The best thing about Schwarz’s film is how endlessly quotable everybody is. When in high school the Waters moved down the street, John and Glenn became “two entwined pieces of energy,” as a friend said. A pediatrician told her that he was more “fem” than he was masculine. As someone says in I Am Divine, Divine would be hosting the show.ĭivine was born Harris Glenn Milstead in 1945 in Baltimore, Maryland, a “good little baby, always had nice manners,” his mother, Frances, said. If he were still alive, it wouldn’t be RuPaul’s Drag Race today. His triumph was unlikely, but he managed to overcome attempts to marginalize queer culture to become an icon of punk and disco. What becomes evident is that Divine had a thrilling appeal that was more than schlock shock-he had the talent to instill a sense of anger, desire, and humor in the audience, helping to put queer culture on the map. Schwarz, who resurrected the forgotten gay film scholar Vito Russo in his first documentary, Vito, presents another love letter and deserved tribute. “A cinematic terrorist,” casting director Pat Moran remarked. “Part outlaw, part serial killer,” Joshua Grannell (drag performer Peaches Christ) describes the character in Jeffrey Schwarz’s new documentary I Am Divine, which opened in New York this week. It was simply high time for gays to be furious at the state of things. It is when Divine opens his mouth, and the psychotic anger inside his voice mixes with this campy anti-beauty, that you understand what kind of insurgency you are witnessing. That it certainly is-the decisive step was when cosmetician Van Smith shaved back Divine’s hairline in order to put on as much outrageous eye makeup on that large forehead canvas as possible. It isn’t simply that his image is more than over the top. What is immune to this escalating bottom-feeding, and without which Pink Flamingos would be dumb and dull, is the magnetism of the film’s star, the 300-pound drag queen Divine. The first third of a list of the film’s indefensible acts would go something like this: impregnating kidnapped women and selling the babies to lesbian couples, peddling heroin in inner-city elementary schools, crushing a live chicken while having sex, flexing one’s anus to the song “Surfin’ Bird.” The staged offenses are so numerous that they become numbing in abundance. If you were to actually sit down and watch Pink Flamingos, you’d find yourself plunged into a deliberate world of weird, as two families compete to be “The Filthiest People Alive,” and make a run at the title of being stupidest as well.
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