do you know where Ricky like Kate, like was she already acting at that point or she just decided to act for this movie? She was starting to act, but she had not like, this is her first foray into it. And when she said, when I met Divine,

I didn't know what to expect. He really didn't like me at first because he wanted to play my part. He wanted to play both the mother. and the daughter like he did in female trouble. But eventually what I love is that they created a mother-daughter bond and Devine even taught Ricky Lake how to walk in heels.

That's amazing. Yes. It was originally called a white lipstick and it was actually loosely based on real events. The Corny Collins show was actually based on the Buddy Dean show, which was a local dance party program that predated American Bandstand. If you remember our episode about American Bandstand,

it was Dick Clark who largely integrated the show and the before then it was very segregated with blacks and whites having different dance shows. That's why is because he wrote, so John Waters wrote an article talking about because he was so obsessed with the buddy Dean show that the reason why it went under is because they refused to integrate. And it was because they used to have Negro days. And since they wouldn't allow, since the network wouldn't allow, like for them to integrate

on other like white people days. So then the white kids started going on Negro days. And since they were doing that, the network got so many death threats, got bomb threats, got all that they just shut the whole show down. Yeah. Which is, so this is John Waters attempted saying this is what could have happened for the Buddy Dean show if they had just integrated. They should have integrated. Good thing we've got all this figured out now. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. It's all solved. So, yeah, Waters used to love watching these teen dance shows back in the day. And it included many of the novelty songs. that we see in the movie, the Continental, the fly, the bug, the roach, shaking tail feather, the Madison.

Waters said, I wanted to bring them back. I wanted the fact that that was sort of a forgotten period when every dance was a gimmick dance. So I had all those records. They were my favorite records. I used to get them out late at night and after a few drinks,

put them on and sometimes even dance. So I picked those songs first and sort of wrote the movie around them and even refers to this as his dance movie. People get confused and think it's his first musical, whereas Crybaby was his first musical. This was his self-proclaimed dance movie. Yeah, it's not a straight musical.

There are a lot of musical moments in the movie, but the actual actors don't go sing their own songs, the way that it became eventually in the musical version of it. Which made it so unique because you rarely get that, where it's just about the dancing, you know? Yeah. Most every musical or whatever, it's got singing and everything else around it, But it was so much fun just to see a showcase of this time in music because, you know,

and it's so funny because now we have it still, you know, you've got like your specific dances, like the Superman and all that stuff. It's more on like in a hip hop direction, I guess, than it was. But they even have one. There's that country. There's like a line dance thing that everyone's doing on TikTok. TikTok's really bringing back the dance, by the way. It's bringing that back.

And I think I started watching because I was talking about this. I was like, I wish there were more shows like this because that's how you find out, like, what are the new dances? Like, what are the kids doing? And Jeff specifically said, he's like, that's what TikTok is. So I started looking at TikTok again. It's like, you're right. If we need to have the pulse of what's going on with the kids these days, you have to look to apps like that because there aren't shows like this. We should just go start hanging out outside of high schools.

I will. Let's do it. Yeah, I won't get put into a jail. By the way, in order to pitch the movie, John Waters got. up in front of the executives and just did all the dances. Oh, I would totally watch that. I love that. That makes me think of, too.

I'm very curious about John Waters and his personal life. Like, do you think he's really got a weird sex life? Or do you think he's one of those people who puts it all out on the camera and he's like, actually kind of tame? You know, he even, I feel like he's actually pretty soft-spoken and chill and real-like. He even talked about how when it came to actors, he was like, people have a misconception. They think the people in real life that are really loud and boisterous would make good actors, but it's always the quiet ones. Right.

You know, and I feel like it's also, it's the, it's the evangelical pastor on live television screaming about, you know, the evils of homosexualities and stuff. That's the guy that's on meth in the hotel room with a male prostitute. You know what I mean? It's kind of, I feel like similar. It's like, it's the guy making the crazy movies about drugs and sex and everything that in real life is probably, you know, is an avid book reader. Yeah, right. Yeah.

I think that's probably true. Yeah. And I like, so in the movie, they also do the dirty boogie at one point. And that is actually a dance that John Waters got kicked off of the Buddy Dean show for doing because it was a black person dance. And I love that he definitely included the dirty boogie in the movie that Tracy does to signify of like, no, we are going to integrate. and they were actually integrating the two different, like, dance styles of white versus black style dancing

in the movie before they were even saying what was going on with it, like before it started integrating, and that was his way of saying, like, most people don't even know because there's no fucking difference between white people dancing. I mean, there is,

because I can't fucking dance. But that's just a person by person basis. So it's like he was already saying that with the dirty boogie, which the dirty boogie is great. I think it's all about the amount of ass you shake is really what it is. Well, yeah.

They often, I think at that time, put on the idea of like being too sensual on black kids, mostly because they're afraid of sexuality in this country because we were founded on repressed people. Yes. Anyway. What I do love, though, is that it is like, this is 1988.

And they don't even talk about, of course, they call her fat and all this stuff. But she is with the hottest dude, unquote in town. Yeah. Exactly like Elvis. Like it actually blows my mind how much that guy looks

like fucking Elvis Presley. Yes. And it was just like, oh, well, she's a new it thing. I'll suck on her face. There was never a question of like her being like,

but I'm fat. She's like, yeah, you're going to suck on my face. It's not part of the main storyline. And I love that. Yeah, it's great. It's fucking wonderful.

And refreshing. And they don't really do that in the musical version. They like to really focus on it. But see, but at the same time, that still spoke to me because I was like, maybe one day I'll be the fat girl that the hot guy likes. And you know what? Now it is.

It did come true. That's right, Jackie. You're beautiful. There you got. I wonder if that footage exists anywhere of him dancing on that show. I know. That would be amazing. I will say the school scenes were filmed at Perry High School, which was the Perry Hall High School, which was the largest public high school in Baltimore County. And he specifically chose the year 1962 because it was still essentially the 50s before, quote, everything changed, as Waters put it due to the advent

of drugs, hippies, and the Kennedy assassination. And he also talked about, it was like, I think it was maybe around the 80s or so when 60s fashion was coming back into style. And he was just like, oh, no, don't make me live through it again. I think he really hated the hippie movement and everything in the 60s. That makes a lot of sense. When it comes to the Negro Day stuff and everything, Waters said, I felt that to ignore that fact, would have been really inauthentic. I don't know if that's the correct word. But if Hollywood had made this movie, they would have had blacks on the show

and just ignored the fact that none of the shows, bandstands, didn't have blacks on them either. None of them did then. And basically the problem was the all the music was black. All the dancing came from blacks. Black singers were on the show all the time as entertainers, but they couldn't dance. And it wasn't because the kids didn't want it.

Their parents didn't want it. And it's just so funny to see the, the double standard of racism. And it's so apparent in this with, what's her name? The woman who hosts... Motor Mouth Mabel? Motor Mouth Mabel.

Dude. No blacks are allowed on the show. Everybody, please welcome Motor Mouth Mabel to come in and emcee. That was a reality they just had to deal with. And how surreal must that have been for her to be a part of the show knowing that they were at the same time

being like, your children are not allowed to be here because yuck. Yeah. But here, you can, you can come up and be a part of this show. It's ridiculous. As long as you play like the good black lady. It's ridiculous.

And it still is kind of like that with, at least with racist in this country. Oh, yeah. It's so bizarre that the- It's a very strange mental separation that some people experience and it's inherited and it's gross. And this film deals in it. It's so funny. A film called Hairspray with this really fun music. But the whole core of it is exactly what you're talking about, Natalie.

It's really a lovely magic trick that this film plays that I didn't even realize. I just thought it was like hairspray. It's, oh, it's going to be a fun early 60s jaunt, you know what I mean? And having no idea that it really spoke to something more powerful. Which is true with John Waters in general. In his earlier stuff, I don't know if he was trying to be as poignant with it, but it's always been sort of a subversive look at like the grotesque side of certain parts of like, quote unquote, proper culture.

which is like a total punk rock thing to do and I really appreciate that sort of expression of art to show like how gross we can be as a society and I mean cry baby I feel like crybaby and serial mom which we're about to get to they they on their face seem like one thing but really are talking about the death penalty and things of that nature that I think is just wonderfully wonderfully done in his movies

also by the way got to shout out the beatniks in the movie that take Tracy and her boyfriend in. They are played, of course, by Rick O'Kasik from The Cars, Rest in Peace. And the singer Pia Zadora. I love that scene. Waters said, I wanted to be a beatnik. It was hard to be a beatnik in suburban Baltimore, I could imagine. But I wanted to be one.

And I read all the books about them and everything and read Life magazine about beatniks. And I just really wanted to be one. That's why I have the whole scene with the whole beatnik scene in the movie. also two other little cast fun facts sure the chick who plays penny her name's leslie Ann powers she sort of just disappeared after the movie she never acted again and people from the movie don't really even know what where she is so she kind of just removed herself completely from society and then which is fine you know good for her but and then the other one is the chick who plays amber von tussle is the pop singer

vitamin C. Oh yeah, baby. Oh, yeah. As we go out, we remember. Also, I have to say that Penny, and I say this only as a compliment, looks just like you at that age. Did you not know?

I was just like, I kept there, I was just like, man, she looks so much like young. I can see that, totally. That's amazing. I like it. I wore my hair like that all the time. I bet you did. But yeah, but no, it's weird.

because vitamin C was a pop singer in the late 90s, like maybe 2000-ish, and she did put a smile on your face. Like that song. This movie came out in 88, and she was a high schooler in that. So that means like 12 years later, it's such a weird transition in my brain

to think like 80s, 88 seems so long ago to me, but I was like enough of a human being when she was like, wow. Yeah, she went to college for acting. Yeah. And then decided to change. into becoming a musician. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

All right, go on. Sorry. Oh, no, all good. I was just going to talk about how ridiculously important hair was back in the day even more so than it is now in terms of how it drew a line in the sand that people don't realize now

when it comes to just how you did your hair back in the day and what that stood for politically and everything and culturally. Waters said around 1962 in Baltimore, all the girls had those big hairdoes. And then suddenly, a few of the really hip ones started doing their hair straight, which you can see evidence of throughout the movie, especially in that beatnik scene.

They talk about it. And people panicked. And it was called Going Joe, meaning Joe college. And people would say, I don't know, should I be Joe? I can't decide. I don't know what to do. There was a major thing. And what happened then is the kids that did do the ironed hair eventually became hippies.

And the ones with the teased hair got married and became probably very middle class. Those are the two options, huh? Yeah, exactly. That's it. That's all you get. Back in the day, it was like short hair, long hair, big hair, straight hair, and that was it. I mean, she got put into the special education class because her hair was too big. Which that scene is pretty funny.

And that, I mean, I think that actually is what created John Waters because those, it's the same with the, I hate to keep using the punk scene as a reference, but it is really similar. And, like, that erupts because people are being corralled into these, like, two or three options. and people are like, but I'm weird. I don't fit into those. And I think what you're saying is fucked up because you're saying you have to look this way, but it doesn't matter how you actually act in real life.

It doesn't matter what you intend to do with your life. It doesn't matter if you hurt people, as long as you look this one way. And so John Waters kind of has, he's important because he fights against that tide. And then he says things like, I made a family movie. It was PG, a shock.

I remember when it got that rating, I wanted to commit suicide. He still at least got a few really gross shots in it. It's still a weird movie. It's definitely weird. And he also, he said that his favorite all-time review of hairspray was Dan Edelstein in Rolling Stone. It says it's a family movie both the Brady's and the Mansons could adore. All right.

I like that. Yeah. So this is by far the most successful Waters film to date. And this leads to something that had never happened since. and it definitely never happened before. His next film is in a bidding war between studios. That's right. Studios are clamoring, fighting to get his next movie,

which is a shocker. And that next movie would become Crybaby, a teen musical romantic comedy starring Johnny Depp released in 1990 that I had never seen before this week. And it might be my favorite John Waters movie at this point. Maybe Serial Mom amazing as well also had not seen that until this week. And man, did I love Serial Mom? Also, there was this line that says about him going mainstream after the moderate success of hairspray.

It seems that someone thought it was a good idea to let the man who defended an act of bestiality by quipping, I think we made the chicken's life better. It got to be in a movie. It got fucked. Have a career in Hollywood. Sorry, I just say, I love that. You gave him the keys to Hollywood now. I mean, there's people have done fun.

far worse with gotten the keys to Hollywood. Yes. Absolutely. So cry baby. Tommy for this one before. Set in 1950s in Baltimore, of course. The story is about the love between a delinquent quote or quote unquote drape and good girl or quote unquote square.

So Greece, I get it. But it's like, yeah, I think this is my Greece, I think, really. It was inspired by fear mongering headlines, warning of drapes in the Baltimore sun, as well as a story about the murder of a young drape at named Carolyn Wells. Waters said it was very, this is what happens to girls who hang out with drapes and claims that the boy that lived across the street from him. We talked about this in the last episode. He always worked on his hot rod and Waters was low-key obsessed with him because his parents like hated him and he was afraid of him. And, you know, he was just this drape. And he said that that guy was crybaby.

Oh, that's great. Johnny Depp is hot as fuck in this movie. That is the, and I said this last time, the only time I've ever been attracted to Johnny Depp and I wanted him to be my boyfriend so badly. I wanted to be Tracy Lords in this movie and I wanted to be my boyfriend. Except that I was definitely the Hatchet Face.

Let's all be real here. Hatchet face dances with her boyfriend in this where she's rubbing her face on his chest and they're just like grinding on each other. It's like, fuck, yeah. Well, yeah, but you don't have a hatchet face. I mean, I got all that. the other parts. That again too, bringing up

what you were talking about with Rookie Lake, when he needed this character filled, because that was originally going to be divine. Ah, yes. Yeah, he put out an ad that just said, looking for an actress that has the body of Jane Mansfield, and I think it's an alarming face that she's

proud of. Yes. Proud of having an alarming face. Which is cool of shit. I mean, like, you know. I mean, that's why when they're in the scene in the, when they're on trial, when the judge says, it's a shame about your face. And she responds, there's nothing to matter with my face.

I got character. I can quote most of this movie. Hatchet face is so great in this. It's also like for as big of an over-the-top comedy as it is, like I said earlier, it's like Greece meets like Class of Newcomb High. It is so, you are so right. It is so sexy. Amy Lecane is super sexy.

Tracy Lords, I was like, oh my God. Hachimachi-machi. That's a Hachimachi. Good God. And I would say, hold on, I think I agree with you the Greece thing. But I would go so far to say, Crybaby's a little bit more of a feminist movie because in Greece, I mean, on Greece, Sandy. Gives up her everything.

She changes her identity to please him. And in this, that main character, what's her name, blanking on her character's name. I want to say it's Sandy, but I know that's Greece. But she at the very start of the movie is fascinated by. she wants to be a bad girl and she was thrust into this sort of, you know, polite overture of life, you know, where she's... Allison. Allison. Allison Vernon Williams.

So she was given this life and she really wants to be bad. So she immediately is already like a more feminist character in that she changes because she fucking wants to change. And she's like attracted to the bad boy because of that. And she's the one that like gets him out of jail and probably my favorite sequence in the film, the jailer. Please, Mr. Jailor. Yeah, man. So fun.

On top of that hot rod, oh my God, it's so, and that whole. Also, sidebar, Iggy Pop in this movie, which Iggy Pop, he plays his step, or he plays his grandfather in it. Iggy Popper is Marcus Park. You texted a photo of it, still, and been like, this is Marcus. And I was like, you're right. He's watching himself in the tub. Oh, you caught me in my birthday suit.

It really is Marcus. Yeah, it's unbelievable. And of course, Iggy Pop, who Marcus absolutely loves. I'm sure he absolutely take the compliment. I send him the text with it, and he goes, would I could be Belvedere Ricketts?

That was his response. Oh, my God, so good. I also want Turkey Point to be my home. Like, I love everything about their family. Yes. And of course, he wrote Crybaby because I think that we had made mention of this last week,

he was completely inspired and obsessed with Elvis growing. up with the way he moved, with his music, and he said that it was actually Elvis, who made him first realize he was gay. He said, is there anything more rock and roll than whacking off for the first time to Elvis? Hell yeah. That's great. It was shot on a budget of $8 million, which was more than previous, but still wasn't a super comfortable budget. This was also big deal, because we forget about, and we've seen Johnny Depp go through such an evolution to, unfortunately, he's at now. This was Johnny Depp's first starring role having been the star of the hit TV show 21

Jump Street. We're old enough to remember how big of a deal 21 Jump Street was in terms of making Johnny Depp a household heartthrob situation. And it was just such a big TV show at the time. But you don't realize like he wasn't the film actor, especially character actor that he's become now. And this movie really put his name on the map in that sense. If it wasn't for Cry Baby, I don't think he would have gotten the relationship he got with Tim Burton and got Edward Cisorhands. That's how Tim Burton's eye was caught was because he was in a John Waters movie, and that's how he got Edward Cisorhands. And also Johnny Depp doesn't sing in the movie, obviously it's dubbed,

but he also was very nervous about the dancing on set. He said, I mean, I just don't dance. I don't get it. So John Waters, of course, was like, ah, you'll be fine, don't worry. Waters was right. After convincing Depp that mocking his image would be an antidote. to typecasting, the star's performance caught the eye of Tim Burton.

Because that was all the thing is that Johnny Depp was so scared of being put into a box at that point in time. And John Waters gave him the opportunity of like, all right, you don't want to be in the box? Do this. Totally. Depp even commented that it makes fun, quote, it makes fun of all that stuff I sort of hate. It makes fun of all the teen idol stuff. It makes fun of all the screaming girls.

And for Waters, he actually didn't know who Depp was when he was, when he discovered him for the part. Waters said, I was writing Cry Baby, and I thought, who can I get to play this? I went and bought every teen magazine, and you were on the cover of every one of them. He did an interview with Johnny Depp, by the way, which is a lot of fun to read.

I said, this guy looks perfect. I didn't know anything about you. And then read these magazines, and they said that you were a juvenile delinquent. I thought this is great. But again, it really is such an interesting case study compared to Greece, because again in crease, there's the scene where Sandy and Danny

are in the convertible and he is trying to grab her boob without asking her. And in this movie, when they're hooking up in a pretty hot scene on the blanket, he asked her like four times if it's okay if he touches her breasts. He fucking Crybaby gets consent. And we stand that.

We stand consent. We stand consent. We stand consent. I honestly do just love the over-the-top performance, that Depp delivers in this movie. I think it is just so funny. All of that, and just the whole thing when she's like drinking the tears. Everything they do with the tear drops

and everything is so funny. I think it's a shame, though, that he said that this was the movie that he watched that made him never watch his own movies again. Wow. Because he hated his performance. I thought he was great.

I think it's exactly what he was supposed to be. Johnny Depp said that? Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, I thought it was awesome. Of course, the film was difficult to make. It was a lot bigger this time. Van Smith talked about, you know, one of his big designers. It talked about how they had to, for the first time, really answer to a studio in a way they never had before.

There were a ton of tech issues. There was an onset flooding incident. One of my favorite anecdotes was apparently the FBI showed up to arrest Tracy Lords. I don't know the exact reason why they had something to do with a federal case against her. And Waters literally just said every person on that set had been arrested. So she was in very good company and well taken care of in that sense. Tracy Lord's in herself. She's amazing.

But she also, she started stripping very young with a fake ID. And also she started being in porn, super young. But she's a fucking badass. Yeah. And I think, as much as I think that the other ones, it changes over time. Now this is the first movie

that John Waters had done since Divine had passed as well. Yes. As we made mention that Divine was supposed to play Hatchet Face, which I think it would have been a, this would have been a completely different movie if Hatchet Face had been played by Divine. I think it would have been a much more John Waters movie

in the same vein though, because it does take you out of the element. But I do like the fact that they must up Hatchet Face's face more so because she was like 15 years older than everyone else on the set. And then they, like she has an interesting face, but they really exaggerated it with all of the makeup. Yeah, and I think she has albinosom or one of those disorders.

So they kind of highlighted the differences that she has in a way that really made it. Yeah, made her a hatchet face. And she's not, that's not what her face looks like. But I think it's about time that we start talking about pussy Willis. Wait, real quick, before we go, I just want to say, Patty Hurst is in pretty much all of his later movies. And I love her so much in Crybaby. She's such a funny character. I think that she's even better in Serial Mom.

Yeah, she's okay. So now I'll go to Serial Mom because she's also great on that. Yeah, so I will say, unfortunately, Cry Baby was a flop, which really bums me out. But just like all of his other movies, it has since become a cult classic. And that's when we get into Serial Mom. A Sweet Mother finds herself participating in homicidal activities when she sees the occasion call for it. God, I love Kathleen Turner. This film, too, is satirizing true crime documentaries and stories in a series.

a way that I don't think they really had been. I feel like again, he was very ahead of his time in terms of the popularity of true crime that would boom later on, thanks to, of course, other shows, another show on our network, the last podcast network. This movie actually signified a lot of first for John Waters. It was the first sets to be built from scratch. It was the first use of a stuntman. It had the highest budget of $13 million. And also it was the first casting of a mainstream Hollywood star in the lead female role. As Kathleen Turner, man. And it's also the most amount of money the director ever spent for music rights.

They did say, he did say this was actually the budget that he felt finally was enough money to make the movie he wanted to make with the $13 million, which is still very low when it comes to film budgets, by the way. Oh, yeah. But he still said that he, he said about the slickness of Serial Mom because this is, the first in his mind the first slick movie he made I would agree with that he said I always wanted them to look like Hollywood movies I just didn't know how to do it but then he called his technique nothing more than failed style but he does return back to his underground raw vision when it comes back around to Cecil be demented yeah we'll talk about that later I loved the the look and feel serial mom this was one of the biggest surprises for me I had never seen it before and I just

apps. I just thought it was hilarious and just so fun. Water said, I always thought of it as a true crime parody. I've always read true crime books. I used to go to trials and I was a true crime buff. And every movie I make is a satire of some genre and I'd never really done a true crime movie. It was kind of a little bit ahead of its time because in a way, it's like OJ. Now there's scenes out of it that look right out of OJ. OJ hadn't even happened yet. Court TV hadn't really happened yet. By the way, I wonder if John Waters likes the last podcast on the left, we should hit him up and find out. I mean, he totally listens to it. He's probably listening to this right now.

Oh, my God, I hope so. Hi, John. But, yeah, he had to battle with the studio a lot as well on this movie. So, again, I think that slickness and everything probably had its, you know, its backfires in that sense of, yeah, it's not as raw and gutteral. But I also have to deal with these fucking studio people. I think that actually fits. with the fact that he's trying to do this overtly 50 style home that's completely a lie. Again, it's another juxtaposition where I think it works that it's clean because you're

showing this woman do these awful things, but on the surface, she's trying to look this certain way. So I think the style of film works in its favor. That's what he said. He said the original pitch was it's not the usual John Waters movie about crazy people in a crazy world, but a movie about a normal person in a realistic world doing the craziest thing of all as the audience cheers her on. I also love you talking about the cleanliness. One of my favorite lines.

I think her kid says the word shit. And she just goes, you know how I hate the brown word. The brown word. Also fucking shoutouts to a crossover for us. Joan Rivers, cereal hags. Love it. Women who love men who love men who. mutilate.

Fuck yeah, dude. That was all. Apparently John Waters and Joan Rivers were friends in real life and they very much respected each other and that makes so much sense. Because they both said what they wanted to fucking say when they wanted

to say it. And what I do also love and enjoyed while watching Serial Mom is knowing that John Waters thinks that this is his best movie. He said that a little bit that he identifies with Serial mom because there's also a lot of

like I hate people who chew gum. It gets on my nerves. I don't like summer white, worn after Labor Day. A lot of things that Serial Mom disliked, I sympathize with her. The problem is that everyone has little things which get on their nerves every day that they could kill people for. But they don't do it literally. They do it figuratively.

So I enjoyed that the two people that I've seen of all the things that I read through that he identifies with are Tracy Turnblad and Serial Mom. Totally. That's great. He said his favorite thing about shooting serial mom was having Kathleen Turner on set. Quote, that was kind of electrifying because she was such a pro and such a good actress. She doesn't suffer fools, but was a complete team player. As long as you were on your game, she was even better.

So I have great memories of being with her through the whole movie. It's also an interesting contrast to, they were a few years apart, but she did that movie Peggy Sue got married where she's again playing sort of like a 50s character. Love it, love it. I love that movie. I know, I love that movie. Here's a good story from Waters about Kathleen Turner that just makes her seem so badass. We built all of the sets in a warehouse in some kind of industrial park. And then as we started to shoot, we realized that there was a wood place very near.

They used wood chippers and bus salls all day. So we had to go over there with Kathleen and beg them not to, which how could they not do it? That's their whole factory. But they did somehow work with us. And I think Kathleen helped a lot to negotiate the buzzsaws that were ruining our sound takes, which is you normally wouldn't expect your lead actress, especially as big of a name as hers, to go and negotiate with a bunch of lumberjacks and a wood mill.

But, you know, it works. If you can get that actress to go over there, you can get the fucking buzzsaws. I don't care if she kills. I want Kathleen Turner to be my wife. I'm completely in love with Kathleen Turner, the husky voice. And really, the way she says pussy willow. It gets me there So funny

Her prank phone call voice was so funny I just immediately was like dying laughing It's so funny And also barely Mink Stoll had said who plays The woman that she is

Calling on the phone And it's even just The letter that she sends her It's so fucking funny And Mink Stoll said This is the first time that John Waters kept asking her to tone it down

In a movie that she was in for her Mink Stole is fantastic And it actually always takes me a minute to find her in the movies because she always kind of transforms herself for the different parts. I was really excited to see her playing this divorced lady with the perm. He did have to battle with execs over the ending as well. They wanted her to become imprisoned, which really he felt like to be it all purpose.

I will say my one complaint, I think that it does suffer from some third act problems. I think once she gets taken in, I think the courtroom scene feels a little long and the tooth. And I love the Suzanne Summers bit. Yes. I think that's really fucking great. Yeah. Yeah. The Suzanne Summers cameo is amazing.

And the ending is really solid. But yeah, that would be the only thing I'd have to say about it. But it was only because of how splashy and fun everything up to the court stuff. And we were talking about this before too. And that of all the things that I've watched John Waters this week, I think that them eating the tiny chickens was the most disgusted I had been. all of the movies. I had to turn away. I don't want to watch

that, but it's insane that he just put that in a mainstream movie and it's fine. Also, the fuck, fuck, that dental scene when it's drilling into the tooth. Yeah, that one's rough too. I had to look away. I had to look away. That one's rough too. There you go. And I didn't even look

away when Divine ate actual dog shit. And I had to look away during the dental scene. Yeah, me too. But I have to say, with the serial mom, the band Camel Lips is L7, which was so exciting. And I forgot that they were in this because I was so young last time I saw it.

Yeah, that was fucking exciting. L7's an awesome punk band. And if you didn't notice that in the close-ups, the band Camelips, if their pants, they had all the camel ties in the pants. I was definitely like, I was like out of it sick as a dog and on heavy edibles while watching cereal mom.

The best way to see it, I think. All right. Next comes Pecker. Full of grace. I have seen this movie hundreds of times. Oh, really? And I forget about how many times I had seen it because it was on Comedy Central all the time. That's true. That's true. And so much of it, though, I realized now was cut out because it was on Comedy Central. And I was like, oh, that makes so much more sense with the teabagging scene.

Oh, they're showing pussy hair in the photographs. Now I get it. It's crazy. Because I'm sure that I think I saw it more rental than Comedy Central, but I remember being on all the time. But that movie doesn't make any sense with all the stuff cut out. And that's why I think I never would have said that it was one of my favorite movies or by any means. It was just a movie that was always on because it was on. Yes, the 1998 comedy drama starring Eddie Edward Furlong.

You might remember him from Terminator 2 with Christina Ricci, among many others, about a young photographer. for in Baltimore that catches the eye of pretentious artists in NYC that make him famous. That sounds like a John Waters plot to me on a budget of 6.5 million. So less than half of what he was working with or about half of what he was working with last film. And he had to go to court about the title, which is insane to me because the MPAA turned it down at first. I love it because when he went into court, the lawyers just had a list of titles like Shaft, free willie in and out and he said he gave a little speech

saying pecker might be vulgar but it's not an obscene word this is a movie about someone who wants his good name back and in this case the good name is pecker but what I still like is that even though he got his way he still stuck it to him and that if you look it up it is

called John Waters quote like with the what is it what's that what's that Aposophie John Waters's Pecker Interesting. So it's still dirty because it's John Waters'

Pek. Sure. People do think it is, and they are right, it is slightly autobiographical, especially the character of Pecker as John Waters himself. He said, the character is and isn't. John Waters, that is.

Some of the things that happen to Pecker happened to me. Things about success, people thinking I made a billion dollars off of Pink Flamingos, which is hilarious to me, personally. Who thinks that? Coming to Baltimore as in

the film and saying, show me the low life. That's definitely based on reality. Also, I did do photography the last five years. I was heavily involved in the art world, which I know something about. But when I started, I didn't live in a blue collar neighborhood like Pecker. I was ambitious. I was quote, in on the joke. I wasn't naive about any of it. So I'm not Pecker. I think it's kind of fun too that the, so there was a photographer on set that took all of Peckers photos. And his name was Chuck Chakakas. believe it's how you say his last name. It doesn't matter.

It's just fun to hear you try to say it. I think it's Shakachis. And he had actually served Waters multiple times at the camera shop where he worked in Baltimore. And so, Shakatchis would be on set taking the photographs that are used in the

movie. Nice. So he wasn't taking them in advance. He was doing it on set. And after a take, he would duck in, take a photo real fast, and then he would immediately run to his lab so that by the end of the day, he could have the photos back in John Waters' hands so that they can use them on the set the following day.

And he said, sometimes he'd end up with only a couple of usable frames, such as when he was tasked with shooting two rats having sex. Man, he loves rat puppets. He does. He says, every day, I'd be like, please God, please God, let there be something here that can work. Waters wanted the photographs to look deliberately amateur,

so Chicacus printed through a piece of glass that he covered in dirt and tea bag stains. He made about 30 prints in total and was forced to turn all the negatives over to the producers when the filming ended. I think Chicacus is a dirtier name than Peschishishishish. Chicacus. Also, I did want to say that I need to try pit beef. I've not had it yet, and I'm very intrigued. And apparently, John Waters is not a fan of pit beef.

Jackie, no, don't do it. He said, once I went out with a guy who was a pit beef guy, and I loved having him tell stories about the pit beef king. I like rare meat, and piff beef always seems like it's cooked to death, which is why he's not a huge fan of it. Pit beef. Pit beef is difficult. Yeah, he also said, Scrapple's another Baltimore dish that I've had in my movies,

and I don't like that either. It's basically fried mystery meat, which, yes. That is exactly what it is. Yeah, Natalie, you can attest to these things? I mean, I know of, I never ate Scrapple. I've been a vegetarian. Well, I've been a pescatarian. Let's not pretend.

She's a pesky. But even when I was living in Baltimore, I was not a meaty-do. But all the gross college kids around me ate Scrapple all the time. What is Scrapple? It is, it's like a pan- It's just fried. Yeah, it's basically like a fried pancake of meat. It's just called meat with a capital M.

The thing is, I don't want to be a contrarian here, but I've had Scrapple before. You know what, you slap some yolks on it. You put some hot sauce on it and all mixed together. Right. I mean, it's probably close to whatever a hot dog is. Yeah, baby. Give it a dog. All right.

Let's get this dog of cooking with the next movie. Oh, no. I know. We all need to work on our transitions. Starting by not talking about how they're transition. That's our first task. Classic podcast joke talking about how good or terrible transition. A second one was.

Cecil B. Demented is the next. Now, this may have. have technically been the first John Waters movie I watched, which I feel like is kind of a crime. Really? Because I think Sessel v. Demented is a lot of fun and it's interesting, but it is not, not near the movie I would recommend. How old were you when you watched it?

Oh, I believe I rented it from Blockbuster when I was like in high school. Okay. See, I always saw the outside of it at Blockbuster, and I thought it was like a dark, dingy action movie because the outside of the VHS is completely not. what the movie is. So this is my first time watching it, and I enjoyed it very much, but I kind of almost felt like it was like,

okay, we get it. We do get it. Right. I do get it. I get it. Goes a little long maybe. I do remember having that same feeling, watching it at home.

It is about an A-list, Hollywood actress who was kidnapped by Art House filmmakers to star in their movie, and I do love that premise a lot. It's also, I did not know a lot about the kidnapping of Patricia Hurst. Patricia Hurst in 1974, she does have a cameo in the film, which I think is amazing.

Hearst was just 19 at the time when she was kidnapped from her Berkeley apartment by an urban guerrilla group. She is the granddaughter of the William Randolph Hurst publishing fortune. So it's completely what this movie is based on. It is definitely, it is influenced by the Patty Hurst trial because she was also kidnapped and she underwent Stockholm syndrome we think it is still not quite sure but she claims that she was like raped and everything yes but yeah there i mean there's that iconic photo of her on the um the is it i think a bank yes with her with the bray on robbing it with the bray and the gun um but yeah she and i believe her i mean oh of course i mean that's it is still it's just they claim that it's up in the air right but john waters was

completely fascinated with patty hurst of course because as we had said earlier he was fascinated by crimes and trials from a young age, but he actually went to the Manson trials. He went to Patty Hearst trial. That's how much he was fascinated because he wanted to see the entire process. He said that it was the infamy of crime that fascinates him much more than the crime itself.

And they actually had a friendship because while everything that was going on in 94 with O.J. Simpson, that they were actually talking on the phone throughout the entire Bronco Chase. He and Patty Hurst just talking. just talking about what was going on and how the infamy of crime

takes over the crimes itself and makes a mockery of the entire judicial system. And this will come into play further on too when John Waters, he's very openly against the death penalty. He's openly, he really is fighting for lots of different things that he doesn't feel is right with the judicial system because he sits and he's obsessed with it. And he actually befriends, people who are in.

notorious styles. That's why now she's in all the, she's in a bunch of his movies because it's like, well, I think you got a bad rep. I think that it wasn't fair what happened to you. So why don't we work together? And she's so fun and engaging in those movies. Yeah. And this fun, the rest of this cast, Melanie Griffith, Stephen Dorff, Alicia Witt, Adrian Greenier, Michael Shannon, Maggie Jillenhall. Oh my God, Maggie Jillenhall as the Satanus though, which is very funny because she's drinking goat blood. She gets to play all the fun parts. She's such a cartoonish version of it, but I think it's also, they sing this no budget rap song in the middle of it, where it's like, no crap services, no budget. And they're doing this entire thing about how the movie they're making in the movie has no budget. While also, I didn't record the budget of Cecil Bita Minted, but I couldn't imagine it was very large.

No. And I did, I will say I wrote down the quote, family is just a dirty word for censorship. Of course, is a play into what happened with him with Hairspray and with Crybaby. And that is something, that is when finally Melanie Griffith has given her own spot to say one of the, quote, lines in the movie that she's allowed to improv and that is what she says. That's funny. Being undergoing Stockholm syndrome. All right.

Do we want to move on to Hairspray going to Broadway? I know we're getting. We're getting to the end. We just have so many things. We have so many things. Yeah, please stop me if I'm moving too fast because I want to get it all in here. So hairspray, so theater producer Margo Lyon saw the original film on television at a time when she was scoping movies for a potential musical. She ends up getting John Waters on the phone and he gives her his blessing.

And then she acquires the rights from New Line Cinema. Classy move, Margo. Classy move. They tried the production out at Seattle's Fifth Avenue, theater and it was a big enough hit that they were able to take it to Broadway in August of 2002. This thing is a giant hit. It wins eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Book, Best Score, and Direction. It runs for over six years. This always blows my mind about successful musical performances. It had 2,642 performances.

Insane. It's just fucking crazy. I didn't do a ton of research on it because it technically, it's It's not like John Waters is. It's just a testament to how timeless that story is. And I love that it got a second life. And crossover again, John Travolta, of course, taking on Devine's part as the mother and having a bit of a resurgence himself because of that. Yeah, and it's great.

It's just fun to, like, it's titillating to know from the side of somebody who likes John Waters. Dirtier films that, like, he actually transitioned into a family musical. Yeah. A lot of people probably don't even know his work. I mean, but there's still like the whole song, it's like the black of the berry, the sweet of the dark. Yeah, it's definitely not like a clean, clean, clean. No, but that's what I like about is that it's put into an entire, you know,

it's put into the box of like this family friendly thing, but it still has like some edge to. Oh, yeah, definitely. It definitely does. What I love to is on Amazon, not only can you see, they made a movie of it, of course, that had some good success, but also they have a lot. a filmed version of the live Broadway performance that you can check out, which is fantastic. Love it.

Holy shit, do we, now does this, where we talk about a dirty shame, which I didn't know anything about. I think we can just touch upon it and move on. Let's just touch upon it. Yeah. Let's touch, I mean, it is a, I. It is a movie that he made.

Again, I appreciate. The cast is amazing. The cast is amazing. Tracy Oman, Johnny Knoxville, Selma Blair, Chris Isaac, Suzanne Shepard, And of course, Mink Stoll, who is one of, I believe, is it just her, or I think there's one other one

who's in every single one of his movies, period. And Mary Vivian Pierce? Mary Vivian Pierce. It's an amazing accomplishment. And some of those side characters, too, are in all of his movies. I don't even know their names, but they show up for, like, little parts. And about Johnny Knoxville, which we had talked about, again, last episode, we touched upon, John Waters had said,

I think the only person working today who matches the Pink Flamingo's sensibility is Johnny Knoxville and the Jackass Movies. I love them. We were never just trying to shock. We were trying to be funny. That's why these gross out comedies that Hollywood spends $100 million on making aren't funny. There's no love in there.

Just mean spiritedness. I 100% agree with that. A thousand. He's so right. And I like that this movie is made with silly fun in mind. Absolutely. He says it is a feel good sex fetish miracle religious movie. quote unquote as Waters put it.

You know that genre. And it was inspired actually by Waters' discovery of sexual slang terms online. This is very influenced by the wild fetish just explosion that happened with the advent of the internet. He said, the only thing that shocked me about all of the fetishes was that none of them had a sense of humor about it. Every one of those, they're dead serious. I did an interview with American Bear Magazine and they call it coming out of the second closet. I, with a straight face, thought,

I understand if you've told your parents you're gay and they accepted it, but then you say, Mom, Dad, sit down. I have something else to tell you. I'm a bear. You're a what? And they don't think it's funny. They really take this seriously.

Bears have cuddle orgies. Something that is really repellent to me. Spell it to me. But all of them are serious about it. There's not a lot of humor. about it. And I do think that is one of the more interesting things with the internet and how we are not allowed to at all laugh about some of these things that really, I feel like we should have more of a sense of humor about. But now we have to take everybody's taste and fetish and everything so too

seriously. I do think, I do think that's also partly because of the fact Hollywood makes movies where they only take, they mock the other all the time in such a mean way because they don't get irony or have any kind of empathy. So it's hard to like sort of differentiate between what's us all laughing together or being laughed at. Right. And I also think it goes hand in hand with how John Waters felt about just coming out in general because according to him, he's like, I never have come out. I didn't come out to my parents. I, you know, I'm not, I didn't have to come out to Hollywood. I just am. I am what I am. And I never needed to come out. Because why am I going to put such

Why is he going to put such seriousness behind it? Like even just what he was saying in this of like, to sit down to let you know that this is what I am. He's like, this is what I am. But I do feel like being gay is probably the most normal thing about John Waters. It's probably not as normal things.

I'm just gay, so don't. He claimed that he asked the MPAA what he needed to remove to get an R rating. This is John Waters. The movie is NC-17. and apparently they told him that they stopped taking notes after a while

and that if he removed the necessary stuff there'd only be 10 minutes of movie there. Sounds about, I mean, sounds about right. Just even in the trailer of it, it is Tracy Allman sitting on a water bottle that is in the trailer of the movie. Oh yeah, baby. And it ends with Johnny Knoxville's character

Ray Ray shooting semen out of his head to become the Messiah. You know. You know. And that is the last film, He made, he did do, what is it called, Kitty Flamingos, I believe? Yeah, Kitty Flamingos, yes.

Do a reading or perform and perform a less filthy version of Pink Flamingos. It's like a kid-friendly version of Pink Flamingos. And he's actually had three development deals since a dirty shame. He said he wrote Fruitcake, which is something that he was paid to write and that it was with Picture House, a new line. Then it all, like, I guess a person named Bob Shea came, and everything changed. Then he got paid by NBC to write Hairspray as a TV series,

and that never went anywhere. And then he got paid by HBO to write the sequel to Hairspray, which he originally wanted to do the sequel to Hairspray and used the title that he had written for Hairspray originally, which was called White Lipsick. Yes. So he wanted to write Hairspray to White Lipsick, which would take place in the late 60s,

and the story would include Link, Dabbling, and LSD, which, please HVR. Please make this movie. I will watch the fuck out of this movie. And yeah, those are just the films. Of course, John Waters has done so many other things as an artist. He has been exhibiting his photography and art galleries since the early 90s, including at NYC's New Museum and the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Please look up his art. His art is absolutely amazing. This was, yeah, this was a surprise to me. I didn't know any of this. As we were talking about last week's episode, he was obsessed with puppets. So what does he do with his own visual art that he makes? He makes a lot of puppets,

as well as doing a lot of Photoshop pictures and that are all very creepy and surreal. If you look up John Waters, Los Angeles, it's him as if he had lived in Los Angeles and he's got all this facework done. It's a very unsettling picture. He did the same kind of thing to a picture of Justin Bieber, but he's actually, and he says, quote,

I am a believer. He's actually a fairly big fan of Justin Bieber. Of course. And they have met a couple of things. of times and so he got permission to use his visage in his gallery. But what he says is, we all know contemporary art can be witty, but can it be funny? I actually think that it can. So he made things like this. I can, it's described, it's called Play Date 2006. It is a sculpture of two dolls of Michael Jackson and Charles Manson as babies. And he worked with Tony Gardner

who made Chuckie in the Child's Play movies to make these very unsettling baby dolls. But what I loved of his puppet work was a sculpture called Control. And it is Ike Turner as a puppeteer pulling the strings on Tina Turner. He said, quote, I was a puppeteer as a child. I loved Ike and Tina Turner very much.

I get why she hated him, but I still think she was the best when she was with him singing-wise. It was a look at the melodrama of that. That's what his sculpture. was four, which that is a rough thing to say. But if you have ever looked up videos of Ike and Tina Turner on stage, it's fire. They were fire together on stage.

Horrible human being. It was horrible human being. It was horrible to her. But on stage, I will give him that. They were fire. He's also, you already mentioned one of his books that he did. The one that I will admit, I'm actually really excited to pick this one up. I'm going to probably put an order in on it in the next day or so.

He put out a book called Car Sick. which recounted his experience hitchhiking across the U.S. from Baltimore to San Francisco, purposely starting with zero cash. And of course, the most memorable moment from that trip was being picked up by a Republican 20-year-old guy named Brett Biddle, who not only took him to Ohio, but again found him in Denver, purposely sought him out in Denver and took him all the way to Reno Nevada. Biddle said, we are polar opposites when it comes to our politics, religious beliefs. But that's what I loved about the whole trip. It was too. two people able to agree to disagree and still move on and have a great time.

I think that's what America's all about. I love that little story. And I really want to read it. His other books, you already mentioned shock value. He also did Crackpot, The Obsessions of John Waters, which I believe Jeff read, right? Recently, there's also art, a sex book that he put out, role models, Mac Trouble and Mr. Know at All, the Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth. elder. So of course not just a book lover, but a book writer as well. He's got his own one-man

show as well. This filmy world is, I think we mentioned it last time, but it's really entertaining and it's directed by the comedian Jeff Garland, which is another weird thing about it. But yeah, it's cool. Definitely something, it's hard to find. It used to be streaming on Netflix for years and now you kind of have to get the DVD of everything. Yeah, you got to get the DVD. And something else I love that he's delved into because again, he's just, he's a Renaissance man. For the past couple of years, he's been doing this thing called Camp John Waters that is in Connecticut, and it is a sleepaway camp experience that he rents out this whole adult camp. I was so jealous when I heard about this. Dude, this year, the guest counselors are Kathleen Turner, Patty Hurst, and Mink Stole.

Wow. I immediately was like, I want to go do this. It's, of course, completely sold out. They do things like they have themed dance parties. Is this every year? Yeah. This year, it's a year. John Waters performs his one-man show. There's hairspray karaoke. There's Bloody Mary Bingo.

There's a John Waters costume contest that's judged by John Waters himself. It is the anti-camp for people that love camp. That's amazing. I want to go so badly. Oh, we got to try to go on in these years. It just looks like it's so much fun. I love that he wants to be involved with people. He wants to talk to people. He wants to get to know the people that also are obsessed with his work because that's who he made it for. He made it for himself, but he made it for us. Totally. I love John Waters. I love John Waters. I love John Waters.

I love John Waters. That's the beauty of doing these episodes is for us, we get to find these amazing stories and learn so much more than I ever thought was possible to know, you know, about this guy. I apologize, I feel like we rushed through some of the stuff because there's just so much. She's just done so much. It's true. And it is a lot to take in in one week. If you have the opportunity, I would say spread out your viewings of John Waters' movies.

There's at least a few moments in every movie that are going to make you feel kind of sick. I feel like I'm going to miss hearing the Baltimore accent. It's very close to Pittsburgh. It is. It's a very specific accent. And I really like noticing the specific words that people say that I'm just like, there it is. There it is. Hell yeah.

My theory on why Pittsburgh and Baltimore have close accent. sense is because they're both river cities. And I feel like there's a chance that river people kind of came through both cities and would kind of like exchange goods and stuff. Yeah, I'll exchange some goods. The problem is I need to get changed. I got to get John

Waters out of my head. I've been disgusting. I really amped up how disgusting I am. Again, Framanda Cheese. When was the last time you said the phrase fromunda cheese? Not since my wedding night. Well, there you have it. That is our episode.

on John Waters, thank you so much for joining us for this episode of pop history. You guys are the best. Check us out on patreon.com forward slash P7 podcast. You can follow me, Twitch.tv. 4.slash h old Nader's ho, Jackie. And don't forget, my lords and lassies. You can listen to P.7 for free on Spotify, guys. And guess what?

We're scooting on over there on Valentine's Day. That's February 14th, for those of you who don't give it H about Valentine's Day. But why wait? You can download and listen to all of our episodes right now with a free account on Spotify. So go ahead, follow the whole last podcast network on Spotify to get new episodes as soon as they come out. My name is Natalie Jean. You can follow me on all the bullshit at The Natty Gene. Hell yeah.

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