Birthday
1946-04-22Place of Birth
Baltimore, Maryland, USABiography
Growing up in Baltimore in the 1950s, John Waters was not like other children; he was obsessed by violence and gore, both real and on the screen. With his weird counter-culture friends as his cast, he began making silent 8mm and 16mm films in the mid-'60s; he screened these in rented Baltimore church halls to underground audiences drawn by word of mouth and street leafleting campaigns. As his filmmaking grew more polished and his subject matter more shocking, his audiences grew bigger, and his write-ups in the Baltimore papers more outraged. By the early 1970s he was making features, which he managed to get shown in midnight screenings in art cinemas by sheer perseverance. Success came when Pink Flamingos (1972) - a deliberate exercise in ultra-bad taste - took off in 1973, helped no doubt by lead actor Divine's infamous dog-crap eating scene. Waters continued to make low-budget shocking movies with his Dreamland repertory company until Hollywood crossover success came with Hairspray (1988), and although his movies nowadays might now appear cleaned up and professional, they retain Waters' playfulness, and reflect his lifelong obsessions.Free Trial Channels
Plus full 80,000+ Prime Video Titles and more!
No Prime?
START 30-DAY FREE TRIALAll Movies List
Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn
2019
6.8
as Self
2019
Sympathy For The Devil: The True Story of The Process Church of the Final Judgment
2015
6.8
as Self
2015
Herschell Gordon Lewis: The Godfather of Gore
2011
7.1
as
2011
For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism
2009
6.3
as Self
2009