John Waters, 'Pope of Trash,' turns 80!

This is Fresh Air. I'm David Biancoley. The multimedia artist John Waters has spent his life being a champion of outsiders, redefining norms, and celebrating individuality and eccentricity. His career path has gone from outrageously standards-defying filmmaker to popular, avuncular TV host and elder statesman of bizarre pop culture. His 80th birthday is next week, on Earth Day, April 22nd.

and we're taking time today to celebrate John Waters. Waters was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in nineteen forty six, and filmed most of his movies there. As a teenager, one of his best friends was Glenn Millstead, an actor, singer, and drag queen who, in his drag persona, went by the name Divine. Waters cast Divine in his early underground films Mondo Trashow in 1969 and Multiple Maniacs in 1970, and cast Divine again as the star of their big breakthrough film, Pink Flamingos, in 1972. The plot of that film had people competing for the title of filthiest person alive, and it was a robust,

Sometimes scatological competition. These are obviously jealous people, jealous of our careers, of all of our press. Why else would they sign that the filthiest people alive? Everyone knows that our title has become my trademark. Why to use it in this way is only to insinuate that they are filthier than I.

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