Tara’s photos – Bring out your dead

October 25, 2007 Boxcar Betties, Tara No Comments 10.jpg

Benjamin Franklin once said, “Show me your cemeteries, and I will tell you what kind of people you have.”

Nice one, Benny.

While I understand where Mr. Franklin was coming from, to me the concept of cemeteries is an intriguing and somewhat perplexing subject. Why do we bury our dead in such places? What is the point? What is the goal?

Okay, so I can understand the need to bury the bodies of our loved ones to keep them from becoming food for scavengers and to attempt to maintain a certain level of environmental hygiene. And certainly, I am sure, magical mystical reasons were thought up as an excuse for burial in these days of old timey yesteryear. (Silly ancestors make me laugh.) But why not cremate the physical bodies of our loved ones? If at the time of our death, the soul is released up into the sky to hang out with all the other souls or something of that nature, what need would there be to enshrine the corporeal bodies of our friends and family in boxes, to be buried in the ground amongst a sea of other corpses? Are our bodies that important, or even that impressive? Do our physical bodies contain something of our essence, our nature, our personality? Or are we just big hunks of meat that these “souls” live in? Are we big Duracell batteries? When we die, does our energy get released like a power surge? Or like a whimper? Does this energy join up to form a hunk of a bigger energy ball? Who shot JFK? Why do I suddenly feel like a five year old tugging on her daddy’s shirt, asking him, “Why the sky is blue? Where do babies come from? Why are clowns so goddamn terrifying?”

Because they really do scare the bejeezus out of me. Them and Catholic priests.

But I digress.

Anyway, back to my thoughts on the matter at hand. In my mind, the concept of “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” seems like an argument for cremation. Or even an argument for burying the bodies of our loved ones directly into the ground, rather than placing their embalmed and made-up bodies (Queer Eye for the Dead Guy?) into borderline impenetrable receptacles which will slow down this process of transformation back into earth. What are we looking to preserve through caskets and crypts and all that jazz? How much money do funeral homes make? Yes, I have seen My Girl, but that didn’t explain jack squat. Some might balk at the idea of burying a loved one’s corpse directly in the ground and envision wild carnivores sniffing out the flesh and digging it up for a meal. Gross, but that’s nature at its finest. However, I really don’t believe that we are currently burying our people in cemeteries because we are terribly concerned about animals devouring them.

And in this strip mall country in which we are living, aren’t cemeteries just a waste of space? Why do we create intricately laid out, crowded fields and parks full of dead people? Don’t get me wrong – in some cities, cemeteries are some of the only open spaces left. And if a field full of dead peeps keeps another Wal-Mart from being built, then so be it (and rock on). And while I understand and subscribe to the concept of memorializing those close to us upon their passing, isn’t a permanent shrine to them a bit … much? Are memories not enough? So, we visit Auntie Ruth’s grave so we can remember her, and while we are placing flowers or hankies or cards or other paraphernalia on her headstone, she is becoming worm food below our feet. Isn’t there a better, classier, not-so-potentially-scary way (note: Thriller?) to celebrate the people whom we love who have passed away than sticking them in the ground amongst the bodies of strangers? Yes, I am aware that strangers are only friends who we haven’t met yet, Reverend … but I am not sure that sunshiny concept applies in particular situation.

By all means, we should remember our loved ones every day, and think back on them with all love and colors of emotion on our human palettes. I just don’t believe that we need cemeteries to do this, or maybe that is just how I operate personally.

So, all of these thoughts raced through my head this past weekend, as I took a stroll through the Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston amidst New England’s fall foliage. Forest Hills, established in 1848, is one of the country’s most historic burial grounds. Sitting on over 275 acres, the site is a park, a museum, an arboretum and an art exhibition all rolled into one. In the midst of this beautiful and yet, well … sorta creepy … landscape, I snapped some photos as I tried to contain my Jack Handy-esque deep thoughts and attempted not to come into contact with any zombies.

So ponder, peruse and enjoy.

Yours in life,

- Tara


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One on One with John Waters

October 25, 2007 Celebrity Interviews No Comments

Photo by Dokument Films

Baltimore is known for three things: crabcakes, The Wire and John Waters – the indie filmmaking legend who carved a niche for himself telling depraved, campy stories of loveable losers. We recently had a chance to talk to the man William Burroughs dubbed “the pope of trash” about his films, his fashion sense and his one-man show.

What does the city of Baltimore mean to you and what sets it apart from the rest of the country?

The city of Baltimore is home to me. I’ve always made movies about what the Chamber of Commerce tried to hide and I always joke that they should put out a bumper sticker saying, “Come to Baltimore and be shocked” and they did about five years ago. I guess they’ve given up and realized that we have to celebrate the weirdness of the city.

And it still is weird because people don’t want to leave, they don’t understand why you’d want to go to New York and they have a good sense of humor about things like when Travel and Leisure magazine picks us as the ugliest people in America – although I saw the other day though that Philadelphia won it this year, so I’m jealous.

Do you think the ugly people of Baltimore are migrating to Philadelphia?

I don’t know. I don’t think that people are ugly in Baltimore; I think they look the cutest. But people just don’t understand extreme fashion – extreme gene pools.

Hairspray and Pink Flamingos are perhaps your most loved films, but what do you think is your most underrated film? Is there a particular movie of yours that you feel never got the recognition it deserved?

I think that all of my movies are the same. I think that each one of them basically, you could pick them out from Hairspray to Desperate Living to Cecil B. Demented and they all say the same thing, that I’m celebrating people that don’t win in real life and I’m celebrating in a weird way part of my life and characters that remind me of different things that have happened in my life. But I know the cliche is always to say, “My films are like children. It’s like Sophie’s Choice, don’t make me pick one.” And I always say that my films are not only like my children, but they are retarded and have learning disabilities and are in homes for wayward children or halfway houses, so I have to be kinder and not pick one.

Gus Van Sant told me that we always would answer this question by picking the ones that probably didn’t do the best at the box office. Some of my early films, I would say Desperate Living did, by far, the worst. And, later in life, Ceci B. Demented, even though when I go to colleges, all the young filmmakers like that one of the best these days. But maybe that’s one I’m very fond of.

Your one-man show, This Filthy World, is being released on DVD. What can fans who pick up the DVD expect to see?

Well, they can expect to see an act really I’ve been doing for over 30 years, developing to this point. Certainly I go through all my movies, I talk about crime, fashion, movie stars, criminals, my parents, Catholicism, religion, everything. It’s my viewpoint, it’s my position paper, and it’s my sermon. If I was an Evangelical minister, I’d pass the collection box.

The film was directed by Jeff Garlin from Curb Your Enthusiasm. How did that come about and what was it like working with him?

He was put with me with my agent and certainly Netflix liked the idea. I hadn’t met Jeff, but I knew him from Curb Your Enthusiasm and liked it. And then I found out that he had directed a lot of other one-man shows. He did a Dennis Leary one and a couple others. He seemed perfect. He came to see me do it at the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and it worked. He really directed the way I liked, which was not calling a lot of attention to the direction, not opening it up – having enough faith in the material that it was funny the way it had been working for many years.

In your films and in This Filthy World, you cover many perverted, taboo subjects. At this point, is there anything left that shocks you?

I’m always trying to make you laugh and I’m trying to surprise you. I think after the end of Pink Flamingos, I never tried to top that. I never tried to shock people again really and in a way, if I had been, I wouldn’t be sitting here today; I wouldn’t have all these movies out because you have to keep reinventing yourself each decade to get young people to come see you. The reinvention that keeps your career coming is that you don’t just write for your generation.

You were a professor of Cinema and Subcultural Studies at the European Graduate School. What was that experience like for you?

I did teach a couple of semesters and it was fine, it was good. It was a graduate school you do online a lot and I would go to Switzerland every year, but I haven’t done that for about 10 years and I don’t do it anymore, but it’s something that I enjoyed.

You’ve always been a very fashionable guy. If you leave your house to go to the grocery store or to the post office, do you still get dressed up or will you ever venture outside in jeans and a t-shirt?

I’m dressed as John Waters when you see me, which means I’m dressed as John Waters today. But, if I’m home, I probably put on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Sometimes it might be a Comme des Garçons t-shirt, but you wouldn’t know. But I know, and it makes me so happy. Certainly when I was young, I never paid more than a dollar for anything I bought. I found everything in thrift shops.

I think if you’re under 30, you’re insane if you spend a lot of money on clothes. Over 40, we need all the help we can get. And I spend a lot of money to look like a disaster in a dry cleaner. I pay money for clothes that are ripped and torn and you can’t get the wrinkles out and even bikers have said to me in Baltimore, “That’s a shame about that coat.” Somehow it cost $2,000. I shop in reverse – I spend a lot to look crummy. A lot of press would say, “Mr. Waters, who was in his thrift shop finest …” I thought, “Thrift shop?” I love that, it makes me laugh. My father always said, “You bought that? They saw you coming, boy.”


Photo by Dokument Films

How often do you get recognized out in public and what sort of people approach you?

Constantly. Every day, anywhere, pretty much. But, you know, its fine – I’m not complaining about it.

What do you do to unwind?

Poppers. (Laughs.)

What would you do for a living if you never got into filmmaking?

I would be a criminal defense lawyer for criminals that did the worst things, lied about it, would do it again and are not sorry. If you’ve seen this film that’s out now that’s called Terror Advocate, I’d be him. He’s a French defense lawyer for the worst of the worst – “the damned, the despised and the depraved,” as Jessie Jackson so brilliantly called his constituency.

Tell us something most people don’t know about you.

Is there anything most people don’t know about me after doing interviews for 30 years? Yeah, actually you don’t have any idea of my private life. You don’t know the name of one person that I’ve ever slept with.

Interviewed by Joel Murphy, October 2007. This Filthy World will be released on DVD on October 30.

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