A stand-up talent... John Waters.
When I was about 10, I went through a phase of watching Hairspray - the original directed by John Waters, not the remake currently in the cinemas - several times every weekend. Set in the early 60s and themed around a TV teen dance programme called The Corny Collins Show I watched it so much that I memorised not only lines of dialogue but dances like the Madison and the Bug, performed by the main characters. After a while, even the between-segment adverts (it was taped off Channel 4) started to look retro.
One day, I found another John Waters film on the shelf where my parents kept their videos - Pink Flamingos. When I asked my dad if I could watch it, the answer was a firm no. I have since, of course, seen the movie and have to concede its scenes of shit eating and a singing anus - to mention only the two most extreme elements of this bad taste classic - made it unsuitable for my 10-year-old eyes. However, Dad was powerless to stem my devotion to the man Andy Warhol called the Pope of Trash. My love of John Waters was for life.
Once I reached adulthood I quickly devoured the likes of Polyester, Female Trouble, Serial Mom, Cry-Baby and Pecker. In them, Waters gave me a whole pantheon of icons to adopt, such as Patty Hearst, the heiress kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) who then threw herself into their cause and later had cameo roles in many Waters films, and drag colossus Divine. I discovered other loves through Waters too - for the 60s American R&B which saturated Hairspray's soundtrack and for Divine-inspiring wayward drag troupe the Cockettes. My friends were fellow Waters disciples - if you couldn't quote Edith Massey's egg man speech from Pink Flamingos, I wasn't interested.
I'm such a John Waters fan I even enjoyed his 2004 sex addict comedy A Dirty Shame. That said, I wasn't disappointed to hear the moustachioed filmmaker is taking a break from behind the camera to star in This Filthy World. A film of Waters' stand-up routine, directed by Curb Your Enthusiasm's Jeff Garlin, it encapsulates everything I love about Waters. Who else could tell such great stories about stealing books from the "see librarian" section of the library as a child, rummaging through Andy Warhol's porn collection, filming Divine rolling around in pig excrement and signing a fan's used tampon? Whether he is in front of or behind the camera, there's still nothing quite like Waters' disgust-meets-humour schtick to amuse me over and over again. Have any other film auteurs similarly shaped your life?
