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Event
Daniel Nardicio presents...John Waters: This Filthy World.
John Waters' one-man show is a "vaudeville" act that celebrates the film career and
obsessional tastes of the man William Burroughs once called "The Pope of Trash."
Focusing in on Waters' early negative artistic influences and his fascination with true
crime, exploitation films, fashion lunacy, and the extremes of the contemporary art world,
this joyously devious monologue elevates all that is trashy in life into a call to arms to
"filth followers" everywhere.
Followed by a signing of Water's book "Role Models".
This is John's first time performing on Fire Island.
Born in Baltimore, MD in 1946, John Waters was drawn to movies at an early age,
particularly exploitation movies with lurid ad campaigns. He subscribed to Variety
at the age of twelve, absorbing the magazine's factual information and its lexicon of
insider lingo. This early education would prove useful as the future director began his
career giving puppet shows for children's birthday parties. As a teen-ager, Waters began
making 8-mm underground movies influenced by the likes of Jean-Luc Godard, Walt
Disney, Andy Warhol, Russ Meyer, Ingmar Bergman, and Herschell Gordon Lewis.
Using Baltimore, which he fondly dubbed the "Hairdo Capitol of the World," as the
setting for all his films, Waters assembled a cast of ensemble players, mostly native
Baltimoreans and friends of long standing: Divine, David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce,
Mink Stole and Edith Massey. Waters also established lasting relationships with key
production people, such as production designer Vincent Peranio, costume designer
Van Smith, and casting director Pat Moran, helping to give his films that trademark
Waters "look."
Waters made his first film, an 8-mm short, Hag in a Black Leather Jacket in 1964,
starring Mary Vivian Pearce. Waters followed with Roman Candles in 1966, the first
of his films to star Divine and Mink Stole. In 1967, he made his first 16-mm film with
Eat Your Makeup, the story of a deranged governess and her lover who kidnap fashion
models and force them to model themselves to death. Mondo Trasho, Waters' first
feature length film, was completed in 1969 despite the fact that the production ground to
a halt when the director and two actors were arrested for "participating in a misdemeanor,
to wit: indecent exposure."
In 1970, Waters completed what he described as his first "celluloid atrocity,"
Multiple Maniacs. The film told the story of Lady Divine and her lover, Mr. David,
proprietors of a freak show who lure unsuspecting suburbanites into their tents to
witness "The Cavalcade of Perversions." In 1972 Waters created what would become
the most "notorious" film in the American independent cinema of the 1970's, Pink
Flamingos. Centered on the great battle to secure the title "Filthiest People Alive," Pink
Flamingos pitted Divine's "Babs Johnson" against Mink Stole and David Lochary's truly
evil "Connie and Raymond Marble," while turning Waters into a cult celebrity. Pink
Flamingos went on to become a smash success at midnight screenings in the U.S. and all
over the world.
Waters followed the success of Pink Flamingos with three more pictures, spanning
the remainder of the decade. In 1974 he created Female Trouble, the story of Dawn
Davenport (Divine), a criminal who wanted to be famous so badly she committed
murder. 1977 marked the premier of Desperate Living, a monstrous fairytale comedy
starring the notorious Mafia moll turned stripper Liz Renay. In 1981 Waters completed
Polyester, a wide-screen comic melodrama starring Divine and Tab Hunter. Filmed
in glorious "Odorama," ticket buyers were given scratch 'n' sniff cards that allowed
the audience to smell along with the characters in their fragrant search for romantic
happiness.
In Hairspray (1988), Waters created "an almost big-budget comedy extravaganza about
star-struck teen-age celebrities in 1962, their stage mothers and their quest for mental
health." The film was a box office and critical success and starred the then unknown
Ricki Lake, Deborah Harry, the late Sonny Bono, Jerry Stiller, Pia Zadora and Ric
Ocasek.
The success of Hairspray brought Waters major Hollywood backing for his next feature,
Cry-Baby (1990), a juvenile delinquent musical comedy satire, starring Johnny Depp. In
1994, Waters released Serial Mom, the well reviewed, socially un-redeeming comedy
starring Kathleen Turner and Sam Waterston, which was the closing night attraction at
that year's Cannes Film Festival.
Pink Flamingos, the ultimate trash masterpiece, was again in theatres for a 25th
Anniversary re-release in 1997, complete with newfound footage. Commenting on the
long-lasting popularity of the film, director Waters proudly boasts, "it's hard to offend
three generations, but it looks like I've succeeded."
Pecker, a feel-good movie about lesbian strippers, pubic-hair harassment and amateur
photography, was released in 1998. It starred Edward Furlong and Christina Ricci. The
Japan Times called it "a Disney film for perverts."
Cecil B. DeMented, a comedy action-thriller about a young lunatic film director (Stephen
Dorff) and his gang of film cultists who kidnap a real-life Hollywood movie goddess
(Melanie Griffith) and force her to act in their own Super 8 underground movie, was
released in 2000. Kevin Thomas of The LA Times, called Cecil B. DeMented "a fast,
furious and funny fusillade of a movie."
A Dirty Shame concerns head injury sufferers who, after their concussion, experience a
carnal lust they cannot control. It stars Tracey Ullman, Johnny Knoxville, Selma Blair,
and Chris Isaak. Rated NC-17 by the Motion Picture Association of America, Peter
Travers of Rolling Stone called the film "wicked, kinky fun."
In addition to writing and directing feature films, Waters is the author of six books:
Shock Value, Crackpot, Pink Flamingos and Other Trash, Hairspray, Female Trouble and
Multiple Maniacs, and Art: A Sex Book (co-written with art critic Bruce Hainley). His
book, Role Models, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in May, 2010 and earned
spots on the best seller lists for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and the San
Francisco Chronicle.
Concurrent to his careers as a filmmaker and author, John Waters is also a photographer
whose work, first represented by American Fine Arts and presently, the Marianne Boesky
Galley in New York, has been shown in galleries all over the world since 1992. Three
art catalogs have been published on John Waters' photographs and sculpture beginning
with Director's Cut in 1997 (Scalo Books). John Waters: Change of Life followed in
2004 (Harry N. Abrams) to accompany a Waters retrospective exhibition at The New
Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. The exhibition traveled to the Fotomuseum
Winterthur in Switzerland, the Orange County Museum of Art and The Andy Warhol
Museum. And finally, in 2006, the catalog, Unwatchable was published in conjunction
with an exhibition of the same name that opened simultaneously at The Marianne Boesky
Gallery in New York and de Pury & Luxembourg Gallery in Zurich. In April, 2009,
Waters'exhibition, "Rear Projection" opened at the Marianne Boesky Gallery in New
York and the Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles.
John Waters' one man spoken-word lecture entitled "This Filthy World" is performed
at colleges, museums, film-festivals and comedy clubs around the world. In 2010, he
played to sold out audiences at the Traverse City Comedy Arts Festival, the Coachella
Valley Music and Arts Festival and the Sydney Opera House. In 2006, Netflix released a
film version of the live act that was screened at the Toronto, Berlin and Edinburgh Film
Festivals. In 2004, the music compilation CD "A John Waters Christmas" was released
by New Line Records and was followed up in 2007 by "A Date With John Waters".
As an actor, Waters has appeared in many motion pictures including Jonathan Demme's
"Something Wild", Woody Allen's "Sweet and Lowdown", Herschell Gordon Lewis'
"Blood Feast 2: All You Can Eat" and Don Mancini's "Seed of Chucky." In February,
2006, Waters hosted a 13-episode television series on the here! TV Network called "John
Waters Presents Movies That Will Corrupt You." He also appeared in an episode of
NBC's hit show, "My Name Is Earl," and played "The Groom Reaper" in the CourtTV
series "Til Death Do Us Part."
Waters is a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and is on the
Wexner Center International Arts Advisory Council. Additionally, he is a past member
of the boards of The Andy Warhol Foundation and Printed Matter and was selected as a
juror for the 2011 Venice Biennale.
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Locationthe ice palace
Main walk
Cherry Grove, NY 11782
United States
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