Ricki Lake became a name in 1985, when she was just 18, after snagging the leading role in John Waters’ “Hairspray.” She’s back in the entertainment headlines with a new autobiography and daily TV show. Ricki left TV in 2004 after 11 years hosting a daily talk show, and returned this past September with a…
Category: John Waters & Underground Films
Underground Films Blog
Divine’s Lost Underground Baltimore Movie-“Vacancy”
My book, “Low Budget Hell: Making Underground Movies with John Waters” tells only parts of the story of my movie making adventures in the 1970s and 80s. This story tells of an attempted underground movie made by two academic Baltimore filmmakers shortly after the release of “Pink Flamingos” in 1972, in which Divine played a…
1984 John Waters Interview on P-town Cable Access
This fascinating interview is from John’s dry period, after “Polyester” floundered. New Line had told him they were finished with no-profit underground movies that bankrolled John’s growing speaking career but left them out of the Hollywood production mainstream, which was Bob Shaye’s real dream. John appears in his pre-Hairspray,…
John Waters’ Net Worth $38 Million?
A website claiming to know how much money a select group of celebrities have or make says Mr. Waters makes $38 million, putting him on the “World’s Richest Celebrities” list. Is that a year, a lifetime, or a complete fiction? The website, celebritynetworth.com, claims to have been around since 2009 and “has since grown to…
John Waters’ Crybaby- Artifact Alert– Swag Comb
Once again, rummaging through my drawers, I found this piece of Waters paraphernalia. Even though “Crybaby” was a Universal Picture produced by Brian Grazer, the $9 million budget was cheap by Hollywood standards. Of course taking away studio overhead, the executive producers and Mr. Waters’ nice high six figure salaries, music, choreography, and other name…
Crybaby #001 – Artifact from John Waters’ Crybaby Jail Scene
Found this ID card in some old papers today. It was required of all cast and crew by the Maryland House of Corrections (MHC), where we shot Crybaby’s prison scenes. MHC, in Jessup, Maryland, was selected because it had a working prison license plate factory. It was famous because Maryland bad boys were threatened by…
John Waters Hitching…. hmmm
A slow reveal the past 2 weeks of John Waters supposedly hitchhiking from Baltimore to San Francisco has been echoing up and down the Internet. If this snapshot had been a little wider, it would have probably revealed a comfy motorhome with body guards, medic, and make-up & wardrobe stylist. John hitchhike? For real? Right.
Liz Renay: The Star Who Would Replace Divine
John Waters’ 1977 movie, Desperate Living, was the follow-up of his most successful films to date, “Pink Flamingos” and “Female Trouble.” It’s $65,000 budget provided a larger and more professional crew than the earlier films, and a “marquee star” budget line that was ten times more than the last. Divine would have been the logical…
Beauty Beauty, Look at You, I Wish to God I Had It Too
Surfing through photos of all the beautiful people at Elton John’s 2012 Oscar Ceremony Viewing Party, I came across these two Russian models hob-nobbing with the jet set. John Waters attended too, of course. Wonder if he spoke to them much. They would be good characters in one of his films. http://www.seattlepi.com/ae/slideshow/2012-Oscars-After-parties-39764.php#photo-2552900
John Waters-Werner Herzog Video Goes Viral
https://robertmaier.us/2012/01/21/werner-herzog-discovers-that-john-waters-is-gay/ This video clip of Werner Herzog was finally discovered by the Internet bloggeratti after being first posted here three months ago. In this time it achieved a respectable 4,000 views, but but in the past 24 hours a dozen blogs linked to it and it received another 20,000+ views! What a mystery the…