Team Experience is celebrating John Waters for his 75th birthday this week
by Jason Adams
If you'd like a new addition to your "Damn why wasn't I there?" list of super-cool world events of the past, have I ever got a doozy -- circe 1973, not long after Pink Flamingos had become a cult sensation, a screening of the film was set up by Fran Lebowitz (because obviously) for Andy Warhol and his various hangers-on at Warhol's Factory in New York. John Waters was already a big fan of the soup-can man -- he still owns a "Jackie O" print that pre-dates his homosexuality, gifted by his then-girlfriend in 1964 -- and so this was no doubt a big deal for the famed Baltimorean, and he's recalled the night fondly in interviews:
"... [Andy] had been shot recently, and the last thing he needed was to meet a bunch of new lunatics.... I brought my gang and Candy Darling was there, and that's when Divine met Candy, and they got along great. Andy watched it sort of hiding it in the closet, and then when it was over he went in the back with me and said, "Why don't you make the exact same movie over again?" And then he said he would back my next movie, which shocked me because no one was saying that, but I think I wisely said no, because it would have been Andy Warhol's Female Trouble...
What a great thing he offered to do that, and he was supportive after that. He put Divine on the cover of Interview and he recommended Pink Flamingos to Fellini in the paper."
Imagining a world where Andy Warhol's name was slapped top-billing onto Female Trouble is a bit of a brain-breaker to me, considering what a vicious (but loving) satire Female Trouble turned out to be of that exact Warhol Factory scene.
Andy Warhol and Divine later in the 1970s at Studio 54
Indeed it's hard not to imagine that this real-world intermingling of two very different, if complementary, queer scenes wasn't a key ingredient in the 1974 film's DNA -- which came first, the script for Female Trouble or that fateful Factory screening? Somebody get John Waters on the phone, please. (No, really. Please???)
As a person who has been watching this movie every couple of months for the past twenty years it screams inexplicable to me that somebody might not know the plot of Female Trouble, but I imagine you're out there and so I'll summarize.
Female Trouble tells the story of the legendary "thief and shit-kicker" Dawn Davenport (Divine), who'd like to be famous and who gets her wish. We follow Dawn from her teenage years eating meatball subs right out in class through one fateful cha-cha-less Christmas; from there we watch her exemplify all the roles of the Modern Woman, becoming a wonderful mother, housewife, disfigured crime-model and mass murderess. And it all culminates in the greatest state-sanctioned execution scene this side of Susan Hayward.
Among the most important characters to help shape Dawn's path are Donald and Donna Dasher (David Lochary and Mary Vivian Pierce), owners of the très exclusive Lipstick Beauty Salon, who make every person looking for a simple hairdo go through a rigorous interview process, guaranteeing only the trashiest of clientele. Dawn, a vision in mesh-orange, is a shoo-in from first sight. And she quickly becomes their star-pupil too, beating her daughter Taffy (Mink Stole) with a dining room chair for her noodle-conniption as Donald snaps wildly away with his camera, asexually horned-up by the seedy spectacle of it.
The Dashers, prissy sexless weirdos who lord over their self-contained kingdom with a set of truly inexplicable rules, are acidic Warhol riffs from their white hair down to their new nylons (all the better for the rats to bite), and I'm sure they tickled Andy to his core. Sure they get Dawn hooked on "Liquid Eyeliner" -- she says she can "feel exhibitionism throbbing in her veins" -- and snivel their way out of any repercussions after Dawn goes on her art-fueled rampage. But Andy lived and breathed Oscar Wilde's adage about the only thing worse than being talked about was not being talked about -- how could he not be flattered?
That said I think it's Waters' poisonous reframing of Warhol's "fifteen minutes of fame" claim with Female Trouble that is the real lasting legacy on the subject, looking back now -- Warhol might have seen how people would go on to become famous for doing absolutely nothing, but Waters proved even more prescient seeing how quickly that mind-set would curdle and go hilariously (and less hilariously) rotten. We've all seen the photo-shopped snap of Divine sneering at Donald Trump back in the day -- the photo might be faked but the photo keeps going around because the sentiment thrums with truth. With Dawn Davenport's fashionably filthy tale, John Waters and his Dreamlanders eviscerated everything about our culture's empty core five entire decades back, leaving two sparkly cha-cha-heels wedged firmly in its trunk. No really, Donald Trump -- go fuck yourself.
More from our John Waters Celebration
Pink Flamingos (1972)
Desperate Living (1977)
Polyester (1981)
Pecker (1998)