Although this is about politics it is concerning a film director, so I’m putting it in this forum.
I had never heard about John Waters but I am hoping his films are really good, because I am going to watch as many as I can. Why? Because in an interview on the Charlotte Observer today John Waters was asked “If the United States is destined to be the world’s policeman, where should we send our troops next – and why?”, and this man said:
“To Cuba, to find the people who were mean to gay people and locked them up and punished them, just the way we (went after) the Nazis. We’re supposed to forget that? I can’t, and that’s the only thing I’m right-wing on; Che Guevara was horrible to gay people. And something about my rich liberal friends going to Cuba rubs me the wrong way, because Cuban people can’t do what we do there and spend the money we spend.”
He’s going into my honorary Cuban folder, and anyone in that folder gets preferencial treatment in my house, including when it comes to renting movies.
In that vein, if you were my shoes and were going to go through John Waters’ filmography for the first time, where would you start?
My personal favorites would be, Serial Mom (Kathleen Turner in a great role) and Hairspray (the 1988 version with Rikki Lake, Divine, Sonny Bono, etc).
Hairspray (the original Waters movie stariing Rikki Lake, not the movie version of the Broadway musical) is good hearted, exuberant and fairly clean place to start. I think it’s probably his best movie. Pink Flamingos and Polyester are better for the full frontal John Waters experience (though the latter probably isn’t really the same without the smell-o-vision cards). Serial Mom is also pretty good (and not too sick).
In that case, his movies can be a bit shocking. They’re typically sort of b-grade, “high camp”, and somewhat intended to be shocking.
Just watch them if you’re so inclined. There’s no way on Earth for someone here to tell you whether you’re going to like a John Waters movie or not.
FWIW, he calls Baltimore his home, but he lives other places too. I’ve seen him around several times, never doing anything weird. Although once I saw him at the grocery store, and all he had in his shopping cart was a few boxes of toothpicks and a couple ears of corn. And, he was on the other side of the store from the corn, so he wasn’t just getting started.
There’s the old school JW, which includes Multiple Maniacs, Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble and Desperate Living.
There’s transitional JW, which includes Polyester, Hairspray, Cry-Baby and Serial Mom.
Then there’s unwatchable JW, which includes Pecker and Cecil B. Demented. Technically there’s post-unwatchable I’ve-given-up JW too, which includes A Dirty Shame.
Start in the transitional period with. If you like them but find them slightly extreme, move forward in the filmography. If you think they’re too tame, move backward.
My personal favorite is Female Trouble and I think it’s his best film. I definitely, as you can tell, skew toward the early end of his filmography in my fandom. I would love to see his truly early work (Hag in a Black Leather jacket and the like) but it’s unreleasable because of rights issues with the soundtrack (plus Waters himself finds them unsuitable). I was lucky enough to see The Diane Linkletter Story when I saw Waters lecture several eyars ago. It’s now apparently also out of circulation.
A good answer to a bad question. (Or at least, a question with a bad premise.) I’m not sure what my favorite one of his movies is - I think I enjoyed seeing one of his lectures more than the films.
Without knowing your taste in movies, it’s difficult to say. As noted above he had 3 phases to his career, the early gross-out comedies(Pink flamingos, Female Trouble, Desparate Living ) a mainstream phase(Hairspray, Cry-Baby, Serial Mom ) and the weak stuff that came later. Hairspray is probably his most mainstream movie, although I was surprised to see that Cry-baby was his best box office performance. My personal favorite is Serial Mom, as it combines aspects from both of his good phases - decent production values and actors that can actually act combined with gross-out sight gags and shock humor. You gotta love a movie where the star witness to a murder is a pervert who was waiting by and peeking through a men’s room glory hole while the murder was being committed
And I just need to brag that I saw Polyester on its original theatrical release and still have my Odorama card, which doubled as the admission ticket. Last time I checked most of the smell had faded, but #9 (smelly gym shoes -worst scent of the movie, even worse than the skunk or the fart) still has a faint trace of stench