home movie named 'Hag in a Black Leather Jacket.'ĩ. His first film, made in 1964, was an 8-mm. When the movie was pressed for laserdisc by the Criterion Collection, the release was held up while the company searched for a manufacturer of Scratch-n-Sniff cards, since the technology had fallen out of favor.Ĩ. Waters shot 'Polyester' with Smell-o-Rama cues flashing at the bottom of the screen, and issued Scratch-n-Sniff cards to ticket buyers. ('This isn't a cast,' I wrote at the time, 'it's a pileup at the wax museum.') Waters called it his 'dream cast,' and after making the film said there were only two people he wanted to work with but never had: Pat Nixon and Elizabeth Taylor.ħ. Susan Tyrrell, Mink Stole and David Nelson. The cast for 'CryBaby' is arguably the most intriguing roll-call in the history of the movies: Depp, Patricia Hearst, Polly Bergen, Iggy Pop, Joe Dallesandro, Joey Heatherton, Willem Dafoe, Ricki Lake, Traci Lords, Troy Donahue. Then came his move to Hollywood financing and movies with bigger budgets and more respectability, but no less cheerful sleaze: ' Hairspray' (1988), ' Cry-Baby' (1990) and ' Serial Mom' (1994).Ħ. Their titles are like a litany of promo-sleaze: 'Eat Your Makeup' (1967), 'Mondo Trasho' (1968), 'Multiple Maniacs' (1969), ' Pink Flamingos' (1972), 'Female Trouble' (1974), 'Desperate Living' (1977) and 'Polyester' (1981). He began in his hometown of Baltimore by making lowbudget underground films.

That and many other facts are contained in Crackpot: The Obsessions of John Waters, his 1986 autobiography, where he poses on the back cover with his trademark pencil mustache (which makes him look like Johnny Depp in ' Ed Wood').ĥ. The secret Celebrity Room at Frederick's of Hollywood is secret for a good reason: After Waters had talked his way past store employees and finally saw inside, he found it nondescript, and without celebrities.Ĥ.

Crackpot the obsessions of john waters