Reflections on ... episode 8 of Feud: Bette and Joan

/ Twilight of a queen: Joan Crawford's last-ever photo session, 1976.  Portrait by John Engstead / 

Episode 8 of Feud: You Mean All This Time We Could Have Been Friends?

Just some random thoughts, musings and reflections on re-visiting the insanely enjoyable Feud: Bette and Joan (2017) -  Ryan Murphy’s deluxe eight-part TV mini-series covering the rivalry between veteran screen queens Bette Davis and Joan Crawford during the making of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) - on BBC2. (I originally watched Feud when it was first broadcast by FX in Spring 2017). You can read my earlier ramblings here and here. 

Feud: Bette and Joan truly reaches its zenith with episode eight. By this finale, even the most churlish contrarian would have to admit both Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon are completely inhabiting Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. It’s never been just about the physical resemblance, but at times the similarities (how Crawford’s and Davis’ coiffures and wardrobes are painstakingly simulated) are striking. The conclusion is awash with sadness, depicting Crawford and Davis coping with the travails of old age and exploring themes of abandonment, decline and death. It’s also a supreme weepie on a par with, say, Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life. Both times I’ve watched this episode, it’s been through a veil of tears (embarrassingly, I wasn’t alone either time!).

It begins with Pauline (Robert Aldrich’s personal assistant) reminiscing in 1978 about her unexpected chance reunion with Crawford at LaGuardia airport, the final time she ever saw her. “She was wearing a Pepto pink dress and a mask of chalk-white foundation being wheeled through the airport with broken ankles, drunk …” seems a clear reference to the infamous 1968 clip of a frankly tipsy Joan giving an impromptu interview at an airport in a wheelchair. 

From there we cut to New York, 1969, with a wrenchingly melancholic montage of a lonely, noticeably older and frailer Crawford stoically adjusting to straitened circumstances and moving into a smaller and more modest Manhattan high-rise apartment, sound-tracked to “Rain Drops Keep Fallin’ on My Head.” (One caveat when I say “modest”: it’s a beautiful luxe apartment by any standards – but also an undeniable step down from Crawford’s previous Hollywood movie star dream mansion with the grand staircase and swimming pool. By this point, Pepsi had jettisoned Crawford from her lucrative spokeswoman position and her film career never recovered from the Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte debacle).

/ Crawford with Princess Lotus Blossom /

As The New York Times’ Sheila O’Malley notes, “the sequence goes on for some time, one evocative fragment after another, a poignant portrait of a woman slowly turning into a ghost.” We observe Crawford unpacking. Learning to heat quiche in the microwave. Answering fan mail. Eating dinner alone on a tray in front of the TV. (The evening news coverage of the Vietnam war depresses her). Wistfully looking at old photo albums while self-medicating with a tumbler of vodka. Trying and failing to zip herself into a green brocade dress, causing her to cancel lunch plans. Scrubbing the kitchen floor on her hands and knees wearing yellow rubber Marigold gloves. Taking possession of a new dog (the female Shiz Tzu Crawford would christen Princess Lotus Blossom – her last pet). Brushing her teeth and spitting vivid red blood into the avocado green sink (Crawford was indeed suffering from periodontal disease at this point). The return of the brusque Mamacita (“I will make myself available to you on a part-time basis”) amidst this relentless solitude comes as a blessed relief. Crawford embraces her tearfully and gratefully.

/ The return of Mamacita /

/ A portrait of Joan: 1959 photo by Eve Arnold /

Lange here has finally adopted the bright auburn hair colour that was mature, late-period Crawford’s trademark. Crawford’s pristine final apartment is also lovingly recreated: the egg yolk yellow, white and green décor (as described in Crawford’s book My Way of Life), with the ultra-kitsch big-eyed and idealized Margaret Keane portrait displayed above the plastic-covered couch.

/ Above: Feud's facsimile of Crawford's living room. Below: the genuine article. I am haunted by the Keane portrait! / 

The blood-spitting leads to a dentist scene. To the young dentist’s horror, Crawford explains that her dental problems are a result of having her six back molars removed years earlier to achieve her signature sunken cheekbones – a supposedly routine Hollywood procedure called “the Buccal”. She refuses his offer of dentures. When he cautions, “At your age you need to worry more about staying healthy than staying photogenic”, Crawford turns steely, snapping, “I’ll stop worrying about how I look when they dip me in formaldehyde.” As Nylon’s Dan Callahan notes, Crawford’s “highfalutin diction is at its frostiest” here.

(I’d long been familiar with the Buccal theory. From Penny Stalling’s gossip-y 1978 book Flesh and Fantasy: “The dramatic transformations that the stars underwent after arriving in Hollywood weren’t always due to lighting or cosmetic tricks. Both Joan Crawford and Marlene Dietrich had their backmost molars, top and bottom, extracted to create their high-cheekboned beauty.” I remember reading that passage to my mother as a kid and her dismissing it: people routinely get their top and bottom wisdom teeth removed and don’t wind up with killer cheekbones! The painstakingly-researched Concluding Chapter of Crawford blog definitively concludes Crawford never underwent the process)

When Crawford’s agent approaches her with the offer of a low-budget British independent horror film entitled The Missing Link, she jumps at the chance to work again. She’ll be playing a scientist! (“I had dreamed of playing Madame Curie”, Crawford purrs).  Arriving on the set in London for the movie (now re-titled Trog), she’s swiftly disenchanted with how just how threadbare and micro-budgeted this schlocky production is. Her dressing room is a dingy Volkswagen van too low for her stand up in. Her co-star is a wrestler wearing a furry ape mask. Perhaps understandably, we see Crawford washing-down pills with a slug from her vodka flask. It’s a degrading conclusion to Crawford’s distinguished film career. Lange movingly demonstrates Crawford’s valiant attempts to maintain her battered dignity and ladylike deportment.

/ Above: Crawford seeing her leading man in Trog for the first time / 

/ “I love people. I’ve been asked if I ever go around in disguise. Never! I think disguise is corny. If you’ve earned a position, be proud of it. Don’t hide it. I want to be recognized. When I hear people say, “There’s Joan Crawford!” I turn around and say, “Hi! How are you?” From My Way of Life (1972), Crawford’s ultra-kitsch, wildly impractical lifestyle manual on how to be a gracious, serene and enchanting wife, hostess and career bitch / 

I’m not sure about the veracity of the time frame, but Feud conflates the filming of Trog with Crawford dictating My Way of Life (her berserk 1971 volume of lifestyle, hostessing and beauty tips) into a tape recorder. Feud’s musical selections were frequently inspired: here the sense of doom is underlined with Jim Morrison of The Doors crooning the dirge-like “The End” while Crawford intones platitudes like “I mistrust people who don’t like animals” and “All the beauty products in the world can’t disguise a disagreeable expression”, the upbeat message painfully contrasted with her actual circumstances. In one spellbinding sequence, we see Crawford alone on the deserted set of Trog at night, pacing back and forth and seemingly in a trance. When she silently tries on Trog’s gorilla mask, the effect is eerie and sad. This is Joan Crawford unraveling.

/ The loving recreations of scenes from Trog. I've only ever seen Trog once - but that was at a special screening introduced by John Waters himself at The British Film Institute in 2015! And he interviewed the wrestler Joe Cornelius (Trog himself! The man behind the gorilla mask!) onstage. Read about it here /

The mortification continues at a book signing session to promote My Way of Life, when it becomes evident that a bratty and irreverent new generation of younger fans (especially the queer ones) have derisively embraced Crawford as a camp figure of fun. In an earlier episode of Feud, Davis had told Victor Buono that she was flattered when drag queens impersonated her in their nightclub acts. Crawford here sees that for an ageing diva, being a gay icon is a decidedly mixed blessing (just ask Tallulah Bankhead).  Always hyper-alert to any sign of ridicule, Crawford hisses, “These people aren’t buying the book for my advice. They’re buying it to mock me.” She’s haughtily affronted when a kittenish blond twink asks her to autograph a Baby Jane photo. Why did it have to be that film, she demands. He tries to backpedal by saying he loves What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? because Blanche and Jane are “survivors.” Crawford abruptly stands up and storms out, trailed by Mamacita: “What do you know about survival?”

Later, Crawford is crestfallen when she sees an unflattering paparazzi pic of herself with Rosalind Russell in the newspaper: “Is that really how I look? Then they’ve seen the last of me”.  (This incident genuinely happened: Crawford had hosted a party in honour of her friend Russell at New York’s Rainbow Room in 1974. It was indeed her last public appearance). Over the phone she instructs her manager to take her name off the books: no more film appearances. “I’m done.” Crawford would withdraw from public life, remaining a recluse until her 1977 death.

Bette Davis, meanwhile is still acting, but struggling and in inexorable decline. Having lowered her standards to keep employed, Davis’ career is reduced to making mediocre, unsuccessful TV pilots that don’t get picked-up. Sarandon is frankly magnificent as the abrasive, raspy-voiced, chain-smoking and imperious monstre sacree Davis, complete with the 1970s tunics, turtle-neck sweaters and big owlish smoked-brown spectacles. This dragon lady incarnation of Davis is the one I remember from TV interviews growing up.

/ Roger Ebert recalling his interview with Davis just before her death: "In the grand style of a movie queen holding court, Miss Davis delivers pronouncements. She speaks in periods and exclamation points, punching out brief, emphatic statements. When she talks, she is always listening to herself talking, constantly monitoring and editing herself, like an actress directing her own performance." Sarandon absolutely captures this terse, theatrical quality. /

/ Bette Davis' 1973 celebrity roast (above) and Feud's recreation (below) /

Davis furiously rages to Victor Buono (Feud portrays him as Davis’ primary confidant) that Kate Hepburn is scoring all the choice roles for older actresses, while she’s left with the humiliating scraps. She then recounts a painful anecdote: Life magazine had recently invited Hepburn to pose with Davis for a special dual portrait – and Hepburn refused. Davis was stung by the rejection – and the realization that Hepburn felt superior to her (“Am I not every bit her equal?” she rails, blinking back tears). In an ideal world, the experience should have given Davis some insight into how she’d made Crawford feel in the past. There’s nothing to indicate Davis made that connection. (By the way: in real life the proposed Davis-Hepburn Life photo shoot was later than Feud implies. It happened in the eighties, not the seventies).

In a previous blog post, I erroneously claimed that Feud repeatedly shows Crawford visiting elite Hollywood cocktail bar and restaurant Perino’s but not Davis, even though in real life Davis was a regular there. I stand corrected! Episode 8 shows a strained and miserable reunion between Davis and her daughter BD in a booth at Perino’s. In a foreshadowing of BD Hyman’s 1985 tell-all book My Mother's Keeper, the frankly-disapproving BD instructs Davis she can longer see her grandchildren without “supervision” and that she needs to address her “drinking problem.” Davis is aghast: “Since when do you think I'm a drunk?” “You’re sitting right there with a margarita,” BD replies, “At 11 am!”

Further evidence of Davis’ dissipation is provided next with a doctor’s appointment that echoes Crawford’s dentist scene. Sarandon had earlier looked too glamorous as 1960s Davis: here she is properly haggard, unflatteringly bewigged, complete with a hacking cough and wheezing asthmatic laugh. The decades of heavy chain-smoking have caught up with her (Davis famously smoked up to a hundred cigarettes a day).  The sympathetic female doctor implores her to quit, to go into rehab. “I’m off booze. I can’t give up smoking. They’re my only friends.” (If cigarettes are your “only friends”, you urgently need to reassess your life). Davis is smoking openly in her doctor’s office during her check-up in this sequence, which is no exaggeration. Vanity Fair has described how in real life Davis would even light up at the dentist’s – she was far too scary to be stopped. (Thank god she didn’t live to see the smoking ban). Feud seemingly suggests Davis’ brand of choice was Lucky Strikes. In fact, she smoked Vanguards. (Crawford smoked Alpines. I assume both brands are now long-defunct?). 

Davis has an awful experience making a made-for-TV biopic about Depression-era evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson starring the notoriously temperamental Faye Dunaway. (The Disappearance of Aimee, 1976). By all accounts the two women clashed. Davis had long wished to portray “Sister Aimee” herself. By the 1970s, she was reduced to playing McPherson’s mother in a secondary role. By comparison, even Davis has to begrudgingly admit that Dunaway’s chronic lateness and tantrums make Crawford seem like an easy-going paragon of virtue.

When Buono tells Davis that Crawford is dying of cancer, she tries to make light of it with a flippant joke: “Cancer isn’t going to kill Joan. She’s a cockroach just like me.” The perceptive Buono points out, “She may be the only person in the entire world who really knows how you feel right now.” Later, we see Davis phone Crawford, but chicken-out and hang up without speaking when Crawford answers. This incident is probably Feud’s invention, but Sarandon’s darting, expressive eyes are genuinely heartbreaking.

/ "This is Joan Crawford speaking ..." /

One of Crawford’s adopted twin daughters (Cathy) visits with her children. Crawford is relaxed about her grandchildren rough-housing in her immaculate apartment: in this regard at least, the control freak has finally mellowed in old age. Cathy cautiously refers to the rumoured book in the pipeline by Crawford’s estranged older adopted daughter, Christina. It’s fascinating to think Crawford already knew about the existence of Mommie Dearest prior to her death. Crawford acknowledges she already knows the book is “alleging the most vile things” and admits she was hard on Christina growing up: “I only wanted her to appreciate her advantages.” (This is one more thing Crawford and Davis shared: their daughters both wrote explosive “misery memoirs” about their mothers). Then comes one of Jessica Lange’s finest moments: in a hopeful tone, she hesitantly asks Cathy, “Do they think of me as their real grandmother?” When Cathy replies, “Of course”, Lange’s eyes brim with tears of gratitude and relief

For many viewers, the dream-like sequence that follows – the dying Crawford’s hallucinatory “party scene” – represents Feud’s artistic pinnacle. Sound-tracked to the The Flamingos’ doo-wop classic “I Only Have Eyes for You”, Crawford stumbles from her bed late at night into the living room and is suddenly reunited with the specters of her chief tormentors: Hedda Hopper, Jack Warner and Bette Davis, looking exactly as they did in the early 1960s. They are formally dressed and playing cards by candle light, wielding cigarettes and martinis. Walking into the frame, Crawford herself is suddenly transformed from grey-haired ailing crone in a nightie into a glamorous decades-younger manifestation of herself sheathed in a satin gown. Davis – back in Margo Channing mode – is unexpectedly sympathetic towards her. “Tell them what they did to you, Joan.”  Crawford responds with a regretful, heartbreaking soliloquy about the emotional cost of her devotion to movie stardom. “I suppose I felt like I always had to be “on”. If someone caught a glimpse of the girl beneath the movie star – poof! – I’d go back to the sad little wretch I’d been. I spent my whole life being Joan Crawford. A woman I created for others. I don’t know who I am when I’m by myself.”

Warner and Hopper vanish, leaving Davis and Crawford alone. “Why am I so happy to see you?” Crawford marvels. “Nostalgia,” Davis replies. In a bit of wish fulfillment, the duo finally manages to bond and have the conversation they always should have had. They apologize to each other, Davis telling Crawford, “I wish I’d been a friend to you.” Crawford’s face (well, Lange’s face) glows with undisguised pleasure. “It’s not too late!” Crawford exclaims. But it is. She calls for Mamacita to bring a celebratory bottle of champagne for them to share. The arrival of the actual Mamacita snaps Crawford out of her reverie. (“There’s no one else here – it’s just you and I”). It had all been a dream; Crawford is a grey-haired wraith again. Crawford died one week later. Mamacita tells the documentary filmmaker of her sadness that Crawford’s funeral was full and star-studded, but when she’d been alive “when she needed them most, no one was there.”

A journalist phones Davis for her comment on Crawford’s death. Davis famously responds, “My mother always said don’t say anything bad about the dead. Only say good. Joan Crawford is dead. Good.” It’s a pithy – if heartless - quote which will look snappy in print, but once Davis hangs up, Sarandon’s eyes are filled with remorse. (Davis herself would die in 1989).

We next see Davis visiting her disabled daughter Margo in the institution. Combing the silent Margo’s hair, the hard-boiled Davis seems able to let down her defenses and admit to loneliness and hurt. She describes the handsome young artist Don Bachardy drawing her portrait. Davis attempts to flirt with him. Bachardy tells her he’s gay (in real life he was Christopher Isherwood’s long-term boyfriend). She’s further dejected to see how aged she looks in his unsparing drawing. It’s a reminder: that’s not just what she looks like, that’s how he sees her. “Yep. That’s the old bag,” Davis sighs.

/ Above: Don Bachardy's sketch of Davis. Interestingly, he also did Crawford's portrait too /

Even worse, Davis has discovered a cache of her late mother’s old letters to a friend. The contents are deeply wounding, making Davis question her mother’s love. She’d written that “that I was a queen bee – that I was selfish and a pain and a chore. “

Finally, the action catches up to the present day: the Oscars ceremony in 1978, where Olivia de Havilland and Joan Blondell have been being interviewed by the documentary filmmakers. Backstage, Davis, de Havilland and Blondell silently watch Crawford honoured as one of the Hollywood luminaries who’d died that year. Sarandon’s face is a mask of mixed emotions. When the documentarian asks Davis to speak for his film, she refuses.

Suddenly and unexpectedly, the action cuts from 1978 back to 1961 and the first day of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?’s production. It feels like an alternate universe where Crawford and Davis are relaxed and at ease together, laughing on the set in their canvas director’s chairs. Picking up her knitting, Crawford tells Davis, “Here’s what I really hope from this picture when all is said and done. I hope I’ve made a new friend.” Smiling, Davis replies, “Me too.” It’s a glimpse of what could have been.

Feud wasn’t perfect: it frequently laid-on its arguments about Davis and Crawford as casualties of Hollywood’s sexism and ageism with a trowel. The unconvincing 1978-set "present day" scenes with Oliva de Havilland and Joan Blondell being interviewed by a documentary crew existed purely to provide exposition. (Just think: if Murphy had skipped those, he wouldn’t now be facing Olivia de Havilland’s lawsuit!). And the central thesis that Crawford and Davis’ enmity was somehow manipulated by outside forces rings false. Both were fiercely competitive, temperamental and prickly and both had lengthy histories of clashing with directors and co-stars long before they worked together in the sixties. Think of Davis' skirmishes with Errol Flynn and especially Miriam Hopkins in the thirties and forties (not to mention Faye Dunaway in the seventies). Or Crawford with Norma Shearer in the thirties or Mercedes McCambridge during the making of Johnny Guitar.  Of course, once they encountered each other, there would be an inevitable struggle for dominance. Feuding was in their DNA!

With all due regards to Bette Davis and Susan Sarandon, perhaps Feud’s greatest legacy is the restoration of Joan Crawford’s image. (Davis never required any rehabilitation in the first place). Without ever sugar-coating her wrath, her neuroses or her messy alcoholism, the collaboration of Ryan Murphy and Jessica Lange humanized Crawford, presenting her as a deeply flawed but compelling anti-heroine, and hopefully banishing the shoulder-padded, wire hanger-wielding Mommie Dearest caricature forever. In Feud, we see a Crawford who lived with an unswerving commitment to glamour, almost militaristic in its discipline. That devotion to artifice and appearance can make someone appear foolish, tragic, make you catnip to gays and ensure you kitsch cult status. But there’s also something noble – even heroic - about it.

At its best, with its powerful and complex female protagonists, conflicts, confrontations, torrents of emotional torment and lush jewel-toned look, Feud invoked the same deeply satisfying, cathartic vein of melodrama as Crawford’s and Davis’ own Golden Age Hollywood “women’s pictures.” As Dan Callahan in Nylon concluded, “surely on that honest tearjerker level, Feud: Bette and Joan is a series that Bette and Joan themselves would have appreciated.”

The Complete Films of John Waters (Every Goddamn One of Them ...): John Waters at The BFI

For London-based sensationalism freaks like me, surely the cultural highlight of autumn 2015 was The British Film Institute’s exhaustive John Waters retrospective It Isn’t Very Pretty: The Complete Films of John Waters (Every Goddamn One of them...) from 1 September – 6 October. The acme of the season saw the Sultan of Sleaze himself jet into London to make personal appearances on the weekend of 18-20 September. And once again I managed to bask in my filth elder’s ambiance.

/ The early years: John Waters and his ultimate leading lady and muse Divine photographed in San Francisco in 1970 /

Courtesy of my film journalist friend Damon Wise (a long-time Waters confidante), I got into the 100% sold-out "John Waters in Conversation" event on Friday 18 September as his “plus one” guest. Waters was interviewed onstage about career (illustrated with well-chosen clips from his films) and then fielded questions from the audience. The “peoples’ pervert” was on scintillating form throughout – the man is a supreme raconteur.

My favourite part of Waters’ onstage discussion: he was asked about the inspiration behind Divine’s striking appearance as bitch goddess extraordinaire Dawn Davenport in his 1974 masterpiece Female Trouble. He explained that while Divine revered Liz Taylor (to the point that Divine smoked Salems - the same brand of cigarettes Taylor was known to prefer - in tribute) and that the fatter Taylor got, the more she actually began to resemble Divine – the real source for Dawn Davenport was the beehive-haired, heavily made-up mother in Diane Arbus’ famous 1966 photo “A Young Brooklyn Family Going for a Sunday Outing, N.Y.C.”

/ A Young Brooklyn Family Going for a Sunday Outing, N.Y.C (1966) by Diane Arbus /

/ Divine as Dawn Davenport in Female Trouble (1974) /

Afterwards Damon smuggled me into The BFI’s elite VIP green room (as you may recall, the last time I was in there I was seated directly opposite Fifties Hollywood heartthrob Tab Hunter –sigh!). Waters was holding court amongst his entourage before introducing a screening of Serial Mom and then doing a book-signing session. (He’s the hardest working man in show business!).  It was a strange and interesting mix of people. Water’s London friends included Helena Kennedy QC (Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws), fuchsia-haired fashion doyenne Zandra Rhodes, talk show host Graham Norton and (most glamorous of all) transgender pioneer April Ashley (with a mane of silver bouffant hair, clad in a flowing green caftan).  I only spoke to Waters very briefly on the Friday night. I told him that when I was in New Orleans in April I made a point of going to his two favourite seedy dive bars – the Corner Pocket (hustler bar where the boys dance on the bar in the underwear – reportedly the inspiration for The Fudge Palace in Waters’ film Pecker) and The Double Play (clientele is mainly trans prostitutes, hustlers, their johns and junkies). “Isn’t the Corner Pocket great?” Waters enthused.

The night of Saturday 19 September saw the high potentate of trash taking the stage at The BFI again (he wore a different striking Comme des Garcons ensemble at every appearance), this time to introduce his freaky and deliciously nasty raw early film Multiple Maniacs (1970). I was accompanied by Mia, part of the duo behind The Amy Grimehouse interactive cult film collective. It’s a sentimental favourite of mine (I first saw it on VHS as a university student in Canada – it truly warped me), sadly unavailable on DVD. The close-ups of Divine – still an embryonic young starlet on the ascent – grinning maniacally and foaming at the mouth and hippie-punk bad girl Cookie Mueller go-go dancing topless are life-affirming sights.  The vomit-eater, bicycle seat-licker, junkie in withdrawal and two men kissing on the lips like lovers in Lady Divine’s Cavalcade of Perversions warmed my heart. And crucially, Multiple Maniacs represents the film debut of the much-loved gap-toothed “outsider” character actress and punk pensioner Edith Massey.

/ Above: David Lochary in Multiple Maniacs (1970) /

/ Joan Crawford in her final film Trog (1970) /

/ John Waters introducing Trog onstage at The BFI on Sunday 20 September 2015. Photo by Pal /

Sunday afternoon I returned to The BFI with my boyfriend Pal to see Waters introduce one of his specially-chosen, personal favourites Trog (1970). (As a kind of side-bar to the main event, Waters curated his own mini-season of his much-loved British films called Teabaggin’ in the Kitchen Sink). I’d never seen Trog before:  the low-budget, ultra-kitsch (and very enjoyable) British sci fi / horror film starring a desiccated and down-on-her luck Joan Crawford (in her last-ever screen role) opposite a guy in a gorilla mask, loincloth and fur booties playing a “missing link” troglodyte on-the-rampage. Crawford is actually majestic in Trog: such steely conviction and professionalism in spite of the mortifying circumstances. We’d been promised that a secret special guest would join Waters onstage afterwards. It turned out to be Trog himself – the man behind the gorilla mask! The role was played by wrestler Joe Cornelius (stage name: The Dazzler). Now in his eighties and very hard of hearing, Cornelius nonetheless looked great in a shiny gold suit (very old-school Vegas showman) and regaled us with stories about the making of Trog - in particular his leading lady. (He was very gracious and chivalrous discussing Crawford – who, he insisted, was not drunk the whole time nor a temperamental Hollywood diva. Apparently she sent him Christmas cards for years afterwards!).

/ Above: Wrestler Joe Cornelius (aka The Dazzler) in his prime /

That Sunday afternoon after Trog represented the last opportunity to see Waters’ rarely-seen early short films:  the Super 8 home movie juvenilia he made as a teenager fired up by the underground cinema of Andy Warhol and Kenneth Anger, which we've all only read about in his 1981 book Shock Value. These works are sealed in Waters’ personal vault and almost never get public airings – they represent year zero for John Waters fanatics like me. Frustratingly, The BFI made seeing them as difficult as possible: they were shown in the cinema’s smallest room and tickets were sold on the day in a first come-first serve basis. Managing to get a ticket was the equivalent of winning the lottery! Sadly, the final screening sold out even before I could attempt to queue for the tickets! So I'll probably never see Hag in a Black Leather Jacket (1964), Roman Candles (1966) or Eat Your Make-Up (1968) now – they will exist only in my imagination! Damon even went to the box office to plead on my behalf – but with no success.

The silver lining: instead, Damon snuck me back into the green room and we got to hang out with Waters again.  This time there were only maybe five of us in there and Waters was on relaxed, loquacious form while he autographed stacks of his books (mainly Carsick) for the BFI's book store and killed time until he introduced a screening of Cecil B Demented later on. I told him I went to see his friend, veteran sex kitten and camp icon Pia Zadora's jazz revue at Italian restaurant Piero’s when I was in Vegas in April 2015. Waters spoke about her with genuine affection and concern (“Did it do well? Did people like it?” Apparently Zadora’s recent residency in Los Angeles wasn’t so successful. I suspect Vegas is her natural habitat).

Interviewed for the September 2015 issue of Sight & Sound magazine to promote The BFI retrospective, Waters had reminisced about how as teenagers he and Divine used to attend Ike and Tina Turner gigs in the sixties when they’d perform in Baltimore and what a big influence feral wigged-out bold soul sister Tina was on his aesthetic. He told us he was flying to Switzerland the following morning for an art exhibit and spoken word gig. Switzerland is, of course, also where retired rhythm and blues tigress Tina now resides. Waters has written about how over the decades he managed to meet most of his heroes: the disparate likes of Little Richard, Nico, Johnny Mathis, Elizabeth Taylor, William S Burroughs. I asked him if he's ever met Tina Turner and Waters exclaimed, “No!” He admitted he’s afraid to in case he's disillusioned - or if Turner was angry with him. Considering Waters has said in the past that Tina was at her best when she was still with Ike, wearing a ratty wig and still had a moustache, Turner’s reaction to meeting him would bound to be interesting. Waters also pointed out for one of his earlier art exhibits he commissioned a conceptual sculpture of a giant Ike Turner manipulating a marionette puppet of Tina. He suspected she wouldn’t see the funny side of that! Finally, we all bade Waters goodbye when the car arrived to take him back to the hotel. It was a truly great end to the weekend.

Postscript: Waters may have departed London, but for me The BFI season properly ended the following Sunday (27 September) when Pal and I went to see Boom! (one of Waters’ Teabaggin’ in the Kitchen Sink selections).

/ Elizabeth Taylor in Boom! (1968) /

“If you don’t like this film, I hate you.” John Waters

Boom! The shock of each moment of still being alive!

It was a real trip to re-visit Boom!, the berserk and baroque 1968 Joseph Losey-directed film adaptation of the flop Tennessee Williams play starring Liz Taylor (in her fleshy, caftan-wearing era) and an alcohol-ravaged Richard Burton. The brawling, hard-drinking Taylor and Burton were reportedly drunk for most of the filming of Boom! (Pal and I got into the spirit of things by downing powerful Bloody Marys beforehand). I’d only ever seen Boom! once before – and that was way back in 2011 when I saw it at The Institute of Contemporary Art with my much-missed late friend Alison. (Alison was a major Liz Taylor fan – I’ll always associate Boom! with Alison).  Trying to make sense of it, I blogged about Boom! at the time. You can read it here. 

Boom! is, of course, one of Waters’ most-cherished films – he appreciates it as a “failed art movie” and has written extensively and eloquently about it and even taken the film on tour, introducing it beforehand. (Famously, Waters once attended a July the fourth party at Liz Taylor’s Hollywood home in the eighties. He made the mistake of telling her how much he loved Boom! Assuming he was making fun of her, Taylor took offence, flew into a rage and shouted, “That’s a terrible movie!”).

Yes, Boom! is awful in many ways, but it’s toweringly, majestically, compellingly bad. It’s mind-boggling. And no one delivers Williams’ most overwrought dialogue quite like Taylor in full scenery-chewing mode. “You can watch [Boom!] a hundred times and never know if Losey meant it to be camp,” Waters has mused. “Camp isn’t the right word. Camp means “so bad it’s good.” This is not “so bad it’s good.” This is so bad it’s art. This is so bad it’s confusing. Or this is so great it’s confusing. You don’t ever know the tone of it. It is, to this day, mysterious to me.”

Further reading: I've blogged about John Waters - one of my key and most treasured inspirations - many times over the years. Read 'em all! My epic 2010 interview with Waters for Nude magazine. When John Waters Met Nico. A Reunion with the Prince of Puke Part 1 (2011). John Waters' Christmas Show at The Royal Festival Hall in 2011. The Amy Grimehouse John Waters Filth Festival in 2014. Reunion with the Prince of Puke Part 2 (2014). Reflections on John Waters' book Role Models.