Little White Lies Issue 94: June/July/August

Directed by JOHN WATERS Starring DIVINE, DAVID LOCHARY, MINK STOLE Released 17 MARCH, 1972 A beat-up mobile home is plonked in barren rural Maryland. Its after-market paint job is soot grey, matte, drab as the bald trees out back (we really are in “the sticks”). The whole tableau would be quite depresso were it not for the statement-pastel panels wrapped around the trailer in Pepto-Bismol pink – the same shade as the flamboyance of plastic flamingos standing sentinel to this, Pandora’s trash can. Inside lurk suburban sex pests, gender gremlins, an egg fetishist and the filthiest person alive – tabloid certified! They’re ready and waiting to perform – per the film’s tagline – “an exercise in poor taste”. First uncaged in 1972, Pink Flamingos details the exploits of two warring filthfluencer clans: one, a…

Many have tried to censor John Waters. Many have tried to silence John Waters. Many have tried to, if you will, “cancel” John Waters. For every person who is aghast at his brand of art, there is another trying desperately to get him to join their cause (some more hateful than others). For every controversial statement he makes, another exists that makes him all the more endearing. Half a century into his career, it’s clear that John Waters is a man who will continue to say and create whatever he damn well pleases, with no boundary other than the limitations of his own imagination. This ceaseless drive to entertain and share his opinions and experiences – be it by directing films, writing memoirs, making cameos in small films, touring all…

1. Mondo Trasho 1969 The one with the chicken execution Supported by a compilation of unlicensed pop music, Mondo Trasho follows Divine after hitting a woman with her car. She keeps her unconscious victim like a doll, dressing her up and rolling her around town in a wheelchair while experiencing intense hallucinations of the Virgin Mary. 2. Multiple Maniacs 1970 The one with the rosary-job An unholy tale of biblical proportions, Multiple Maniacs once again centres around Divine as the ringleader of a perverted circus with a pastime of killing. Her boyfriend’s infidelity provides the catalyst for a religious awakening, a murder spree, and an unsavoury encounter with a giant lobster. 3. Pink Flamingos 1972 The one with the singing anus, faeces in the mail, homocide, incest, dog shit, abduction……

The Dreamlanders, so named for John Waters’ Dreamland Productions, aren’t just the director’s stable of trusty actors and collaborators repeatedly popping up across his filmography, or even his muses. They’re a family, organized around things more meaningful than blood: an identification with the Baltimore metropolitan area, for one, but also the uniting principles of filth and transgression. As simpatico sickos, this collection of oddballs, misfits, and outcasts have formed a community that is reflected in a body of work consistently interested in weird, insular tribes. We’ll introduce you to Divine properly over on page 22, but read on for a detailed index of all the other beautiful, hatchetfaced repertory players spinning trash into, well, golden trash. Cookie Mueller Role Call: Divine’s sex-worker daughter Cookie in Multiple Maniacs; feminine-wiled spy Cookie…

There’s a scene in John Waters’s 1972 trashterpiece Pink Flamingos in which Divine, played by the drag queen of the same stage name, breaks into the house of Raymond and Connie Marble (David Lochary and Mink Stole) with her son, Crackers (Danny Mills). After licking the furniture to assert Divine’s status as “the filthiest person alive”, like a dog marking its territory, Divine fellates Crackers, an image that could only have been in worse taste if the sexual roles were reversed. As they rush down the stairs to escape, they pass framed film posters on the wall. One of these films is The Queen, a spectacular 1968 documentary by Frank Simon about a drag contest hosted by the queen Flawless Sabrina in New York. Waters’ reference to this groundbreaking film…

Picture a heist. An intimidatingly statuesque womxn, garbed in the white furs of an apres-ski socialite, raids a fashion museum. Electra Abundance, an LGBTQ+ house mother, walks tonight in a competition themed ‘Royalty’. Her scurrying ‘children’, Black and Latina queers, rejected by homophobic America, fill garbage bags with the gowns of dead white aristocracy. “What should we take?” asks one. “Everything”, Electra Abundance replies. Shattering the museum’s doors, the pilot episode of hit TV drama Pose marries transgender crimes to feelgood pop. In 1972, the wicked godmother to such gleefully gay on-screen felonies was hiding out in a pink trailer on the edgelands of Baltimore. In John Waters’ cult comedy, Pink Flamingos, two families compete for the title of Filthiest People Alive. Drag queen Divine (Harris Glenn Milstead) plays Babs…