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…
Tag: Divine
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…
A Rare Envelope from Divine to John Waters- 1980
Here’s an artifact. Too bad it’s not a letter. The envelope contained a handful of cash receipts from Divvy for reimbursement from “Polyester,” which had just wrapped. Since I was the line producer and had to approve all expenses, John handed them to me. A brief note from Divine’s agent/manager, Bernard Jay, requested a…
Divine Mauled by Press in Violent Scene Cut from Polyester
Many scenes from John Waters’ early films were left on the cutting room floor. They were great scenes, but Waters was fanatical that his films not exceed 90 minutes. He thought that comedy could not hold an audience longer than that. So many of his scenes are lost to movie-goers of today, but maybe a…
Divine- The First Rapper c.1974 (Accidentally)
In his early movies, John Waters just lifted music for his sound tracks from a friend’s record collection ignoring copyright or licensing permissions. There wasn’t money for such things in underground movies, so he just put it off until later. Female Trouble’s title song (called Female Trouble) was its only piece of legal music. With…