Sat 9/27 @ 7:30 pm
By Hollie Gibbs
“When I was a kid, art meant dirty, and that’s the way it should stay.” – John Waters
Not since the Marque de Sade has excrement eating had such an impact on a storyline! Sure, Human Centipede features all of the shit-eating, but none of the panache of Pink Flamingos.
Disappointed with the failed toe-sucking of Road Trip? Enjoy the full-out shrimping complete with Cinderella fantasy of Mondo Trasho!
Did you feel cheated after spending three hours for too short a payoff from The Green Mile? Luckily, old sparky’s victim’s visage is blazoned across the screen throughout Female Trouble’s ending credits!
John Waters is a master of serving up everything you never knew you wanted.
A writer, director, actor, artist, host and collector, Waters pushed the boundaries in 1970s cinema with shocking (and sometimes revolting) dark comedies that tickled the taboo. Creating funny films of the forbidden, Waters often presents bombastic characters in preposterous situations. An exercise in hyperbole, beneath the pounds of pancake make-up and falsies of his films lays social satire.
With a pencil-thin mustache and razor-sharp wit, Waters is a favorite uncle who takes you to your first R rated movie and buys you dirty magazines. He has created sex acts that are as common in our sexual culture as teatime is in England’s social culture. With a witty, genteel manner, his civility belies his dirty mind.
Now the forerunner of feculence will pass along his irreverent wisdom and extraordinary life experiences in a 75-minute monologue This Filthy World: Filthier and Dirtier (a completely updated presentation of Waters’ one-man show This Filthy World) at the CIA Cinematheque Sat 9/27. It will be followed by Q&A before a book signing. (Waters recently turned his 2012 adventure hitchhiking from Baltimore to San Francisco into a book entitled Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America, which will be available for purchase.) The event is expected to sell out.
“Waters has graduated from renegade Baltimore underground filmmaker to American cultural icon,” Cinematheque Director John Ewing said. “He has introduced camp, kitsch, and ‘filth’ into bastions of great cinema, and his funny, generous, warm-hearted movies have helped gay culture gain acceptance in mainstream American society.”
The king of cult movies has cast Hollywood heavyweights alongside porn stars and millionaire socialite kidnap victims in films starring his Dreamlanders and drag queens, most notably the incomparable Divine. From a private school education in upper-middle class Roman Catholic Baltimore, Waters now reigns as the pope of trash. With early films among the first picked up for distribution by the fledgling New Line Cinema, Waters’ work is now ingrained in the cultural filmscape like ‘finely woven filth that even God himself could never break’.
Later in his career, he crossed over into the darker side of the mainstream. Waters’ 1988 film Hairspray was even adapted to an award-winning Broadway musical, which was then adapted back to a hit musical film.
Listen as Waters spins the tales of his life experiences in person Sat 9/27 at 7:30 pm as the CIA Cinematheque presents: This Filthy World: Filthier and Dirtier. No one under 18 admitted.
Hollie Gibbs has a BS in journalism from Kent State University and studied photography at School of the Visual Arts in Manhattan. Her articles and photographs have appeared in numerous local and national publications. She can also be found playing guitar with various bands and building life-size monster props.
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106
Cleveland, OH 44106