1315-1316 Hairspray & Desperate Living

[domino harvey]

Hairspray

After decades of pushing the boundaries of bad taste with his underground provocations, John Waters found surprising mainstream success with this infectiously irreverent rock-and-soul comedy. It’s 1962, and the only things bigger than the bouffant hairdos are the popular dance crazes sweeping the nation. When Baltimore teen Tracy Turnblad (Ricki Lake) shoots to stardom on a local TV dance party, her radical self-confidence and support for racial integration launch a movement that takes the city by storm. Costarring the inimitable Divine in a fiercely funny double role, Hairspray finds Waters marrying his wildly subversive sensibility with a newfound bubblegum sweetness for what may be his most irresistible film.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director John Waters, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
Alternate 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
Audio commentary featuring Waters and actor Ricki Lake
New conversation between Waters and WFMU DJs Dave “the Spazz” Abramson and Gaylord Fields
New interview with Lake and actor Colleen Fitzpatrick
Reflections from actors Debbie Harry, Jo Ann Havrilla, Leslie Ann Powers, Clayton Prince, Shawn Thompson, and Pia Zadora
Deleted scenes
Behind-the-scenes documentary
Get to Know John Waters (1987)
Interview with production designer Vincent Peranio
Trailer
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by critic Jessica Kiang

New cover by F. Ron Miller

Dangerous Living

Following the unrepentant outrageousness of Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble, director John Waters brought his notorious trash trilogy to a fittingly twisted close with this antifascist fairy tale. After hysterical housewife Peggy Gravel (Mink Stole) murders her husband with the help of her fed-up housekeeper (Jean Hill), the newfound “sisters in crime” escape to the bizarro shantytown of Mortville, a depraved penal colony presided over by a despotic queen (Edith Massey) whose tyranny pushes her subjects to shocking revolt. Deviant cops, death by dog food, DIY surgery—Waters unleashes all this and more in an at once relentlessly warped and oddly moral vision of queer rebellion.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director John Waters, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
Audio commentary featuring Waters and actor Liz Renay
Optional Italian dub track
New conversation between Waters and film programmer Cristina Cacioppo
Back to Mortville, a tour of the film’s main Baltimore location, led by Waters
New interview with actors Susan Lowe, Mary Vivian Pearce, and Mink Stole
Interview with production designer Vincent Peranio
Trailer
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by critic Grace Byron

Cover based on an original theatrical poster featuring photography by Peter Hujar

[Peacock]

Looks like we’re never getting the early shorts are we?

[Ashirg]

Optional Italian dub for Desperate Living must be the strangest extra.

[therewillbeblus]

My favorite Waters. Thoughts:

My John Waters preferences have always been (I suppose, appropriately) bent from the norm, but it wasn’t until this third/fourth revisit that Desperate Living surpassed Multiple Maniacs as my favorite. Contrary to many, I don’t think this film is quite so front-heavy (although the first ten minutes are as funny as ever, I prefer the next ten!) - and I seem to be alone in feeling like this is the most consistently hilarious and engaging of all his works by a country mile. Waters supports this state of fluidity by removing his characters from any real-world hang-ups that might obstruct their lunacy - transporting them into a society of misfits, where the environment is in a constant state of stimulation, peripheral gags firing like Tati on amphetamines even when the central action isn’t in shock mode or set up for a joke. All his films permit unfiltered chaos but rarely this inspired - and I never realized how this film essentially obliterates the creative value of Carpenter’s Escape from New York by overwhelming the myopic imagination of that film tenfold, half a decade before it was produced.

The histrionic behavior -that can grow tired due to formal distancing or dead-spots populating the two-dimensional linearity of the ‘windup’ sections in his other films- is fed with a constant restorative energy by the milieu here. Mink Stole’s hyped-to-11 perf somehow never exhausts itself, but in a clever reflexive in-joke becomes more and more appropriate when responding to triggers to earn such a shrill reaction! Other Waters regulars like Edith Massey also fully inhabit the untapped potential of their roles far better than the drive-by antics in prior efforts. Even the flashbacks work at servicing extraneous skits Waters wants to insert and might’ve forced into the main plot in another film - they seem to succeed at what Quentin Dupieux has been trying and often failing to do with his own off shooting web of mini-narratives throughout his own oeuvre.

[Lowry_Sam]

Optional Italian dub for Desperate Living must be the strangest extra.

Maybe it has something to do with the involvement of an Alamo Drafthouse programmer... but they didn't add optional English subtitles for the Italian dub, so it's probably not going to work as a humor translation thing.

I am ecstatic to see DL getting a UHD too.

[Beloved Aunt]

Is Hairspray the debut of Jerry Stiller in the collection?

[colinr0380]

Maybe the Italian dub it is to create the sense of Salo-style debauchery about Desperate Living? It certainly makes for an interesting lesbian couple double bill with High Art and the previous month's Fresh Kill!

I was not too enamoured of Desperate Living as a whole, but it starts out with perhaps the strongest sequence of any John Waters film, with an unhinged Mink Stole losing her mind and ranting at everyone, ably abetted by Jean Hill that we otherwise would never have gotten to see until deranged social media rants became a thing.

[The Curious Sofa]

Desperate Living has its moments and some great gags (the lesbian glory hole!) but without Divine, a genuinely great performer, it lacks spark and feels a little dreary.

My theory about the Italian dub is that John Waters, being a connoisseur of European art-house classics who considers 8½ to be a seminal film, intended to create a gag that would align Desperate Living with Italian art-house movies.

[Finch]

I had the same experience as colin and curious sofa when I watched Desperate Living a year ago or so. Best opening of any Waters film but the rest didn't grip me as much. Dreary is how I felt about it too. Maybe it'll play better on a revisit.

[Matt]

Looks like we’re never getting the early shorts are we?

Not until Waters dies, and maybe not even then. He showed them at some career-honoring event a couple decades ago and said it would be the last time. He considers them juvenilia and doesn’t want them out.