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Multiple Maniacs. Photographs by Lawrence Irvine courtesy and copyright Dreamland Studios.John Waters still shocks. While the Pope of Trash may now be something of a respectable elder to queer cinema, appearing on talk shows and making annual movie recommendations for Artforum, his films have retained their ability to surprise and challenge the status quo. Works like Mondo Trasho (1969) and Multiple Maniacs (1970) have kept audiences squirming in their seats (and reaching for the barf bags), but they’ve also gained their long-denied critical understanding. They’re now taken seriously, viewed as earnestly as any kind of “respectable” film that doesn’t feature singing anuses, mother-son incest, or rape via giant lobster. Pink Flamingos (1972) is almost certainly the only film in Sight and Sound’s Top 250 greatest films of all-time list that features its lead eating dog feces from the sidewalk.Yet not every aspect of the Waters canon has been given its rightful due.

The Pope of Trash is about to be the Trash of Tinseltown, as John Waters is slated to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The 77-year-old John Waters will receive his star – designated as the 2,763rd – on September 18th as he is surrounded by frequent collaborators Ricki Lake, Mink Stole and Greg Gorman. As part of Waters’ Dreamlanders troupe, Lake has appeared in five films for Waters, most notably Hairspray, while Stole has appeared in every single one, beginning with 1969’s Mondo Trasho. Meanwhile, Gorman has photographed Waters numerous times, capturing some famous images of the director’s trademark pencil mustache.

As per Ana Martinez, producer of the Hollywood Walk of Fame, “John Waters has been a huge part of pop culture for many years…As a director, he has created some of our historic and favorite film moments and we’re thrilled to welcome him to...

The magic of John Waters' 1972 cult classic "Pink Flamingos" is that even after decades, it still possesses the power to disgust and repel audiences. Bearing an Nc-17 rating — it deserves nothing less — "Pink Flamingos" features copious nudity, cannibalism, assault, vomiting, unsimulated sex, torture, real animal death, and real coprophagy. The characters constantly scream about how much they hate the world, and how wallowing in filth is the only thing that brings them true happiness. Indeed, breaking rules, destroying property, shoplifting, public sexual exposure, and eating poop are acts of blissful, pointedly perverted defiance against a world that demands normality. "Pink Flamingos" is a big queer, naked, punk rock middle finger to the pearl-clutching bourgeoisie.

Waters' movies from the 1970s — "Mondo Trasho," "Multiple Maniacs," "Pink Flamingos," "Female Trouble," and "Desperate Living" — are all essentially supervillain movies. Waters once said in an interview with yours truly (an interview that is sadly now...

Chicago – The legendary “Pope of Trash,” outrageous filmmaker John Waters, promoted his new novel “Liarmouth: A Feel-Bad Romance” at the Chicago Humanities Festival (Chf) on May 7th, 2022, and HollywoodChicago.com was there.

Waters sat down for an interview with Chicago cinéaste Richard Knight Jr. at the Spring Chf, and signed his new novel afterward. Photographer Joe Arce got an Exclusive Portrait of the filmmaker, and Patrick McDonald got a bit of insight into his film film, “Hag in a Black Leather Jacket,” which Waters made on 8mm in 1964 at age 18 … see the 30 second documentary below.

John Waters at Chicago Humanities Festival, May 7th, 2022

Photo credit: Joe Arce of Starstruck Foto for HollywoodChicago.com

John Waters was born in Baltimore, and his met his frequent collaborator Divine (Glenn Milstead) while growing up in nearby Lutherville. He absorbed the atmosphere of “Charm City” and used Baltimore as the early settings for his films,...

John Waters mixed do-it-yourself moviemaking with don’t-try-this-at-home mayhem to produce the ultimate and most fiercely independent film. Made for $12,000, Pink Flamingos premiered at the Baltimore Film Festival 50 years ago. The cult masterwork replaced Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo as the midnight movie in residence at Elgin Theater in Manhattan and set high and low standards for no-budget motion picture filmmaking.

While the extremely low-budget Plan 9 from Outer Space is renowned as the worst film ever made, Pink Flamingos has a street rep as the raunchiest. Ed Wood’s sci-fi horror mashup cost $60,000 to make, which by 1956 standards is still five times the budget Waters spent. And this from an NYU film school reject who stole textbooks and sold them back to the college bookstore, and went to sleazy exploitation movies more often than going to class.

“I went to New York University, very briefly,” Waters is quoted on Dreamlandnews.

I’d recently been absorbed in the deep colors and heartache of Douglas Sirk's melodramas, following on from this I found myself pining for more white picket fence drama, but with a twist. This is where John Waters came back into my world, how I had missed him, so this edition of Notebooks Soundtrack Mix is a sonic ode to a pioneer of perversion. I started back with Polyester (1981) and Serial Mom (1994), which, alongside Gus Van Sant's 1995 To Die For is a double bill I’m always dreaming of. The work of John Waters ramps up the technicolor dreams of Sirk and places them in a camp world of dysfunctional misfits. His work is a reminder to not take things so seriously and that there is a place for everyone in this world which, importantly, includes the poor, repugnant and nasty! Waters is famous for his use of...

Stars: Divine, Tab Hunter, Edith Massey, David Samson, Mary Garlington, Ken King | Written and Directed by John Waters

After his prolific 1970s, enfant terrible John Waters directed only two films in the 1980s, at each end of the decade. They were also his two most mainstream and – relatively speaking – palatable works. One was 1988’s Hairspray, and the other was Polyester, made in 1981.

Waters’ muse Divine plays Francine Fishpaw, a middle-aged housewife who’s married to a wealthy porn cinema owner, Elmer (David Samson). They have two teenage kids: the uncontrollable and self-destructive Lu-lu (Mary Garlington), and Dexter (Ken King), whose frustrated foot fetish leads him to a stint in prison after a rampage as the “Baltimore Foot Stomper”.

Like most Waters flicks, there’s no real plot, just a melting pot of outrageous characters doing hideous things to each other. Francine is the glue that holds the tenable parts of the family together.

It’s 50 years since John Waters made his first feature film, “Mondo Trasho” — a scuzzy, Divine-starring underground ride that set the tone for a career of joyously offending delicate sensibilities and expanding the boundaries of U.S. indie cinema, through such now-celebrated films as “Pink Flamingos,” “Polyester” and the original, pre-Broadway incarnation of “Hairspray.” With Locarno celebrating Waters’ films with a mini-retrospective and the Pardo d’onore Manor award for career achievement, we caught up with the 73-year-old to discuss cinematic rebellion, past and present.

Half a century ago, when you were releasing your first feature, you can’t have imagined that you’d now be getting career awards and retrospectives at a major film festivals.

I know, I love it. It’s so different, though. When I was growing up, people’s parents found my films and called the police. Now people say to me, “My parents love you,...

Previous recipients include Ken Loach, Werner Herzog and Agnès Varda.

Us filmmaker John Waters will receive the honorary Pardo d’onore Manor lifetime achievement award at the 72nd Locarno Film Festival this year (August 7-17).

Waters will accept the award in a special ceremony in Locarno’s Piazza Grande on August 16.

The Baltimore native has been a director for more than fifty years, making his first short film Hag In A Black Leather Jacket in 1964 and his first feature Mondo Trasho in 1969. He is renowned for embracing an irreverent style in films such as Pink Flamingos (1972), Female Trouble (1974) and Desperate Living (1977).

Waters’ 2000 feature Cecil B.

The 34th Film Independent Spirit Awards, which airs live on the IFC cable channel at 5 p.m. Et/2 p.m. Pt this Saturday with Aubrey Plaza as host, is likely to be more indie than it has been recently. Consider that in the past decade, the Spirit Award for Best Feature has agreed with the Academy Award’s Best Picture winner five times: “The Artist” (2011), “12 Years a Slave” (2013), “Birdman” (2014), “Spotlight” (2015) and “Moonlight” (2016).

But there is no way that is happening this year. Why? None of the Spirit nominees –“Eighth Grade,”“First Reformed,” “If Beale Street Could Talk,” “Leave No Trace” and “You Were Never Really Here” — are up for an Oscar. That is quite a shift, given that every Spirit winner for the past nine years has at least been nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars.

The two Spirit categories that are most likely to coincide with Oscar...

Commentary Commentary“Now this is especially hideous. There’s no possible reason that this shot is in the movie.”Multiple Maniacs (1970)

Commentator: John Waters (director, writer, producer, cinematographer, editor)

1. Frequent Criterion Films partner, Janus Films, has been a big part of Waters’ life, and he’s thrilled to be recording this track on the day this film was actually premiering in a Janus art theater. They “were the first ever to show [Ingmar] Bergman to me when I was in high school, I’d see art movies and it was always Janus Films. Criterion always was a class act with what kind of films they’d pick, so I’m incredibly honored that they’d pick to distribute this movie.”

2. “Is it ironic, or is it a natural ending to my career in the best kind of way,” he says regarding his arrival on the Criterion label. He adds the film is what he started with (it was...

From the opening of Multiple Maniacs when Mr. David introduces us to Lady Divine’s Cavalcade of Perversion are we being introduced to John Waters’ own perversion? And how long do we want to stay? Divine’s entrance is as an engorged Elizabeth Taylor bathed in shimmering white light furthering the early mystique of Divine and her Cavacade. From robbing to rosaries, movie posters to murder John Waters is “performing acts” as we have truly entered Waters’ World.

“Produced, directed, written, filmed, and edited by John Waters” – auteur: check. Multiple Maniacs is not a high-budget film and was certainly never screened before the hours of midnight in the 1970’s. Waters made the film for $5000 borrowed from his father also borrowing the land surrounding their house to set the film. During the making of his first film, Mondo Trasho, he was arrested by the police so the early scenes of Multiple Maniacs...

John Waters has never made any secret of his admiration and love for the films of Russ Meyer, the breast-obsessed auteur behind such berserk B-movie classics as Vixen, Mudhoney, and the immortal Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Those exploitation classics had an enormous impact on Waters’ own sex-and-violence-drenched films, especially the early star vehicles for the cross-dressing Divine like Pink Flamingos and Mondo Trasho. When the Criterion Collection released its own edition of Meyer’s 1970 opus Beyond The Valley of The Dolls, Waters was more than happy to share his thoughts about both the movie and the music featured in it. Criterion is currently highlighting some excerpts from Waters’ interview on its website. Scripted by a young Roger Ebert, Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls was the film that was supposed to bring Meyer into the mainstream. Unlike his previous independent pictures, this was a major studio production bankrolled by ...

"It's even weirder now than it ever was," John Waters says, reflecting on his newly restored, resplendently profane Multiple Maniacs. "When I was watching it again recently, I was thinking, 'No wonder my parents were uptight.' But I'm proud of it."

The Pope of Trash's 1970 feature stars his greatest muse, the raunchy drag queen Divine, as the ringleader of a homicidal sideshow called the Cavalcade of Perversion that sets up camp in — of course — Baltimore. Vulgarity ensues. The poster for the theatrical re-release, restored from film the director had kept in his closet,...

There’s something faintly perverse about the idea of John Waters’ early work being painstakingly restored, especially by the highbrow gatekeepers at Janus Films/Criterion. Audiences originally saw these films in cruddy conditions, on the underground/midnight circuit, and that continued to be the case for decades afterward. Even in the ’90s, seeing Multiple Maniacs (1970)—Waters’ second feature, following the nearly dialogue-free Mondo Trasho—often involved an ancient, beat-up 16mm print projected on a basement wall, which felt absolutely right. Transgression is at the heart of Waters’ ethos; his earliest films, in particular, derive much of their power from the feeling that you’re seeing something you’re not supposed to, as if the movie had somehow escaped keepers who had been entrusted with preventing it from contaminating impressionable minds. All the same, so few people have seen Maniacs (which was only ever issued on VHS) that its theatrical ...

John Waters has made 16 films over the course of his nearly 50-year career, one of which has remained elusive for years: 1970’s “Multiple Maniacs.” Janus Films recently restored the cult icon’s second feature, and Waters spoke to us about the film’s re-release, the filmmakers of today he most admires and why he hasn’t directed in more than 10 years.

There’s a funny coincidence because our TV team is at the TCAs. NBC is promoting “Hairspray Live” as part of their upfronts. It’s like Must See TV for the Whole Family. Meanwhile, your “Multiple Maniacs” restoration is going to promote rosary jobs for a whole new generation. Is this your idea of a balanced life?

It is, because I felt the same thing. I did in June a thing with the Baltimore Symphony, where they do “Hairspray,” and I’m sort of like Victor Borge and I...

"In the early days, people seemed to believe that we were the people in Pink Flamingos, that we lived in a trailer and ate dog shit," John Waters says. "And we really weren't, obviously. We'd be in prison if we were. But it was a good reaction. It meant the movie worked."

For the past half a century, the Baltimore-born filmmaker and his pencil mustache have gleefully stood at the vanguard of vulgarity in cinema. Movies like his 1970 freak show Multiple Maniacs and his 1972 offering Pink Flamingos nauseated audiences when...

The Hairspray and Pink Flamingos director is no stranger to irony. But would you buy a book of Role Models from the Pope of Bad Taste?

What is the ultimate John Waters anecdote? A master of irony, a man renowned for his outrageous, scandalous wit, most conversations with the film-maker, artist and raconteur turn up stories of dark bars in Baltimore, cult criminals and obscure dangerous movie stars. My favourite story, though, concerns a chicken.

The animal featured in Waters's 1972 classic, Pink Flamingos. Branded by Variety as "surely the most vile, stupid, repulsive film ever made", it's remembered by most for the scene in which Divine eats dog faeces. But that was not even the film's most controversial shot. No, there was also a sex scene in which a chicken is both molested and killed on camera. Let Waters take up the story: "The son is fucking Cookie. The chicken's in the middle.

Are you familiar with John Waters? He may not be the originator of camp, but he is in many ways the modern-day godfather of it. As for what camp is, I'll let Waters himself explain it, which he did in a guest appearance on "The Simpsons":

Waters: It's camp! The tragically ludicrous? The ludicrously tragic?

Homer: Oh, yeah! Like when a clown dies.

Waters: Well, sort of.

Camp filmmaking essentially involves treating relatively stupid, tasteless ideas with the same sort of ingenuity and creative reverence typically reserved for so-called "fine film." This is Waters' stock in trade, so much so that it is somewhat baffling to be a fan today knowing that his classic "Hairspray" was adapted for film and theater musical treatments. What's not so baffling is the filmmaker's recent revelation that he's gearing up to call it quits.

In an interview with Modern Painters (via Movieline), Waters...