Ahead of its 50th anniversary next year, John Waters’ Pink Flamingos is finally available to stream, on The Criterion Channel. For such an important and widely known movie, it had been extremely hard to watch over the past several years. “Warner Archive” (which absolutely no longer exists) came out with a VHS and DVD for its 25th anniversary, in 1997, but since then, a hard copy’s been out of print, and it’s never been available to rent or buy on iTunes and Amazon.
I bought that 1997 release as a teenager, exposing my high school and college friends to Waters’ and Divine’s filthiness, enjoying watching people’s reactions to the more infamous sequences, which I won’t describe in any further detail here. If you haven’t seen Pink Flamingos, sign up for The Criterion Channel and watch it right now. It’s still shocking today, maybe even more so because contemporary independent film has become so tame and tasteful in comparison. Today’s young John Waters’s, eager to push boundaries and break cultural taboos, are more likely to host right-wing podcasts than to enroll in film school. This is too depressing to think about.
I gave away my copy of Pink Flamingos — and all my VHS’s — before moving in with my now husband a decade ago. This was stupid and short-sighted (giving away the videos, not the move or the marriage.) I must have been in the thrall of the tech utopianism that poisoned my generation in the early ‘10s. We’ll be able to watch anything we want with the push of a button! How ridiculous does this sound now? As the big studios that own the rights to these movies get gobbled up by the giant conglomerates that run our lives, I can’t imagine cult-film preservation is near the top of their priority lists. Buy hard copies of the films you love, because who knows what we’ll have access to in the future. Though nothing has been announced yet, I have to believe that Criterion is preparing some big 50th Anniversary Bluray release for Pink Flamingos in 2022. I’ll be sure to hold on to my copy next time I move.
So, a question you may or may not be asking is, what possessed a suburban 16-year-old to buy a VHS copy of Pink Flamingos in the first place? I’m trying to remember the sequence of events that led me to Divine in her coral mermaid-cut dress, pointing a handgun into the face of anyone who dares pop the movie into their VCR. I had seen Serial Mom, Hairspray, and maybe even Cry Baby by then, but none of those movies initially made a huge impression on me. Then, in 1998, came Pecker, Waters’ first movie since Serial Mom, his most autobiographical movie, and most importantly for me, his first (and only) to star Christina Ricci.
It’s hard to overstate how important the filmography of Christina Ricci is to people who were teenagers in 1998. Previous child-to-adult stars like Jodie Foster and Brooke Shields were always in “adult” movies (Taxi Driver, Pretty Baby), so their transition to “adult” roles was relatively seamless. Their sexuality was exploited from an early age — they were always marketed as a “woman in the body of a girl” — so audiences expected them to act grown up in grown up roles. This was undoubtedly terrible for their mental health, and it led to one sadly unsuccessful presidential assassination, but it helped them be taken seriously as actresses. Ricci, after her breakout turn as Wednesday Addams in The Addams Family and Addams Family Values (still the greatest child performance of the 1990s), was in a series of big hits that nobody over the age of 15 would be caught dead watching. Films like Casper, Now and Then, and Gold Diggers: The Secret of Bear Mountain were hugely popular with her tween fanbase, but they didn’t have much wider cultural reach. In the winter of 1997, Ricci was in a tired remake of the 1965 Hayley Mills vehicle That Darn Cat, and it would have been smart to assume that her reign as a child star was coming to an end. But then she took a supporting role in Ang Lee’s critically acclaimed suburban sex drama The Ice Storm, and adults, who maybe hadn’t thought about her since The Addams Family six years previously, began to realize what a captivating screen presence she possessed.
Instead of joining the teen rom-com or slasher booms, which were going full force in the late 90s, Ricci decided to make a series of indie movies that would cement her as the coolest young actress of her generation. In the summer of 1998, she starred in Don Roos’ The Opposite of Sex, Vincent Gallo’s Buffalo ’66, and John Waters’ Pecker, back to back. Because of Ricci’s teen star power, these were the first indie movies directly marketed to the generation now known as Geriatric Millennials. Maybe we had seen and loved Pulp Fiction, Fargo and Lost Highway when we were a little too young, so we were primed for something a bit edgier than She’s All That and Titanic.
So I went into Pecker a Christina Ricci fan, and I left a diehard John Waters fan. Pecker is about a young photographer — he’s nicknamed Pecker because he pecks at his food, duh — played by Eddie Furlong (another child star attempting to transition to adult roles) who is suddenly discovered by the New York art world, and must choose between fame and fortune, and his artistic integrity and family back in Baltimore. Waters was canny enough to cast not only Furlong and Ricci (as Pecker’s laundromat-obsessed girlfriend) but a slew of late-90s indie darlings including Lili Taylor, Martha Plimpton, and Welcome the the Dollhouse’s Brendan Sexton III.
It’s an absolutely idealized, sanitized portrait of the artistic process, which was probably attractive to me as an artistically inclined but clueless 16-year-old. Pecker has one photography show in a sub shop, gets discovered by a powerful art dealer, and immediately becomes the toast of New York. It’s a fantasy that sidesteps all of the hard work it takes to become a successful artist, and in that sense it has a lot in common with the 1930s “girl goes to the big city” comedies starring people like Joan Blondell and Ginger Rogers. Pecker as a character is ethically pure, and his purity helps him succeed in spite of the corruption and debauchery around him.
Watching Pecker last night — it is available to rent on iTunes and Amazon — it reminded me of another favorite childhood movie starring a morally pure protagonist, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Pecker is wide-eyed Charlie Bucket, his sugar-obsessed baby sister Little Chrissy is Augustus Gloop, brassy older sister Martha Plimpton is Violet Beauregarde, bratty girlfriend Christina Ricci is Veruca Salt, and delinquent friend Brendan Sexton is Mike Teevee. Willy Wonka is the glamorous New York art-dealer, creepily underplayed by Lili Taylor, who longs to exploit Pecker financially and sexually. Pecker becomes a star, winning the chocolate factory, while keeping his innocence in tact. It’s a strangely moralistic lesson from Waters, who, twenty-five years previously, was contaminating every bourgois value he could get his filthy hands on. But it’s a comforting message to a teenager, who wants to believe that by staying good he can make good.
Things I read this week:
Congratulations are due to me, since I actually finished a novel, Detransition, Baby. It’s getting a lot of press because it’s a piece of commercial fiction written by a trans author and speaking to the trans experience. It is important for those reasons, but it’s also just really well written and entertaining — almost, but not quite, a beach read.
Here’s a good review in The New Yorker if you don’t believe me.
I’m also, of course, continuing to read The Housewives: The Real Story Behind The Real Housewives.
A Quiet Place Part II - not for me.
Pink Flamingos
All That Jazz - 4k Criterion Bluray, baby.
Undine - New Christian Petzold, if you liked Phoenix or Transit.
Pecker
Was the Mare finale only a week ago? Feels like a lifetime.
The Underground Railroad ep 2-5
Le Bureau season 1 ep 7-9
Hacks ep 4-8
Drag Race Australia
Real Housewives (NY, BH) - Kathy Hilton might be the most deranged woman to ever appear on one of these shows, and that’s saying something.
I’m watching the French Open, which is infuriatingly being broadcast in snippets on Tennis Channel, Tennis Channel Plus, NBC, and Peacock. Get it together guys. Serena lost just before I sat down to write this, so that sucks, but three other American women are fighting for a spot in the quarterfinals tomorrow. Sloane Stephens especially is playing beautifully.