John Waters: Pope of Trash│The Academy Museum
In Conversation with Curators Jenny He and Dara Jaffe
John Waters, the flamboyant flamingo. Photo by Greg Gorman. Images courtesy of The Academy Musuem
In the Academy Museum’s third large-scale temporary exhibition, curators Jenny He and Dara Jaffe have crafted the first comprehensive exhibit dedicated to the Baron of Bad Taste, the ‘provoc-auteur’ and iconic filmmaker John Waters. From his first short 8mm film at age 17, Hag in a Black Leather Jacket, to taboo-trouncing features like Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, Hairspray, and Cry-Baby, the upcoming exhibition explores Waters’ process, themes, and unique approach to moviemaking over a subversive and salacious sixty-year career.
Using some 400 objects to tell the story, curators He and Jaffe have culled costumes, props, handwritten correspondence, photographs and more from an extensive list of sources that includes Waters’ own personal collection, Wesleyan University, Yale University, the University of South Carolina, and private lenders such as recurring Waters’ cast members Mink Stole and Traci Lords. Highlights among the never-before exhibited objects include the electric chair from Female Trouble, the Velma Von Tussle exploding wig worn by Debbie Harry and Tracy Turnblad’s roach dress worn by Ricki Lake in Hairspray, the leather jacket worn by Johnny Depp in Cry-Baby, and the bedazzled skeleton costume worn by Maggie Gyllenhaal in Cecil B. Demented.
John Waters: Pope of Trash is accompanied by a concurrent retrospective film series, including a rare silent screening of Waters’ 1968 film Eat Your Makeup, with live commentary from Waters, as well as a 35mm screening of Serial Mom, preceded by a conversation with Waters and performer/filmmaker Peaches Christ. A fully-illustrated companion book featuring a new interview with Waters and text by the curators is also available in the Academy Museum Store, along with first-ever officially licensed merchandise from Waters films. Prior to the launch of John Waters: Pope of Trash on 17 September, Film Review chats with curators Jenny He and Dara Jaffe about their four year ‘odd-yssey’ into the wonderfully tacky, wacky world of John Waters.
Brought to you by Ultra Clutch Hairspray! John Waters: Pope of Trash, Academy Museum of Motion Pictures,
Photo by: Charles White, JWPictures/©Academy Museum Foundation
Film Review (FR): It seems daunting to distill a filmmaker’s 60-year career. How did you approach the exhibit?
Jenny He: I think we certainly went macro to micro. That's a great question for us to think about, especially four years in. We started this project in late 2019 and we're days from opening. It's been an incredible journey. We looked at everything. We went to all of the possible lenders that we might have for the exhibition—John Waters, certainly, Wesleyan University is a major lender to the exhibition. We basically looked at everything, then we drilled down and pared it down to what you will see in the exhibition. We left no stone unturned. We really took several years in the process, making sure that we were distilling John's body of work into a spatial experience for our visitors.
Bell and Howell Camera, Photo by Mitro Hood © Academy Museum Foundation
Dara Jaffe: His film career spans five plus decades, but once you start to look into it, you realize that there are through lines of his deepest obsessions that run throughout. You can compare his first movie to his most recent movie and realize that these obsessions have been there the whole time. [We’re] illuminating those for our visitors as they walk through the exhibition.
(FR): What was your collaboration with John like on this project?
Dara Jaffe: It's been amazing working with John. Right from the beginning, we knew that he was going to be one of the biggest lenders with his personal collection. Knowing that we'd want to have access to him as a resource—he opened his home to us, he opened his entire personal collection to us, and welcomed us to Baltimore several times. He literally drove us around in his car giving us a tour of, not only filming locations, but also fun little tidbits that only John would find notable Baltimore things to point out. There's nothing more vital than being able to ask the artists themselves when you have a question about their own work. He's also connected us to basically his entire family, the Dreamlanders—the cast and crew that he's been working with pretty much the whole time.
Pink Phlem-ingo bag for Pink Flamingos (1972), Courtesy of Ogden and Mary Louise Reid Cinema Archives, Wesleyan University
One thing we saw over and over again, is that when we reached out to his collaborators, they would say, ‘If this is for John, anything. Anything for John’, so we also got that wealth of knowledge, not only hearing the first-hand experiences of all of these artists who have worked with him, but also asking if they had any additional objects that perhaps we could borrow for the exhibition. He really opened a lot of doors for us and has been a resource the entire time.
Jenny He: I don't want to speak for John, but I'm hoping that this journey of revisiting has been gratifying for John as well. For example, we would do Zoom meetings where we would actually watch one of John's films together with him, while he talked about it. He made comments where he said, ‘Oh, I forgot about this moment’, then he starts going into a story about a film that he made in the 60s. As we were digging through John's film career, he's also revisiting it together with us. I think that was really key in terms of the collaboration, having that live audio commentary with the director on Zoom was so great.
Dara Jaffe: Yeah, you’re so right. I think we got a lot of fresh revelations.
(FR): There's a tangible piece that comes with that. You're getting a one-to-one connection with John and his collaborators. In addition to frequently working with the same actors, Waters also collaborated closely with make-up and costume designer Van Smith and production designer Vincent Peranio. How does their work play into the exhibition?
Jenny He: Van Smith, his longtime costume designer, is unfortunately, no longer with us. Vincent Peranio, his longtime production designer, now lives in Portugal, but he has been a great resource for us. We're also borrowing materials from the Vincent Peranio archives at Yale University at the Beinecke library. Vincent has been really hands on with us as well. We have been emailing him throughout, just fact checking a lot of things and understanding the process–the way the design worked between John and his crew. In particular, his costume designer and his production designer are at the forefront in the exhibition and will be on display throughout all of our galleries.
(FR): Throughout this research process, were there any big surprises for you, in the objects that turned up?
Dara Jaffe: There were so many amazing moments. When you're starting out, you have your wish list of, ‘if this still exists, it would be so amazing to find’. One of those for us, was the exploding wig worn by Debbie Harry in Hairspray, which it turns out is at Wesleyan University. When we found it there, we both just started screaming. The archivists came in concerned, but we were just so excited to have found the wig. I feel like John is very aware of what's in his collection. So I think for John, what's probably more surprising is hearing what his friends and collaborators have hung onto after all these years. There were some that we found later in the process that we'd been looking for. You have to piece all the different pieces together. In Cecil B. Demented Maggie Gyllenhaal's character–who is a makeup designer–wears an ammo belt, where instead of ammunition, each slot has a lipstick, so it's an ammo belt full of lipsticks. We had located the costume that she wears and so many other things. Then finally, we were connected to the prop master, Brook Yeaton–who by the way is the son of Pat Moran, John Waters longtime right-hand woman. He had so many missing pieces. He had the fire poker from Serial Mom.
Lamb leg prop from Serial Mom (1994), photo by Mitro Hood. Images courtesy of The Acadmey Museum
© Academy Museum Foundation
Jenny He: A stunt one and the Hero one.
Dara Jaffe: One of the murder weapons in Serial Mom. There's so many amazing stories that surround the objects. In Cry-Baby, all of the drapes, the members of the gang, have these matching black leather jackets that say ‘Cry Baby’ on the back. Jonathan Benya is an actor who was in this film when I believe he was seven or eight years old. He is Cry Baby’s nephew in the movie, Ricki Lake’s [character Pepper’s] son [Snare-Drum], and he has a teeny tiny version of the Cry-Baby jacket. He told us that being a part of this movie meant so much to him. It's the most special experience of his life. And this is what he kept from it. At one point, his parents unfortunately had a house fire. He said, ‘They grabbed the pets and they grabbed this jacket.’ It's the only thing that survived, other than the family, because that's how much it meant to him. It’s very special knowing that we've got objects like that in this exhibition and there's so many. There are 12,000 square feet of objects with stories like that behind them.
(FR): There’s certainly a lot to dive into. I imagine that was a challenging task as well, narrowing it down to what appears in the exhibit. What did your research process look like and how did you collaborate across all of these channels to pool the items on display?
Gas can prop used by Johnny Knoxville as Ray Ray, A Dirty Shame (2004), Photo by Owen Kolasinski/© Academy Museum Foundation
Jenny He: There was certainly a lot more that we could have put in the exhibition, but I think [we narrowed it down] through the process of looking at what we wanted to communicate about John's films, and as Dara mentioned earlier, connecting the themes throughout the exhibition. Visitors are traveling through the galleries chronologically, so we established from the opening gallery, an introduction to John's work. Then from there, we look at a biography of John—his filmography, his visual chronology, establishing who John is. And then from there, you go through a journey from his first short film all the way to his latest feature. Looking at that, Dara and I wanted to bring out specific stories. So for Serial Mom, we created the crime scene vignettes. For Cecil B. Demented, we wanted to bring the ensemble cast out, so we have several character costumes on view.
We looked at every single film thinking, how do we communicate John's themes using the prominent elements of that movie, and most importantly, what objects had to show. Going back to, of course, Van Smith's costume designs and Vincent’s production designs, that resulted in set decoration and props that we could show, that we've gathered from John's own collection, as well as the collection of The Reid Cinema Archives at Wesleyan University, and in particular, his cast and crew, whom we've had the privilege of speaking to early on, as Dara mentioned. The scavenger hunt of materials and objects and artworks to put in the exhibition allowed us to look at this huge pool and then we worked from macro to micro, to make sure that we were not missing any element of John. Once you exit the exhibition, you will be fully immersed in the world of John Waters. Not only if you’re a longtime fan, but also a visitor who doesn't know anything about John. John's mode of filmmaking from his independent beginnings in a do-it-yourself method of guerilla filmmaking with his so-called Dreamlanders, all the way to his rebellious Hollywood productions.
Baltimore bumper sticker, Photo by Owen Kolasinski/© Academy Museum Foundation, Courtesy John Waters
(FR): We have to talk a little bit more about Baltimore, which you mentioned earlier, because we can’t talk about John Waters without talking about Baltimore, Maryland. How does his hometown–a recurring character in his films–find its way into the exhibit?
Dara Jaffe: Not to be cliche, but Baltimore had to be a character in this, it had to be a presence. There are a lot of people who are obsessed with a location, but I don't think anyone has stayed as loyal to a place as John Waters has to Baltimore. He's filmed every single one of his movies there. There are definite through lines. Starting in his biography gallery, and throughout—Baltimore is represented. Especially Pecker, his film that definitely has some meta elements in terms of a homegrown Baltimore artist who finds his way to the New York art scene. The crux of that gallery is comparing all of the props from the Baltimore scenes, to the props from the New York scenes. It's the kind of wink-wink that John was doing in that film, in terms of comparing them. In our visits to Baltimore–one of my favorite things to do is make an itinerary, where you're hitting as many filming locations as possible. We went to every single Baltimore filming location. Not only did seeing it with our own eyes make us understand his movies deeper and get a better sense of what the production must have felt like, [it helped us understand] where he was when he made the movies, especially as he goes from the streets of Baltimore to the suburbs.
Clapperboard, Pecker (1998), Photo by Owen Kolasinski/© Academy Museum Foundation
Scratch-and-sniff ‘Odorama’ theatrical gimmick card for Polyester (1981), Courtesy of Ogden and Mary Louise Reid Cinema Archives, Wesleyan University
One of our favorite stories from our research is about Polyester, which was his first movie that he filmed in the suburbs. They actually rented a house on a dreamy cul-de-sac. At the end of production, they held a giant yard sale in the front yard and sold all of the set pieces and furnishings that had been in the movie. So many people had told us this. When we were in Baltimore going to filming locations, we were like, ‘Let's just knock on some doors on that cul-de-sac. Maybe someone will still have something, maybe someone will still live there.’ It just so happened that the very first door we knocked on happened to belong to the only person still left in the neighborhood who was there when they shot Polyester. He lives in his parent’s home. At the time, he had climbed onto the roof and taken some amazing pictures of John directing that have never been seen that are now going to be in our exhibition. And his sister still had the bar cart that Divine serves drinks from the beginning of the movie. It was bought in that yard sale and they've been taking care of it all these years. It’s that story of connecting, almost walking in his footsteps, and being so incredibly rewarded for it. We were really hoping, of all the furnishings, to find that bar cart, because that also helps us tell the story we want to tell.
Another amazing thing to understand when you go to Baltimore, is that, John talks about the beginning of his career, that he and his friends were like the pariahs of the town. It was like, ‘Be careful with those crazy people with the movie camera. They're no good, who knows what they'll do.’ Now he's the hero of the town. Everywhere you go there are pink flamingos. You know they're there as a sign to John, the beloved hometown hero. That transition is also a major part of John's narrative across his career.
(FR): Which pieces do you feel are the most significant or revealing in terms of Waters’ body of work and really hone in on who he is as a filmmaker?
Pink Flamingos (1972), Courtesy of Warner Bros., photographed by Lawrence Irvine
Jenny He: Very early on in the exhibition in the biography section, we have a section dedicated to his Dreamlanders. They are so called because his first production company was called Dreamland, and his recurrent cast and crew were later known as Dreamlanders. People like Pat Moran, David Lochary, of course, Divine, Mary Vivian Pearce, Mink Stole, Vincent Peranio, and Van Smith.
Dara and I selected a specific object or artwork to represent each person in John's Dreamland sphere. I think for me, that section really distills for visitors who John is, which is somebody who everybody wanted to work for–for pennies, for free. They were passionate professionals. These were independent films, but they were professional films. Everybody was so dedicated to making John's vision come alive. What you’ll see there, [are pieces like] a drawing that Van Smith sketched, a costume sketch that another Dreamlander dug out of the trash is on view. We have Divine’s birth mementos. They're coming from John's own personal collection and Pat Moran's own personal collection—birth plate, baby shoes, a birth announcement. That really speaks to the closeness of John's cast and crew. From the early Dreamlanders, to his later films, people like Ricki Lake, Johnny Knoxville, Kathleen Turner, they have that same kind of passion and inclination and closeness to making John's vision come to life as the early Dreamlanders did. I think that's really representative of the story that we're trying to tell in this exhibition. Camp John Waters, which is something that happens every year, brings together different camp counselors. I think Johnny Knoxville is the camp counselor this year, and Kathleen Turner was there [previously]. So it really gives you a picture of this filmmaking family that John has created from the early 60s to today.
(FR): Music also plays an important role in Waters’ films. How does music feature in this exhibit?
Hairspray (1988), Courtesy of Warner Bros., photographed by Henny Garfunkel
Dara Jaffe: That's a great question, because he is incredibly particular about music. There are musical sequences, whether it's singing or dancing or performance, in almost all of his films. So much so, that we actually decided to punctuate the middle of our exhibition with an experiential gallery. There will be a montage compiling all of these musical performances, the dance performances, from across his filmography, from the very beginning. From his earliest never-before-seen film to the most recent, our visitors will be encouraged to dance if they would like to dance along. It falls chronologically between Hairspray, which he categorizes as his dance film, and Cry-Baby, which is his musical. So it also makes sense that it's bridging that transition in the heart of his filmography.
So many of his movies are period pieces and in some cases, they're nostalgic. It's the era he came up in, or the era that influenced him. He is so particular from a cultural standpoint, of what music goes with what dance goes with what subculture or social group. Using this specificity to do what he loves to do, which is humorously bending or satirizing social status, social groups, and different aspects of society. Who's considered high brow, who's considered low brow. So often music is telling that story. He likes to satirize everyone from social insiders to social outsiders. He's very, very particular when it comes to portraying culture. I feel like music to him is the heart of that. It also goes hand in hand with fashion, looking through his scrapbooks. He cut out clipping after clipping about musicians, about what they're wearing, how their hair looks. I feel like this is very much part of the fabric of his filmography, he uses it to so many different ends.
John Waters: Pope of Trash opens Sunday, 17 September. To learn more and book tickets, visit: www.academymuseum.org
Shoes worn by Edith Massey (Frederick's of Hollywood Zingy Zip-Ups) in Female Trouble (1974), Photo by Mitro Hood © Academy Museum Foundation
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CHAD KENNERK
