Back in 1972, John Waters was widely perceived as one filthy filmmaker. That’s when he made “Pink Flamingos,” starring the late, great drag queen Divine (whom Waters describes, accurately, as “Jayne Mansfield meets Godzilla”). “Pink Flamingos” follows the adventures of the “filthiest person alive” as she goes toe to toe with evil usurpers. The epic battle involves incest, cannibalism and sexual slavery.
But now, as he heads toward his 60th birthday in April, Waters has gone positively mainstream, thanks to “Hairspray,” a movie he made in 1988 that has been adapted into a hit Broadway musical, the latest touring version of which opens Tuesday at the Cadillac Theatre for two weeks.
Inspired by actual events from Waters’ youth in Kennedy-era Baltimore, “Hairspray” tells the story of Tracy Turnblad, a big-boned, big-haired teenager who longs for nothing more than to dance on an “American Bandstand”-style local TV program called “The Corny Collins Show.”
She gets her wish, despite her unfashionable girth and the opposition of a snobbish, stop-at-nothing nemesis. But Tracy’s triumph turns hollow when she realizes that her black friends are prohibited from appearing on the show. With the help of some misfit allies, Tracy leads a campaign against dance-floor segregation.
“Hairspray” the movie has grossed more than $6 million domestically on a $2 million investment, according to the online database IMDb.com.
But “Hairspray” the musical has become a minor phenomenon. It won eight Tonys in 2003 (including “best musical”), critical raves and an audience Disney might envy. “We sell booster seats at the theater,” says lyricist Scott Wittman, who collaborated on the show’s score with his life-partner, Marc Shaiman. “We get lots of little girls in the audience all the time, and they all know the words.”
“The funny part,” adds Shaiman, “is when their parents go to the video store and say, `We’d like to see more of that John Waters!'”
But for Waters, the distance from “Pink Flamingos” to “Hairspray” isn’t so awfully far. “I don’t think that `Hairspray’ is basically any different from `Pink Flamingos,'” he remarks by phone from his studio in Baltimore. “In the degree of surprise, maybe–but at the same time I think [whom] I’m rooting for is the same in every movie.”
In “Pink Flamingos”, he says, Divine–like Tracy–is “secure. She’s the filthiest person alive and she’s living a peaceful existence until she’s attacked by a jealous, judgmental person who tries too hard. I always root for the people who mind their own business and generally don’t have a lot of moments of heroism in their lives. In my world, they always win.”
If anything, Waters claims, it’s “Hairspray” that makes the stronger statement. As for the suggestion that the musical’s message is to reject people “dancing in separate worlds,” he says, “That’s a little sappy. I think we’re a little more militant than that. It’s like, `Boy, haven’t you learned yet?! You can’t be a racist and win in the year 2005! There are no excuses anymore!’ I think `Hairspray’ is like, every person that’s a little different, maybe if they band together, no one will care what the other people think ’cause there are more of us!”
In his review of the August, 2002 Broadway opening, Tribune theater critic Michael Phillips called “Hairspray” “a buoyant pop confection, tons of fun, sweetly subversive and generous in spirit.” Beyond the “infectious” score, he said, the musical has the power to become an American standard because it “[c]rucially . . . finds more than mere traces of human feeling beneath all the hair.” The show, he concluded, offers “precisely the right amount of too much.”
Waters points out that under cover of its ’60s rock tunes, quaint Funky Chicken-ish novelty dances and bouffants, “Hairspray” the movie throws out its share of provocations, endorsing interracial dating among teens, for instance. “I’ve always said [`Hairspray’ is] the most perverse movie I’ve ever made,” declares the angular man with the pencil mustache, “because it lures families into my world.”
The Broadway folks aren’t nearly as feisty as Waters. “It’s just about acceptance,” composer Shaiman says of the musical, “and, pardon the pun, not being weighed down by outward appearances.”
“The show is about inclusiveness,” agrees Mark O’Donnell, who co-wrote the book with Thomas Meehan. “There’s the fat girl . . . and black civil rights–but geez, it could be about anything: gayness, Jewishness, foreignness, age.” He compares “Hairspray” to “Cinderella”–a story “about the outsider who finds her way.”
This is the musical “Hairspray’s” second time through Chicago, having made its first pass during the winter of 2003-4. The fact that it returns without a single major name in the cast (Bruce Vilanch of “Hollywood Squares” fame lead the earlier tour) demonstrates the producers’ confidence in the musical’s inherent appeal.
The whole thing couldn’t have turned out more wonderfully for Waters, who’s happy that Shaiman, Wittman, O’Donnell and Meehan didn’t write “a Hallmark greeting card for fat people”–and that his career has finally “been understood.”
Indeed, it appears to have been kicked into overdrive: thanks to the success of “Hairspray,” Waters’ 1990 movie “Cry-Baby” is now in the process of being made into a musical.
And like “The Producers,” “Hairspray” itself is spinning in a media-adaptation whirlpool: the musical that was born of the movie is now in the process of becoming a movie itself, featuring a screenplay written by O’Donnell, Meehan, and Leslie Dixon.
It’s all part of Waters’ new status as a prominent mainstream artist. “The last time I saw [the musical version of `Hairspray’] was at the opening at the Kennedy Center, which was bizarre,” Waters says. “For me to be standing up, everyone applauding? One of the producers leaned over and said, `These people would have murdered you before.'”
`Hairspray’
When: Tuesday through Dec. 18
Where: Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 W. Randolph St.
Price: $37.50-$82.50; 312-902-1400 or www.broadwayinchicago.com
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onthetown@tribune.com
