Brace yourself, reader. This is an account of a conversation with the director of the yucky trailer-trash comedy Pink Flamingos. Perhaps you won’t recall the final scene in which the overweight transvestite Divine munches on an actual dog turd. No, it wasn’t faked — this was in 1972 and there was no budget for trickery.
‘Because we were on pot all the time it didn’t seem that strange,’ John Waters recalls. ‘It’s lost today, but it was a political commentary. At the time Deep Throat had just come out; pornography had become legal. What’s left? What can’t you do?’
Waters is celebrated for his pencil moustache and transgressive movies, which shake a (knowingly limp-wristed) fist at the tyranny of good taste. When the Sixties celebrated the heterosexual revolution, his early work went several extra miles further to explore the boundaries of what could be put on film. His exuberant comedies tell of fat girls who wanna dance (Hairspray), suburban murderesses (Serial Mom) and sex addicts (Polyester, A Dirty Shame).
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