. J9 6
February
16, £001
V O L U M E 18 ♦ N
umber
8 ♦ F
ebruary
16, 2001
P o rtlan d , O r e g o n
Taking out
the trash
Maria Webster
John W aters dishes
w ith Just Out
by
C hristopher M c Q uain
F
1 or decades now, filmmaker, pundit and
all-around trashmonger John Waters
has been fighting the good fight in the
name of bad taste. Beginning his
career in the late 1960s with no-budget,
scandalously bizarre and grotesque short
films starring a most unusual, very large
and very funny drag queen named Divine,
he went on to become an artist of Warhol-
like proportions, the underground filmmak
er’s underground filmmaker.
His 1973 debut feature, Pink Flamingos,
is a midnight-screening rite of passage to
rival The Rocky Horror Picture Show. In
1988, he made a brief foray into less twist
ed but no less individualistic territory with
his nostalgic PG film Hairspray, which hit
it big in the mainstream yet still starred
Divine and hatched the career of future fel
low trash-culture maven Ricki Lake.
Waters has seen something of a renais
sance in recent years, continuing to make
his own unmistakable brand of indepen
dent film (most recently Cecil B.
Demented). He also branched out as a guest
voice on an indelible episode of The
Simpsons and shocked his fans as only he
can with an unlikely appearance in Woody
Allens highbrow Sweet and Lowdown. (In
true Waters style, his date for the premiere
was none other than Patty Hearst.)
Ferron
Continued on Page 36
Just out
The lesbian music scene is alive and well in Oregon
BY K a T Y 'D a VIDSON
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