Hairspray (1988)
After suffering through John Waters’ 2004 debacle “A Dirty Shame,” I remarked that he had been making movies for more than 30 years without ever learning how. And this is coming from someone who loves Waters — a true American original whose uproarious movies all celebrate the unrelenting strangeness of his hometown, Baltimore (where I have lived for the past seven years). I spent some time on the set of “A Dirty Shame” for an AP story that never got written, largely because nobody really cared, and I wasn’t exactly inspired by seeing the man in action as he shot some of his trademark material: clunky exposition and camp histrionics. I even overheard Chris Isaak complaining that he was getting little feedback on his performance and didn’t know whether to tone it down or go further over the top. He felt he occupied a nebulous middle ground amid the insanity, and he was right, sadly.
Rewatching the original “Hairspray” reminded me anew of Waters’ limitations. It’s less than 90 minutes long, and yet it still falls apart completely in the third act. Nearly every line of dialogue is yelled; people scurry around like startled rats; and the pace becomes dizzying because Waters has run out of plot developments. He has no idea how to get all his characters in the same place for the climax, so they just show up without explanation.
And yet … I loved it. It’s a terrific movie, and all of a piece, because no one but Waters could have tapped into the potential of “The Buddy Deane Show,” a cheap, local “American Bandstand”-style program that aired on weekday afternoons in Baltimore in the early 60s, with clean-cut high school kids dancing to the latest hits. Waters actually appeared on it a couple of times, and he brilliantly lampoons the cutthroat backstage culture, with teenagers as local celebrities and arbiters of taste. “The Corny Collins Show,” as Waters redubs it, is the biggest thing in their world, and they’re stars. He subverts them at every turn, visiting an endless stream of humiliations upon the ice-princess queen bee Amber von Tussel (Colleen Fitzpatrick).
Waters’ hero, of course, is Tracy Turnblad (Ricki Lake), a pleasantly plump teenager who dreams of shaking her ample tail feather on “Corny Collins.” She soon gets her chance, to the indignation of Amber and the shock of her mother, Edna (Divine). But Tracy isn’t satisfied breaking down the chubby barrier; she crusades to end the show’s segregationist practices. Blacks and whites aren’t allowed to dance together, and once a month the show hosts “Negro Day.”
Despite the star power of the new musical version, the performances in the original hold up well, because Waters cast unknowns who were perfect for the roles. I still think Ricki Lake is the best Tracy, and Divine, of course, lives up to his name. Unlike John Travolta, who gets laughs with an exaggerated Baltimore accent, Divine is believable as Edna. The fact that he was male is immaterial, so fully does he inhabit this overweight Highlandtown hausfrau. He knocks Waters’ awkward, declamatory dialogue out of the park. “It’s the times, Wilbur. They’re a-changin’. Something’s blowing in the wind. Fetch me my diet pill.”
Shawn Thompson, as Corny Collins, is remarkably good, because he looks and feels like a local TV guy who understands how the show resonates with people but whose hosting duties make him mildly uncomfortable. (Viewers send telegrams — telegrams! — to Corny, and he reads them on the air.) Young Elvis lookalike Michael St. Gerard is fantastic, too, as the dreamy Link Larkin. I loved how Waters makes him a horndog who wants to feel up Amber, and later Tracy, at every opportunity. Seaweed, too, moans at pleasure at being allowed to go to second base with Penny Pingleton; Clayton Prince and Leslie Ann Powers, who play the parts, are sweet and unassuming.
Waters’ festively demonic personality seeps through his first PG-rated movie. He’s great at depicting hysterical white panic at the prospect of integration. Penny’s mom (Joann Havrilla) has a complete meltdown when she has to “rescue” Penny from a black neighborhood. Later, she enlists a psychiatrist (played by Waters himself) who tries to hypnotize Penny out of her interest in Seaweed. (”Think about all the nice white boys at your school, and how you’d like to date them,” he purrs.) When protesters are demanding that “Corny Collins” be integrated, one of them holds a sign that reads, “Amber Is an ASSHOLE,” with the “O” drawn to look like, well, you know. And Waters throws in a completely unnecessary but priceless scene with Tracy and pals hiding out with a couple of beatniks (Pia Zadora and Ric Ocasek), for no reason other than he thinks it’s funny that Baltimore would have beatniks. The new “Hairspray” is fun and sugary and buoyant, and the original is too — but it’s also delightfully weird.