Filthy: The Weird World of John Waters
Robrt L. Pela
Los Angeles: Alyson Books, 2002.
$15.95, £10.99, 209 pages, ISBN 1-55583-625-9
Nicolas Magenham
Rouen
In the second chapter of this biography of John Waters, Robrt
Pela recounts his short stay in Baltimore—the director's hometown and the setting for all
his films—and admits to a feeling of disappointment, as the natives did
not look like Waters characters: "No snaggle-toothed punk has accosted me,
demanding money at knifepoint. Even in the worst part of town—the filthy
inner city, where I wandered among decaying row houses in search of angry reprobates—people
were shockingly ordinary, even kind" [10]. He noticed that the only people
worthy of the title "filthiest people alive" are Waters's fans—who
do not necessarily live in Baltimore by the way. Nevertheless, Pela's purpose
in this book is not to demonstrate that Waters's films are a mere product of
his frenzied imagination and that his cinema has nothing to do with the circles
in which Waters moves. Around the end of the book, Pela brings out the visionary
aspect of his films regarding American society. With its trash talk shows on
TV and its discussions of a semen-stained dress and a badly placed cigar, the
society of the turn of the century looks like a Waters film, Pela rightly points
out. He goes so far as to imagine Bill Clinton "playing the Divine role
in a real-life Watersian comedy" [139].
It is not really surprising to read that when the nonconformist director was
a child and a teenager, one thing mattered to him: to escape from the tediousness
and the moral rigidity of his environment. As a child, he was fond of marvelous
tales and wild children's television programs which allowed him to flee from
his "suburban hell", and as a teenager, he often went to New York in
order to watch independent films by Andy Warhol or the Kuchar brothers. During
his teenage years, he also met people like Mary Vivian Pearce whose influence
on his works is tremendous. Waters recounts how the nuns at his Catholic School
greatly influenced him too, as they sparked his interest in "forbidden films"! "I
thank God for pointing me toward my vocation so early in life", Waters states
[8]. This quotation shows that this chapter is not only very instructive about
the origins of Waters's trademark as a filmmaker, but it is also one of the most
hilarious parts of the book. Anecdotes about Waters's taste for gruesome situations
and fantasies about car accidents when he was a kid are particularly juicy. In
fact, Filthy is full of quotations by Waters—generally taken from Shock
Values, his autobiographical essays—which reminds the reader of the
fact that he is not only a brilliant filmmaker, but also a brilliant writer and
commentator of his own films. For instance, every Waters fan remembers this scene
from Pink Flamingos (1972) in which a chicken is squashed between two
characters who make love. Waters's remark to justify this disturbing scene
is worth the price of the book itself: "[n]ot only did the chicken get fucked,
so to speak, […] it also got famous in a movie to boot. We actually made
this chicken's life better" [76].
In Chapter 3, Pela narrates how Waters met his future collaborators: David
Lochary, Pat Moran and Maelcum Soul—whose "radical makeup and outrageous thrift-store
chic had an enormous impact on the look of the young filmmaker's earliest characters" [21].
Maelcum Soul's appearance makes one regret that there are no photos of Waters's
friends and/or collaborators in the book, the small drawings by Paul Wilson which
pepper Filthy being a frustrating compensation. Of course, Pela also
relates in detail the relationship between Waters and his protégé, the
drag queen Divine. For instance, he refers to the famous "dog-shit scene",
in Pink Flamingos, but instead of lingering over its transgressive aspect,
he focuses on the strong link between the director and his star: Divine is
so grateful to Waters for making him famous that he goes so far as to accept
to
eat faeces in front of his camera. Divine's gratefulness is even highlighted
by the fact that during the shooting of the scene, the poodle was fussier than
the actor, since it took it a long time to defecate.
Following the example of Waters's films, Filthy contains unusual elements
like an amusing posthumous interview of Divine or a chapter entirely made up
of quotations relating to the "dog-shit scene". Unfortunately, even
though they are intrinsically appealing, some of these unexpected chapters are
sometimes detrimental to the book's unity. For instance, when Robrt Pela examines
John Waters as an object of cult, it may represent an interesting sociological
study of fans, but it detracts from the real subject of the book, that is, John
Waters. Pela also offers a "bluffer's guide to recurring imagery and motifs
in John Waters films". While it is often funny, this guide is generally
superficial; Pela contents himself with paraphrasing the films (except in his
study of the religious themes). Anyway, according to Pela himself, the real purpose
of this chapter is more to "impress your date with insights into Waters
references to Luis Bunuel and the Catholic Church" [111] than to be a highbrow
study. Besides, Pela never really delves into "serious" subjects, even
in other parts of the book—which is quite fortunate, in view of this rather
disappointing guide. For instance the engagé aspect of Waters's
cinema such as his pro-choice position is treated in a very sporadic way.
Even though Pela never really deals with political or sociological issues,
he nevertheless strives to bring out the paradoxes inherent to the Waters persona,
such as his adoration for both Warhol and Disney, or the fact that he worked
both as a radical, independent director and as the employee of a Major. Reading
the first pages of this biography is enough to realize that Waters's father
may
be the origin of this contradictory personality; although he was very Republican,
Waters senior always supported John's nonconformist cinematic activities. For
instance, for the short film Eat Your Makeup (1968), Mr. Waters helped
his son build a dope vending machine! "I actually look back in awe that
he did that", John Waters tells about his father [33].
To conclude, although Pela is not really worthy of the title of "the filthiest
biographer alive", his book is nevertheless enjoyable and his tongue-in-cheek
style will no doubt please John Waters himself. For Waters aficionados Filthy:
The Weird World of John Waters is a must.
