You want a Bawlamer story, here’s one about two of my favorite local icons: John Waters, because he’s reportedly back in the movie business, and the late Blaze Starr, because she was ready to be sexy even when nobody was looking.
Various news reports now tell us Waters has gotten the go-ahead from Village Roadside Pictures to write and direct “Liarmouth,” a movie version of his novel, “Liarmouth: A Feel-Bad Romance” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux).
The latest Waters epic features one Marsha Sprinkle, who is described in The Sun as “a suitcase thief and a weaver of sadistic but entertaining lies.”
Isn’t that just like John?
Across his whole half-century career, Waters has been described as some kind of bad boy of the arts. Just look at some of those early Waters films: “Eat Your Makeup” and “Mondo Trasho” and “Multiple Maniacs.”
The titles alone seemed shorthand descriptions for those who claimed Waters was glorifying the grotesque in order to make a buck.
To make such a claim, though, was to miss the revolutionary message beneath the laughs: it’s the grotesque ones who are our grandest heroes. They’re friendless, they’re freaks. Yet they overcome everything society has imposed upon them.
It’s like Edna Turnblad’s poignant line in “Hairspray”: “They don’t put people like us on TV, except to be laughed at.”
But these are the very people Waters has always championed, whether it’s Edna’s daughter, Traci Turnblad, hoping to get a spot on the Corny Collins TV dance program, or Blaze Starr, who came out of impoverished West Virginia hill country to lend some dignity to undressing every night in front of strangers.
It was Waters who got the idea, some years back, to cast Blaze in one of his movies. By this time, the legendary un-dresser was retired from her strip tease job at the 2 O’Clock Club on The Block, and was living out in Carroll County where she sold handcrafted jewelry at a shopping mall in Eldersburg.
Waters had admired Blaze since he and a teenage pal named Harris Glenn Milstead would sneak down to The Block and watch Blaze strut her stuff. That’s where Milstead — the future cross-dressing actor known as Divine — learned about women’s clothes.
Many years later, Waters called Blaze’s agent and asked if she would like a role in one of his movies. The agent was Blaze’s sister.
“Would there be nudity?” the sister delicately asked.
“No,” John told her, figuring Blaze had to be 70 by then.
“Well, then,” said the sister, “she wouldn’t be interested.”
Who knows who they’ll cast as Marsha Sprinkle in the upcoming “Liarmouth.” Blaze is gone, so is Divine. At 76, it’s nice to known John Waters is around, and he’s back in the movie business.
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