John Waters
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the director born 1893, see John Waters (director born 1893). For other uses, see John Waters (disambiguation).
| John Waters | |
|---|---|
.jpg)
Waters at Pen America/Free Expression Literature, May 2014.
| |
| Born | John Samuel Waters, Jr. April 22, 1946 Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. |
| Residence | Baltimore, Maryland |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Boys' Latin School of Maryland |
| Alma mater | New York University |
| Occupation | Film director, screenwriter, producer, actor |
| Years active | 1964–present |
| Notable work(s) | Hairspray, Pink Flamingos |
| Home town | Lutherville, Maryland |
John Samuel Waters Jr. (born April 22, 1946) is an American film director, screenwriter, actor, stand-up comedian, journalist, visual artist, and art collector, who rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films. Waters's 1970s and early '80s films feature his regular troupe of actors known as the Dreamlanders—among themDivine, Mink Stole, David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce, and Edith Massey. Starting with Desperate Living (1977), Waters began casting real-life convicted criminals (Liz Renay, Patty Hearst) and controversial people (Traci Lords, a former pornographic actress).
Waters dabbled in mainstream filmmaking with Hairspray (1988), which introduced Ricki Lake and earned a modest gross of $8 million domestically. In 2002, Hairspraywas adapted to a long-running Broadway musical, which itself was adapted to a hit musical film that earned more than $200 million worldwide. After the crossover success of the original film version of Hairspray, Waters's films began featuring familiar actors and celebrities such as Johnny Depp, Edward Furlong, Melanie Griffith,Chris Isaak, Johnny Knoxville, Martha Plimpton, Christina Ricci, Lili Taylor, Kathleen Turner, and Tracey Ullman.
Although he maintains apartments in New York City and San Francisco, and a summer home in Provincetown, Waters still mainly resides in his hometown of Baltimore,Maryland, where all his films are set. He is recognizable by his trademark pencil moustache, a look he has retained since the early 1970s.
Contents
[hide]Early life[edit]
Waters was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Patricia Ann (née Whitaker) and John Samuel Waters, who was a manufacturer of fire-protection equipment.[1] His family were upper-middle class Roman Catholics.[2] Waters grew up in Lutherville, Maryland, a suburb of Baltimore. His boyhood friend and muse Glenn Milstead, later known as Divine, also lived in Lutherville.
The movie Lili inspired an interest in puppets in the seven-year-old Waters, who proceeded to stage violent versions of Punch and Judy for children's birthday parties. Biographer Robrt L. Pela says that Waters's mother believes the puppets in Lili had the greatest influence on Waters's subsequent career (though Pela believes tacky films at a local drive-in, which the young Waters watched from a distance through binoculars, had a greater effect).[3]
Cry-Baby was also a product of Waters's boyhood, because of his fascination as a 7-year-old with the "Drapes" then receiving intense news coverage because of the murder of a young drapette, coupled with his awed admiration for a young man who lived across the street and who possessed a hot rod.[4][5]
Waters was privately educated at the Calvert School in Baltimore. After attending Towson Jr. High School in Towson, Maryland,[6] and Calvert Hall College High School in nearby Towson, he ultimately graduated from Boys' Latin School of Maryland. For his sixteenth birthday, Waters received an 8mm movie camera from his maternal grandmother, Stella Whitaker.
Career[edit]
Early career[edit]
His first short film was Hag in a Black Leather Jacket. According to Waters, the film was shown only once in a "beatnik coffee house" in Baltimore, although in later years he has included it in his traveling photography exhibit.
Waters enrolled at New York University (NYU). The school, however, was not what Waters had in mind:
Extremely influential to his creative mind, Waters tells Robert K. Elder in an interview for The Film That Changed My Life, was The Wizard of Oz.
Waters has further credited his influences as, among others, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Federico Fellini, William Castle and Ingmar Bergman. He has stated that he takes an equal amount of joy and influence from high-brow "art" films and sleazy exploitation films.
In January 1966, Waters and some friends were caught smoking marijuana on the grounds of NYU; he was soon kicked out of his NYU dormitory. Waters returned to Baltimore, where he completed his next two short films Roman Candles and Eat Your Makeup.[1] These were followed by the feature-length films Mondo Trasho and Multiple Maniacs.
Waters's films would become Divine's primary star vehicles. All of Waters's early films were shot in the Baltimore area with his company of local actors, the Dreamlanders. In addition to Divine, the group includedMink Stole, Cookie Mueller, Edith Massey, David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce, Susan Walsh, and others. These early films were among the first picked up for distribution by the fledgling New Line Cinema. Waters's later films premiered at Baltimore's Senator Theatre and sometimes at the Charles Theatre.
Waters's early campy movies present exaggerated characters in outrageous situations with hyperbolic dialogue. Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, and Desperate Living, which he labeled the Trash Trilogy, pushed hard at the boundaries of conventional propriety and movie censorship. A particularly notorious scene from Pink Flamingos, added as a non sequitur to the film's end, featured—in one continuous take without special effects—a small dog defecating and Divine eating its feces.
Move toward the mainstream[edit]
Waters's 1981 film Polyester starred Divine opposite former teen idol Tab Hunter. Since then, his films have become less controversial and more mainstream, although works such as Hairspray, Cry-Baby, Serial Mom, Pecker, and Cecil B. Demented still retain his trademark inventiveness. The film Hairspray was turned into a hit Broadway musical that swept the 2003 Tony Awards, and a film adaptation of the Broadway musical was released in theaters on July 20, 2007 to positive reviews and commercial success. Cry-Baby, itself a musical, was also converted into a Broadway musical.
In 2004, the NC-17-rated A Dirty Shame marked a return to his earlier, more controversial work of the 1970s. He had a cameo in Jackass Number Two, which starred Dirty Shame co-star Johnny Knoxville, and another small role as paparazzo Pete Peters in 2004's Seed of Chucky.
In 2007, he became the host ("The Groom Reaper") of 'Til Death Do Us Part, a program on America's Court TV network featuring dramatizations of marriages that soured and ended in murder.
In 2008, Waters was planning to make a children's Christmas film called Fruitcake[8] starring Johnny Knoxville and Parker Posey.[9] Filming was planned for November 2008,[10]but it was shelved in January 2009.[11] In 2010, Waters told the Chicago Tribune that "Independent films that cost $5 million are very hard to get made. I sold the idea, got a development deal, got paid a great salary to write it—and now the company is no longer around, which is the case with many independent film companies these days."[12]
Waters has been known to create characters with alliterated names for his films including Corny Collins, Cuddles Kovinsky, Donald and Donna Dasher, Dawn Davenport, Fat Fuck Frank, Francine Fishpaw, Link Larkin, Motormouth Maybelle, Mole McHenry, Penny and Prudy Pingleton, Ramona Ricketts, Sandy Sandstone, Sylvia Stickles, Todd Tomorrow, Tracy Turnblad, Ursula Udders, Wade Walker, and Wanda Woodward.
Fine art[edit]
Since the early 1990s, Waters has been making photo-based artwork and installations that have been internationally exhibited in galleries and museums. In 2004, the New Museum in New York City presented a retrospective of his artwork curated by Marvin Heiferman and Lisa Phillips. His most recent exhibition was Rear Projection in April 2009, at the Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York and the Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles.[13] Waters has been represented by C. Grimaldis Gallery in Baltimore, Maryland since 2002.[14]
Waters's pieces are often comical, such as Rush (2009), a super-sized, tipped-over bottle of poppers (nitrite inhalants) and Hardy Har (2006), a photograph of flowers that squirts water at anyone who traverses a taped line on the floor. Waters has characterized his art as conceptual, saying that "the craft is not the issue here. The idea is. And the presentation."[15]
Other interests[edit]
Waters is something of a bibliophile, with a collection of over 8,000 books. When Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson visited Waters in his home in 2011 he commented,
He has had his fan mail delivered to Atomic Books, an independent bookstore in Baltimore, for over 20 years.
Puffing constantly on a cigarette, Waters appeared in a short film shown in film art houses announcing that "no smoking" is permitted in the theaters. This short spot was filmed by Waters for the Nuart Theatre (aLandmark Theater) in West Los Angeles, California, in appreciation to the theater for showing Pink Flamingos for many years. It is shown immediately before any of his films, and before the midnight movie showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Waters has since quit smoking himself.
He played a minister in Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat, which was directed by one of his idols, Herschell Gordon Lewis, and is a sequel to one of his favorite exploitation films.
Waters serves as a board member of Maryland Film Festival, and has selected and hosted one favorite feature film within each Maryland Film Festival since its launch in 1999. Waters' picks have ranged fromJoseph Losey's Boom! to Gaspar Noé's I Stand Alone.
Work in progress[edit]
Saying, "My life is so over-scheduled, what will happen if I give up control?", Waters completed a hitchhiking journey across the United States from Baltimore to San Francisco turning his adventures into a book entitled Carsick.[17] On May 15, 2012, while on the hitchhiking trip, Waters was picked up by 20-year-old Myersville, Maryland councilman Brett Bidle, who thought Waters was a homeless hitchhiker standing in the pouring rain. Feeling bad for Waters, he agreed to drive him four hours to Ohio.[18]
The next day, indie rock band Here We Go Magic tweeted that they had picked John Waters up hitchhiking in Ohio. He was wearing a hat that said, "Scum of the Earth".[19] In Denver, Colorado, Waters reconnected with Bidle (who had made an effort to catch up with him); Bidle then drove him another 1,000 miles (1,600 km) to Reno, Nevada. Before parting ways, Waters arranged for Bidle to stay at his San Francisco apartment. "I thought, you know what, he wanted an adventure, too," said Waters. "He's the first Republican I'd ever vote for."[17]
Bidle later 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 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."[17]
Awards[edit]
In 1999, Waters was honored with the Filmmaker on the Edge Award at the Provincetown International Film Festival.
Personal life[edit]
In 2009, he advocated the parole of former Manson family member Leslie Van Houten. He devotes a chapter to Van Houten in his book Role Models published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in May 2010.[20][21][22]
In 2011, John Waters visited Lake Forest College to give a speech, and was interviewed by the professor Davis Schneiderman.[23]
Waters was a great fan of the music of Little Richard when growing up, claiming that ever since shoplifting a copy of his song "Lucille" at the age of 11, "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." In 1987, Playboy magazine employed Waters to interview his idol, but the interview did not go well, with Waters later remarking that "it turned into kind of a disaster."[25]
Recurring cast members[edit]
Waters often casts certain actors/actresses more than once in his films.
| Actor | Mondo Trasho(1969) | Multiple Maniacs(1970) | Pink Flamingos(1972) | Female Trouble(1974) | Desperate Living(1977) | Polyester(1981) | Hairspray(1988) | Cry-Baby(1990) | Serial Mom(1994) | Pecker(1998) | Cecil B. Demented(2000) | A Dirty Shame(2004) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Divine |  | | | | | | ||||||
| Patricia Hearst | | | | | | |||||||
| Ricki Lake | | | | | | |||||||
| David Lochary | | | | | ||||||||
| Traci Lords | | | ||||||||||
| Susan Lowe | | | | | | | | | | | ||
| Edith Massey | | | | | | |||||||
| Cookie Mueller | | | | | | |||||||
| Mary Vivian Pearce | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| Mink Stole | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| Susan Walsh | | | | | ||||||||
| Alan J. Wendl | | | | | | | ||||||
| Channing Wilroy | | | | | | |
Filmography[edit]
Writer/director[edit]
- Hag in a Black Leather Jacket (1964, 8mm)
- Roman Candles (1966)
- Eat Your Makeup (1968, 16mm)
- Mondo Trasho (1969, 16mm)
- The Diane Linkletter Story (1970, 16mm)
- Multiple Maniacs (1970, 16mm)
- Pink Flamingos (1972, 16 & 35 mm)
- Female Trouble (1974, 16 & 35 mm)
- Desperate Living (1977, 16 & 35 mm)
- Polyester (1981)
- Reckless Eyeballs (1985, unreleased B&Wshort; this film featured the poet Shaun Shane as the lead)[citation needed]
- Hairspray (1988)
- Cry-Baby (1990)
- Serial Mom (1994)
- Pecker (1998)
- Cecil B. Demented (2000)
- A Dirty Shame (2004)
Writer[edit]
- This Filthy World (2006)
No comments:
Post a Comment