John Waters Talks Trash, Divine Inspirations and Why Anti-Drag Laws Are Doomed to Fail

variety.com:

John Waters looks positive giddy as he perches on the edge of his chair at the Provincetown Film Festival, chuckling as he recalls the bad reviews Variety gave him back in the day.

I recall one from the 1974 write-up for “Female Trouble” — “‘Camp’ is too elegant a word to describe it all” — and he rolls his eyes at the word “camp.” “No one says that word anymore,” he laughs. “To me, ‘camp’ is like two older gay gentlemen talking about Tiffany lampshades in an antique shop.

We were never that. We used ‘trash’ or ‘filth,’ which was more punk, to describe our style.” Trade reviews offered a strange sort of validation for the budding “smut-eur,” who would take the put-downs and twist them to his advantage back in the early ’70s, turning bad blurbs into good publicity for his gonzo stunts.

When Fine Line rereleased Waters’ most notorious film, 1972’s “Pink Flamingos,” for its 25th anniversary, the poster proudly quoted Variety: “One of the most vile, stupid and repulsive films ever made.” A quarter century later, the squalid comedy about shameless deviants competing for the title of “filthiest person alive” was inducted into the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry. “The most hurtful one was ‘Desperate Living.’ All it said was ‘Amateur night in the psycho ward.’ I couldn’t use that one,” says Waters of the blurb for his scandalous 1977 film that follows a pair of unrepentant killers toward a fate worse than prison.