SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER

“Female Trouble was the only movie I wrote completely as a star vehicle for Divine,” John Waters tells us by phone about his Pink Flamingos follow-up, which screens at BAM this Saturday as part of its I Am Divine series. “His character, Dawn Davenport, was based on my memories of the girls I went to junior high with, especially one so-called ‘bad girl’ with Dawn’s hairdo named Carol: she lived across the street from Divine, and they used to play poker for pimple medicine, rather than for money.

[jump]

“I like all of Divine’s performances in my movies, but to me Female Trouble gives him his meatiest role: he starts as a teenager, ages 15 years, commits crimes, performs a trampoline act, plays both a man and a woman at one point, and gets to have sex with himself. Divine always liked being the star of a movie, and I think that he loved looking so glamorous in this one. I never had a burning aim with my movies except to hopefully be delighted by the perverse; even when Dawn finally goes to the electric chair, to me, it’s a happy ending.”