John Waters @ 75: A Dirty Shame (2004)

Team Experience has been celebrating John Waters for his 75th birthday.

By Ben Miller

I like to think John Waters had enough of what people have been expecting from him.  Following a slightly more conventionally commercial run of films with Hairspray onward, Waters returned to his sex-addled farcical roots with 2004’s A Dirty Shame.  I love the idea of a fan of Cry-Baby showing up to this film expecting something along the same lines, only to be presented with something much closer to Desperate Living.

A Dirty Shame follows the residents of Hartford Road as either "neuters", a group of puritanical sex haters, or "perverts", a group of sex addicts with unique fetishes brought on by accidental concussions...

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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 : Desperate Living (1977)

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

by Camila Henriques

The final chapter of John Waters's so called "Trash Trilogy" has everything you would expect from the filmmaker. Except for one pivotal thing: it doesn't have Divine, the iconic star that made the two previous excerpts from the trilogy - "Pink Flamingos" and "Female Trouble" - true camp classics. But even if her magnetic screen presence is always a sight in Waters's filmography, you needn't worry about Desperate Living, as the 1977 film represents the raunchy brand of comedy camp that makes the director one of our most fascinating auteurs...

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The Furniture: John Waters, Small-Business Advocate

Team Experience is celebrating John Waters for his 75th birthday. So here's a special episode of "The Furniture," by Daniel Walber, our series on Production Design. 

Pecker is a rare, quiet(er) film in the John Waters filmography. It’s not as outrageous as Pink Flamingos or Female Trouble, nor as bombastic as Hairspray or Serial Mom. It’s plenty lewd, of course, and it’s hardly devoid of yelling. But it’s understated.

After all, it’s a movie about photography - pictures over words, that sorta thing. It’s about capturing the essence of Baltimore in crisp snapshots. The titular Pecker (Edward Furlong) is an amateur photographer with a passion for the little moments of his life: a burger on the grill, the Hampden neighborhood welcome sign, rats mating in an alley...

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