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‘Fuego’: The insane story of a raging nymphomaniac (highly recommended by John Waters)
12.31.2020
09:30 am
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From the Dangerous Minds archives, here’s a sizzling hot cult film to help keep you warm. Highly recommended!

I first heard about Armando Bo’s lusty 1969 Argentinian sexploitation movie Fuego (“Fire”) due to John Waters championing of the film. I’m always interested in seeing something—like Boom!—that John Waters is enthusiastic about and I reckon that quite a few of you feel the same way. If so, then you NEED to watch Fuego and you need to watch it now.

Trust me, it DOES. NOT. DISAPPOINT.

Fuego stars the outrageously hot, extremely well-endowed Isabel Sarli, who has the sort of “brick shithouse” build that Russ Meyer was so very fond of. Fuego and Meyer’s Vixen would actually make a great “ants in her pants” nymphomania double bill, but a more appropriate match-up might be Female Trouble and Fuego, which was obviously a big influence not only on John Waters, but also on Divine. Much of Dawn Davenport—the character’s fashion sense, walk and even her bouffant hairdo—would appear to be closely modeled on Isabel Sarli. Sarli was also an outrageously hammy actress and Divine just took her already over-the-top “undulating” acting style and turned the volume up to 11. If you are not at least curious to see the woman who inspired the divine Divine, why are you even reading this blog???

In Fuego, Sarli plays the sexually insatiable, irresistible Laura and in this role, lemme tell ya, she is perfectly cast. Laura is a completely uninhibited—if not completely unhinged—and naturally this gives Sarli plenty of excuses to doff her duds, which she does constantly and we see her engaged in trysts with both men (any man seems to do, her catchphrase—normally screamed—is “I NEED MEN!!!”) and with her older, lizard-like lesbian maid. A wealthy businessman named Carlos (director Armando Bo, who also wrote the script and the insanely incessant music) sees some girl-on-much-older-girl action on the beach and later attends a party at Laura’s boyfriend’s house. Soon Carlos is seeing Laura, but he has no idea what he’s gotten himself into. She roams the streets flashing her tits and he is constantly catching her in bed with other dudes. This happens a lot.
 

 
The first part of Fuego is where most of the naked flesh is shown, whereas the latter half is talkier, more melodramatic and way more NUTS. Laura realizes that her uncontrollable urges are causing her husband grief when he nearly kills an electrician he catches her bonking. They go to a sex expert to discuss what can be done about her “condition” but during the gynecological exam, Laura has a thundering orgasm. The pair travel all the way to New York where Carlos is told by a doctor there that the only thing that can save Laura is… his unwavering love. Well all right then!

I won’t tell you how it ends—hint: FUCKING CRAZY—but when you know in advance that Armando Bo and Isabel Sarli made 27 films together—with her rolling around naked in every single one of them—and that they were famously lovers for years (although he never left his wife for her), you can start to project all sorts of unhealthy psychological things onto Fuego. First off, Bo wrote the script and so he therefore wrote the cuckold role for himself. There’s also the voyeuristic aspect of Bo arranging to see his woman getting her tits out for so many other guys.

There’s a certain “cucky” subtext to Fuego, let’s just say and leave it at that.

Waters calls Fuego: “A hetero film for gay people to marvel at” and truly, it’s a movie that covers all the bases. I’d recommend watching it in a group. It’s enjoyable no matter what, but like most “so bad that it’s good” movies, experiencing it for the first time with a bunch of other people is the way to go. If you just saw Fuego cold, with no background information about it, it might take a while to figure out how you are supposed to react to it.

Armando Bo died in 1981 and Sarli stopped making films. She became a cult figure with a devoted following. Sarli was feted at Lincoln Center in 2010 and profiled in TIME magazine. In April 2018, John Waters presented Fuego in Argentina and got to meet Sarli. She died in 2019 at the age of 89.
 

 

 
In the clip below from his John Waters Presents Movies That Will Corrupt You show, the Fellini of Baltimore waxes poetic about one of his favorite films, and candidly admits that he “stole” a lot of stuff from Fuego:
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.31.2020
09:30 am
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Acid Drag & Sexual Anarchy: Fifty years ago The Cockettes turned drag upside down


A photo taken by Clay Geerdes of author and Cockette Fayette Hauser wearing a homemade grass skirt ensemble.

The catastrophic effect of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has hit anyone working in the gig economy incredibly hard. Book tours over the years have become big business for authors and independent bookstores hosting author events in support of newly released literature. Many authors, set to embark on Spring/Summer book tours, have had to scrap their plans, with some publishers even holding back on releasing their books. Thankfully, this was not the path chosen by drag trailblazer Fayette Hauser, she of the pioneering gender-bending performance troupe The Cockettes. It is my great privilege to be able to share a bit about her glittery, LSD-drenched book, The Cockettes: Acid Drag & Sexual Anarchy—a magnificent 352-page volume detailing the three-years the Cockettes conquered San Francisco and turned the drag community on its magnificently wigged head.

As Hauser recounts in the book, she was “rendered speechless” by a hit of strong acid at a party and soon found herself sitting on the floor only able to sit upright with help from the wall behind her. During this voyage, Hauser became acutely aware of the individuality of the people surrounding her to the point where she was not able to recognize their gender or her own. The year was 1968, and the Summer of Love had led masses of people to detach themselves from modern conformity, liberating their ability to express themselves freely. Eventually, The Cockettes would pave the way for others, whether gay, straight, bisexual, or pansexual, with their provocative performances and their communal way of life by living by the term “Gender Fuck.” And if you’re wondering what exactly is “Gender Fuck,” it made sense to go directly to the source, Hauser herself, to help define this very direct description of a person not identifying as exclusively male or female:

“The term Gender Fuck emerged as many of our descriptive phrases did, in an Acid flash! This term, gender fuck, became a way of describing our look, which was highly personalized, very conceptual, and without gender boundaries. We wanted to mystify the public so that the onlooker would declare, ‘What Is that? Is that a boy or a girl?’ We wanted to open people’s minds to the terrain between the tired gender binary models, which were much too mentally binding and boring as well. We unleashed that open space in between. We explored the fluid nature of the Self, which led to the term Gender Fluid. I think we succeeded in opening that Pandora’s Box of multi-dimensional, organic self-expression through body decor.”

In 1968, after graduating with a BFA in painting from Boston University, Hauser, a New Jersey native, moved out to San Francisco. Soon she would form a collective with like-minded, free-spirited people, and the Cockettes would officially begin their reign in 1969—specifically on the stage of the Palace Theater in North Beach on New Year’s Eve. The ever-growing troupe would first communally inhabit a grand Victorian-style home on 2788 Bush Street and then, after a fire rendered the home uninhabitable, a building on Haight—one of San Francisco’s most notorious streets. There was also a home known as The Chateau on 1965 Oak Street, where members of The Cockettes spent their time devising their next performance, creating costumes and personas, and tripping on LSD. The Cockettes took so much acid that they would often become non-verbal. This would lead to other forms of communication by way of personal adornment using makeup, clothing, and anything else that would convey the silent message emanating by the troupes’ diverse members, including 22-year-old Los Angeles native Sylvester James Jr., soon to become R&B disco queen Sylvester. Before his short stint with The Cockettes, Sylvester was a part of a group called The Disquotays—a performance collective comprised of black crossdressers and transgender women.
 

Sylvester during his short time with The Cockettes. Photo by Clay Geerdes. Unless otherwise noted, all photos provided to Dangerous Minds are for exclusive use.
 
The Cockettes’ performances were the be-there affair for all the counterculture chicks, dicks, and everyone in between. When director John Waters touched down in San Francisco to show off his 1969 film Mondo Trasho, the screening landed the director in jail for conspiracy to commit indecent exposure. The film made its debut at the Palace Theater where The Cockettes performed their knock-out drag shows on the regular. At the time, Waters was not aware of The Cockettes, but that would quickly change for the director as Divine would end up performing with the Cockettes as “Lady Divine”—one of the first times would be in the first annual Miss de Meanor Beauty Pageant at the Palace, where Divine played the pageant host, Miss de Meanor. In addition to confessing to the Tate/LaBianca murders, Divine would lead the other participants in the show (Miss Conception, Miss Shapen, Miss Used, and Miss Carriage) in a tournament to the death, where the queens had to fight with their fists for the coveted crown.

Divine would go on to win the ‘The Miss de Meanor Beauty Pageant’ in 1971. The following year, during The Cockettes’ last official show (another ‘Miss de Meanor Beauty Pageant’) at the House of Good, John Waters wrote a speech for her to read onstage, described by Cockette Scrumbly as “brilliant”. As the idea of Divine reading a speech written by John Waters is everything, I asked the director if he was willing to share any memory he had of this drag-tastic moment, and he very kindly responded with the following:

“To be honest, I’m not sure a written copy of that speech even exists in my film archive at Wesleyan Archive, and if it did, it would be word-slash-words that only I could understand. I do remember it was punk-ish (before the word) in a hippy venue that was bizarrely the Peoples Temple church, that was rented for the occasion after Jim Jones and gang had moved out. Divine ranted about following hippies home, eating sugar and killing their pets, or some such lunacy. I do still have the poster hanging in my SF apartment. I’m glad Scrumbly remembered it because I always did too. Quite a night in San Francisco.”

 

A flier advertising The Cockettes’ last show featuring Lady Divine.
 
The Cockettes intermingled with, as you might imagine, lots of famous people who were intrigued by the troupes’ anything-goes take on drag and life. Author Truman Capote called the Cockettes shows “the only true theater.” Alice Cooper, who once jumped out of a cake surrounded by The Cockettes for a PR stunt dubbed “The Coming Out Party for Miss Alice Cooper,” was a frequent guest at the Haight-Ashbury house. And then there was Iggy Pop. When Iggy and The Stooges were recording Fun House in 1970, the then 23-year-old Iggy would start each studio session by dropping a tab of acid (as noted in the book Open Up and Bleed). The band decided to take a break and head to San Francisco for a weekend, playing a couple of shows at the Fillmore with Alice Cooper and Flamin’ Groovies. The first show on May 15th was attended by most of The Cockettes, who bore witness to Iggy on stage clad in the tightest jeans possible and long silver lamé gloves. Iggy was already a sweetheart of the gay community, and as Cockette Rumi Missabu recalls, Iggy distinctly gave them the impression he was “playing just for them.” Following the show, Iggy would become a regular guest of The Cockettes.

In the 2002 film, The Cockettes, Cockette Sweet Pam confessed that the collective “almost brushed their teeth with LSD,” to which Fayette would add, “contributed to the emphasis of flashy costumes.” Although the use of acid was the norm for the Cockettes, their art, sexual autonomy, and fierce expressions of individuality all contributed to the creation of High Drag. And, thankfully, the world would never be the same.

 

Cockette Wally in full regalia. Photo by Clay Geerdes.
 

Cockette John Rothermel Photo by Clay Geerdes.
 

Cockettes’ Dusty Dawn and Wally in pearls. Photo by Clay Geerdes.
 
Much more after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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05.11.2020
12:06 pm
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Fiona Apple’s dad plays a crazed, killer Santa Claus in a John Waters favorite, ‘Christmas Evil’
12.14.2018
09:46 am
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Christmas Evil poster 1
 
Christmas Evil is a psychological horror movie about a unstable man obsessed with Christmas. He becomes increasingly unhinged over the course of the film, eventually donning a Santa Claus costume to deliver toys—and kill. First screened in 1980, Christmas Evil is a high quality B-movie, and has developed a much deserved cult following over the years. Its most famous supporter is John Waters, who’s been a vocal fan of the film for decades. Lewis Jackson, the writer/director of Christmas Evil, credits Waters with both the picture’s revival and his own re-embracing of a project he had put so much into decades prior, before it all slipped from his grasp.

Filming of Christmas Evil largely took place during the November-December 1979 holiday season, a moment Jackson had been preparing for for some time. He first came up with the idea for the film after he smoked a joint and saw an image of Santa Claus holding a knife.
 
Santa 1
 
Jackson worked for years on the script, and envisioned a mainstream, big budget movie. While Hollywood liked his finished script, they felt the concept was just too strange. Jackson did secure a modest $450,000 to shoot the picture—a budget he would ultimately exceed by $400,000.

For the crucial lead role of Harry Stadling, Jackson had met with a number of famous actors, including Peter Boyle, but they all passed on the project. Jackson was then introduced to a little-known actor who was primarily a Broadway performer. This was Brandon Maggart.

I met him, and I saw something. It was a gamble, because basically his looks were not like a movie star. But he brought something to it. When I look back now, there were some moments with him in the screen test where you see the performance completely whole. He brought that musical comedy quality to it. It comes from another place. It’s off kilter. It appealed to me. I cast him and we started shooting a couple of days later. (from Regional Horror Films, 1958-1990: A State-by-State Guide with Interviews)

Maggart’s the father of singer/songwriter Fiona Apple, who was three years old when Christmas Evil was released.
 
Harry
 
In the opening minutes of Christmas Evil, we see Harry, as a child, witnessing a sexually-charged exchange between his mother and father—who’s dressed as Santa Claus—which greatly disturbs the boy. The film then fast-forwards to the present, in which an adult Harry is preoccupied with Christmas, and either thinks he is, or wants to be, Santa. He spies on neighborhood children, noting whether they are “good” or “bad.” At the same time, he maintains a job at a toy factory, seeming to live a normal life to those around him, but privately becoming more and more crazed. It’s all very creepy and unnerving.
 
Beard
 
On November 6th, 1980, an advance screening of what Jackson was then calling You Better Watch Out took place at a theater in Pittsburgh. “It’s about the myth of Santa Claus as he was known in the 19th century,” Jackson told The Pittsburgh Press, describing his film. “He was regarded then as a moral arbiter, a figure to denote good and band. The idea was: Be good or Santa will bring you something bad.” He also equated it to a fairy tale, in which “violent and lovely things,” as well as “horrible and fantastic” events occur.
 
Dead bodies
 
Though he had to work with a smaller budget, Jackson found that because there wasn’t as much at stake, financially, he was able to stick to his vision—for the most part. He did lose some control over the final edit, and the title was changed. Jackson didn’t realize it would be called Christmas Evil until he was a handed a poster with that title.

Christmas Evil was the first film to depict Santa Claus as a killer, and there were expectations that the movie would be a slasher, in the spirit of Halloween. But the movie is really a character study, with the pacing of an art film, and the first murder doesn’t take place for a while. Horror ‘zine writers, who were expecting gore—and lots of it—were disappointed. After a bunch of negative reviews and just a few screenings, Christmas Evil faded away.
 
Poster 2
 
One viewer who totally understood the film was John Waters, who first saw Christmas Evil in a Baltimore theater. When it came out on VHS, Waters would screen the picture during his Christmas parties. In the “Why I Love Christmas” chapter in his 1987 book, Crackpot: The Obsessions of John Waters, the Pope of Trash unironically praises Christmas Evil, writing that it’s the “best seasonal film all time,” and a “true cinematic masterpiece,” adding, “I wish I had kids. I’d make them watch it every year and if they don’t like it they’d be punished.”

Much more after the jump…

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Posted by Bart Bealmear
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12.14.2018
09:46 am
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Can’t help it: John Waters on Jayne Mansfield and Hollywood’s first cum shot
06.12.2017
10:24 am
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‘American Venus,’ Joe Coleman’s portrait of Jayne Mansfield
 
The Girl Can’t Help It is Frank Tashlin’s sophomoric and wildly entertaining 1956 salute to the throbbing new art form known as rock and roll music. The movie featured a plethora of early rock and roll stars, including Little Richard, Fats Domino, Eddie Cochran, and Gene Vincent.
 
The movie was enormously important in the development of the Beatles. John Lennon and Paul McCartney both became avid fans of The Girl Can’t Help It, a mutual love for which provided a bonding moment for the two ambitious young musicians from Liverpool. McCartney played a version of “Twenty Flight Rock,” which Cochran performs in the movie, as a kind of audition for Lennon, who instantly invited him to be in the group he was putting together, then called the Quarrymen.

Many years later, the recording session for the Beatles’ raucous anthem “Birthday” had to be interrupted so that the Fab Four could go off to Paul McCartney’s Cavendish Avenue flat and watch a prime-time airing of the movie.
 

 
Another fan of The Girl Can’t Help It is scurrilous midnight movie master John Waters, who found the subversiveness of the movie quite a tonic in the conformist 1950s in which he found himself growing up. (Indeed, Waters freely cops to stealing his own mustache from Little Richard, who has a transcendent performance in the movie.)

Cochran et al. aside, the primary focus of The Girl Can’t Help It is obviously Jayne Mansfield’s attention-getting physique, which the drunken press agent played by Tom Ewell is tasked with turning into a major star. In this documentary clip, Waters swoons for roughly 20 minutes about the movie as well as about Mansfield herself, whom Waters favors over Marilyn Monroe, even to the point of divulging that “Divine was my Jayne Mansfield, only put together with Godzilla!”
 

 
Waters acutely observes that the noted scene in which Mansfield’s character Jerri Jordan causes all manner of mayhem merely by walking down an urban boulevard, including causing substantial blocks of ice to rapidly melt and frosty jugs of milk to spout, pretty much provided the “respectable” 1950s audiences with an impossible-to-miss analog for a cum shot.

More after the jump…

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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06.12.2017
10:24 am
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‘Female Trouble’ dolls and other imagined retro toys based on John Waters films
05.25.2017
10:01 am
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Divine as “Dawn Davenport” doll
 
Opening today at La MaMa Galleria at 47 Great Jones Street in Manhattan (and there until June 24) is “Lost Merchandise of the Dreamlanders” a show featuring shouldabeen toys and other fake retro “merchandise” based on characters and situations from the films of John Waters:

Do you remember eating Divine breakfast cereal or sleeping on Pink Flamingos bed sheets when you were a kid? Neither do we, but you just might upon viewing this oddball array of rare collectibles. Lost Merchandise of the Dreamlanders is a showcase of kitschy and ironic retail items based on the early films of Baltimore director John Waters. Discover forgotten toys, home decor, and seasonal artifacts featuring familiar Dreamlander movie personalities. Presented in the spirit of a Sunday morning garage sale, the exhibit revels in the strange, nostalgic appeal of the 70s and 80s.

The Dreamlander exhibition is the brainchild of Tyson Tabbert, a sculptor at New York’s Asher Levine fashion house, who looked into officially licensing some of John Waters characters for the toy market a few years ago, but found that this probably wasn’t in the cards:

“I was initially able to contact someone at Warner Brothers to discuss the possibility of making the figures legit. But the possibility of licensing them was, as I interpreted it, slim at best.”

Undeterred, Tabbert got some artist friends together to create some of the products he had in mind for an art show. Everything in the show is a period piece (ahem) designed to look like vintage toys. There’s even a bedspread! Tabbert self-financed much of the work, which also includes plastic Halloween masks of Connie and Raymond Marble from Pink Flamingos, a Desperate Living tea service and a metal ashtray inspired by Lobstora, the giant lobster that rapes Divine in Multiple Maniacs.

If you are looking for some officially licensed Divine swag, there’s an online Divine shop that sells T-shirts, tote bags, pins and other stuff.

 
The final scene from ‘Female Trouble’
 

Taffy’s parents, Dawn and Earl (both played by Divine) meet cute in a tableau inspired by a scene in ‘Female Trouble’
 

Metal Lobstora ashtray
 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.25.2017
10:01 am
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‘REAL ACTUAL FILTH!’: Finally some John Waters movies in high def
05.10.2017
07:31 am
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‘Multiple Maniacs’ poster on sale at Westgate Gallery
 
I wonder how many film snobs are out there who buy every single new Blu-Ray released by the Criterion Collection as a kind of Cliff Notes subscription to “Impeccable Taste in Cinema.” You know the type—if you suggest seeing a movie, they rush straight to Meta-Critic before committing to anything. I relish their reaction to Multiple Maniacs, John Waters’ self-described “celluloid atrocity,” a riveting, rancid, rollickingly funny B&W snapshot of everything we now cherish from his greatest work, of which MM absolutely must be included. It’s all here, all for the first time: corpulent diva Divine starring as a dominant, foul-mouthed, white-trash bitch goddess, narcissistic and deliciously cruel, yet oddly endearing and cloaked in charisma; the equally talented Mink Stole, creating the first of her many deeply disturbed fabulous underdog characters for Waters; Cookie Mueller (“a mean hippie who was recently released from a mental hospital”) and Edith Massey, (playing herself, a wacky barmaid at Dreamland Studios’ favorite dive, Pete’s Hotel); reams of overwrought, razor-sharp, quotable dialogue; vicious satire unleashed equally upon the Peace & Love generation and Nixon voters; striking jolts of surrealism which both pay homage to and parody experimental and art films; and plenty of scabrous, black-comedy shocks. It’s even better than amyl nitrate.

In Multiple Maniacs, the surreal and the shocking reach their mutual pinnacle in a jaw-dropping sequence in the second half of the movie:  Lady Divine’s mission of vengeance against her cheating boyfriend (David Lochary) and his brainless blonde chatterbox lover (Mary Vivian Pearce) is waylaid when a “religious whore” (Mink) lures Divine into a church to perform a rectal “rosary-job” accompanied by Divine’s orgasmic visions of the life of Jesus Christ (George Figgs), complete with miracles (the “fishes & loaves” here represented by canned cat food and Wonder Bread), Edie as the Virgin Mary and a positively Gibsonian crucifixion, all played for very queasy laughs, of course. 
 

‘Divine Saves the World’ stageplay/‘Multiple Maniacs’ poster from 1972

Historically the most difficult Waters film to see that’s actually worth seeing, Multiple Maniacs’ most successful cinematic run was as a pre-Pink Flamingos midnight show at San Francisco’s Palace Theatre circa 1971, where it became a deeply offensive sensation, often accompanied by live stage shows written and directed by Sebastian of The Cockettes, with titles like “The Heartbreak of Psoriasis” and “Divine Saves The World.”  Never blown up to 35mm when New Line Cinema began distributing it post-smash-Pink Flamingos, it got an “okay” VHS release in 1987, but never made it to DVD.  Anyone familiar with battered 16mm repertory prints or the shrill, tinny videotape may think they’re experiencing their own rosary-job hallucination—Multiple Maniacs looks amazing in HD (Waters himself remarked “Finally, Multiple Maniacs looks like a bad John Cassavetes film!”) and sounds even better. With one rather key caveat: due to music licensing rights- and cost issues, the entire brilliant, bootleg soundtrack of dozens of inspired songs from multiple decades has been replaced by a new score by composer George S. Clinton. Which is a truly tragic loss. This devil’s bargain does yield some choice extras: a Waters audio commentary, interviews with surviving cast and crew, and more.
 

Italian ‘Desperate Living’ poster
 
So as far as Golden Age John Waters in HD, this package is as good as it gets for now: Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble have yet to surface anywhere in HD, and while a gorgeous-looking HD Polyester is available for rental and purchase via Amazon Video, they used a version WITHOUT the flashing Odorama numbers… that stupidly retains the intro with “Dr Arnold Quackenshaw” explaining how to use the Odorama scratch ‘n’ sniff card (not hard to locate them even now if you try) which is essential to fully enjoying the film.  However, iTunes currently has Desperate Living in HD, so that could possibly mean a Criterion edition of this fucked-up masterpiece might be in the works. The sharp transfer brought tears to these perverted eyes—turns out it IS very pretty, what a town without pity can do.
 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Christian McLaughlin
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05.10.2017
07:31 am
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Behind the scenes with John Waters, Johnny Depp, Iggy Pop and Traci Lords on the set of ‘Cry-Baby’
11.14.2016
01:20 pm
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The fulcrum of John Waters’ career is Hairspray, the PG-rated 1988 crossover hit that made it possible to discuss his movies in, erm, “polite society.” Before Hairspray he was a scourge, after it he became America’s favorite dirty uncle.

This news report of the filming of Cry-Baby, Waters’ 1990 follow-up to Hairspray, is unimaginable without the success of its predecessor. Shooting for Cry-Baby took place in the spring and summer of 1989 in and around (where else?) Baltimore. The photo above was likely taken during the shoot, as Johnny Depp turned 26 in June of 1989.

The voiceover blandly calls Waters “a poor man’s Barry Levinson gone berserk,” which seems highly questionable to me. Aside from their hometowns, Levinson and Waters have little in common.

The segment features a couple of great quotes from Waters:
 

“It’s the same kind of movie. It’s a John Waters film. There’s puke in it, you’ll be happy to know.”

“Some older woman came up to me in the supermarket and said, ‘I love all your films!’ I said, ‘You do not!’”

 
Priceless stuff.

According to Wikipedia Cry-Baby was the only movie of Waters’ career that went through a bidding war, based on the success of Hairspray. But then Cry-Baby didn’t make its $12 million budget back, and that was the end of the bidding wars for John Waters.

I’d bet anything that the Cry-Baby set was a fun place to hang around. You had Waters and Depp, of course, but also Ricki Lake, Iggy Pop, Traci Lords, Patricia Hearst, Susan Tyrrell, and Willem Dafoe, and that’s not even getting into Waters’ usual supporting players. After the video we’ve supplied some groovy pics taken while the shooting of the movie was in progress.
 

 

 

 
Much more after the jump….....
 

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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11.14.2016
01:20 pm
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Punk rock knitting: These cult figure sweaters are easily the most amazing sweaters money can buy


Kraftwerk sweater by by Amimono Horinouchi
 
I’m not the sort of person to really care all that much about, or even notice, expert knitting or “crafting” or embroidery or anything remotely like that. This very sentence will probably mark my first time using the word “felted” and it might very well be the last. I’ve got no business being in a Hobby Lobby. I’m not putting it down, but it’s not my area of interest.

That was until I saw the jaw-dropping sweaters made by Amimono Horinouchi, a 49-year-old knitwear artiste based in Tokyo. THIS is where my own esoteric interests hit the Venn diagram with wool sweaters hard. When I saw the Kraftwerk sweater, my eyes practically bugged out—they’re all so amazing: Debbie Harry, Ramones, Bowie, YMO—but what could possibly top that insane Kraftwerk sweater???

And then I saw the one on his website of Throbbing Gristle-era Genesis P-Orridge and was completely and utterly floored.

Amimono Horinouchi‘s knitwear might be “fashion,” but it is also art.

According to his Etsy page, which has prices in dollars, the bags sell for less than $200, and the sweaters go for about $600 which I think is a great bargain. He also takes commissions and will even do a sweater of your beloved dog or cat. I’d love to see him working in large tapestries. Incredible!

Follow Amimono Horinouchi on Twitter.
 

Genesis P-Orridge
 

Debbie Harry
 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.27.2016
12:27 pm
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Giant John Waters head bong
10.14.2016
02:34 pm
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Image via NikkiSwarm on Instagram

I completely adore this huge ceramic John Waters head bong by artist John de Fazio. The piece is currently on exhibit in Los Angeles at Venus Over Manhattan. (Looks more like a “pipe” to me, but the Internet is calling it a “bong.”)

Fun fact: During his brief tenure at NYU in 1966, a young John Waters was involved in the first major pot bust on a college campus. University authorities asked the students involved to keep quiet about the incident, but Waters called the New York Daily News the next day giving the tabloid paper an interview about what had happened.

Photo by Nicole McClure AKA Nikki Swarm on Instagram and Twitter

Posted by Tara McGinley
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10.14.2016
02:34 pm
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‘This Time’: John Cougar Mellencamp is really in love with John Waters actress Edith Massey
06.03.2016
01:31 pm
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Long before he gained fame, Indiana-born and raised roots rocker John Mellencamp was already married and a father, just two weeks after graduating from high school in 1970. After two-years in a community college—and a stint with a New York Dolls-influenced glam rock group called Trash—for a period of about 18 months he travelled back and forth several times between New York City and his small town home of Seymour trying to get his foot in the door of the music business. In 1976 Mellencamp was signed by none other than the infamous Tony Defries, the flamboyant and ruthless manager of David Bowie, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and other outré performers (like electro chanteuse Annette Peacock). It was Defries who dubbed him “Johnny Cougar” thinking his German surname sounded too hillbilly.

In fact, the young Mellencamp had little choice but to go along with the name change which he saw for the first time already plastered across his Chestnut Street Incident album cover without his consent:

“I was totally unaware of it until it showed up on the album jacket. When I objected to it, he said, ‘Well, either you’re going to go for it, or we’re not going to put the record out.’ So that was what I had to do… but I thought the name was pretty silly.”

That’s rough! Imagine how pissed off the guy was holding his debut album in his hands for the first time and finding out he’s got a brand new—stupid—name? Mellencamp’s career survived Defries, and the name went from Johnny Cougar to John Cougar then to John Cougar Mellencamp before he settled on the name he was born with. Mellencamp was no overnight sensation. His first album flopped—selling just 12,000 copies—and ultimately he found himself on a record label that wanted him to be a middle-of-the-road pop songsmith like Neil Diamond.

It was during this time, a couple of years before his commercial breakthrough with American Fool that Mellencamp released the Steve Cropper-produced album Nothin’ Matters and What If It Did in 1980. That album featured on its cover, the artist posing with none other than John Waters’ star Edith Massey, who was also in the video for one of the record’s Top 40 singles, the charmingly goofy love song “This Time.”

Mellencamp told Rolling Stone in late 1980:

“I was looking for a typical heavy woman to convey a lower-middle-class way of living.”

More like desperate living, right? It looks like Edie got over the Egg Man?

Posted by Richard Metzger
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06.03.2016
01:31 pm
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Watch John Waters’ favorite ‘failed art film’: The INSANE drunken mess that is ‘Boom!’


 
As all true John Waters fanatics know, the Pope of Trash’s favorite film of all time is Boom! director Joseph Losey’s utterly preposterous adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ 1963 play The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore. Waters considers Boom! a bit of a litmus test: He’ll show it to friends and if someone doesn’t like it, he won’t talk to them anymore. Seems a bit much, but he’s John Waters and I respect that!  Waters described the film to Robert K. Elder in his book The Best Film You’ve Never Seen: 35 Directors Champion the Forgotten or Critically Savaged Movies They Love as “beyond bad. It’s the other side of camp. It’s beautiful, atrocious, and it’s perfect. It’s a perfect movie, really, and I never tire of it.” You’ll notice that he doesn’t say that it’s good. And he’s right, it is beyond bad. Wow. Boom! is in a category by itself, even among films starring Liz and Dick when they were shitfaced, okay?
 

 
Boom! reveals itself as a cinematic atrocity almost from the film’s very first frames—not that this is a bad thing, mind you.  A clearly drunk—and I do mean clearly drunk, okay?—Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton star, respectively, as Sissy Goforth, the richest woman in the world (“married to five industrial kings!”), and Chris Flanders, a penniless poet who has the uncanny knack for showing up just when some rich lady is about to kick the bucket, ready to relieve them of their personal possessions. We know this because Flanders’ nickname is “The Angel of Death.”

When we meet her, La Taylor is seen swanning about her private island wearing insanely elaborate Karl Lagerfeld clothes and literally hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Bulgari jewels. She is attended to by fawning servants (including a surly dwarf!) as she dictates her memoirs and asks for constant “injections” for her pain (as if she could feel any due to all the booze).
 

 
Burton arrives on her island and is nearly ripped apart by a pack of guard dogs. She asks him to stay and offers him a change of clothes, which includes a Samurai sword which he sports—inexplicably—for much of the film! Why not? They spend much of their screen time engaged in (obviously) drunken screaming matches. It’s AWESOME!

At one point, Noel Coward (as “The Witch of Capri”) shows up for a dinner party of “boiled sea monster”—carried on the shoulders of one of her servants and shouting “HOO HOO SISSY!” as he arrives—and gives her all the hot gossip on Burton/Flanders, who he thinks is a gigolo and warns her of his “angel of death” reputation. (It’s worth noting that the role of the “the Witch of Capri” was originally offered to Katherine Hepburn who was insulted and turned it down.)
 

 
Director Losey admitted that all the principals on Boom!—including himself—were shitfaced drunk for the entire filming. Burton later fessed up that there were several films he made in the 60s that he literally had no memory whatsoever of making. Odds are strong that Boom! is one of them!

John Waters used to tour with Boom! screening the sole existing print of the film available during his lectures. He told Vice:

[Tennessee Williams] said it was the best film ever made. Which to this day only he and I can agree on. He’s right though. The play was called The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore, but that was too long to put on the marquee so they called the film Boom!, which is the sound of a bomb going off—ironic, considering how hard it bombed.

It’s so awful it’s perfect. My favorite bit is when Elizabeth Taylor pukes into a handkerchief, looks down and there’s blood, and she says, “Ah! A paper rose!” The script is ridiculous. Come on, it’s about the richest woman in the world, called “Sissy Goforth,” and the Angel of Death. Maybe everyone does need an angel of death who comes to them when they die and so what if your angel of death steals something from you.

The point is, it’s a staggering movie and it’s worth seeing it with a live audience because you just don’t know how to react at the beginning. You think, What is the tone of this? That’s the thing that is so bizarre. Apparently Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were drunk for the whole time they were filming it. Elizabeth Taylor kept wanting to buy the set and it had a roof and they had to tell her it wasn’t real. She wanted to live there and they had to say, “We’re making a movie! This isn’t a real house!”

I remember I met Elizabeth Taylor and the first thing I said is, “I loved Boom!” and she got real mad and shouted, “That’s a terrible movie!” And I said “It isn’t! I love that movie! I tour with it at festivals!” Then she realized I was serious. Because it is a great movie. I feel like if you don’t agree with that I hate you. If you don’t like Boom! I could never be your friend. Right now I live by the water and every time I see a wave hit a rock I shout, “Boom!” like Richard Burton.

Watch ‘Boom!’ after the jump…

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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04.13.2016
02:07 pm
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Leigh Bowery’s shock therapy: ‘When I’m dressed up I reach more people than a painting in a gallery’
03.28.2016
12:00 pm
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The dictionary defines the word “legend” as:

1. a traditional story sometimes popularly regarded as historical but not authenticated.

2. an extremely famous or notorious person, especially in a particular field.

It would be fair to say this word fits rather snugly with the performance artist, designer, would-be pop star, icon, artist’s model and “work of art” Leigh Bowery.

When asked recently, “Who was Leigh Bowery?” I was briefly flummoxed as where to begin in any attempt to describe this wonderfully extravagant yet self-indulgent character. There were so many facets to his life—so many fictions, so many facts—it seemed rather unsporting to choose only one.

Leigh Bowery was born on March 26th, 1961, in the small working class suburb of Sunshine in Melbourne, Australia. He was was the eldest of two children born to Tom and Evelyn Bowery. His mother had lived her entire life in Sunshine and raised Leigh and his younger sister Bronwyn in a house opposite her own childhood home. Sunshine was that kind of community. People lived and died there—they knew their place and rarely ventured beyond its boundaries.

Leigh was a large beefy child with a head of golden curls. Because of his build, his father hoped Leigh would become an Australian rules football player or at the very least something sporty. Yet Leigh showed no inclination for such physical activities. He preferred gardening and later needlework—something he first learnt while convalescing in hospital after an operation to help his testicles descend.

At school he was a very bright pupil. He had a keen and enquiring mind, was constantly reading books and showed great aptitude for classical music—in particular playing the piano. His life changed after he won a scholarship to Melbourne High School.

Leigh later claimed that he had known he was gay from the age of twelve. During his time at Melbourne High, he began his sexual adventures. On his way home from school, Leigh cruised the public toilets at the central railway station. He discovered wearing a school uniform made him highly attractive to the older men.  By his own estimate—which may or may not be true—he claimed he had sex with about one thousand men before he left school.
 
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His parents had hoped Leigh would study music at university. Instead, he chose to study fashion design at the Melbourne Institute of Technology. Leigh was one of only two boys in his year. He quickly learnt how to machine sew and began making some of his early flamboyant designs. These were not exactly appreciated by his teachers who wanted him to design ladies’ underwear and children’s clothes.

But Leigh had moved ahead of such small ambitions and wanted to create his own designs. He was eighteen and had fallen under the influence of punk—as he later explained in an interview.

The thing which made everything click for me was the punk movement where people used themselves and their appearance to describe so much and I just loved Busby Berkeley movies—all those sequins and feathers—and I would always have my nose in a National Geographic, gazing at women with stretched necks and rings going in strange places.

Leigh was also very enamored with the club scene in London, which he read about in all the imported pop and fashion magazines he got his hands on.

I wanted to hang out with the art and fashion people. I wanted to go to nightclubs and look at the clothes in the shops. I loved the idea of punk and the New Romantics. England seemed the only place to go, I considered New York but that just seemed full of cheap copies of London. I don’t think I made a mistake.

He quit college and worked in a department store to raise the funds for the London move. When he arrived in the city of his dreams, Leigh lived with a friend. When this friend moved out, Leigh decided to change his life and become more involved with the city around him. According to his friend and biographer Sue Tilley, Leigh made a list of four resolutions on New Year’s Eve 1980:

1) Get his weight down to twelve stone.
2) Learn as much as possible.
3) Establish himself in either fashion, art or writing.
4) Wear make-up every day.

Leigh managed to meet three of these resolutions over the next decade.

Read more about Leigh Bowery, plus a documentary about him hosted by Hugh Laurie, after the jump…

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.28.2016
12:00 pm
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Divine and friends action figures from John Waters’ ‘Female Trouble’
01.07.2016
08:59 am
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“Mr. Wineberger, Dawn Davenport is eating a meatball sandwich right out in CLAESS!”
 
Divine’s official social media guru directed my attention, yesterday, to the work of sculptor Tyson Tabbert, who recently created a batch of “action figures” for John Waters’ masterpiece Female Trouble.

In Female Trouble, perhaps Waters’ best film, Divine plays Dawn Davenport, career criminal and fame seeker. An addiction to injected liquid eyeliner sends her on a berserk crime spree, ending in art/murder. In one of its most famous scenes, Dawn destroys the family Christmas when she doesn’t receive the gift of “cha cha heels” she is expecting. “Nice girls,” it turns out, “don’t wear cha cha heels.”

Tabbert has created an entire playset devoted to this iconic cinematic scene.

Unfortunately, according to Tabbert’s Instagram, the figures are not for sale. But maybe if enough people beg him? I know I’d throw down for the “Female Trouble Christmas Morning Playset.” It would have a place of honor every year, right next to the Nativity and Christmas shit log.
 

 

 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Christopher Bickel
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01.07.2016
08:59 am
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A sackful of holiday greetings from Divine, Edie the Egglady & Miss Jean Hill (NSFW)
12.15.2015
09:11 am
Topics:
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Here are the grand goddesses of John Waters’ Dreamland repertory company, Divine, Edith Massey, and Jean Hill, making spirits bright for the holidays in this collection of pin-up photos.

Though all three performers have sadly left this planet (Divine in 1988, Edie in 1984, and Jean Hill in 2013), their beauty and glamour lives on.

The majority of these photos were taken for novelty Christmas cards in the ‘80s—the sort you would have found at a Spencer’s Gifts back in the day.
 

 

 

 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Christopher Bickel
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12.15.2015
09:11 am
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Cool T-shirts featuring Ken Russell, Klaus Nomi, John Waters, Sylvia Plath & more

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It’s getting near that time for buying presents and shit. The one present I’ll certainly be adding to my holiday wish list of hoped-for Christmas goodies is a Ken Russell T-shirt from Hirsute History.

The l’enfant terrible genius of British cinema, Unkle Ken—the man responsible for such classic movies as Women in Love, The Music Lovers, The Devils, Tommy and Altered States—is just one of the many hirsute heroes to be found on a range of colorful clothing available from Hirsute History at Amphorphia Apparel. Here he joins Sylvia Plath, John Waters, Susan Sontag, Jerry Garcia, Ada Lovelace and a whole bunch of other artists, scientists, ideas and stars that’ll look good on your body.

So, if you fancy wearing a Ken Russell or an Ada Lovelace, then hop over to the site or get a retina burn from the selection below.
 
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Ken Russell.
 
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Sylvia Plath.
 
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Groucho Marx.
 
More fab T-shirts, after the jump….
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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11.24.2015
12:26 pm
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