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John Waters has been busy over the past ten years as a writer and visual artist, but as a film director (the role which, after all, made his reputation as America's leading purveyor of the weird, the sordid and the marginal), not so much. His last feature—A Dirty Shame, about "an uptight, middle-aged, repressed woman turns into a sex addict after getting hit on the head," according to IMDb), came out in 2004, and he hasn't had much luck securing funding for his movies since. However, he may have finally found his way back to the director's chair—in a limited way—with his latest project: Kiddie Flamingos, a 74-minute video "sequel" to Pink Flamingos, the infamously X-rated epic of bad taste that put Waters on the map. Don't expect to find it in a theater near you though, however. It's the centerpiece of his latest exhibition at Marianne Boesky Gallery.
Titled "Beverly Hills John," the show is billed as being "more personal and self-critical," and includes photographic self-portraits like one showing his face altered beyond recognition by plastic surgery (giving the late Joan Rivers a run for her money). There are also images that feature covers of famous literary works juxtaposed with pornography inspired by them. But Kiddie Flamingos remains the main attraction. It documents a table read of the original Pink Flamingos script by a group of child actors. If that sounds a prescription for child abuse charges, consider that the script has been completely sanitized. As an ironic exercise in self-censorship, it may not please all fans of vintage Waters, but it's free, and at least puts him back where he belongs: behind the camera.