I mean, it wasn’t what I was thinking about when I made “Hag in a Black Leather Jacket.” But as I went along, I always was interested. When I made Hollywood movies, people said, “Did you ever think you’d make a Hollywood movie?” Well, I never thought I wouldn’t. They certainly understood something that I was never sure of when I was young. If I’m the Pope of Trash, what are they? They’re the, I don’t know, the Holy Mother of God. We appreciate that! Back in ‘82, you described “Polyester” as “an initial effort to spread my germs to suburbia.” With the Academy show, do you feel like that campaign is now complete? IndieWire: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to IndieWire. The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. He’d yet to see the the exhibit he first had to fly to Kent, Connecticut for his annual adult sleepaway Camp John Waters (tagline: “Not all cults are bad”). I spoke to Waters over the phone a week before its September 14 press preview. A mature woman who discussed with other fellow adults ‘grown-up’ words - felching, plate jobs, snowballing, to name a few,” and closes with “PS: Thanks for hugging me when I needed one (always!)” There are also handwritten first drafts of scripts for “Pink Flamingos” and “Desperate Living,” all on yellow legal pads in Waters’ tidy cursive. In a post-production thank-you letter, “Hairspray” star Ricki Lake writes: “I will never ever forget for the first time in my life, my peers treated me as an adult. However, some of the exhibit’s most memorable highlights come from seeing words on the page. Sit in the pews, and you might be buzzed by the same gimmick that thrilled 1959 audiences who watched “The Tingler,” directed by Waters’ hero William Castle. Instead, the exhibit places visitors inside a church with his early Dreamland stars like Divine, Edith Massey, and David Lochary rendered in stained glass, Waters represented as a beatific and smirking priest, and shocking highlights from films like “Pink Flamingos,” “Polyester,” and “Desperate Living” projected on the pulpit. They’ve got to open that door and be greeted with such a shock.’ And he said, ‘We can’t really electrically shock them, can we?’ And the answer is, no, we cannot.” John Waters Pope of Trash, an Exhibition Devoted the Filmmaker’s Work, on Tuesday, Septemat The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, Los Angeles, California Charles White, JWPictures/©Acad And when we first walked into the entrance of that show, John said, ‘When this is my exhibition, they’ve got to walk into a huge shock here. “At that time, it was our Miyazaki exhibition. “Something that unlocked something really major for us was when we first showed John the space where the exhibition would be,” Jaffe said. Overseen by exhibitions curator Jenny He and associate curator Dara Jaffe, it includes a flyer for Waters’ early puppet shows, Divine’s baby shoes preserved in bronze (and his birth certificate as Harris Glenn Milstead), Mink Stole’s cat-eye rhinestone eyeglasses from “Pink Flamingos,” the $16 receipt for the “Female Trouble” scene clipped by Maryland censors, and clips from Waters’ appearances in TV and movies including “Homicide: Life on the Street,” “Seed of Chucky,” “Sweet and Lowdown,” and “The Simpsons.” Nearly four years in the making, the exhibit demanded a snipe hunt to find what would become 400 objects to sum up more than a half-century of his work. Uber, Robert De Niro Deny Reports of Reviving ‘Taxi Driver’ Character for Commercialįrom September 17, 2023, through August 4, 2024, “John Waters: Pope of Trash” dedicates 12 galleries to a delightful and unfiltered examination of Waters’ life and work, hosts screenings of 12 of his films (including the little-seen “Eat Your Makeup” on September 17, with Waters providing live commentary), and a 250-page hardcover catalog that includes essays by Waters, revered Wesleyan University film professor Jeanine Basinger, “The Wire” creator David Simon, and Waters interviews conducted by Ricki Lake, Kathleen Turner, Iggy Pop, Sean Baker, and more.
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