Ever since IMDb started predicting who I was trying to ask it about, I’ve started getting irritated at how much I have to type before it suggests people I consider iconic. Like today—so okay, there are a lot of people and movies starting with “John,” and I guess it’s not a huge deal that it’s insufficient to know that I want one of the most famous living directors? But I have to type “John Wa” and pick him out from lower on the list than John Wayne, and that’s a little disheartening, given we’ve already gone through several people I don’t recognize to get there.
Already some of you are giving me side-eye. “Most famous living directors”? Yeah, I’ll stand by that. Because I think a lot of people know who John Waters is without really knowing directors. Sure, that’s in part because he was on The Simpsons that one time, which let’s be real is not true about a lot of directors. I just think he’s one of those directors people know about before they really know much about movies in general, because unlike many other directors, he’s a personality. Nothing against people like Spielberg and McQueen, but there’s just something about John Waters. I’m actually watching an MST3K episode that mentions him—and it’s a Joel episode.
A thing I like about him is that he very much gives off a “I am making movies with my friends” vibe, and I always prefer that to “my movies are tortured art, peasant,” which I kind of get from a few others who are big names. I mean, it’s literally true for his early movies; the cast of movies like Female Trouble and Pink Flamingos are his friends, and he’s hanging out with them and a camera. I honestly think it’s kind of adorable. The movies aren’t necessarily my thing, but I’ve long been open about admiring movies I don’t necessarily like.
Though I do like some of his movies. It’s a little awkward to me how much I like Cry-Baby, for example, and not just because it was the first of his movies that I saw. Also arguably one of the most accessible. Until you get into the whole Hairspray thing, and I’ve only seen the original of Hairspray. Actually, the “making movies with his friends” thing is why I wish they hadn’t cast John Travolta as Edna Turnblad, or at least part of it. The role wasn’t originally written “for a drag queen.” The role was written for Divine, the friend of John Waters, which meant writing it for a drag queen.
He also just seems like a really nice guy. I’ve read some of his writing, and it’s charming. I also know a really great story from the set of Cry-Baby that I have to share. You see, by the Cry-Baby era, he was casting all kinds of random people presumably because it amused him to have them in his movie. In Cry-Baby, one of those people was Traci Lords. She came up to him one day and said she was actually really uncomfortable, because all those people knew who she was and about her history and so forth. I mean, she’d been arrested.
For those of you unfamiliar with Cry-Baby, Lords plays the character of Wanda Woodward, a sultry woman with a mind of her own. Her mother, the ultimate twee ’50s housewife, is played by Patricia Hearst. It seems Lords was unfamiliar with Tania and the Symbionese Liberation Army, so she was given a quick history lesson. They also started a club on set for people who’d been arrested at one point or another, and it included about half the cast and crew, including Waters himself. All of this at least in part to make a young, notorious actress feel more comfortable. That’s a heck of a guy.
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