JOHN WATERS: TAKING OUT THE TRASH

AN EXHIBITION IN L.A. EXPLORES THE WORK OF JOHN WATERS, THE CREATOR OF THE FIERCELY CAMP, ORIGINAL FILMS PINK FLAMINGOS, FEMALE TROUBLE, HAIRSPRAY, AND CRY BABY

by Sarah Fensom, brutjournal’s USA West Coast bureau chief

John Waters: Pope of Trash
September 17, 2023 through August 4, 2024
Academy Museum of Motion Pictures
6067 Wilshire Boulevard
Los Angeles CA 90036

LOS ANGELES — At the recent preview of John Waters: Pope of Trash, a new exhibition on view at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, its well-known subject amused attendees with one of his mother’s frequently uttered maxims: “Fools’ names and fools’ faces always appear in public places.” John Waters, the filmmaker, writer, and artist who has been in the public eye for nearly six decades, admitted that that was an adage he had rarely heeded.

The writer, film director, and visual artist John Waters in a promotional photograph for the exhibition John Waters: Pope of Trash, which is on view at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles through August 4, 2024. Photo by Greg Gorman, ©Academy Museum Foundation, courtesy of Academy Museum of Motion Pictures

Waters loves scouring news headlines. He says he reads 20 newspapers per day (“That’s my material,” he told the crowd). The over-the-top characters in his films, many of whom were unforgettably portrayed by the legendary actor Divine in such cult classics as Pink Flamingos (1972) and Female Trouble (1974), stop at nothing to achieve not just a taste of fame but, more rewardingly, the glory of infamy.