1974: An Ode to "Female Trouble" and Taffy Davenport

by Nick Taylor

As regular TFE commenter par pointed out in the comments for my Tina Holmes piece last week, there’s a lot of supporting actresses from 1999 who I could honor this Pride month. It’s a very tempting idea, and though many of those women will likely get their flowers later in the year - who wouldn’t want to pick over Election as the nonsense of the US Presidential race really starts heating up? - I think this is a terrific opportunity to hop across major eras and remind folks that, hey, queers have been around and making films for a long fucking time. We’ve been rubbing our grubby hands all over cinema since its inception.

If we’re talking about queer cinema, and if we’re talking about a peak among peaks, there’s really nowhere else to go but Female Trouble, John Waters’ inspiring ode to troubled teen flicks from the ‘50s, and the perfect performances of Mink Stole and Hilary Taylor as Taffy Davenport . . . .

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John Waters @ 75: Hairspray (1988)

by Cláudio Alves

As Oscar fever dies down, we return, here at The Film Experience, to the John Waters retrospective in celebration of the director's 75th birthday. I'm immensely grateful for Nathaniel, who invited us each to choose a movie, since it gave me a grand opportunity to dive deep into the filmography of this auteur. Before this month, I had only seen three of Waters' movies, but now I've watched most of his features, including five of the projects he did with legendary drag queen Divine. The picture I'm here to explore is fundamental in the legacy of both artists. Hairspray was to be Divine's last movie before a tragic death at the age of 42…

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John Waters @ 75: Polyester (1981)

Team Experience is celebrating John Waters for his 75th birthday this week

by Eric Blume

John Waters’ 1981 film Polyester satirizes the “women’s picture” genre, but in the way that only Waters would spin it.  His heroine, Francine Fishpaw, played of course by muse Divine, is trapped in a horrific marriage to the owner of the local porn movie palace.  Her daughter is a nympho and her son has taken his foot fetish to a comically violent place.  Sex and vice surround Francine, and she’s just soldiering on, nobly of course.

The beauty of Waters and his sensibility is this:  imagine someone making this movie today.  You can’t, because the basic elements are too far out there...

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John Waters @ 75 : Female Trouble (1974)

Team Experience is celebrating John Waters for his 75th birthday this week

by Jason Adams

If you'd like a new addition to your "Damn why wasn't I there?" list of super-cool world events of the past, have I ever got a doozy -- circe 1973, not long after Pink Flamingos had become a cult sensation, a screening of the film was set up by Fran Lebowitz (because obviously) for Andy Warhol and his various hangers-on at Warhol's Factory in New York. John Waters was already a big fan of the soup-can man -- he still owns a "Jackie O" print that pre-dates his homosexuality, gifted by his then-girlfriend in 1964 -- and so this was no doubt a big deal for the famed Baltimorean, and he's recalled the night fondly in interviews:

"... [Andy] had been shot recently, and the last thing he needed was to meet a bunch of new lunatics.... I brought my gang and Candy Darling was there, and that's when Divine met Candy, and they got along great. Andy watched it sort of hiding it in the closet, and then when it was over he went in the back with me and said, "Why don't you make the exact same movie over again?" And then he said he would back my next movie, which shocked me because no one was saying that, but I think I wisely said no, because it would have been Andy Warhol's Female Trouble...

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John Waters @ 75: Pink Flamingos (1972)

This week Team Experience pays tribute to John Waters for his 75th birthday.

by Nathaniel R

Unlike eggs and fresh meat, both of which are memorable supporting characters in John Waters Pink Flamingos (1972), movies don't come with expiration date. Nor should they. The expiration dates for movies are theoretical, figurative, and cultural, and are thus almost never agreed upon. Some movies magically live forever losing little of their original flavor. Some become even more flavorful and would be better suited to a wine analogy than this ill-advised animal byproducts one we're pursuing. We call these expiration-date busting films, classics. Whether they make you sick, these "old" movies, is entirely up to you. Can you remove yourself from the now while watching them or do you expect all movies to cater to the accepted opinions, values, and mores of the right now (which will have its own expiration date)? These are questions we might ask about any classic especially in our current very volatile and angry social climate, where everything is being reevaluted (which is a good thing) and mostly branded unacceptable (an unfortunately reductive thing, especially when it comes to art from previous eras).

But since our subject tonight is Pink Flamingos (1972) which wants to make you sick, it's the wrong question altogether. Maybe we don't have a question at all. Our eyes are still wide, heads still spinning, and feeling slightly nauseous...

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