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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Drag Race: "Divine" John Waters Inspiration

Manuel here to talk about that wonderful Drag Race episode this week which was dedicated to, as Ru called him, “the Sultan of Sleaze, the Baron of Bad Taste,” Mr John Waters! Seeing RuPaul and legendary auteur John Waters together judging drag queens on their “ugly dresses” was many a gay cinephile’s wet dream.

How does she manage to look this AMAZING every week?

John Waters: She was not afraid to play not glamorous. A lot of drag queens I know, they’re afraid to do that.
RuPaul: You were looking at me when you said that!

And, can you blame him?

RuPaul, the drag superstar par excellence is glamor (or, her latest incarnation is, as “No RuPaulogies” taught us back in season 5). Even when she camps it up (look at that dress!) she is glamor incarnate. Now in its seventh season, RuPaul’s Drag Race has, for better or for worse, created a seemingly new kind of drag, one that insists on glamor above all else (or in addition to everything else): how many times have we heard Santino, Michelle Visage, Ru herself or any of the rotating cast of guest judges complaining that a certain girl’s look wasn’t “couture enough," "not high fashion" or that “it didn’t look polished enough”? Even when challenges call for camp, humor, and/or stylized aesthetics, glamor has remained the requirement on the runway. It’s not for nothing Ru has coined the term Glamazon to refer to her queens.

Not this time, though...

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