There’s a something called “syndication” in television, a process of selling a program’s license to multiple networks and affiliated stations. You know those TV shows with countless reruns—like Saved By the Bell, Forensic Files, that’s syndication.
Movies operate within this system as well. Like when it’s Christmas, there’s Home Alone. Or when it’s Valentine’s Day, there’s Sixteen Candles. They’re movies that fit the season, and attract viewers long enough to sit through commercials. And that’s the process of syndication: someone rents a license, fits it into a timeslot, presents it to paying advertisers, attracts an audience, and then generates a profit.
But, for those lesser holidays, finding the right program isn’t obvious. Like, what movie goes with Earth Day or Flag Day? Or better yet, Sibling’s Day? That’s why coming across, low-cost, low-risk licenses sometimes generates interesting options for everyone. And that’s how John Waters’ 1994 cult classic Serial Mom enters into homes nearly every Mother’s Day.
On the outside, Serial Mom is an odd pick for Mother’s Day. Its plot is rather simple: a mother goes around the neighborhood murdering people and gets away with it. This base premise sounds more like a psychological thriller than a movie celebrating motherhood. But, this is how John Waters works: By taking the mundane parts of life and pushing them into places that are overlooked or frankly ignored by society, he forces you to enjoy the awkward yet hypocritical parts of culture. And by taking our peripheral understanding and examining its internal mechanics, you see how a 1994 movie opens your mind to a wonderfully, trashy world.
Dr. Elizabeth Buchanan, a renowned Ethicist and Human Subjects expert, explains how an overriding theme in Waters’ work sets up our understanding:
Elizabeth: I think a message that really carries through is the notion of normalcy and what is normal. And in some of the earlier films, some of these acts and some of these fetishes and some of these things that went on were so outside what society would consider normal. The irony of it, the satire of it— [makes us ask] who’s defining that normalcy?
Elizabeth asks the perfect Waters’ question: What’s normal? Not to downplay his work, it’s really the question of every Waters film: Who tells us who’s normal and how do we judge it? In fact, it’s really the only question to ask before you examine how a child for ‘50s Baltimore became the Pope of Trash Cinema.
The Early Life of John Waters
John Waters grew up during the Baby Boom in the Baltimore, Maryland area. Like other children in post WWII America, his childhood was a typical suburban existence: two married parents, Holidays with extended family, and Sunday school. And given the fact that Waters had a seemingly normal childhood, how he became of the Pope of Trash isn’t obvious. After getting kicked out of New York University as a freshman in 1966, he went back Baltimore with an 8mm camera and a whole a lot of time on his hands
With little money and nowhere to go, Waters did what many young artists do: Use their surrounding resources. Waters looked no further than Baltimore and his friends as the inspiration for his work. To this day, the city has been the setting and location of all his films. Elizabeth, who grew up on the East Coast, points out that Baltimore, like other metro areas, is more complex than one thinks:
Elizabeth: “Growing up on the East Coast, you have different opportunities to go different places. In 8thgrade, our class trip was to the Baltimore Harbor and we went to the aquarium. And I think that was my first time in Baltimore. And now looking back on it and to this day, Baltimore is really very segregated. There’s a really nice area with the harbor and the aquarium. Very beautiful. And not too far away, some really rough neighborhoods. If you have seen The Wire, that’s the reality. And from going there and thinking it was just this beautiful, touristy place, and then learning and going to college and seeing my first John Waters movies, [I] realized that Baltimore is a really interesting place and it still is to this day.”
Baltimore is fairly dynamic. As Dr. Nathan Koob points out, since the rise of John Waters, the city can’t escape being defined by Waters. And while he was rising, he captured the bizarre side of Baltimore. Like Elizabeth suggested earlier, there’s a pleasant yet scary side to the city, and Waters homes in on this. For better or worse, it’s critical to understand how a high school friend, money from his parents, and drag helped Waters develop one of the greatest assets of Baltimore: Divine.
Born Harris Glenn Milstead, Divine was one part singer, one part actor, and one part over the top. Being teased for being overweight and effeminate as a child, Divine flocked to the counterculture of the 1960s, despite being raised in a traditional Christian household like Waters. It was this flight that took Divine to the Maverick’s, a bohemian hub in a conservative city. Here, Divine became part of the Dreamlanders, an acting troupe who later worked in many Waters’ films. In fact, it was Waters himself that gave Milstead the name Divine.
And as this persona, Waters and Divine pushed every boundary possible. They were on a mission to make the “the trashiest motion pictures in cinema history”. Coming out of the ideal of the 1950s, they were positioned to do it. Hippies, drag, drugs, fetishes, sexuality, they used every outlet possible. And with Waters’ third movie, Pink Flamingos, Divine established himself as Dreamlanders mascot. With a movie that centers around characters fighting for the title of the filthiest person alive, it’s scene after scene of exercising poor taste. It cultivates with Divine eating real dog feces.
If anything, Divine wasn’t for every one. Loud, crude, and overtly abrasive, Divine was the terrorist of bad taste. But, for those who understand Waters’ abject art, there was nothing outside of Divine.
As make-up artist Van Marks and Divine explain in the documentary Divine Trash, Divine wasn’t merely a drag queen:
Parks: “Drag was just coming onto the scene so to speak. And it was very in your face kinda drag. It wasn’t Miss Maryland. It wasn’t trying to was for a really girl or something like that. It was very aggressive, very in your face. I Think Divine made Ru Paul possible and other ones. I mean at the same time there was Candy, Darling in New York, Jackie Curtis, and stuff. But basically they were giving a lot of real girl as the term goes. Where Divine took a bigger than life character.”
Divine: “I didn’t want to be type casted. I mean I feel like I am an actor. If you must call it something else, I am a drag queen or a shim I prefer to call it. I hate transvestite or transsexual. I think they are all ugly. I mean: I don’t mean the people. I mean the term. You don’t have to put me [in] a term. I think that when I am an actor I play a woman. And people believe, a lot of people believe that I am a women. And I think for man with 250 pounds and [who can] go out and convince people that he is a woman, that’s some fine acting there.
For a girl who grew up in a small, isolated, New Jersey town, Elizabeth didn’t take Divine for granted, so to speak. Immersed in ‘80s Goth and skateboard culture, Elizabeth saw Divine and Waters as many others did: Outsiders. More importantly, they were outsiders doing something productive. They were mocking the world that excluded them. It’s what got Elizabeth hooked.
Elizabeth: I was so obsessed with Divine, for so long. I think because I grew up in a really small, very kinda sheltered place. And we didn’t see that. We didn’t see people who looked like that and acted like that. And it was like I couldn’t get enough of her.
It really was…I had never experienced a person like that—in any way, shape, or form. I just was fascinated in every way. The acting, the ability to transform into so many different roles. You know, to hold people in these films. And to be engaged in these horribly inhumane level[s] and still like this character.
Elizabeth was so committed to Divine, that she couldn’t pass up this opportunity.. After Divine passed away in 1988 at the age of 42 of heart disease, Elizabeth missed her chance of getting to meet him. But, after making friends during her Freshman year of college, they took a pilgrimage to Maryland.
Elizabeth: Two of my best friends from college took a pilgrimage to Divine’s grave. And have a really cool, artsy-fartsy, black and white picture with us in our Goth wear. It was fun. It was like we were so committed to Divine and what he brought to film and what he brought to counterculture. It was just one of those things in college where we had an opportunity. One of my friends that we went with her aunts live not too far from the grave site. And [she] said ‘Divine’s not buried too far away from here.’ And were are like ‘We’re there. We’re doing this!’
Divine wasn’t the only thing that got audiences into Waters. For some, it was the thrill of constantly getting shocked. They were going places and seeing things made of nightmares and poor choices. But, the underlining theme of everything was humor. Some of Waters’ films were so underfunded that his mother scored them with her piano. Add that together with cheap sets, cheap wardrobes, and the same actors, people caught onto Waters. It was cheap. It was tacky. And it worked. For some, it was how Waters developed his characters against these constraints that made him successful.
AJ Moore came into John Waters right as Hollywood began to take notice. After the success of 1982’s Polyester—where Waters worked with ‘50s teen idol Tab Hunter and musicians Blondie and Michael Kamen, Waters was poised for bigger opportunities. And that happened with 1988’s Hair Spray, a satirical take on ‘60s dance movies. Unlike Waters’ other films, it had a mild PG rating—his lowest to date. But like all his films, Waters used campiness to examine racism, segregation, poverty, class structure, body image, and so on. As AJ explains, it’s how Waters develops his characters that really gets his attention:
AJ: John Waters artfully makes films with all the idiosyncrasies of pulp, pulp fiction, and pulp novels, and old pulp serials, and camp, and high camp—and almost the stage play dramatiz-ish of B-movies. But he does it artfully. There is an intent to it. You know, there are other films like Pecker where you can see that he can make a straight film. But having his characters playing heightened caricatures of the world and the world they inhabit actually gives them, I think in some ways, more weight—or at least more artistic weight impact.
AJ isn’t the only person to see this. In-house movie expert Ryan Lemay notices what Waters isn’t afraid to do. He isn’t afraid to cast unattractive main characters doing mundane things. He explains how Hair Spray and Cry Baby, at their cores, do this:
Ryan: I think maybe on some weird, cerebral level, like someone watches a John Waters movie—maybe not Serial Mom—but there are trashy people in it and then they react. And then they have to self-examine: ‘Well, why do I have a problem watching a movie where the main characters aren’t glamorous?’ You know what I mean. They have to look at themselves and [ask]: ‘Does that really bother me? Why does it bother me?’
Because I know as kid that could have bothered me maybe. Like, ‘Why is Edna Trunblad so gross?’ But now, I really don’t see her that way at all. She’s just a working lady who doesn’t have a ton of money so she irons and washes other people’s clothes. But in the musical, she’s pretty. She’s a big lady but she’s pretty.
The idea that John Waters was never afraid to go there—wherever there is—he’ll do it. I feel like some people [say] ‘Oh, what is this? What are these hillbilly people in Cry Baby? Why am I rooting for them? They are weird and trashy.’ But, they are nicer than the other people [in the movie] you know. I think sometimes people have a hard time identifying with people they see so different as them—even though, when you peel back the layers, ‘Oh, I am actually like them a lot.’
As Ryan suggests, Waters uses a common tool of his generation: Shock value. Like other artists who started in the late ‘60s, it wasn’t a question of craftsmanship per say. It was more of a question of “What can we do that’s almost illegal?” Add that and the tenacity to do it, Waters and Dreamlanders accomplished what others couldn’t. They had audiences question social norms. This would be a critical part of what makes Serial Mom relevant.
As Elizabeth explains, it’s one of Waters’ best aspects:
Elizabeth: You got to expose yourself to everything. You have to be open. You have to really accept whatever is coming at you. And accept that part of what so many counter movements, they are trying to shock you out of boredom. They are trying to shock you out of your daily dumbness. And make you conscious of what’s going on around you. That’s what so many of John Waters’ films were about: Shocking you out of complicacy and forcing you to think about societal issues and alterative perspectives. Race, and class, and gender issues, that’s what Waters’ films were about. That’s what’s it’s trying to tell you. Of course you are going to be horrified. Yeah, it’s disgusting. Divine puts dog poop in his mouth. But, there’s a meaning behind all of that. And that’s what you need to focus on.
Stepping Into the Hollywood Machine
Waters’ transition from trash cinema to big budget Hollywood doesn’t make sense. I mean, if Pink Flamingos and Divine were his point of reference, Waters should have made millions in the fetish, porn industry. But from 1969’s Mondo Trasho to 1982’s Polyester, he went from self-distributing to working with then independent studio New Line Cinema. It’s a rather big jump that doesn’t make much sense. I mean, at the time, up-in-coming writer/director John Hughes was a safer bet than John Waters for any studio.
But, the late ‘70s and the early ‘80s were the dawn of home video. Before, movies would play in theatres almost exclusively. And if you missed them, it wasn’t guaranteed syndication. Now, you could buy a VCR and your favorite tape and watch it whenever and wherever you wanted. If you couldn’t afford a copy, you could rent it. This was the golden era of movie stores. And the rental market was a key part of taking John Waters out of Baltimore and into your home:
Even for AJ, who grew up in small town Minnesota, he soon realized how popular John Waters was:
AJ: So the weird thing about video stores [and] VHS distribution in general was, even in a small town like Caledonia, they had a pretty sizable video store. And VHS distribution has whole different game than what they got now. So, for most video stores, content was cheap. And studios put out stud cheap. So, like every B-run movie that was possible from like Basket Case and Critters to all of those and a lot of the Waters stuff was available. Not really the early stuff, but I would say from…definitely Cry Baby and Hair Spray. I would say, from like ’85 on until the DVD revolution happened, anything after that was available. Even some of the earlier stuff, like Mondo Trasho and that would be on the shelves. Those where like some seriously worn tapes. So there’s definitely an appetite for it even in the small world down there.
Think about it: John Waters could make affordable movies, using the same location and same people. And as the years progressed, he was getting attention. Better yet, he was getting critical attention. The New York Times, Playboy, and other outlets were reviewing his movies—oddly enough, well.
So, on one hand, you have a movie that doesn’t need much money to break even. And, on the other hand, when it gets released on home video, audiences are renting it. It didn’t take long for New Line to connect the dots. In 1987, Waters’ budget went from $300k for Polyester to $2 million for Hair Spray. And to top it off, established acts within Hollywood wanted in. Sonny Bono, Jerry Stiller, and Debbie Harry all played major parts in the movie. From an investment angle, it wouldn’t take much for the movie to make a profit. Even if it didn’t at the box-office, the home video market would make up the difference.
And then, on Feb. 26, 1988, Hair Spray hits theatres and John Waters officially goes from X-rated trash cinema to family friendly PG. And to the shock of some, Hair Spray returns a 400% profit. The combination of satire, camp, and ‘60s R n’ B is the perfect palette for mainstream audiences. It urges then Rolling Stone critic David Edelstein’s famous quote: “A family movie both the Bradys and the Mansons could adore.” And with that, Waters enters into what will be known as his Hollywood years.
AJ, who came into the world of Waters during this transition, remembers how others started to understand Waters.
AJ: The Hollywood years is where people started getting in on the joke. Polyester was kind fof that last trash film thing. But, by that time, he had already created a public persona. You know, he had been on Sally Jessy Raphael or Donahue or whatever. So people started to know John Waters as being a trash merchant.
But in that, he got the latitude to make those films. And I think the people that were naturally attracted to that kinda of art—people like ourselves: The weird kids who liked outside art. The people who were outside—whether they were religiously outside, or gender, or sexual preference, or non-conformist of any stripe all ready saw a home in them. Where not only were the themes going to be…even in spite of the fact there’s going to be vulgarity and that amplified vision of filth if you will. But there was something safe about it. That they got to be part of the story instead of an exception in the story. I think strangely enough it’s one of those things that built upon its own momentum in a way…where it just became a quirky thing in those later years.
It wasn’t just the public that built off this momentum. Big Hollywood wanted a piece too. So, in 1989 Waters jumped ship to Universal Pictures, Hollywood’s oldest studio. And with this jump also came star power. He was able to attract bigger acts: Johnny Depp, William Dafoe, Iggy Pop, socialite Patty Hearse, and Oscar winning composer Patrick Williams. With this cast, he was ready for Cry Baby, a satire of ‘50s era musicals, in line with Guys and Dolls, and Grease. But, it doesn’t mean that Waters went completely mainstream. He also cast former porn star Traci Lords, and independent maintain Susan Tyrrell.
But, by this time, Waters lost Divine. Weeks after the release of Hair Spray, Divine died of an enlarged heart. Waters still had Mink Stole and Mary Pearce, but it wasn’t the same without Divine. He cast unknown Kim McGuire, as Hatchet-Face, who did a wonderful job. But, for fans like Elizabeth, it was going to be a challenge.
Unfortunately, a musical, comedy, satire of ‘50s greaser culture didn’t translate well to audiences. A similar concept worked for Grease, but the Waters flare had a breaking point with mainstream audiences. The critics were mixed as well. Gary Thompson of the Philadelphia Daily points out, “As Waters moves to a more conventional type of satire, he is losing some of the edge that gave his earlier films their crass appeal.
But, a mainstay of the day, Gene Siskel points to the contrary: “For a while the actors seem intimidated by the ’50s references, but the film eventually develops a musical energy that carries the day.”
In the end, movies are in the hands of the audience. Even Ryan’s mother wasn’t a fan:
Ryan: He did Cry Baby right before [Serial Mom] and I remember my mom went to that with her boyfriend. And I was a little kid and I didn’t know anything about it. But she’s like ‘That movie’s a waste of film!’ [laughs] I remember watching it later with my cousins and being like ‘I don’t know why she hated it so much. It’s funny’ [laughs].
In the end, of the nearly 12 million budget, the box office generated 8 million. This was a lose for Universal and Waters. But, taking in the home movie market, the film could have stayed solvent. So, Waters had his first and only strike at Universal. With that, Waters and Universal parted ways. But, this didn’t stop Waters from his most ambitious project yet: Serial Mom.
A Mother Who Loves is a Mother Who Kills
Ryan: Serial Mom was probably the first John Waters’ movie that I saw and I was like ‘I love this movie.’ And I remember, I have bought a lot of movies, but back in the day when Top Ten Video was around, I rented the same movies and I rented Serial Mom a bunch of times. And when they closed that’s where I got my first copy. I bought it from them.
For Ryan and others, Serial Mom was entry level John Waters. And rightfully so: whereas musicals and dance movies had fallen out with the general public by the 90s, odd-ball comedies reigned supreme. This is the era of Pauli Shore, Adam Sandler, Jim Carey—who by 1995 released some of the biggest hits of the decade.
The premise of Serial Mom is as odd as it gets: Beverly Sutphin is the ideal mother and wife, with a suburban home, a station wage, and a tendency to murder anyone she finds annoy. The person who doesn’t rewind videotapes: dead. The neighbor who doesn’t recycle: dead. The teacher who’s mean to your son: He’s definitely dead!
Waters’ outrageous satire of suburban life, true crime, and the American serial killer love-hate complex fits in with other 90s comedies. In other words, if a pet detective trying to find a dolphin stolen by a cross-dressing cop could make $100 million, a movie about a suburban mom killing neighbors could too. Ultimately, the new independent studio Savoy Pictures stepped in and Serial Mom began production in 1993.
From the start, it seemed like Waters was ready to make in the mainstream. He successfully courted Golden Globe nominated Sam Waterston, television celebrities Suzanne Somers and Joan Rivers, retained future talk show host Ricki Lake, found an unknown Mathew Lillard as well as getting alternative rockers L7. to band the fictional band Camel Lips.
But the real tour da force was A-list Kathleen Turner as serial-mom, Beverly Sutphin. Turner, who was a major success throughout the ‘80s, earned several awards and seen box office numbers well over $100 million. Waters later commented about Turner:
Waters: Well, I thought it was possible because she’d taken big chances before. She had worked with Ken Russell. She’d made a lot of crazy art movies. She’d made The War of the Roses, which I had especially loved. So, I thought she might go for it, and I was right! And Kathleen still likes to take on a challenge in a movie. She doesn’t like to do things she’s already done, and she likes to take something on with some punch to it.
AJ recounts seeing the movie opening weekend:
AJ: Well, having seen a few…well having seen a good number of his movies the first time, I was expecting, I think was expecting something a little bit more racy, a little bit more vulgar and off putting. And what I wasn’t excepting then was Kathleen Turner is a powerhouse in that movie [laughs]. She’s actually pretty impressive. And everything happens around her anyway. I think she has 99% of the screen time in it if not more.
Turner’s portal of Beverly, for some, is an acquired taste. Roger Ebert remarks how “Turner’s character is helpless and unwitting in a way that makes us feel almost sorry for her – and that undermines the humor. She isn’t funny crazy, she’s sick crazy.”
In a relative way, Ebert has a valid point. But for Ryan, it’s Turner’s absolute commitment to the role and her understanding of comedy that makes it work.
Ryan: Kathleen Turner knows the difference, so she’s not doing anything to be funny. It’s like so: This is how Beverly Sutphin feels. This is the emotion I am going through. So, even when she’s chasing Scotty down the street with a butcher knife, it’s funny looking. But, she looks intense. She’s not ‘This is silly. I am running with a butcher knife.’ It’s like ‘I’m going to get this guy.’
Maybe, I feel like a lot of movies if you tweak the music you can change the kind of movie it is. When people make fan trailers of like ‘What if this movie was a horror movie.’ I feel like her performance could work equally as well in a horror movie, just because she commits to the character and it is genuine acting.
It’s not…comedy is being incredibly serious that’s what Bea Arthur said. That’s what she realized as an young actress. Like ‘Oh, people are laughing because I am so serious.’ Kathleen Turner’s commitment to the genuine character and not ‘I’m in a funny movie with John Waters, so I have to be funny.’ She’s just like ‘Nope. I am acting.’
Through Beverly, Waters under hands suburban living. The Sutphins are Americana: The small business owners, the stay at home mom, the young son, and the daughter in college. But as the movie progresses, we see a family that’s unsure of itself and unable to stop a person who thinks she improving the neighborhood by killing all the errors of suburbia. In some ways, they reflect the ugly tendencies of American living:
Ryan: It’s hard to say, because I feel for he most part…her family is normal but she’s the weird part about it. Even if you look at the family as a whole, for the most, they are normal. However, at the end, she gets acquitted and they’re kind of happy about it but they know she did it. They know she killed all these people. They’re like “I guess we’ll just take her home? That’s fine.’ They didn’t testify against her. They didn’t….I guess maybe Eugene doesn’t as much, but the kids really seem to enjoy this fame that they are getting. This business they are starting with their books and pins and movie rights and all this stuff. I feel like they really do accept their mom for the monster she is and they kind of use it to their advantage.
What makes the Sutphins so fascinating is how direct Waters’ critique of them is . As AJ points out, there’s a certain ugliness to it:
AJ: I think Waters is an incredibility aware person to begin with and he has to be to operate the way he does. But, I think that he definitely saw that and I think there’s some serendipity in there. Because part of it was poking fun or pulling away the scab off of that veneer of gentility over the over the late Reagan suburban family. There’s always this bizarre ugliness that lurks underneath it. And he just grabbed that dial and turned it up to 35.
Narrator: Do you think that was really effect? Like taking it and turning it up to 11?
AJ: Yeah. And I think as a result of what happened in time—in and around it—it stopped being about pulling the veneer of the banal, suburban existence…to expose that deviance and ugliness underneath it. And [now] you have that thing that at the same time we turned all the criminality and ugliness in society into entertainment spectacle. I remember sitting in the student lounge in college for hours on end watching the white, Ford Bronco.
In years after Serial Mom’s release, Waters laughs at movie’s relevance. He comments about it during a British Film Institute screening:
Waters: If you look at his movie today, there’s weird stuff in it. It was made before the OJ case in America. But it became turn almost. The stuff that happened here with OJ. There’s this scene in the movie that [someone] told me [about]. ‘I didn’t write that line? It’s not in there.’ But it is. You’ll see. It’s about Bill Cosby [laughs].
Waters makes no excuse for exploring the love-hate serial killer complex. Beverly is the only complex character we see a one-dimensional world through. And through her, we see social customs, understand how they function, and then laugh at them. As Ryan points out, it’s as if Beverly becomes the serial killer you root for.
Ryan: I think the interesting thing about Beverly as a character is you do root for her. You totally understand where she is coming from. And yet you’re totally like…I remember as a kid I didn’t care about any of the murders except Scotty. ‘She set him on fire and the people in the band laughed about it.’ That bothered me for some reason. Where I am now like ‘It’s a joke.’ That’s the whole idea. Yeah, everyone is so in the hype. They’re like ‘Yeah, let’s spit booze on him and burn him even more.’ [laughs]
I think that Kathleen Turner has the ability to be a murder who you root for—you may not want her to kill people—but, you understand what she’s going through. You understand why she kills who she kills. In a way, everyone that she kills in the movie you see a point. Like ‘Well, they did have this coming.’ Not, that you want someone murder for that reason in real life, but you identify with her motives. You get that this lady called my son ‘Son of a Psycho.’ She’s so rude to him. I better off her.
I think the teacher scene really spoke to me as a teenager because I was a horror nut and I liked to draw creepy things. Not just creepy things, but to have a teacher tell my mom that there’s something wrong with your kid because he likes these horror movies…I feel like my mom would not murder him but she say ‘He’s fine. We talk. We’re good.’ [laughs]
Beverly’s actions aren’t meant to be justified. And they don’t have to be. Like Francine Fishpaw, Wade Walker, or other Waters characters, she functions as a response to the absurdities that surround us. And as Waters progressed into the mainstream with Hair Spray and Cry Baby, he didn’t stop being himself. As AJ points out, Waters always turned the world onto its own problems:
AJ: I was thinking about how I would answer this—just I thinking about the arc of John Waters’ films in general and where there was kind of a shift there that initially it was about breaking taboos and carrying the joke and the premise too far—for the sake of thumbing your nose at convention. And really kind of pointing at or poking at the hypocrisy of modern life in general.
And in the later movies, they really kind of are, in some ways, direct studies. I don’t want to get too serious about it because John Waters wasn’t so far up his own ass in films making—where he thought he was doing something high art of philosophical. He has always approached it as a trash medium, but where you can actually take it and turn society on itself or a concept in society on itself and use it to parody itself.
When you look at the whole Beverly’s actions and reactions surrounding them, they’re hilarious. Bludgeoning someone to death with a rake of lamb for not rewinding a videotape. Or, murdering someone for stealing a parking space—it’s how Waters mixes the notion of the mundane and trivial that makes them work. Even after the police arrest Beverly, she can’t help but play around with the joke when she says “The only serial I know anything about is Rice Kipsies.” For Elizabeth, they’re something people can relate to:
Elizabeth: It was just so funny. Because those things that Kathleen Turner’s character killed for, you know, they were things that anyone could relate to. Right, anybody could laugh [and say] ‘Oh, my God. You know, I didn’t recycle. What’s going to happen to me?” So, again, taking the absolute mundane and twisting it and toying with it. And making people think: What are we prioritizing? What is important? Why aren’t we taking about serial killing and psychosis? Why aren’t paying attention to what really matters?
Serial Mom: A Journey to Mother’s Day
Waters: So, when we made this movie, it was the time in the Hollywood system where I had the most trouble in my life. It was done with this company that gave me a great advance to make it. I mean I was very well paid to make this movie in Hollywood standards. And when we had the first test screening they looked at it and said ‘We will never release this movie. She sets somebody on fire in this movie.’ We said that was in the script. And they said ‘Well, still…’ That means that they never read the script.
So, I said let’s have a test screening with an audience who will like it. They said ‘Okay.’ We had it at the Writers’ Guild in LA. The audience loved it! They gave it applause. [The studio] said ‘It doesn’t count. They like you. So, we’re going to have in a neighborhood where nobody knows you or heard of you’ So we went to a neighborhood where Rodney King’s jurors lives. In a part of LA that I never saw in my life. It was so deep in suburbia that when we pulled up I thought We’re going to be lynched here.
So, they spent all this money to have a test screening to make it fail, so they would have me listen to them. I thought Okay, I believe that you can find this audience. Just put the money in the ad campaign this cost. I finally won because of Liz Smith the gossip columnist, who Kathleen Turner went to and let Serial Mom live.
From the start, Serial Mom was against the odds. Even with Savoy Pictures trying to stop it, on April 13, 1994 Serial Mom opened across the country. And like Cry Baby, it was a commercial disaster. Critics were mixed. Audiences barely showed up. And the movie put an end to John Waters’ Hollywood years.
How could Serial Mom fail while others succeeded? I mean, if a movie about two friends driving a van-turned-sheep-dog across the country could make it, why couldn’t a movie about a loving, serial killing mom make it?
As AJ and Ryan suggest, there was one outside factor no one predicted. Weather :
AJ: Yeah, so when it first came out, that was one of the deepest, deep freezes in Minneapolis history. While I was living up there, they had like 38 below and 72 below with the wind chill. They shut the city down and ran the buses for free for 24 hours. So, I could totally get why that had the combination of locking people in and when it got nice, people weren’t interested in going to a movie theatre.
Ryan: I don’t know why the first weekend of a movie is so important especially now. But, I feel like if that first weekend doesn’t do well, the word of mouth doesn’t happen.
Like the majority of Waters films, there isn’t instant appeal. We’re talking about a slow burn. Movies that take time reaching audiences. And as Ryan suggested, Waters films have a word-of-month quality, movies that succeed because a friend recommended them. For a man who started out in pay-to-play theaters, three movies that grossed 8 million dollars each is an accomplishment.
While Hair Spray and Cry Baby are heartfelt coming-of-age films, they’re stuck in ‘50s and ‘60s nostalgia. But, others have used this concept to an advantage: They’ve become Waters’ most profitable works—generating remakes, musicals, national tours, Tony Awards, and so on. In fact, the 2007 remake of Hair Spray grossed over 200 million at the box office. Although overtly wholesome and devoid of its original campiness, it made John Waters digestible to the mainstream.
But, with Serial Mom, it’s like Waters is rallying against nostalgia. The film portrays how a steady diet of sitcom idealism produces dysfunctional families. As AJ And Ryan suggest, there’s a certain timeless to Serial Mom—as if Waters unconsciously produces an open door between 1994 and today:
AJ: It’s oddly not dated. Like the cars, and the phones, and the cell phones…of course the technology is dated. But it holds up really well. It could have been made two years ago and about 1994 and it’s still digestible and viewable from that frame.
It was shot incredibly well. I didn’t go and dig around and look for the budget of it [side note: nearly 13 million). But the filming and the framing [are good]. In a lot of ways, some of John Waters stuff all the way up to Cry Baby had that Christopher Guest improvisational energy in it that you could really feel. And Serial Mom is a finished movie. It was edited and cut exceptionally well. And I think it’s the one you shouldn’t pass up because it’s an entertaining view and it’s a pretty masterful flick evening for being what it is.
Ryan: There might have been a period of time where it wouldn’t have done as well. And not we are back to where it would do well again. Just in that, conservatism isn’t the right word, but in the way of the internet boom, and the way moms are judging other moms and other parents are out saying ‘This person is a bad parent.’ The Beverly Sutphin mystic like ‘She’s such a wholesome women.’ But really, she’s not. I think it would speak to a lot of people in today’s audience—in that we have some many people putting on airs. And even with social media, people showing all the good stuff in their life. But, what’s behind that? All these good photos of happy families? Well, she’s also a drug dealer or something like that [laughs]. So, I think it would play well today [or] even better.
We’ll never know if Serial Mom would play better today. And, we don’t need to know. It lives on and still shows us a paradox where reality and absurdity co-exist. As Serial Mom airs each Mother’s Day, it’s a really the best world that Waters can offer, a space where weirdness thrives. Even in the end, Serial Mom is a testament of one outsider’s success.
Waters: And the movie came out. It was probably not a success. Not a giant success. It lives on and plays on TV. Always on Mother’s Day in America [laughs]. I’ll always get a booking on Mother’s Day! So, I’m really proud of this movie. And I think it’s the best movie I ever made. And thank you all for coming tonight for this wonderful honor. Thank you.
[Music and images made by Seth Langreck]
