CREEMEDIA

CREEMEDIA

John Waters Mainlines Middle America A Sneak Preview Of Polyester

Mark J. Norton and Jerry Vile

The all time king of cinematic grossness, John Waters, is back at it again. Waters, who wrote, produced and directed cult favorites Female Trouble, Multiple Maniacs, Pink Flamingos, and Desperate Living has just begun post-production work on his newest shocker Polyester. It stars Divine, Edith Massey, Tab Hunter, David Samson, Ken Kinq, Stiv Bators, and Mink Stole.

Waters, in a phone interview, called Polyester 'a comedy about alcoholism and divorce.. .a love story gone quite wrong.. .Father Knows Best gone berserk. It's about a family in suburbia and every awful and disgusting thing that can possibly happen to them.'

The movie was shot in 32 days for a mere $300,000. Waters' lastfilm, Desperate Living, was budgeted at $65,000. In these days of excessive spending on movies he's to be commended.

Just where does Polyester take place?

'Baltimore, of course!' Waters said proudly. 'It's probably the sleaziest city on earth. The thing is, there are really pretty parts and real ugly parts. If you're feeling in an ugly mood you go to the ugly part, and if you're in a nice mood you go to the pretty parts. I like Baltimore because it looks like Anytown, U.S.A. That's why I've made eight films here.'

The cast is regular John Waters fare. Divine, Edith Massey and Mink Stole are stalwarts from Waters' early days. Divine, who committed the ultimate indecent act in Pink Flamingos by eating dog shit, finally gets a chance to play a sympathetic role, the mother of the family whose lives get destroyed. Waters said of Divine's character in the film, 'Divine is totally different than she's ever been in any of my other films. She plays the victim. She's the one good character in the movie that does nothing wrong to anybody, and everyone does horrible things to her. She's very funny, breaks down in the film, and becomes an alcoholic. '

Edith Massey, the 'egg lady' in Pink Flamingos, also plays a sympathetic role. 'In Polyester,' said Waters, 'Edith plays someone who thinks she's a debutante.. .but isn't.'

Sounds pretty good, John.

A newcomer to the Waters fold is Stiv Bators, singer of the now defunct Dead Boys. Stiv, who's been known to almost hang himself on stage, bash his head into speaker cabinets and bleed profusely, must have posed Waters some problems. Did he? 'Oh no! Stiv was very, very easy to work with,' said Waters. 'I'd met Stiv before,and knew that he had an outrageous manneronstage. In real life he's a very ambitious, smart young man who is going to go places. He's very easy to work with. He was always on time, he did everything professionally.'

When Waters described Stiv's role in the movie, it was quite obvious that Stiv did not need to act. 'Stiv plays the bad boy who goes with Divine's daughter. The boy np mother could love,' he explained. 'In one scene he tries to beat up Divine. They have this great fist fight, then beat each other with a vacuum cleaner. In another scene he's a trick-or-treater who goes to a woman's door and she doesn't have any candy, so he kills her. He shoots her, then says 'Maybe next time you won't be so selfish and ignore holidays meant for children.' He's really funny.'

'Polyester,' claimed Waters, 'takes place in real life. It takes place in a suburban home that's done in velvet mediterranean furniture.

Everyone wears leisure suits and has Charlie's A ngels' hairdos. We went to many furniture stores and scouted for the ugliest, tackiest furniture, and said to the salesman 'Oh, this is so great!' We didn't have the heart to tell the guy 'My God! This is the ugliest thing I've ever seen!''

John Waters not only understands and uses shock value, he wrote a book about it. Cleverly titled Shock Value, it's a book about the things that interest Waters. And what interests him? 'My films, things that interest me like rats, things I like to do in my spare time like going to murder trials, going to Russ Meyers flicks.'

Murder trials?

'.They're better than movies. Think of the drama.. .and they're free!' Waters enthused. 'I went to the Manson trial, the Patty Hearst trial, I went to Watergate.. .and other obscure ones like this Hell's Angels' trial in California. The only one I missed that I really wanted to see was the John Gacey trial, and the only reason I missed that was because I had to finish my book.'

Did you go to the Berkowitz trial?

'No/' said Waters, almost shouting. 'He was boring. I was disappointed when they finally caught him, he was so ugly and dogs were involved and I absolutely hate dogs, so I didn't go.'

You hate dogs?

'Oh-hhh yes! When their lips touch my flesh my blood turns to ice water. It's not that I hate one particular type of dog or anything, but they repulse me. I do however,' he paused, 'have a dog in my new movie.'

Is it safe to presume the dog gets killed in the movie?

'No,' Waters chuckled, 'but it commits suicide.'

In John Waters world, that makes perfect sense. But back to the murder trials. What's so fascinating about them?

'I'm fascinated by how a criminal deals with the sudden glare of national publicity,' Waters said. 'A lot of my book is about that. I'm interested in the drama of it. My favorite criminal is one who is guilty but denies it and is unrepentant. I think that makes for the best trial., .I'm mainly interested in that glare of publicity and how it makes everything so berserk in the courtroom. I hate going to the theater because I don't like the fact that the actors can see me. The only kind to theater I really like is trials. As long as they're not my own.'

One would have reason to imagine that Waters would worry about his own trials. There was a pretty explicit blow-job in Pink Flamingos, and wouldn't that prompt censors to force you to re-edit your work?

'I regret that being in there, because I never really wanted to have hard core in it. I don't even know why I left that particular scene in there. It really wasn't hard core,' he laughed, 'he didn't have a hard-on!

'Pink Flamingos once got busted in Hicksville, New York,' Waters continued enthusiastically.

'There's a censor board in Maryland and they always hassle me but 1 always take them to court and win. I wish 1 could hire the woman on the censor board to work for me, because every time she tries to stop people from seeing my films, I win in court and more people come to see them, so she's really like my press agent. I really respect her. She recently banned a film I made 12 years * ago called Multiple Maniacs. She banned it because she said it had bestiality in it and all it had was Divine getting laid by a paper-mache lobster.

I can't believe she thought it was real. No, I can't say that I'm afraid of censorship. It has helped me. My films aren't porno, that's the only thing they can stop. I mean, when people take off their clothes in my films,' he laughed, 'the audience wishes they'd put them back on!'

Waters' first film was titled Hag in a Black Leather Jacket and cost $80 to make. His most recent film cost $300,000. The latter cost is considered minimal at best. If John Waters had a budget of say, $31 million like Apocalypse Now, what would he do?

'You know,' he reflected, 'everyone says my films are decadent. Well, I think the idea of spending $31 million and coming qp with a mediocre movie is decadent. To me,

Apocalypse Now looked like a war between two teams of special effects men.

'Anyway, if I had that much money to work with, I'd make five movies, notone. I'd hire actors like Victor Mature and Anita Ekberg. I think that they're real stars. Jayne Mansfield is my all-time favorite star, because she really looked different. I like exaggeration, and Jayne Mansfield was certainly an exaggeration. So is Divine.'

If Waters ever did get that steep a budget, he'd probably retain his trademark sense of humor and make a film just as twisted. Was there any particular problem in his childhood that was responsible for his weirdness?

'I don't know. Before I was a filmmaker, I was a puppeteer for children's parties between the ages of 11 and 15,' Waters recollected. 'By the time I was 12,1 hadthree to four shows per week and I charged 25 bucks for each show.

Eventually, however, the puppet shows began getting too weird, and the parents wouldn't hire me anymore. That's when I went into movies.'

Every man has their price. What's yours?

'My price? For what?' he laughed, 'If I'd sell out, who would buy me?'

JOHN WATERS FILMOGRAPHY 1964 Hag in a Black Leather Jacket (Mary Vivien Pearce)

1966 Roman Candles (Maelcom Soul, Mink Stole, Divine, David Lochary)

1967 Eat Your Make-Up (Marina Melin, Maelcom Soul, David Lochary, Divine)

1968Mondo Trasho (Mary Vivien Pearce, Divine, David Lochary, Mink Stole)

1969 Multiple Maniacs (Divine, David Lochary, Mary Vivien Pearce, Mink Stole, Edith Massey)

1972 Pink Flamingos (Divine, David Lochary, Mary Vivien Pearce, Mink Stole, Edith Massey)

1974 Female Trouble (Divine, David Lochary, Mary Vivien Pearce, Mink Stole, Edith Massey)

1977 Desperate Living (Liz Renay, Mink Stole, Susan Lowe, Edith Massey, Mary Vivien Pearce, Jean Hill)

1980 Polyester (Divine, Tab Hunter, Edith Massey, David Samson, Mary Garlington, Ken King, Mink Stole, Joni Ruth White, Stiv Bators)

Cement-Mixers To Hell

THE IDOLMAKER

Directed by Taylor Hackford

(United Artists)

When you wish upon a star.. .you could wind up with an alter ego. Or at least with a pseudo-Roman mansion in New Jersey. Vincent Vacarri—who at the age of 27 lives with mom on the Bronx's Arthur Avenue—breathes rock lore from fan magazines, writes hit songs but won't deal with exploitative publishers, and realizes that if his balding dome eliminates him from becoming a late 50's Italianate rock star, he can mold some out of his greasy friends. First he creates Tommy Dee, who has to be taught not to grab his crotch when he sings and has the hots for underage girlies underneath his suitably Bandstandoid image.

When Dee's stardom pushes Tommy out of his control, Vincent improves his debut success by magically transforming Guido the busboy into Caesare, a lad with coils of blue-black hair who throws up after his first public performance. In a matter of weeks, under Vincent's relentless tutelage, Chez goes onstage a tensed tiger... and comes off more ripped and torn than Sid Vicious. Eventually, he too breaks free of his mentor, but nothing keeps our Vinnie down. He faces himself in the mirror, decides that the world is ready for a more distinguished type of performer, and emerges from his cocoon of depression as.. .a quasi-Neil Sedaka!

If The Idolmaker is really the way showbiz was conducted after that day the music died in 1959, the British Invasion came none too soon. Supposedly based around the career of manipulator Robert Marcucci, the force behind Fabian and Frankie Avalon and the film's technical advisor, The Idolmaker's biggest . achievement is in the extent it paints a Dorian Gray picture of an American musical void. Arguably, given Tamla-Motown, the girl groups and the work of Phil Spector, those years offered a lot of good rock'n'roll, but few would maintain that such manufactured teen idols as the Philadelphia names-changed pasta gang contributed much great art.

Ray Sharkey, in the lovingly detailed role of Vincent Vacarri, fares best in this overblown, error-laden film. He projects the demonic compulsiveness of a religious fanatic as the #£'idolmaker, ' and his lust for the top is believable enough to carry him into more sophisticated cinematic ventures.Tovah Feldshuh, in the peculiar (for her) role of a 16 Magazine-type editor, who rules the roost by sellinijJier covers to the highest bidder, joins 'artistes' Paul Land and Peter Gallagher in being locked into one dimensional roles, and smarmy Maureen . McCormick, who shoulda been rapped in the mouth a few times on The Brady Bunch, insults female critics portraying yet another screen reporter/groupie.

The Idolmaker is good for a few calculated laughs, but our amusetnent is without warmth, and the film's pat ending invites little empathy. However, more serious flaws abound concerning its musical credibility. Jeff Barry, who wrote some decent tunes in the early 60's, has dreamt up a mishmash of doo-wop and disco that falls flat representing then or now. The presentation of Caesare, on a multi-tiered, neon-lit cake of a stage, might have worked for Presley in Las Vegas, but was nothing like the unassuming Brooklyn Fox where I saw Bobby Rydell at the height of his career, headlining an Alan Freed package show.

Considering the director's insistence on authentic late 50's locations—such as the Italian enclave of Arthur Avenue-he had no excuse allowing Paul Land's Tommy Dee character to whine, circa 1959, that an Italian kid from the Bronx could never become a rock star, when in 1958, Dion and the Belmonts, from that very neighborhood, were already huge successes.

With as much bravado in promotion as they used to put across the film, The ldolmaker's marketing crew have stuck posters around New York saying 'Caesare is here, November 14th,' imitating one of the movie's stunts. But every picture does not tell a story.

Toby Goldstein