I Am Divine

I AM DIVINE             B+                  

USA  (90 mi)  2013  d:  Jeffrey Schwarz                       Official site

An energetic and fun film, offering little new about Divine, but offering a wonderful portrait of her life, especially providing key insight into what made her vital and unique.  Jeffrey Schwarz has quite a long history of making documentary short films, making behind-the-scenes videos for films like FOOTLOOSE (1984, 2011), FRIDAY (1995), and RESIDENT EVIL (2002) that were added as DVD extras, though recently his interests have turned to creating feature length biographies of outsider artists, particularly those in the LGBTQ community, like film historian Vito Russo, gay porn star Jack Wrangler, and the master of promotional gimmicks, William Castle.  Here he turns his attention to legendary cult film performer Divine, using a brash, quick edited style that is often hilarious, where her persona is born in underground films where she became the queen of oversized drag queens.  Born Harris Glenn Milstead in Baltimore, his mother was devastated to learn from a physician that he was more feminine than male, known as effeminate, so he was a shy and sensitive kid with no friends who was relentlessly picked on and abused by various local bullies, where he learned to despise school because of how he was treated there.  Nonetheless, we meet the girl next door who went to prom with Glenn, where he insisted upon doing her hair and make up, eventually learning to be a hairdresser.  She was completely unaware of anyone being gay in those days, so his coming out party was something of a surprise, especially when he chose to be dressed as Elizabeth Taylor.  For underground film director John Waters, they met when Glenn moved into the neighborhood at age 17, where he witnessed how he was treated at school, recruiting him to star in his second film ROMAN CANDLES (1966), shot on 8 mm, notable for being Divine’s first film, a name chosen by Waters to depict her larger-than life persona, something she ultimately grew into, culminating with her now legendary performance in PINK FLAMINGOS (1972), the film that put her name on the map.    

Without a doubt, the working relationship of Divine throughout the career of John Waters is simply a match made in heaven, as Divine became Waters’ outrageous alter-ego, willing to do anything for the shot, where the clips from their earliest films together are simply hilarious, one of which is a deliberately offensive recreation of the historic Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination in EAT YOUR MAKEUP (1968) with Divine playing Jackie-O in a pillbox hat, or another holding her audience hostage at gunpoint in FEMALE TROUBLE (1974) and demanding “Are you willing to die for art?,” where she then proceeds to start shooting into the audience.  What’s especially poignant is the effect Divine had on other gay kids, especially the younger ones, as they literally threw themselves at her during live appearances, as they were so taken by her courage and bravery to stand up and be different.  Divine’s coming out precedes the Stonewall riots, where she’s wearing flagrantly shocking make up and giant wigs, where Waters dared to turn a 300-pound drag queen who was not afraid to bare her flab, or wear skin-tight dresses, into a larger-than-life symbol of rebellion, taking her act onstage where she encourages the audience to insult and interact with her during her performance, becoming the Goddess of Bad Taste, like a Don Rickles diva, “So you think all of us outsiders—drag queens, lesbians and gay men—are disgusting?  Let me show you what disgusting really is, you prigs.”  The list of people offering comments is neverending, yet most offer rare insight into the man behind the persona, where despite the brash outer appearance as a movie diva, expanding what a drag queen could be, he remained a completely different person offscreen, a shy and introverted person who always wanted to be accepted as a man.

One of the truly heartbreaking moments in her life was confessing openly to her parents about her gay sexuality, and her mother immediately threw her out of the house, where they didn’t speak for decades.  Her mother can be seen indicating she realized this was a bad decision on her part and regretted it as soon as she said it, but then she never called Divine afterwards to make things right.  Many attribute this unfulfilled emotional emptiness as one of the many excesses in Divine’s character, where she often ate to overcompensate for what she felt was missing in her life.  But lest we think she was pining away in solitude, think again, as Waters reminds us Divine had cute boyfriends, poster boys and porn stars, and joined a San Francisco psychedelic theater group called The Cockettes, another perfect match, as they both fed off one another’s outrageousness, screening all the early Waters short films, establishing Divine as a cult icon.  Divine performed on several hit shows off Broadway, where she met all the stars, including Andy Warhol, where Elton John brought her onstage to perform with him at Madison Square Garden, which may have started a music career as Divine hit the road performing in small and sweaty clubs shaking her booty in slinky gowns, where she was a very popular demand at various openings as she could elevate the energy level to a disco party atmosphere, and Divine loved to dance. 

Waters kept working with her for 20 years, where she was always the star of the show, where the images of Divine going toe to toe with Lanie Kazan in LUST IN THE DUST (1985) are simply hilarious, two enormously big-bosomed women, but equally interesting is the affection that developed in working with 50’s matinee idol Tab Hunter.  The other huge breakthrough was Waters’ HAIRSPRAY (1988), a hugely successful film for both their careers, as it received critical acclaim from the New York film critics and even Pauline Kael, describing Divine as “something like the lunacy of a W. C. Fields in drag,” but it’s also a film where Divine had to play second banana to a young overweight Ricki Lake as Tracy Turnblad who was the film’s chubby star, and it featured Divine as a less than glamorous drag queen, drawing sympathy from the audience for her believability in the role of Tracy’s working class mother, “Could you turn that racket down, I’m trying to iron in here.”  Divine actually reunited with her mother after decades of silence, an especially tender moment, but also eye-opening when we see her mother hadn’t realized that her son Glenn was actually Divine.  Her death was a jolt to everyone, especially because her life was finally obtaining some well-needed balance, and she landed a spot as a  regular on the cast of the TV show Married With Children, but had a massive heart attack the night before shooting began.  The plethora of voices contributing to this overall portrait is really quite outstanding, and the film is impressive, where even in death Divine remains an iconic force for all rejected souls and outsiders, paving the way for defining one’s own career long before there were publicity agents to do that for you.           

The Honeymoon Killers

Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck

THE HONEYMOON KILLERS                                                    B+

aka:  The Lonely Hearts Killers

USA  (108 mi)  1969   d:  Leonard Kastle     co-director:  Donald Volkman and Martin Scorsese (uncredited)

You’re a little on the heavy side, but you’re not an old bag, you know.    
—Bunny (Doris Roberts)

One of the true underrated classics of American cinema, shot on a B-movie budget of about $150,000, initially directed by none other than film novice Martin Scorsese who had the distinction of being fired after only ten days on this picture for working too slowly, yet he supposedly shot the two set-ups for the opening hospital scene, a long hallway pan and a follow-up shot in the hospital room where the nurse tartly scolds the staff for personal indiscretions, also the lakeside scene near the end that was actually shot first, a scene where Stoler nearly drowns, which apparently was quite legitimate.  After a brief  replacement by Donald Volkman, it was writer Leonard Kastle that assumed full-time directing duties, his one and only movie, but one that holds up well over time.  French director François Truffaut claimed this was his favorite American picture, now a cult classic that is rarely screened.  Everything about this picture stands out, from the opening bombastic music, ultra dramatic staccato bass strings from the opening Allegro movement of Mahler’s 6^th “Tragic” Symphony, to the trashy premise that it’s based upon, targeting the lonely hearts personal ads as a get rich quick scheme.  While it has a similar premise to Chaplin’s MONSIEUR VERDOUX (1947), another delicious black comedy about marrying and murdering rich women for their money, this one is actually a love story starring the always abrasive, overweight wonder Shirley Stoler as Martha Beck, the predecessor to John Water’s Divine, and her “Latin from Manhattan” playboy flirt of a boyfriend, Tony LoBianco as Ray Fernandez. 

The wrenching melodrama is fast and furious, as is some deliciously campy dialogue as the couple falls in love through a flurry of over-heated letters, where Ray seals the deal by dancing a sexy Rumba in front of Martha and her mother where his gyrating backside glides past the camera, which leads Martha to sedate her mother, a pattern she continues using throughout the film, as she’s a jealously protective nurse who stocks up on pharmaceuticals.  After ditching her mother in an Old Folk’s Home, she goes on a crime spree with her new beau, pretending to be his sister as he fleeces elderly spinsters as prospective brides out of their money, slyly encouraging them to convert all their assets to cash in order to start a new life together.  But Martha’s all consuming jealousy becomes something of a liability, as rather than sneak out with the cash in the dead of night, as is Ray’s modus operandi, Martha is angrily confrontational with these women when they show interest in Ray, usually stirring up the hornet’s nest at the most inappropriate times.  Initially, they simply make a getaway, but their methods grow more unsavory over time.  Of interest, their targets are ordinary women, people we would easily recognize at the supermarket, yet the fact that they have money to throw around really irks Martha, creating an underlying level of hatred and contempt on top of the manic jealousy she feels from the excessive attention these frivolous women are paying Ray, all of which adds to an intolerable situation for an overbearing woman who wishes to totally and exclusively possess her man.  Ray is driven by greed, pure and simple, but Martha’s actions, which lead to a kind of banality of violence, is based on simple jealousy.  She simply can’t share her man with anyone.      

Based on a real life couple that was sent to the electric chair in San Quintin in 1951, it’s interesting that no attempt was made to create a 50’s era look, like for instance Terrence Malick’s BADLANDS (1973), instead it has a timeless feel because the viewers become so intimately involved with the couple’s increasing level of antagonism towards the rest of the human race, becoming morally detached, off in their own universe where they are all that matters.  Unusually seedy, photographed in a dimly lit black and white, the character’s actions are darkly disturbing, yet mysteriously, the audience is actually pulling for them to get away with it, so they have a perversely strange magnetic appeal.  The violence shown is never gratuitous or exploitive, but instead reveals a near impossible level of desperation this couple reaches in order to protect themselves, becoming crudely realistic, where one of their victims is hit in the head with a hammer not once but twice, yet still she lingers for over a minute in screen time instead of dying instantly like they do on TV.  Despite the extended melodrama, the film can be starkly realistic, especially in its portrayal of human motivations.  Martha is one of the more provocative characters seen in awhile at the movies, as her size literally engulfs much of the screen, as does her shadow that adds even greater dimension, but her emotional realm is ferocious, as she can angrily show her disgust, express herself in a rage of discontent, or succumb to an equally outrageous moment of melodramatic hysteria, where she feigns suicide several times in order to attract the attention she needs.  It’s fitting that in real life it was her final request to be allowed to sit in Fernandez's lap in the electric chair.