Wednesday, August 7, 2024

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: DIVINE TRASH (1998) ***

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on August 17th, 2007)

(NOTE:  Divine Trash was featured as a bonus supplement on the Criterion Collection’s Blu-Ray of Pink Flamingos.) 

Documentarian Steve Yeager’s fun, fact-filled chronicle of cult maverick John Waters is a must-see for fans of Baltimore’s greatest living director. It covers his childhood (he used to perform puppet plays based on William Castle’s The Tingler) and his early films with his leading lady Divine (such as Hag in a Black Leather Jacket, Roman Candles and Eat Your Make-Up) and concludes with the making of his cult classic Pink Flamingos. His early influences (H.G. Lewis, the Kuchar Brothers, and Paul Morrissey), fans (Jim Jarmusch, David O. Russell and Steve Buscemi), and his famed acting troupe (Mink Stole and Mary Vivian Pierce) are interviewed as well as Waters himself. The interviews are insightful and entertaining, but the best part is seeing rare behind the scenes footage from the set of Pink Flamingos (including the infamous dog shit eating scene). Yeager also directed In Bad Taste, which covered Waters’ later years and features many of the same interviewees.

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