Yesterday, the Virginia Film Festival announced that attendance for last weekend’s screenings and events totaled more than 19,000 people—a fest record. Ah, but only a fortunate few nabbed tickets for UVA’s second annual Arts Assembly last Friday, which likely set another benchmark: first official UVA function to feature references to LSD, analingus, Sarah Palin-inspired porno and womb-raiders.
As his first official act as this year’s featured guest, dumpster diva director John Waters performed "This Filthy World," his one-man show, before a packed and cackling crowd at Culbreth Theatre—including at least one Waters doppelgänger. (That’d be associate professor of art Bill Bennett, a thin mustache hugging his upper lip.) The man’s performance, however, may pass into the annals of UVA speeches as inimitable. A full recap follows the video:
A review of John Waters’ "This Filthy World"
Vice Provost for the Arts Elizabeth Hutton Turner informed the audience that the theme for this year’s assembly was "Opening the Door for Creativity Through Inclusion and Community"—like the film fest’s "Funny Business" theme, broad enough to allow for just about any topics, no matter how marginal or niche. Waters, said Turner, "probed and measured the social margins," a comment that earned at least one chuckle from my row.
A few more introductory comments, and there he was—a long, thin face hovering above a dark turtleneck and striped slacks, like a good-natured, velvet Nosferatu. Waters reminded the audience that no video or audio recording was permitted; "You make me feel like Connie Francis," he said.
What was permitted? Tales of pot busts, strip club visits with his leading lad(y), Divine, and a stripper named Zorro who "looked just like Johnny Cash." He talked about the influence of Kroger Babb’s 1945 birth film, Mom and Dad, which he said played for six years in Baltimore and was more about sin than cinema. (Screenings involved "creepy old men looking at a vagina while ignoring the baby…birth as a masturbation aid.")
In little time, however, it became clear how appropriately Waters’ performance fit the assembly theme. (Unlike, say, Do the Right Thing and "funny business.") Artists succeed through influence, Waters seemed to stress, but influence requires a community.
"Wouldn’t you rather your kid be a bad influence than the one getting influenced?" Waters asked. And in the right light, the man who admitted to recently bidding on Ingmar Bergman’s trash cans made a good point. The dynamics of influence involve either asserting it or being under it. Contrary to what his stories might suggest, Waters has spent most of his life doing the former.
