John Waters - FishbowlLA

Kenneth Turan Remembers When Cannes Was a Much Easier PR Ride

Richard Horgan — Wed, 15 May 2013 10:30:28 +0000

Those were the days. At the top of his reminiscence piece about covering the Cannes Film Festival, LA Times film critic Kenneth Turan paints a delightful, junk-the-junket picture:

Cannes was more casual back in 1971, of course. You could hang out with Italian director Luchino Visconti without much planning or go see Jack Nicholson in his hotel room and spend the afternoon discussing his first directorial effort, Drive, He Said, with no more preamble than running into a friend of his on the street.

There were 800 credentialed journalists back then; today, there are around 4,000. Turan cites the 1999 Greek sci-fi parody Attack of the Giant Moussaka as one of his all-time favorites from the less carpeted Marché side of the annual event.

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John Waters Christmas Show Winding Its Way to LA

Richard Horgan — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 17:00:05 +0000

There’s rarely a dull moment when John Waters is in the middle of it all.

Last night during the Tarrytown, New York performance of the filmmaker’s annual Christmas show tour, an audience member tried to present him with a taxidermy mouse. Tonight, the venue is the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach, followed by LA’s Wilshire Ebell Theatre on Thursday.

Ahead of tonight’s Solana Beach appearance, Waters chatted with U-T- San Diego North County arts reporter Pam Kagen. At one point, he went off on – surprise – a weird tangent:

“Everyone should come to the show, even if you can’t stand Christmas on religious grounds, financial grounds, communist grounds, sexual grounds…”

Wait a minute … sexual grounds?

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Pioneering Independent Filmaker George Kuchar Dead at 69

Pandora Young — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 16:50:19 +0000

Longtime San Francisco resident George Kuchar passed away Tuesday night at the age of 69. Kuchar wore many hats – visual artist, teacher, author – but he is best known for his work as an underground filmmaker. From the San Francisco Bay Guardian:

By himself and with his twin brother, Mike, George Kuchar — who influenced innumerable young artists while teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute — directed over 200 films, as wild and creative as they were low-budget, and almost always boasting titillating titles: Color Me Shameless (1967), Hold Me While I’m Naked (1966), The Devil’s Cleavage (1973). He also wrote the screenplay for 1975 horror-porn-turned-midnight-classic, Thundercrack!

John Waters, Todd Solondz, and David Lynch are among those who count Kuchar as an artistic influence. Waters contributed an introduction to the twins’ 1997 book, Reflections from a Cinematic Cesspool, now out of print. Hopefully we’ll see it someday on Google Books…

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Pondering Jack Black’s Giant Penis

Richard Horgan — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 14:30:43 +0000

Strange things are bound to happen when a freelance travel reporter sets sail for the Bermuda Triangle. But quite frankly, FBLA was completely unprepared for the scene about a third of the way through Gulliver’s Travels that sees Jack Black whip out his privates and dangle them off-screen, for an extended period of time, above Lilliput’s citizenry.

While the 20th Century Fox family film showcases a remixed version of Jonathan Swift‘s fabled kingdom, the basic big-person-little-people ratio remains the same. Ergo, viewed from below, the manhood of our moonlighting mailroom clerk Lemuel Gulliver would be the equivalent of a small dirigible.

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Operation Repo or So It Has Come to This

Tina Dupuy — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 08:00:12 +0000

In our quest to do nothing over the winter break – we ended up in a Operation Repo marathon on TruTV.

This “unscripted” show is Cops meets Jerry Springer.

Or it’s Reno 911 – if it decided to really be a show about the perils of police work.

You know how when your stupid friend begs you to go see their improv group at some horrible club in Hollywood and you spend the evening sitting in the back of some sticky theater watching the parade of lame and you wonder why you are friends with this guy in the first place and how the hell did you just get suckered into paying a cover to watch real life Hard Rock servers pretend to be Starbucks workers? “Ok, now we need help from the audience.” Indeed.

That’s how Operation Repo is…sans the stupid friend and the cover charge. It’s a series of reenactments of some of the “looniest” and “wildest” repo adventures in The Valley – but if John Waters cast it. There’s the obese blond Latina goth girl who repos vehicles in a floor length black tutu for starters…

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FBLA Goes to the Party: Schnabel at Gagosian

Kate — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 12:00:46 +0000

Julian Schnabel’s paintings of bones (used in the credit sequence of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) are on view at Gagosian Gallery, with a preview party last night. Schnabel’s at work on his next film, because he evidently needs no sleep.

Tilda Swinton, Lauren Hutton, Ben Silverman, the Weinsteins, Brett Ratner, and Diane Keaton were sighted.

Fashion icon Lisa Eisner (she owns Sammy Davis Jr.’s wardrobe) and Nicky Hilton both looked great but not together, naturally.

We said hi to Roger Friedman but didn’t recognize David Carr from the NY Times. (We don’t seem to be the only ones.) Gabe Snyder took a smoke break with Schnabel, but we were too busy feeling inept.

We were just about to snap John Waters with our Speed Graphic camera disguised as a phone, when the official photog hissed at us to get out of his way. Waters told us he never watches The Wire, as it’s too depressing, and that he’s delighted for Patty Hearst and her show dog, but no, he’s not making a movie about dog shows.

Outside, the paparazzi were getting soaked.

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Patty Hearst Wins with Bitch at Westminster

Kate — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 12:37:09 +0000

The NY Times blog, The Lede, seems to think Patty Hearst, heiress/kidnap victim, has been sitting on her ass in Connecticut since she got out of that prison cell, only to re-emerge at the Westminister Kennel Club show. Mike Nizza thinks she ditched taco night at the sorority to join the SLA and completely ignores her real come-back–Serial Mom, directed by the immortal/immoral John Waters:

The bitch above is Kathleen Turner. The canine version, Diva (real name: Shann’s Legally Blonde) won a ribbon for Best of Opposite Sex in the French bulldog competition, the runner-up prize. Don’t know if she’s wearing white shoes.

(Nizza’s not really a reporter, but boy can he code!)

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FBLA 20 Questions: Emmanuelle Richard

Kate — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 10:18:10 +0000

Foreign correspondent, Emmanuelle Richard contributes to French daily Liberation,Swiss public radio and French Vogue. She blogs, she’s clever, and has that effortless French chic but a wicked sense of humor about the world, show biz and Los Angeles. We’re overjoyed she answered our questions.(And a word to all future 20 Questioners–she sent us all the URLs, saving us hours of valuable time.)

1. What newspapers do you read?

The New York Post, first thing in the morning since they started delivering in L.A. a few years ago. I wish I could say the L.A. Times (where her husband works) but I love too much starting the day laughing out loud or shouting: “Good Lord!” You have a sense that the people there have a blast hunting for stories, producing the pages and coming up with insane headlines. And you grow so fond of the gallery of characters, apart from the many unpleasant anti-European columnists. Then I grab the L.A. Times, starting with the Opinion section. I also check the website of the national daily paper I work for in France, the left-leaning Liberation.

2. Which ones do you move your lips to while reading? You mean, when you silently mutter WTF? More often than not, the LAT, especially when they feel the need to rephrase a paragraph three times in one story that could easily be 30% shorter. To be fair, my hometown paper also induces a lot of silent “WOW”s, and I often end up defending it in conversations in L.A. where trashing the LAT seems like a requisite sport. Coming from France where investigative journalism is as foreign as tofu, I feel very lucky to have the LAT.

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Of All the Nerve: Ask John Waters Anything

Kate — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 13:16:09 +0000

John Waters, in what must be an example of publicity gone wrong, as agreed to answer questions at Nerve.com. From the site:

Send us your questions as feedback to this post or email them to scanner@nerve.com–please leave your first name, age, and location-and we’ll pick the best questions to ask Waters on Friday. You’re welcome to reach back into the murky depths of his career, but be sure to ask about his new CD, A Date With John Waters.

What’s to ask about the CD? Is there a secret surprise inside? If you need help with a question cheat sheets abound.

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