Pink flamingos youtube tv#

All of the people I worked with became my friends, my other family. She disapproved of him and of what we were doing, but he could always make her laugh. My family was mortified, but my mother ended up converting to the cult of John Waters. I lost friends because of the film and I gained them. Nobody at the time was doing what we were doing. The gods of cinema were looking down on us with kindness. Any number of catastrophes could have happened that day way out in the woods. So I was focused on throwing a torch into the trailer we had been spraying real gasoline around, and it came very close to my coat. I was always terrified of forgetting my lines, especially when everything is the master take and you have to start over if you mess something up. But my coat did almost get set alight in the scene when we torch Divine’s trailer. The only thing I balked at was that John wanted me to set my hair on fire.

Any number of catastrophes could have happened that day in the woods My coat almost got set alight in the scene when we torch Divine's trailer. David Lochary, who played my pervert husband, did it with the blue ink out of a Magic Marker. I had to bleach my hair white, and then I coloured it with red ink in shampoo. Dying my hair that shade of red was difficult to do in the 1970s – you couldn’t just run to the drugstore for some dye. My character Connie Marble’s clothing was all mine. Most of my scenes were filmed in the actual house where John and I were roommates. I’m generally a pretty decent gal in real life, so it was fun to get permission to really be vile. And that Divine would win, and that we would lose and be humiliated. All I knew with Pink Flamingos was that it was going to be a rivalry, vying to be the filthiest people alive. When he asked me to be in a movie, I would say yes without knowing anything about it. There was a hugely sacrilegious element to his early films that I was very happy to participate in, having grown up Catholic like him. I had already made three movies with John, who I had met through my sister. Photograph: Dreamland Prods/Kobal/Rex/Shutterstock Mink Stole, actor The team … back row, Mary Vivian Pearce, Danny Mills, John Mills and David Lochary front row, Divine, Mink Stole and Edith Massey. Their parents loved them and made them feel safe, even if they had to watch a singing asshole.

Pink flamingos youtube tv#

But the daughter is now a very happy, well-adjusted TV producer, so no harm was done. When I look back on it, we should’ve all been locked up. I do remember some of them running through the apartment screaming. But children always loved Divine, because he was like a clown. I think we covered their eyes for the sex scenes. I once showed it at a children’s birthday party – for the daughter of my casting director, Pat Moran. But I lost every time we were in court for obscenity.

The night it opened at the Elgin theatre in New York, my life changed El Topo, the first “ midnight movie”, had just closed there, so it was the perfect place to show it.

Even if you hated it, you couldn’t not tell someone about it. People thought he lived in that trailer and ate dog shit.Īs soon as I saw it with an audience, I knew it could be a hit. But after Pink Flamingos, it was hard for him. Eating the dog turd was no big deal there are no camera cuts, you can see it is real. But he used the rage he had from being bullied in high school to make that character. He was a shy man he would never go in drag unless he got paid. Divine was nothing like that character in real life.