It’s been more than two decades sinceJohn Watersdirected a film, although he’s kept himself busy with museum exhibits, touring his one-man show, and writing his first novel,Liarmouth, whichcame close to being made into a moviewithAubrey Plaza. Although his singular sense of camp humor has been sorely missing from the big screen, it might be hard to top his last outing,A Dirty Shame, which reaches a sort of apex of bad taste. Released in 2004, it represents a return to the gleefully shocking exploitation flicks that made Waters famous, produced with the same level of craft as his more mainstream outings. It’s the biggest budgeted sleaze-fest ever made, serving as a sort of magnum opus forthe Pope of Trash.
‘A Dirty Shame’ Was a Return to John Waters' Roots
Set in Waters' beloved Baltimore,A Dirty ShamestarsTracey Ullmanas Sylvia Stickles, a suburban convenience store owner with an uptight view of sex. Sylvia is so repressed that she’s locked her large-breasted daughter, Caprice (Selma Blair), in the garage so she can’t keep dancing at the local go-go club under the name Ursula Udders. That all changes when Sylvia is whacked on the head and suffers a concussion that turns her into a sex addict. She quickly falls under the spell of Ray-Ray Perkins (Johnny Knoxville), leader of a gleeful group of sex addicts who indulge in fetishes heretofore never before known to man. This puts them directly at odds with the town’s more puritanical citizens, led by Big Ethel (Suzanne Shepherd) and Marge the Neuter (Mink Stole).
By the time he madeA Dirty Shame, Waters had achieved a level of mainstream success that would’ve seemed unimaginable in the days when he was directing movies likePink FlamingosandFemale Trouble. Made on a shoestring and headlined by the drag queenDivine, these films were sold to audiences almost exclusivelyon their shock value, in much the same way that Waters' idols —William Castle,Roger Corman,Herschell GordonLewis— sold their low-budget shockers. As the trailer forPink Flamingospromised,you were in for something gross, trashy, and wild. In spite of their nonexistent production value and cast of Baltimore locals (dubbed the Dreamlanders), the films had success onthe midnight movie circuit, and won praise fortheir subversive humor. Eventually, Waters was given enough money to cast Divine alongside an established star,Tab Hunter, in his suburban satirePolyester.
This Bonkers John Waters Film Blasted Indie Movies
John Waters turned his singular critical eye to film itself for this 2000 vision of insanity.
Post-Polyester, something seemed to change within Waters, and all of a sudden, he was channeling his love of kitsch and pop culture into the PG-rated nostalgia-festHairspray. From there, Waters became a studio comedy director, setting controversy aside for the star-driven vehiclesCry-Baby,Serial Mom, andPecker.Although still infused withhis trademark campiness, these films were gentler in tone than the trash extravaganzas of his youth.Hairsprayeven got turned into a Tony-winning Broadway musical (which was itself adapted into a 2007 film), while Watersbecame something of a householdname thanks toThe SimpsonsandWoody Allen’sSweet and Lowdown. Perhaps spurned on bythe gross-out successofThere’s Something About Mary, Waters set out to prove withA Dirty Shamethat he was still the king of bad taste. And boy, did he ever.
‘A Dirty Shame’ Is a Fitting Swan Song for John Waters
Water has never shied away fromputting shocking material in his movies: after all, this is the man who had Divine eat literal dog poop inPink Flamingos.YetA Dirty Shamereaches an almost absurd level of bad taste, as if Waters were expelling all the pent-up raunchiness he’d been repressing in his gentler films. As Sylvia and the other residents of her quiet Baltimore suburb get whacked on the head more times thanThe Three Stooges, they’re finally able to indulge in sexual pleasures they’d previously kept hidden,with Waters staging some of his most outrageous comedy sequences. The highlight involves Sylvia dancing with her husband, Vaughn (Chris Isaak), at a senior center, and when the power of sex overtakes her, she lifts a water bottle off the ground without using her hands (we’ll let you use your imagination as to how). Like a sort of X-ratedAlice in Wonderland, Sylvia encounters a variety of nymphomaniacs with bizarre fetishes, from adult babies to shelf-humpers.
Movies produced by big studios rarely get released withan NC-17 rating, yetA Dirty Shamewas, as its near-encyclopedic listings of aberrant sexual behaviors made it nearly impossible tore-cut to an R-rating. Few American films have been as preoccupied with perversion as this one, and its mere existence is a triumph for Waters. The shock and horror that the “neuters” feel when confronted with the perverts can almost be seen as a reflection of how conservative audiencesreacted to the director’s earliest films, which gleefully thumbed their noses at 1950s values.Culture ultimately caught up with Waters, and the once-renegade filmmaker became accepted by polite society, in much the same way that the perverts inA Dirty Shameeventually triumph. Given the realities of movie financing and aging, there’s no telling whether Waters will ever make another film. If he doesn’t, we can at least take solace in the fact that he achieved his goal ofbringing bad taste to the masses. Dirty? Perhaps. But a shame? Far from it.
A Dirty Shame
