John Waters: Change of Life
By Michael Cohn
Three rooms are dedicated to screening Waters’ three earliest films, "Hag in a Black Leather Jacket," (1964), "Roman Candles" (1966), and the hilarious "Eat Your Makeup," (1968). All of these films haven’t been screened publicly since the ‘60s. These short films provide early glimpses of Waters stalwarts such as Divine, Mink Stole, and David Lochary enacting his eerie and strange scenarios before the camera.
His paraphernalia is interesting but it is the movies that are the most fun. "Eat Your Makeup" begins with an actress crawling through the sand crying out for her makeup, which a bare-chested blonde man throws at her and she proceeds to consume. Next Lochary and a deranged governess played by Maelcum Soul kidnap a young woman and chain her to two fashion models and force her to walk down the catwalk while a crowd jeers. One of the models escapes to a carnival house of horrors, where she is frightened by a girl scout. After one of the models is killed, she is revived by a kiss from the carnival attendant and she changes into a princess, as "Someday My Prince Will Come" plays in the background. In a dream sequence, Divine fantasizes about being Jackie Kennedy riding in a convertible alongside a young actor coiffed in a JFK hairstyle in a disturbing recreation of the Zapruder assassination film.
The other two movies are bizarre in their own fashion. Waters’ first movie, "Hag in a Black Leather Jacket," features a white ballerina (also played by Soul) who elopes with a black suitor. They celebrate their wedding with a hooded Klansman, who rides atop their car. The wedding guests eat cake thrown off the roof of Waters’ parents’ house.
"Roman Candles" acknowledges Andy Warhol’s influence on Waters’ early film work and is patterned after Warhol’s "Chelsea Girls," with the screen divided into three images that unreel simultaneously. Among the sequences are actors shooting up heroin, documentary footage of the pope, clips from old "Creature from the Black Lagoon" monster movies, drag queens, and a threesome in bed.
Also on view is a pop-up cardboard recreation of Waters’ extensive library, including his bookshelves, tables, couch, and an action figure of porn star Jeff Stryker. Waters includes thick loose-leaf catalogs of his library, divided into such helpful categories as Patricia Hearst, Extreme Catholicism, and Jonestown.
The bulk of the exhibit features a series of photos laid out in horizontal progressions that seem to morph from one extreme to another. The results are both funny and reflexive. "Self-Portrait" shows photos of sitcom actor Don Knotts changing into the image of his near look alike, John Waters himself. Similarly, "Facelift" depicts Elizabeth Taylor getting a facelift, and when the bandages are unwrapped, she too is revealed to have changed into Waters. Anyone can become John Waters, as his ubiquitous influence in everything from drag queens to trailer trash daytime talk shows clearly demonstrates.
Many of the photo collages juxtapose memorably disgusting movie stills. "Toilet Training" assembles shots of stars like John Travolta and Danny Glover sitting in the john, and "Puke in the Cinema" features photos of actors and actresses retching. Others build to a humorous climax in the last panel. A piece entitled "Birth Control," shows a succession of photos of a woman giving birth, with her obstetrician ultimately delivering the fanged monster baby from "It’s Alive!"
Besides Miss Taylor and Mr. Knotts, other influences on Waters include JFK and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. "Jackie Copies Divine’s Look" is a Jackie Kennedy doll in a flaming red dress pointing a handgun, as Divine did in "Pink Flamingos." Across from her is "Sneaky JFK," a John F. Kennedy doll dressed in a white gown with a string of pearls around his throat.
Also of note is the collage "Return to Sender" where Waters arranges the undelivered envelopes he attempted to mail to Pia Zadora, Charles Manson, JFK Jr., Diana Ross, Joey Heatherton, Rock Hudson, and Jayne Mansfield.
John Waters lives on the borders between art and the obscene, a space which the New Museum celebrates. The chance to view his personal detritus makes his movies three-dimensional. And just as gross.
