The Edge Online - Reviews: John Waters

Trash Trio: Three Screenplays
John Waters
Thunder’s Mouth Press, paperback, 258 pages, £8.95
Review by David Clark (1996)

In the Baltimore suburbs, in the early 1970s, the young John Waters was making films with his friends. And he had some fine friends.

In 1972 in particular, Waters was filming Pink Flamingos on a small budget at the weekends, using his regular crew. Given that we don’t have half the magazine free to discuss the wonderful world of John Waters and that this is actually a book review, what can we say about Pink Flamingos?

Divine. Flashing and voyeurism. A ‛singing asshole’. That shit-eating scene. Baby-selling (to lesbians). Babs (Divine) is ‛the filthiest person alive’, and defends her claim to tabloid fame against all comers. A strange and hilarious story follows.

The script for Pink Flamingos is included here, alongside that for 1977’s Desperate Living, another fabulous confection, chronicling a town full of the dregs of society, held in the thrall of the villainous Queen Carlotta, whose terrible fate the film leads up to. Women wrestlers. Transvestite cops. People eating each other, and not in a good way.

Waters misses out the film he made between Pink Flamingos and Desperate LIving, 1974’s Female Trouble, perhaps because of the absence of Divine from that particular funfest. However, the profusely illustrated Trash Trio also includes Waters’ script for the unmade Flamingos Forever. This was lost to us after the deaths of Divine and another Waters regular, Edith Massey. Trash Trio is as close as we’ll ever be to that lost cinematic treasure.

I’m not usually fussed about reading screenplays, unless they contain something interesting that was cut, for whatever reason. But Waters’ scripts are fantastic. The wonderful descriptions make Trash Trio worthwhile just by themselves. The dialogue can be savoured for hours, and the inclusion of Flamingos Forever makes this book essential for fans of these films, and an ideal gift for perverts everywhere.