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John Waters
2 FOLLOWERS • 38 CREDITS • APR 22, 1946 • 78
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Growing up in Baltimore in the 1950s, John Waters was not like other children; he was obsessed by violence and gore, both real and on the screen. With his weird counter-culture friends as his cast, he began making silent 8mm and 16mm films in the mid-'60s; he screened these in rented Baltimore church halls to underground audiences drawn by word of mouth and street leafleting campaigns. As his filmmaking grew more polished and his subject matter more shocking, his audiences grew bigger, and his write-ups in the Baltimore papers more outraged. By the early 1970s he was making features, which he managed to get shown in midnight screenings in art cinemas by sheer perseverance. Success came when Pink Flamingos (1972) - a deliberate exercise in ultra-bad taste - took off in 1973, helped no doubt by lead actor Divine's infamous dog-crap eating scene. Waters continued to make low-budget shocking movies with his Dreamland repertory company until Hollywood crossover success came with Hairspray (1988), and although his movies nowadays might now appear cleaned up and professional, they retain Waters' playfulness, and reflect his lifelong obsessions.
Overview
Growing up in Baltimore in the 1950s, John Waters was not like other children; he was obsessed by violence and gore, both real and on the screen. With his weird counter-culture friends as his cast, he began making silent 8mm and 16mm films in the mid-'60s; he screened these in rented Baltimore church halls to underground audiences drawn by word of mouth and street leafleting campaigns. As his filmmaking grew more polished and his subject matter more shocking, his audiences grew bigger, and his write-ups in the Baltimore papers more outraged. By the early 1970s he was making features, which he managed to get shown in midnight screenings in art cinemas by sheer perseverance. Success came when Pink Flamingos (1972) - a deliberate exercise in ultra-bad taste - took off in 1973, helped no doubt by lead actor Divine's infamous dog-crap eating scene. Waters continued to make low-budget shocking movies with his Dreamland repertory company until Hollywood crossover success came with Hairspray (1988), and although his movies nowadays might now appear cleaned up and professional, they retain Waters' playfulness, and reflect his lifelong obsessions.
Known For
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
Saturday Night Live
Late Night with Seth Meyers
Real Time with Bill Maher
RuPaul's Drag Race
Tony Awards
The Blacklist
Search Party
My Name Is Earl
The Daily Show
Frasier
Finding Your Roots
E! True Hollywood Story
Chucky
Explained
Homicide: Life on the Street
21 Jump Street
The Graham Norton Show
The New Yorker Presents
HBO First Look
The Simpsons
FEUD
Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip
The Andy Warhol Diaries
Hairspray
Thinking XXX
Jackass Number Two
Hairspray
Living with Chucky
Seed of Chucky
Jackass 2.5
Pride
Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn
Production Credits
Cry-Baby
Hairspray
Hairspray
A Dirty Shame
An American Crime
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