John Waters Is Ready for His Hollywood Closeup

The day after John Waters’s mother attended the opening of his 1969 film, “Mondo Trasho,” she called him in hysterics, saying, “You are going to end up in a mental institution, die from an overdose of drugs, or commit suicide.” She had reason to worry. The film, a black-and-white romp shot on a two-thousand-dollar budget, features a nude hitchhiker, a topless tap dance in an asylum, and a foot fetishist giving a woman a “shrimp job” (toe sucking). During production, in Baltimore, Waters and some of his troupe were arrested for conspiracy to commit indecent exposure. Despite the chaos, his mother’s prophecy proved to be mistaken. Three years later, Waters unleashed the naughty classic “Pink Flamingos,” which concludes with his fearsome drag muse, Divine, feasting on dog feces. Waters went on to become one of the preëminent cult filmmakers of his generation, racking up such honorifics as the Prince of Puke, the King of Filth, and, in the words of William S. Burroughs, “the Pope of Trash.”