BALTIMORE — In the notorious close of John Waters’ 1972 film “Pink Flamingos,” Divine eats dog excrement off a Baltimore sidewalk.
The scene-stealing drag queen who died in 1988 “would be jokingly jealous,” Waters said, to hear that, around 50 years later, the film’s director will be one of 24 celebrities to get a star on another sidewalk: the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles.
“What person ever walks down Hollywood Boulevard and doesn’t fantasize their name being a star on the Walk of Fame?” said the filmmaker, 76, who was raised in Lutherville and spent his career championing Baltimore’s misfits and other quirky characters.
Since its dedication in 1960, the Walk of Fame has grown to include more than 2,700 names, from Alan Arkin to Renee Zellweger. The popular tourist site is maintained by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.
Asked if he had any preference on where his star is located, Waters said, “I wouldn’t want to be next to [former President Donald J.] Trump’s because his gets vandalized all the time. Or maybe there’s better security there.”
Waters said he was nominated for the star by Outfest, a California nonprofit that provides support to LGBTQIA artists (the I and A stand for intersex and asexual) and organizes a film festival in Los Angeles. The group also will take care of the $55,000 fee to have the terrazzo and brass star installed. A spokeswoman for Outfest could not be reached Monday for comment.
The first time Waters visited Hollywood in 1970, driving cross-country for the premiere of his film “Multiple Maniacs,” there may have been little indication that he would one day share a sidewalk with mainstream acts like Fred Astaire.
“I certainly didn’t imagine any of this happening,” he said. “But I wanted to go out and see the world, and at the same time I stayed in Baltimore because it kept me sane in a weird way, or whatever my version of sanity is.”
Waters’ portrayals of his hometown in movies such as “Hairspray” and “Pink Flamingos” have simultaneously celebrated and solidified Charm City’s weird reputation in the public imagination.
“Baltimore’s identity in people’s minds is through me, Barry Levinson, David Simon, Anne Tyler,” he said, name-checking two Charm City directors and one novelist. “Nobody writes about [Baltimore] making it look like a normal place. And that’s Baltimore’s charm, is that it is an eccentric city that knows how to poke fun of itself.”
The addition of Waters’ star to The Hollywood Walk reflects how, in the course of several decades, his work has gone from being firmly underground to solidly above ground, with films like “Hairspray” becoming a Tony Award-winning musical. He has collaborated with A-list actors such as Kathleen Turner in “Serial Mom” or Melanie Griffith in “Cecil B. Demented.”
Waters and his longtime friend and collaborator Mink Stole are currently featured in an ad campaign for Calvin Klein linked to Pride Month. “Just call us Marky Mark and Brooke Shields, the older version,” he joked.
But he takes the fame in stride: “I’m overexposed.”
Waters, who for 40 years has maintained a strict writing schedule each morning, has been on tour with his new novel, “Liarmouth: A Feel-Bad Romance.”
He said his achievements should “give hope to any crazy kid from anywhere that starts making his first movie on his phone today with his nut friends and everybody tells him he can’t do it and he’s crazy.”
Waters’ star will be installed on The Hollywood Walk sometime next year, perhaps timed to the opening of his forthcoming exhibition at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.
The museum, which opened last year, also holds a pair of sequined red slippers made for Judy Garland during the filming of “The Wizard of Oz.”
Waters’ exhibition will include artifacts from his Baltimore home, such as a birth certificate belonging to Divine, born Harris Glenn Milstead.
“Divine’s birth certificate will be in the same building as Judy Garland’s red slippers,” said Waters, sounding wistful.
Maybe one day, Waters said, Divine will get a star on The Walk, too.
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