John Waters on Pink Flamingos: “Terrorism Against Good Taste”

metroweekly.com:

Pink Flamingos had its longest run ever in Los Angeles at the Landmark NuArt, where it played at least one day a week for ten years straight,” says John Waters. “Talk about legs, as Variety used to call it.”Legs, indeed.

The film that put Waters — and his sensational drag cohort, the late Divine — on the cultural map, Pink Flamingos, in all its thrilling tastelessness, has remained a crown jewel of underground filmmaking for 50 years.“We were rebels,” laughs Waters. “The movie was a group act of terrorism against good taste.”In December, the Library of Congress inducted the film into the National Film Registry.And it was just released on Blu-Ray by the Criterion Collection, boasting a 4K upgrade struck from original 16mm footage, and a “barf bag” full of extras, including a literal barf bag, deleted scenes, a talk between Waters and director Jim Jarmusch, and a Waters-led tour of the film’s Baltimore locations.“They did a beautiful, beautiful job,” says Waters. “There is a guy, Lee Kline, who I work with on all my films at Criterion.

He knows the exact amount of dirt and grain to leave in. He knows how to restore it to make it look good, without making it look like something it never was.”Next weekend, Pink Flamingos will be celebrated in Washington, D.C., at Landmark’s E Street Cinema, with special midnight showings on Friday and Saturday.Waters isn’t at all surprised that the film — with its “singing asshole,” live chicken sex scene (don’t ask, just watch), and Divine’s exuberant ingestion of fresh dog shit, which Waters calls the film’s “Jackass moment” — remains wildly popular and fervently revered to this day.“It still causes trouble,” he says. “It didn’t get nice.