Low Budget Hell: Making Underground Movies with John Waters by Robert Maier

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Low Budget Hell: Making Underground Movies with John Waters by Robert Maier Low Budget Hell is an unauthorized insider’s story of outrageous 70s and 80s low budget filmmaking where every rule was broken in a crazy world of sex, drugs, and rock & roll. In his journey through the underground, Maier rubs shoulders with folks like Johnny Depp, Divine, Ricki Lake, Andy Warhol, Jack Palance, Tab Hunter, Bill Murray, Sonny Bono, the Coen brothers, artist Jean-Michel Basquait, The Ramones, and Blondie. Low Budget Hell is a roller coaster ride of bizarre lowbudget movie stories: lunches of Kools, Cokes, and soggy meatball subs; riding the subway with $25,000 cash; a Federal drug bust on set—at gunpoint; meeting with Deborah Harry and Chris Stein—in bed; getting death threats from the mob, fending off attacks by irate husbands; placating enraged stars and producers; and going on dates with John Waters to topless movies at Baltimore’s sleaziest theaters. It was a time of irresponsible experimentation and the story of artists who went from living in their cars to buying million dollar Manhattan lofts— and as John Waters says, how fortunate we are for the statute of limitations. Robert Maier is a writer/producer/production manager who worked for fifteen years with John Waters on his movies, Female Trouble, Desperate Living, Polyester, Hairspray, and Crybaby, plus a dozen other low-budget movie-makers in New York City and Baltimore. He made the noted 30-minute underground documentary, Love Letter to Edie, and is the author of two books on film and video production. Robert lives in Davidson, North Carolina where he teaches audio and video at a community college. For more information visit www.facebook.com/LowBudget/Hell Available from Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and booksellers worldwide. Author: Robert Maier Publisher: Full Page Publishing Genre: Entertainment ISBN: 978-0-9837708-0-0 Formats: Paper and Kindle e-book Size: 5.5 in. x 8.5 in. 346 pp. Price: $15.95 Contact: Robert Maier Full Page Publishing 704-996-7724 [email protected] .

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Thesis John Waters
john waters: subversive success interview with wall street journal By John Jurgensen John Waters, the writer and director who emerged from the midnight movie circuit of the 1970s, has earned his status as a social critic. In 13 feature films, including Pink Flamingos and Hairspray, he gleefully presents depraved characters undermining a society of squares. In the seven years since he made his last film, the director has written Role Models, a collection of essays about his idols who hurdled over adversity, including Johnny Mathis, Little Richard and a seedy pornographer. He’s also hunting down funding for his next script, Fruitcake, a Christmas movie for kids. He lives in Baltimore, his native city and the setting for his films, in a house purchased in 1990. At age 65, Waters remains a celebrated figure for counterculturists but accepts that his time as a revolutionary has passed. Earlier this year, protestors at Occupy Baltimore built an encampment they called Mortville, a tribute to the criminal enclave depicted in Waters’s film Desperate Living. Waters supports them but declined to join. “I have three homes and a summer rental, and some of my money is in Wall Street,” he explained. He champions younger filmmakers whom he says succeed in subversion, including Johnny Knoxville and Todd Phillips. At the same time, he reviles “the new bad taste,” which he defines as entertainment that tries too hard to shock and lacks inventiveness and wit. When I was a kid, my parents were a little uptight because the things I was interested in weren’t the proper things for a six-year-old.
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John Waters (Writer/Director)
John Waters (Writer/Director) Born in Baltimore, MD in 1946, John Waters was drawn to movies at an early age, particularly exploitation movies with lurid ad campaigns. He subscribed to Variety at the age of twelve, absorbing the magazine's factual information and its lexicon of insider lingo. This early education would prove useful as the future director began his career giving puppet shows for children's birthday parties. As a teen-ager, Waters began making 8-mm underground movies influenced by the likes of Jean-Luc Godard, Walt Disney, Andy Warhol, Russ Meyer, Ingmar Bergman, and Herschell Gordon Lewis. Using Baltimore, which he fondly dubbed the "Hairdo Capitol of the World," as the setting for all his films, Waters assembled a cast of ensemble players, mostly native Baltimoreans and friends of long standing: Divine, David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce, Mink Stole and Edith Massey. Waters also established lasting relationships with key production people, such as production designer Vincent Peranio, costume designer Van Smith, and casting director Pat Moran, helping to give his films that trademark Waters "look." Waters made his first film, an 8-mm short, Hag in a Black Leather Jacket in 1964, starring Mary Vivian Pearce. Waters followed with Roman Candles in 1966, the first of his films to star Divine and Mink Stole. In 1967, he made his first 16-mm film with Eat Your Makeup, the story of a deranged governess and her lover who kidnap fashion models and force them to model themselves to death. Mondo Trasho, Waters' first feature length film, was completed in 1969 despite the fact that the production ground to a halt when the director and two actors were arrested for "participating in a misdemeanor, to wit: indecent exposure." In 1970, Waters completed what he described as his first "celluloid atrocity," Multiple Maniacs.
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Pink Flamingoes and the Culture of Trash
--�·. : ··-·,----., ,•' ! \··I Sleaze queen Divine in Pink Flamingos. 808 THE TERRAINOF THE UNSPEAKABLE Pink Flamingos and the culture of trash DARREN TOFTS To me, bad rasre is whar enrertainmenc is all about. If someone vomits watching one of my films, it's like getting a standing ovation. John Waters 1 Theorizing crash culture presents cultural studies with some awk ward problems. The issue is not just che way crash culture rends co posicion irs audience with respect co gender and sexual policies. Ir is also chat rhe rerm is used both descriptively and normatively: ir designates a range of subcultural practices, but it also suggests a moral accirude , a cultural discourse on what is acceptable as representation - a discourse char emerged in overt confrontation wirh the guardians of high culture. In recent years the rerm has been used in rhe context of a continuing and increasingly sophisticated interest in che obscene, and also of a sustained intellectual inquiry inco rhe dynamics of populism and mass culture, and the conditions of production and consumption in post-industrial society. Within cultural studies there has been a rigorous critique of the ways in which crash culture has come co be understood, how it is used and by whom, and the ambiguous policical force it exerts within the domain of popular culture generally. Philip Brophy has distinguished between che rerm crash- ('all maccer of refuse ... all the material lefr over') and its erstwhile synonym, junk ('all rhe material injected, invited, avowed, support ed'), in cerms of their relation co the process of consumption (culture). Brophy's collaborative 'Trash and Junk Culture' exhibi tion of 19892 skilfully represented the extensive and hierarchical nature of crash culture, from the overtly visible (exploitation advertising, video nascies, pornograph�·) to che sublim�nal (body building and wresding magazines).
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By Billups Allen Billups Allen Spent His Formative Years in and Around the Washington D.C
By Billups Allen Billups Allen spent his formative years in and around the Washington D.C. punk scene. He graduated from the University of Arizona with a creative writing major and a film minor. He has worked in seven different record stores around the country and currently lives in Memphis, Tennessee where he works for Goner Records, publishes Cramhole zine, contributes music and movie writing regularly to Razorcake, Ugly Things, and Lunchmeat magazines, and writes fiction. (cramholezine.com, [email protected]) Illustrations by Codey Richards, an illustrator, motion designer, and painter. He graduated from the University of Alabama in 2009 with a BFA in Graphic Design and Printmaking. His career began by creating album art and posters for local Birmingham venues and bands. His appreciation of classic analog printing and advertising can be found as a common theme in his work. He currently works and resides at his home studio in Birmingham, Alabama. (@codeyrichardsart, codeyrichards.com) Layout by Todd Taylor, co-founder and Executive Director of Razorcake/Gorsky Press, Inc. Razorcake is a bi-monthly, Los Angeles-based fanzine that provides consistent coverage of do-it-yourself punk culture. We believe in positive, progressive, community-friendly DIY punk, and are the only bona fide 501(c)(3) non-profit music magazine in America. We do our part. This zine is made possible in part by support by the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture. Printing Courtesy of Razorcake Press razorcake.org ne rainy weekday, my friend and I went to a small Baltimore shop specializing in mid-century antiques called Hampden Junque.
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Transcript a Pinewood Dialogue with John Waters
TRANSCRIPT A PINEWOOD DIALOGUE WITH JOHN WATERS In the films of John Waters, “The Pope of Trash,” outrageous behavior co-exists with genuine humanism. After his genuinely shocking Pink Flamingos , Female Trouble , and Desperate Living , he made the surprise move of directing a PG-rated musical, Hairspray , which placed its classic teen love story against the backdrop of early-1960s racial integration. Sadly, the movie was Waters’s last collaboration with the actor Divine, who died a week after its release. Waters spoke about Hairspray as part of a Moving Image retrospective of his films. A Pinewood Dialogue following a screening of completely obsessed by it. They still have reunions Hairspray , moderated by Chief Curator David today in Baltimore of the people that were stars on Schwartz (October 25, 1998): this show that I go to. They are mostly sixty years old now. And to see 200 sixty-year-old women SCHWARTZ: Please welcome John Waters. doing “The Locomotion” without irony is quite a (Applause) sight. They are still very serious about it. I heard one woman say, “She wasn’t on the show. She was a WATERS: Thank you. I like Queens. It looks like guest.” And they go in separate doors if they were Baltimore, kind of. I feel at home. You know, I on the committee and stuff. It’s really good. They’re accidentally made a family movie when I made this real mean to the other people who weren’t on the picture. If you haven’t seen it, it’s about how much show.
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AT the HISTORIC SENATOR THEATRE 5904 York Road Baltimore, Maryland 21212 Thursday, November 20, 2014 6:30 PM
the allied memberS of AIABALTIMORE present AN EVENING WITH TIMORE BAL JOHN WATERSAIA AT THE HISTORIC SENATOR THEATRE 5904 York Road Baltimore, Maryland 21212 Thursday, November 20, 2014 6:30 PM JOHN WATERS – director, actor, author, & photographer will entertain AIA Baltimore members and guests with wry and humorous stories from his life, living and directing films in Baltimore. Mr. Waters will talk about how he uses locations, buildings and backgrounds to help tell a story, create a mood, and evoke the unique identity of a place and the people who live there. He will reflect on how Baltimore’s distinct character and “sense of place” has been reflected in his films. Mr. Waters will discuss how his film locations are chosen, how they help him tell his story, and possibly what he might be looking for in the future. A Reception, catered by Little Havana and limited to 50 guests, will be held in the Senator Theatre mezzanine immediately following the Program. John Waters will be in attendance, available for photos and autographs. Signed copies of Mr. Waters’ new book, Carsick, will also be available for purchase. SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES General Admission Tickets Program Only DIVINE SPONSOR $2,000 - SOLD OUT PINK FLAMINGO SPONSOR $500 INCLUDES 1 Program ticket with preferred $55 per ticket seating, 1 ticket to post-Program Reception, 1 ticket to Private Speaker Dinner, and $500 per 10 tickets promotion in all event marketing DESPERATE LIVING SPONSOR $300 INCLUDES 1 Program ticket with preferred seating and promotion in all event marketing Don’t miss out on this one-of-a-kind AIA POLYESTER SPONSOR $200 sponsorship opportunity! Contact Kathleen Lane INCLUDES 1 Program ticket with preferred at AIA Baltimore before they’re all sold out: seating and 1 ticket to post-Program [email protected] // 410.625.2585 Reception.
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John Waters on Making Multiple Maniacs
presents The theatrical premiere of John Waters’ rarely seen trash classic! “ Can only be compared to Todd Browning’s Freaks.” —Los Angeles Free Press “ The pope of trash.” —William S. Burroughs “ Even the garbage is too good a place for it.” —Mary Avara, Maryland Board of Censors John Waters’ gloriously grotesque, unavailable-for-decades second feature comes to theaters at long last, replete with all Multiple Maniacs was shot on an Auricon 16 mm camera using manner of depravity, from robbery to murder to one of cinema’s Kodak black-and-white reversal film with audio magnetic stripe. most memorably blasphemous moments. Made on a shoestring Additional exterior footage was filmed on a Bell & Howell hand- budget in Baltimore, with Waters taking on nearly every technical cranked camera. Plus-X film was used for the exteriors, while task, this gleeful mockery of the peace-and-love ethos of its era Tri-X was used for the interiors. The reversal original was kept features the Cavalcade of Perversion, a traveling show put on by in John Waters’ closet from 1970 until he moved in 1990, after a troupe of misfits whose shocking proclivities are topped only which it was kept in Waters’ attic at occasional 100-plus-degree by those of their leader: the glammer-than-glam, larger-than- temperatures—until the Criterion Collection retrieved it and life Divine, who’s out for blood after discovering her lover’s scanned it in 4K resolution on a Lasergraphics Director film affair. Starring Waters’ beloved regular cast the Dreamlanders scanner at Metropolis Post in New York.
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Posters Boo-Hooray Catalog #7
catalog no. 7 posters Boo-Hooray Catalog #7 Posters Boo-Hooray is proud to present our seventh antiquarian catalog, dedicated to the poster. An incredibly diverse medium, posters deliver a message in a brief and graphic burst. This ephemeral form of communication is often left unarchived and completely unprotected against the annihilatory tick of the clock, coinciding with the one-off nature of what the posters document and announce: an exhibition, a protest, a meeting, a performance, a happening. This catalog gathers posters across a wide array of subjects such as film, art, theatre, politics, and literature; and in a variety of modes of address: polemical, didactic, and annunciatory. Included are signed posters by filmmaker John Waters, a poster advertising an early exhibition by Memphis designer Ettore Sottsass, a remarkable poster from the Young Lords Party, a Swedish Black Power poster, and much more. For over a decade, we have been committed to the organization, stabilization, and preservation of cultural narratives through archival placement. Today, we continue and expand our mission through the sale of individual items and smaller collections. We encourage visitors to browse our extensive inventory of rare books, ephemera, archives and collections and look forward to inviting you back to our gallery in Manhattan’s Chinatown. Terms: Usual. Not onerous. Catalog prepared by Evan Neuhausen, Archivist & Rare Book Cataloger and Daylon Orr, Executive Director & Rare Book Specialist; with Beth Rudig, Director of Archives. Photography by Jack Shannon. Layout by Evan. Please direct all inquiries to Daylon ([email protected]). All items subject to prior sale. Payment may be made via check, credit card, wire transfer or PayPal.
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James Egan Collection of John Waters Interviews MS48 Finding Aid Prepared by Joan M
James Egan Collection of John Waters Interviews MS48 Finding aid prepared by Joan M. Wolk This finding aid was produced using the Archivists' Toolkit February 12, 2016 Describing Archives: A Content Standard Enoch Pratt Free Library Special Collections 2012 http://www.prattlibrary.org/ 400 Cathedral Street Baltimore, MD, 21201 443-984-2451 [email protected] James Egan Collection of John Waters Interviews MS48 Table of Contents Summary Information ................................................................................................................................. 3 Biographical/Historical note.......................................................................................................................... 4 Scope and Contents note............................................................................................................................... 4 Arrangement note...........................................................................................................................................5 Administrative Information .........................................................................................................................5 Controlled Access Headings..........................................................................................................................5 Collection Inventory...................................................................................................................................... 7 Series I: Articles used in Interviews, dated...........................................................................................
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University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture and the Arts Issue 04 | Spring 2007
University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture and the Arts Issue 04 | Spring 2007 Title “The vanguard – and the most articulate audience”: Queer Camp, Jack Smith and John Waters Author Nicholas de Villiers Publication FORUM: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture and the Arts Issue Number 04 Issue Date Spring 2007 Publication Date 05/06/2007 Editors Clare Bielby & Sally Henderson FORUM claims non-exclusive rights to reproduce this article electronically (in full or in part) and to publish this work in any such media current or later developed. The author retains all rights, including the right to be identified as the author wherever and whenever this article is published, and the right to use all or part of the article and abstracts, with or without revision or modification in compilations or other publications. Any latter publication shall recognise FORUM as the original publisher. “The vanguard—and the most articulate audience”: Queer Camp, Jack Smith and John Waters Nicholas de Villiers University of Minnesota Art is one big thrift shop. —Jack Smith I genuflect before Jack Smith, the only true “underground” film-maker. —John Waters I must move fast, you understand me / I want to go down in celluloid history —The Smiths, “Frankly Mr. Shankly” Early in her essay, “Notes on ‘Camp,’” Susan Sontag introduces the concept of a “Camp eye,” a way of seeing the world as an aesthetic phenomenon. She argues that while “the Camp eye has the power to transform experience … not everything can be seen as Camp. It’s not all in the eye of the beholder” (277).
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Abstract the Filthiest People Alive: Productions of Urban
ABSTRACT THE FILTHIEST PEOPLE ALIVE: PRODUCTIONS OF URBAN SPACES AND POPULATIONS IN THE FILMS OF JOHN WATERS by Dennis Wayne Everette Within society, a variety of attitudes concerning urbanized spaces exists. Some people adore cities while others detest them. More specifically, there is often a fear of those that dwell in the city. These perceptions are based on difference of class, race, sexuality, or deviance from the constructed social norm. The portrayal of cities in film, both negatively and positively, is a well-established trend. This thesis offers insight into perceptions of the city, its spaces and culture, by bringing together processes of othering, abjection, socio-spatial exclusion, and territoriality to try to explain fear and apprehension of urban space. Cinematic film is a valuable source of geographic knowledge, and John Waters’ work speaks to urban spaces and inhabitants deemed undesirable by the hegemonic groups in society. This thesis elucidates his production of the city; his films depict his hometown of Baltimore, Maryland as a refuge of delinquents, miscreants, and perverts. THE FILTHIEST PEOPLE ALIVE: PRODUCTIONS OF URBAN SPACES AND POPULATIONS IN THE FILMS OF JOHN WATERS A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of Geography By Dennis Wayne Everette Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2011 Advisor_______________________ (Dr. Marcia England) Reader________________________ (Dr. Bruce D’Arcus) Reader________________________
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Copyrighted Material
Chapter 1 The Roots Baltimore. The story of Hairspray begins here, as does the story of its director. John Samuel Waters, Jr was born in Maryland’s largest municipality on April 22, 1946. He was raised in suburban Lutherville, in an upper-middle-class Catholic home. His parents, Patricia Ann Whitaker and John Samuel Waters, a successful manufacturer of fire- protection equipment, provided him with a happy and conventional childhood despite recognizing early on that their eldest child was “an odd duck” (Waters, 2004b).1 For example, he was obsessed with cata- strophic automobile wrecks, fires (an interest he shared with his father), hurricanes, and disasters in general, all of which fed the grisly fantasies of his precocious imagination. He was drawn to stagecraft, costuming, and showmanship, always with an entrepreneurial edge. Neighborhood children paid a nickel for admission to his family’s garage, which Waters transformed into a “horror house.” He staged puppet shows for local birthday parties at US$20 a pop, presenting hyper-violent versions of Cinderella and Punch and Judy. He devel- oped a particular fascination with the stage actor, Cyril Ritchard’s portrayal of Captain Hook, so much that the young Waters attempted to imitate him by scotch-taping his fathers’ neckties to his head to cre- ate the appearance of long, pirate locks. Growing COPYRIGHTEDup, Waters loved the movies. He especiallyMATERIAL enjoyed horror films, films with evil villains, or anything involving a gimmick. In the late 1950s, he became a fan of the director William Castle, the “King Hairspray, First Edition. Dana Heller. © 2011 Dana Heller.
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