Review: 'Burning Down the House: Talking Heads and the New York Scene That Transformed Rock'

Talking Heads are one of the few truly big bands that one could credibly describe as "enigmatic." Despite selling lots of albums and having four members recognizable enough that you don't have to be a super-fan to name them all, Talking Heads are a group that raises a lot of questions because they followed a path very different from any other band. Most of the band came from extremely privileged backgrounds; so how did they end up as residents of a dog shit-strewn club best known for spawning punk? How was the band's novice rhythm section capable of playing such angular art rock? How did someone as defiantly geeky as David Byrne become one of the most recognizable rock stars of the eighties? How did a stripped down four-piece swell into a veritable orchestra of percussionists, vocalists, and other supplementary musicians who played more like front-liners? What did the members of the band who weren't really calling the shots feel about all that?

Review: 'John Waters: Indecent Exposure'

Wait a minute. John Waters is an artist? A rather multifaceted artist? I consider myself a fan, but this is news to me. That Waters is not just the uncontested King of Trash-ola but also a photographer and collaborative sculptor who has been the subject of his own art show is a revelation. The works displayed in that show at the Baltimore Museum of Art (of course) are featured in a new book called John Waters: Indecent Exposure.

So what should you expect from Waters’s non-cinematic art? Oh honey, you know what to expect! You’ll laugh! You’ll die from shock! You’ll puke! You’ll see the faces of Hollywood stars projected onto butt cheeks (Rear Projection, 2009)! You’ll see a disturbing 3D tableaux involving an infant with Michael Jackson’s adult head crawling toward a tyke with Charles Manson’s deranged coconut (Playdate, 2006). You’ll see some of cinema’s most iconic moments subtitled in pig Latin (Pig Latin, 2008)! You’ll see a Jackie O doll dolled up as Divine (Jackie Copies Divine’s Look, 2001)! You’ll see Twelve Assholes and a Dirty Foot (Twelve Assholes and a Dirty Foot, 1996)!

So like Pink Flamingos and Polyester, Waters’s museum-worthy work delights in scatology, celebrity, and hilarity. One does not usually expect to laugh out loud when viewing fine art, so prepare yourself for that shocker too.

Waters’s work will be a gas for those with a taste for bad taste, which makes the presentation in Indecent Exposure a bit frustrating. While his photos of his TV screen and weird sculptures completely lack pretension, the layout and text content of this book sometimes succumbs to that vice. The images are often shrunk down to postage-stamp size to make room for vast vistas of empty, white space, which is a crime that too many art books commit. 

As for a series of analytical essays, the only writer who really taps into the spirit of Waters’s work is Robert Starr, whose “Queering the Pitch” is both enlightening and funny. The others feel inappropriately academic. Initially, I wondered how Waters, himself, would react to such pieces. Would he roll his eyes at them or revel in them as scrumptiously kitsch? Based on the lengthy interview with the artist that wraps up the text side of Indecent Exposure, I think Waters may unironically approve. Here he reveals that there is actually serious, artistic consideration behind works depicting title cards of the shitty movies that were supposed  be screened on the planes destroyed on 9/11 or a picture of a flower that squirts viewers in the face if they get too close to it. The interview is also very valuable for what it reveals about Waters’s artistic process, such as the fact that he conceptualizes his sculptures while Tony Gardener, the guy who created killer-doll Chuckie and the fake breasts Selma Blair wears in A Dirty Shame, sculpts those uncanny likenesses of Jackson, Manson, and the rest. Needless to say, the interview is the biggest kick textual kick in Indecent Exposure. 

Review: 'Multiple Maniacs' Blu-ray

“This isn't any cheap X-rated movie or any fifth-rate porno play. This is the show you want: Lady Divine's Cavalcade of Perversion… The sleaziest show on Earth.”

So begins John Waters’s first feature to make ample use of his absurdly wordy, mostly shouted dialogue, though David Lochary’s carny pitch could just as well have kicked off Waters’s second total talky. Indeed, at first Multiple Maniacs feels like a crude dry run for the even more deliriously crude Pink Flamingos. The whole Dreamland company is present: Lochary and Mink Stole and Cookie Mueller and Edie Massey and Mary Vivian Pearce and, of course, the divine Divine. Two years before she embodied the filthiest person alive in Flamingos, Divine is the murderous main attraction of the sleaziest show on Earth— a freakshow reveling in such outrages as puke eaters and smack shooters. Compared to the very real and very graphically depicted chicken slaughtering, blowjobbing, asshole singing, and shit eating of Pink Flamingos, the simulated atrocities of Multiple Maniacs seem positively quaint.

Waters also hasn’t quite fine-tuned his shtick yet with an interminable, ten-minute-plus scene in which Divine and Mink Stole substitute a string of rosary beads for the anal kind in a church. The director would soon learn that the funniest outrages are less like forcing audiences to stare at a dead dog for ten minutes and more like just peeling the dog off the pavement and whacking the audience in the face with it.

The very cool thing about Multiple Maniacs is that it’s the closest thing Waters ever made to a monster movie. This becomes obviously true when Divine, who seems like she’s already way over the edge at the beginning of the movie, gets driven even further over the edge when a giant lobster rapes her. Then Divine takes over for Lobstora in this Baltimore Kaiju by going on a full-fledged Godzilla-style rampage.

Another cool thing about Multiple Maniacs is that it is Waters’s very first film to get the Criterion treatment. The slightly soft picture betrays the fact that Waters wasn’t exactly Gregg Toland, but there’s still a very appealing B&W indie aesthetic that is captured well here despite the stray scratch or two. Audio is similarly well presented despite any deficiencies related to amateur-filmmaking, though those who saw the film back in 1970 may be disappointed that Criterion was unable to get the unapproved Elvis songs used in the original print approved (they’re replaced with some generic Rock & Roll instrumentals).

Of the three substantial supplements, the best is by far Waters’s own typically charming, funny, and informative audio commentary that is the rare commentary to actually make watching a film more enjoyable. 33 minutes of interviews with Stole, Susan Lowe, Pat Moran, George Figgs, and Vincent Peranio is also great fun as the Dreamlanders share affectionate memories of Waters, their friends and cast mates, and filming. There’s also a ten-minute video essay by film scholar Gary Needham. All this makes for a nice package that is—fingers crossed—just the first interspecies coupling of the most prestigious home-video company in America and the filthiest filmmaker alive.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 165

The Date: March 13

The Movie: Pink Flamingos (1972)

What Is It?: John Waters gave the still-new Midnight Movie phenomenon a high-colonic by shooting it full of competitive murder, coprophagia, incest, infantilization, hardcore fellatio, castration, forced pregnancies, black-market baby dealing, chicken fucking, shrimping, and poop mailing. Somehow, Waters and Divine make it all amusing, weirdly charming fun even as Pink Flamingos hasn’t lost its ability to shock in 40-plus years. Personally, the only thing I find tough to watch is the singing anus.

Why Today?: On this day In 1781, William Herschel discovers Uranus.