Long before Hairspray went Broadway and Cry-Baby killed Johnny Depp’s teen idol image, John Waters was already a bonafide American icon, thanks mostly to his wildly transgressive Pink Flamingos and its internationally infamous final scene (yes, the turd eating). The 1972 film — which features Divine’s career-making performance as the Filthiest Person Alive — was many viewers’ first taste of Waters, and the renegade idiosyncrasies that make his films such divisive sensations. But what about the incendiary work that came before it?
Waters considers Multiple Maniacs (1970), his second full-length feature, the “trainer wheels” for Pink Flamingos. The black and white movie follows Lady Divine, twisted ringleader of the traveling “Cavalcade of Perversion” freak show. She robs her disgusted audiences at the end of each gig, then skips town with the sideshow performers and her philandering boyfriend. Bored of the busts, Lady Divine decides to start killing her patrons — setting off a murderous rampage that ends in a standoff with the National Guard (after she’s had wild lesbian sex on a church pew while reciting the Stations of the Cross, and been raped by a giant lobster, of course).
Multiple Maniacs is a window into an era when Waters’ legendary troupe — Divine, Mink Stole, Cookie Mueller, Mary Vivian Pearce, and David Lochary — weren’t the subversive stars we now cherish, but a band of Baltimore oddballs waging war on American decency. And were it not for the Criterion Collection and Janus Films’ recent restoration efforts, we might never have been able to see it. When Waters wasn’t able to secure a traditional release for the film he made for $5,000, he drove around the country and rented spaces to screen it himself. It was released on VHS in 1994, but has never before been available digitally or on DVD — the original reel has been sitting in Waters’ attic for decades.
On Friday, the newly restored Multiple Maniacs opened its nationwide theatrical run at New York’s IFC Center, where the Pope of Trash himself presided over his (much better looking) blasphemous orgy of sleaze and depravity for the first time in over four decades. Before he reintroduced the world to the proto-punk classic, we sat down with Waters to learn more about it.
Congratulations on this restoration. I know it’s one of your favorites.
Thank you! It’s funny; I wrote that it was my favorite back in 1980 and I’ve made a lot of movies since then. Seeing it completely restored makes it like a new movie to me — one from my past that came back and got a great facelift.
In This Filthy World, you said you wanted it restored in a nice puke green. Is that still a dream?
[Laughs] No, I like how it looks now as a bad John Cassavetes movie.
It opened in Provincetown, where you’ve been going forever.
Fifty-two summers! And yes, we had the sneak preview at the Provincetown Film Festival.
What keeps you coming back?
I work there, I’m not really on vacation. I’m writing a book and it’s the perfect place to do it. I live in a Grey Gardens-style house on the water, I love to swim and ride my bike — it’s about as healthy as I get — and I look better with a tan.
Do you still go out?
We have a big party once a year in a bar so we can have a bar that we actually like everyone in. But otherwise, I go to the straight bars. I like to see the outsider view; I want to be with the minority!
Do you ever go to the A House [P-Town treasure and one of America’s oldest gay bars]?
I haven’t been this year but I always go once, because it’s where Tennessee Williams met his boyfriend, where Billie Holliday played. I saw Judy Garland get drunk in there before she died. There’s history there, so much history.
Have you ever screened Multiple Maniacs in Provincetown before?
That was the first place we screened it outside of Baltimore. It played at the Art Cinema; I’d rent the whole theater and four wall it. Outside of Baltimore, Provincetown was always the first place we played things, then San Francisco. New York was last. Everybody came; Edith [Massey, one of Waters’ longtime Dreamlanders] saw one of the films at the Unitarian Church.
What kind of people showed up?
Bikers, gay people who didn’t get along with other gay people, criminals, people who took LSD, people with a sense of humor who got angry and later turned into punks. I would sit there in the back with my 16mm and show it at midnight; Divine would hand out flyers on the street in Provincetown. It was a different time.
You shot it in 1969, a very tumultuous time. What were you thinking about at its genesis?
About revolution and riots and insanity! Which was a lot of what was going on during the fall of 1969, probably the most volatile time in the entire year. It was the second world war after the second world war. I think Multiple Maniacs reflected that, but we were — hopefully — being humorous about what was allowed, what was illegal, what you could do, and how you could surprise people. That’s in hindsight, though. Then, it was just all my friends making a movie the same way a 20-year-old today would make movies with their friends and their cell phone. There’s very little difference.
Multiple Maniacs is now your highest rated film on Rotten Tomatoes.
I know, 100%! I think we finally got a bad review today. I’m very flattered; the reviews are very intellectual now, and I don’t think we had one good one then. We used the negative reviews in the film, and now we use the good ones. It’s the same movie, just dressed up.
Speaking of: in This Filthy Word, you talk about imagining the Wicked Witch of the West wearing Comme des Garçons. Do you imagine any of your own characters in Kawakubo?
A few of the homeless people in Pecker are wearing Comme des Garçons, I think, when they’re discovered by the LA photographers. And when we made Desperate Living, Van Smith had all the clothes made out of garbage — they wore shower curtains, garbage bags. I think that’s very similar to what Rei Kawakubo does. But I don’t make movies about people that wear high fashion; most of my characters are normal people that act insane rather than insane people that act self confident.
Some of the clothes in Multiple Maniacs are very chic.
There was this woman named Mrs. Miesta, an old Jewish lady in a house dress in her basement that made clothes for drag queens on the side. She said, “Don’t let my husband ever know.” She didn’t ask a lot of questions. And when the word got out, other drag queens in the city started coming to her too. But Elizabeth Taylor was our model who we were mocking with the fur coats and everything.
Mr. David [Lady Divine’s ill-fated boyfriend] almost looks like he’s wearing new Gucci.
David Lochary made a lot of it himself; he did the costumes before Van got started on Pink Flamingos. We always used to wear a lot of ludicrous cowboy shirts with guitars and shrunken heads. The greatest thrift shop in Baltimore didn’t really know what was good or bad. Well, they did, but what we liked, they didn’t want. You could fill a bag for a dollar, and Divine used to go in with a crayon, stapler, and cardboard and change the prices. Even when it was a dollar, he’d mark it down to forty cents.
It seems like you and Kawakubo came to this idea of punk anarchism before the music and movement really crystalized.
I think Vivienne Westwood came to punk early, but I do feel Rei was even beyond that. Deconstruction and holes — her look was always like something went wrong at the dry cleaner. The first thing I ever bought was that handkerchief with the holes in it so when you blow your nose the snot goes on your hand.
Did you go to the sample sale?
I’ve been to it before, but I didn’t go this year. Did you get anything?
Gigantic, asymmetrical wool pants.
It always makes me crazy when I see something there that I paid for! But I don’t care; I wore it first.
Your Simpsons episode turns 20 next year.
I still love it, I was very proud to have been a part of it. But I get the lowest royalties. People in animation didn’t get SAG then, so I’ve actually gotten a check for one penny. I cash ’em anyway. I’m just mad you can’t do it twice; the only people that did were Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Jackson. I want to do it twice! But I was in the Alvin and the Chipmunks movie, that’s better.
That’s better than The Simpsons?
Yes. No, I’m just kidding. They changed the line, but Alvin actually says to me, “I saw Pink Flamingos.” In a children’s movie! I thought, “Huh? Alvin the Chipmunk is talking to me about Pink Flamingos?” That’s as insane as Multiple Maniacs being released almost 50 years later.
‘Multiple Maniacs’ is now showing at the IFC Center. Tickets and more information here.
Credits
Text Emily Manning
Photography Alasdair McLellan
Styling Francesca Burns
[The 35th Birthday Issue, No 337, Spring 2015]