Add to that the fact that he also sang the title song (with lyrics penned by Waters) and it’s easy to see why many think of this as his most memorable role. Divine also did all his own stunts in Female Trouble, and let's face it, trampoline flips and swimming across freezing rapids in full drag is no easy feat. Divine takes on a male role for the first time and, combined with his enthusiastic performance as Dawn - whose life is charted from truculent teen to psycho mummy - shows off his versatility as a character actor. This is Waters' commentary on parenting, beauty and crime, and it bears an uncanny resemblance to the shocking way early sex education films portrayed women who indulged in sexual activity before marriage. The couple conceive a child on Christmas Day, but Earl leaves Dawn to raise their daughter Taffy on her own. Waters is cited as saying Divine’s finest performance was in Female Trouble, the film in which the actor literally has sex with himself as he plays both Earl Petersen, a grotesque alcoholic, and Dawn Davenport, a horny teenager. Society saw them as perverts so they decided to revel in their status and take it to the extreme to make their point. At a time when homosexuality was treated as a developmental maladjustment, Divine’s insecurities at being different forced him to the outskirts, making him a perfect fit for The Dreamlanders, who took a stand with their filmed homages to trashy splendour. In the book Shock Value, John Waters devotes a chapter to Divine, interviewing him about his troubled childhood, during which he was bullied for his appearance and effeminacy. The film was embraced by the Midnight Movies movement and its success allowed it to tour the country with New Line Cinema taking on distribution. The now infamous dog shit eating scene is still gag inducing, but it was a stunt that worked to garner the attention both Divine and Waters were looking for. A shaved-back hairline made room for his excessive eye make-up, a look dreamed up by Waters who wanted Divine to be a cross between Jayne Mansfield and Clarabell the Clown. Waters’ filmed Divine walking down the street in full drag and caught the shocked faces of the onlookers. The perfect partner to Waters in their lampooning of the director’s Catholic upbringing.ĭivine’s break came in Pink Flamingos where he took on the blonde bombshell look most of us will be familiar with. Bearing a resemblance to his idol Elizabeth Taylor, with a dark wig, long lashes and a low back dress, his performance is one of no-holds-barred enthusiasm. Their second feature, Multiple Maniacs, features Divine getting rosary beads shoved up his ass in a church whilst the story of the crucifixion is played out behind him, as well as a charming scene depicting his rape by a giant lobster. Made only two years after the 35th President’s death it was absolutely in fitting with their bad taste ethos. In Eat Your Makeup Waters had Divine dress up as Jackie Kennedy to re-enact the assassination of JFK. It was shown triple projected in the basement of a church in Baltimore with permission from a priest who encouraged Waters’ creative streak. Roman Candles was the first short film Waters made with Divine. Glen was christened Divine by Waters, who thought an inflated, male Jayne Mansfield would make “the most beautiful woman in the world.” Divine became the most famous of the Dreamlanders cast thanks to his outrageous on screen persona and dedication to drag, both of which eventually helped ease him toward a music career as well as a stint acting on stage. Harris Glen Milstead met John Waters when he was an overweight sixteen year old and they became firm friends for life. These early cast and crew members were Mink Stole, Susan Walsh, Mary Vivian Pierce, Pat Moran, David Lochary and Harris Glen Milstead, a mixture of party kids, art school and film school drop outs, with a DIY attitude and an anarchic spirit determined to rebel against small minded suburbia. Out to shock, disgust and make people laugh, he managed to meet some like-minded friends along the way, and these were the people who became known as The Dreamlanders. One of these young misfits, John Waters, was inspired by underground movies from the likes of Andy Warhol and the Kuchar Brothers to start his own production company, Dreamland Studios, (located at his parents’ house and then a rented slum apartment in downtown Baltimore) with which he created his own subcultural movement, dedicated to pioneering bad taste filmmaking. A creative group of young misfits in suburban Baltimore embraced the drugs, experimenting with pot and LSD, but also experimenting with their sexuality, marking themselves out as deviant opponents of the status quo in the process. The late 1960s in America was a time of shifting attitudes towards sex, homosexuality, drugs, religion, race and war.
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