![]() They didn’t even know he was doing drag.ĭoes it take a juvenile delinquent to star in these movies and break boundaries?Ībsolutely. He would write checks in his parents’ names to pay for extravagant parties. They did have an estrangement for a time, but it wasn’t because he was gay, it was because he was a little nuts. If he got beat up at school, she’d show up at the school. I think a lot of people can identify with the story of a son and mother who knew her son was different-and unlike a lot of people in her generation, she didn’t reject him. I’m glad she was in it she gave it its heart and soul. She didn’t live to see this film, but we dedicated it to her. She was the first interview that we conducted. Not only did I get his blessing, but he opened a lot of doors for me and called everyone I wanted to interview and told them if I was going to get in touch with them, he supported this project, and they should do it.ĭivine’s mother, Francis, was still with us when we started making the film. He was the first phone call I made, and I wanted to get his blessing. I knew John, because he was in my first film, Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story. ![]() Was it easy to convince your sources, like John Waters, to participate in the film? Still from Hairspray courtesy of BAMcinématek/Photofest Divine was a beautiful, gorgeous creature, but he was also 300 pounds. They wanted to pass as women-beautiful, gorgeous creatures. A lot of the drag queens at the time wanted to be Miss America. Divine certainly wasn’t the first person to do drag, but he was among the first wave of drag performers to really turn drag upside down and play with the notions of gender. Drag culture has always been on the margins-even in gay and lesbian society. ![]() Does it take a homophobic environment to produce someone like Divine? Today, pop culture has a lot of women acting like drag queens-Lady Gaga and Katy Perry, to name a few-but few contemporary drag icons besides RuPaul, who became famous back in the 90s. I felt like Divine’s story of being the triumph of the outsider really resonates today. people like Lady Gaga, who are popular with kids, essentially share Divine’s message: be yourself, don’t let anybody put you down for being different. Most gay men over 40 can quote every single John Waters movie verbatim, but those movies don’t play in theaters a lot. Midnight movies aren’t really a thing any more. Why do you think younger gay guys haven’t heard about Divine? As time went on, I thought that kids growing up today didn’t really have the firsthand experience of seeing those movies as they were coming out-Divine wasn’t known around the younger kids. Jeffrey Schwarz: I’ve always worshipped at the altar of John Waters and Divine since I was a teenager. VICE: What made you decide to make this movie? This week, I spoke to Jeffrey over the phone to talk about the making of the movie, why today’s gay youth needs Divine, and the difference between John Waters’s films and today’s reality TV–centric trash culture. (The original collection mixes screen prints on polyester of B-movie posters and plenty of marabou feathers, coming together to form a heady, typically Divine mix of high and low.) Fifteen percent of proceeds are being donated to Visual AIDS, an organization supporting artists living with HIV, while a donation has also been made to Baltimore Pride, a Black-led LGBT+ organization based in Divine’s hometown.Directed by Jeffrey Schwarz, the movie chronicles how Harris Glenn Milstead, originally a chubby kid from suburban Baltimore, created the Divine persona and reinvented drag in the process. While the planned capsule collection and accompanying exhibition have been postponed due to the current pandemic, the project will live on via a limited edition release of T-shirts and totes and an online exhibition featuring both Divine memorabilia and samples of the collection which never was. The subversive cult figure might seem like an unlikely partner for Loewe’s brand of traditional Iberian craft, though under Jonathan Anderson the brand has moved towards more offbeat, art world-adjacent collaborations. If Waters is known as the “Pope of Trash,” then Divine was undoubtedly his queen, or in the words of Waters himself, “the most beautiful woman in the world, almost.” Whether being sexually assaulted by a giant lobster in 1970’s Multiple Maniacs, or, in one especially infamous scene from 1972’s Pink Flamingos, eating dog feces, he is spellbinding. ![]() It isn’t just his signature look of oversized, Jayne Mansfield-on-acid platinum blonde wigs, and eyebrows halfway up his forehead, either. For anyone fortunate enough (or unfortunate enough, depending on your threshold for on-screen obscenity) to have seen John Waters’s string of wilfully shocking early movies, the image of Divine in all his glory is impossible to forget.
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