HairSpray directed by John Waters 1988

1. HairSpraydirected by John Waters1988

2. THE MAN • John Waters is the King of Campy, absurd, and sometimes insanely vulgar movies. • John Waters brand of grotesquery is first and foremost hilarious, and there's a wealth of pointed social commentary behind the bitchy, raunchy kitsch. Easy to dismiss as a clown, but we think he was America's most important underground film-maker back in the day. A true product of backward, ugly Baltimore, MD.

3. Quotes • "To me, bad taste is what entertainment is all about. If someone vomits watching one of my films, it's like getting a standing ovation. But one must remember that there is such a thing as good bad taste and bad bad taste." • "I pride myself on the fact that my work has no socially redeeming value." • "If you can make someone laugh who's dead set again you, that's the first step to winning them over to your side."

4. Childhood Trauma? • Waters had a twisted childhood; his favorite childhood memories were reportedly the sight of real blood on the seat of a wrecked car in a junkyard. • Waters was expelled from the New York University Film School for smoking pot. • Trademark is all his movies are set in Baltimore. • His earlier films are the stuff of legend circles of bad taste, worship, crowned by 1973’s Pink Flamingos. • It is a sure thing that Waters can’t get through any film without at least one revolting scene, and he gives us a couple of them in Hairspray. • Mercifully, they are brief and tempered with good humor.

5. One Smart Cookie • Waters is a prolific film director, author, photographer and sometime actor. He first gained notice in the film world with his release "Pink Flamingos". Generally, as his budgets have increased, the gross stuff has decreased, though his later works still have their moments. • Water's films are equally notable for the colorful casting. His earlier films, through 1981, relied primarily upon a group of actors and crew called the Dreamlanders. The most famous of the group is Divine, a 300 lb. cross dresser who passed away in 1988. Pop-culture icons began to turn up in Water's films starting with the release of "Hairspray", which included Sonny Bono and Pia Zadora. The release of "Cry-Baby" marked the screen debut of Patty Hearst who shared the screen with such disparate talents as Traci Lords and Joey Heatherton. • Waters has contributed many essays and articles to national publications such as Newsweek, American Film, and Playboy. His social commentaries cover a broad range of topics, from bad hair to juvenile delinquency. In addition to articles, he has published 3 nonfiction books, Shock Value, Crackpot, and Trash Trio. He also published a book of photographs titled Directors Cut. During 1995, a Soho art gallery presented a showing of Water's photography titled "My Little Movies." During this same year he made a cameo appearance on the television show Homicide. He most recently appeared in the Woody Allen film Sweet and Lowdown as Mr. Haynes.

6. Waters’ Crazy, Crazy World • Waters writes all his own films, and the basic elements of filth and debauchery still exist in his screenplays - just in a more palatable fashion. Also present in many of his films are the plastic sincerity and squashed innocence of late 50's and early 60's Americana: Sweet mothers who make breakfast for a family of four versus cheap girls who have babies in the backs of cars. • Of course, he is most well known for breaking boundaries of acceptable filmmaking. Drugs, queers, abortion, religion - nothing is sacred in his field of vision. When asked about it, he says "secretly I think that all my films are politically correct, though they appear not to be. That's because they're made with a sense of joy." And perhaps that is why so many people from all around the world take such joy in his movies. • Waters also recreates the world of early 1960’s high school with a more than slightly sardonic eye.

7. The Film * Tracy’s exile to the “special ed” homeroom and the subsequent dodge ball scene presents school as Waters must have seen it: noisy and brutish, with not guess as to the directions from which the next blow will come. • Tracy Turnblad: Ricki Lake • Psychiatrist: John Waters • Mrs. Turnblad/Arvin Hodgepile: Divine • Beatnik Chick: Pia Zadora • Wilbur Turnblad: Jerry Stiller

8. “If you remember the 60’s, you weren’t there.” -Dennis Hopper • Takes place in 1962 in Baltimore, where a program known as “The Corny Collins Show” is at the center of many local teenage fantasies. The kids on Corny’s show are great dancers. They are “popular”. They are on the Council, a quasi-democratic board of teenagers who advise Corny on matters of music and supervise auditions for kids who want to be on the show. • Commentary on the decivilizing ‘80s that Stiller and Divine and Bono and Harry, who would have qualified as sideshow exhibits in the real ‘60s, look in the contest of this movie like plausible parents. • The movie carries a social message as sort of a sideline: “The Corny Collins Show” is racially segregated, and Tracy and her black friends help to change that situation. • Basically the movies is a bubble-headed series of teenage crises and crushes, alternating with historically accurate choreography of such forgotten dances as the Madison and the Roach.

9. This isn’t like the remake! • The movie probably has the most to say to people who were teenagers in the early ‘60s, but they are, the people least likely to see this movie. It also will appeal to today’s teenagers, who will find that every generation has its own version of Corny Collins, and its own version of the Council, heap of teenage history. • “The Corny Collins Show” was based on a real television show called “The Buddy Deane Show”. • “Tilted Acres” was based on “Gwynn Oak Amusement Park” in Baltimore County, MD, where racial problems occurred. • The Tilted Acres scenes were shot at Dorney Park in Allentown, PA. • CollenFitzpatrick, who played Amber, is not pop singer Vitamin C. • RicOcasek from the band “The Cars” and Pia Zadora guest star as Beatnik Cat and Beatnik Chick. • “Hairspray” was also known under the working title “White Lipstick”. • - Michael St. Gerard, who played Tracy’s boyfriend Link, went on to appear as a young Elvis Presley in two separate productions: “Great Balls of Fire,” the story of Jerry Lee Lewis, and “Elvis: The Early Years,” a short-lived biographical series on ABC.