Looking back on his career, John Waters by his own estimation "started in the underground," then went to independent cinema, "then Hollywood, then Hollywood independents, then crashed right back down to where I am today, Hollywood underground."
The Baltimore provocateur who shocked audiences with his gleefully depraved, Divine-fronted films like Multiple Maniacs, Pink Flamingos, and Female Trouble found mainstream success with the chipper dance flick Hairspray. That led to his most shocking turn yet: a bidding war over his follow-up film, a '50s-set movie musical called Cry-Baby.
Starring Johnny Depp as the titular "drape" (an early '50s term for greaser), Cry-Baby followed the Baltimore-rattling romance between the swaggering teen delinquent and his "square" girlfriend Allison Vernon-Williams, played by Amy Locane. As their love heats up, a culture war kicks off, resulting in dance scenes, fist fights, a jail break, and a climactic game of chicken — peppered with rockabilly musical numbers that are as catchy now as they were in 1990, when this retro parody of Elvis Presley movies was released.
As Kino Lorber Studio Classics readies a 4K UHD + Blu-ray release, Waters spoke with Mashable about Cry-Baby's journey from Hollywood hopeful to box office bomb to relished cult classic. He also shared the lessons he learned about showbiz along the way.
Hairspray's (perceived) success had studios scrambling to work with John Waters.
"It was right after Hairspray [1988] had come out as a hit," Waters recalled of the interest over his next proposed project, noting, "[It was] not as big as everybody thought, but in LA, all you need is the perception of a hit." Next thing he knew, this underground auteur was pitching Cry-Baby to studio execs, who were showering him in praise. "There was a bidding war, they were sending me clothes, and everything was amazing."
Waters admitted his pitch for Cry-Baby was "not as threatening to them" as his past films, which starred drag queens who relished murder and literal shit-eating, yet he remained as irrepressibly subversive as ever: "I used visuals from gay porn to sell it, but they didn't know that." Pulling Bob Mizer photographs in for the pitch (specifically the ones of "clothed" juvenile delinquents), Waters hooked Universal and producer Brian Grazer. And thanks to Waters having convinced 21 Jump Street dreamboat Johnny Depp to play the lead role — promising him it would complicate his teen idol persona — he was granted a lot of creative freedom in putting together the rest of his ensemble.
"They let me pick a crazy cast," Waters said. In addition to Depp, that included punk rock star Iggy Pop, former porn performer Traci Lords, Hairspray's ingenue Ricki Lake, and the infamous heiress/kidnapping victim Patty Hearst. However, when it came to test screenings, Waters was in strange new territory.
John Waters on the trials of test screening Cry-Baby
"It was definitely my first real Hollywood experience with test screenings and all that," Waters said, adding, "The very first time we ever had a test screening at Universal, every teenage girl in the audience went crazy, like it was an Elvis Presley movie. But they never did that again, ever, anywhere else."
Despite the initial frenzied reaction, the studio put a million dollars into a reshoot to make Cry-Baby more commercial. But the film, which Waters recalls having a budget of $11 million, made just $8.2 mil in theaters. By contrast, Depp's follow-up Edward Scissorhands banked about $54 million worldwide.
Waters has taken some credit for that, noting he showed director Tim Burton dailies for Cry-Baby, which inspired the Edward Scissorhands casting. But in response to his film's flopping, Waters said of the teen girl demographic that had made Depp a star, "They smelled a rat in me. They knew that we were making fun of the genre."
Waters knew going into a Hollywood production that there'd be compromises, and there were, both over the budget and the theatrical cut. "But it was also how I bought my first house," he rationalized. "So, that's the math question: How much studio involvement do you want? And if you want a house or if you'd rather buy or rent? They go hand in hand."
Johnny Depp helped Cry-Baby find its audience… eventually.
Musing on the film's underwhelming box office performance, Waters said, "We made a very commercial movie, I thought. And I was right in the long run, because it's probably been seen by more people all over the world than any movie I've ever made. Because of Johnny Depp, it continues to play [on TV] constantly.
'You look back — I don't have any bitterness about anything that happened to me in Hollywood," Waters mused. "They treated me fairly. You have to learn how to negotiate through it. And that was a big lesson."
Despite Cry-Baby being dubbed a dud upon release, Waters found his fans over the decades. "There's so many people that come up to me today and say that's the first of my movies they ever saw when they were 12 and how important it was for them," Waters reflected. That generation of John Waters fan (which includes this writer) didn't necessarily get all of the references to Elvis Presley musicals and Ann-Margret movies, but that was by design.
Basically, you didn't have to be in on the joke to be beguiled by Depp's Cry-Baby. "That's the thing," Waters said. "He is dreamy. And he is a movie star. And he's incredibly sexy. That French-kissing scene is really sexy. I always tell all my actors, the main direction I always give is: Play it completely seriously, like you believe every moment of it. Never wink at the audience. And they didn't. And that way, if you're lucky, it can work on two levels."
He added that some women even confessed to saving and drinking their tears like Amy Locane's besotted Allison does in the movie. "That's the only scene that [the studio] tried to get me to cut," Waters said, "Because test screenings hated it. But my audiences loved it."
Waters noted that both Cry-Baby the movie and the Broadway show it inspired, Cry-Baby: The Musical, flopped at the box office. But with the release of the Blu-ray for the former, he has hope for the latter getting a revival of its own. "I believe Cry Baby: The Musical will come back on Broadway and be a hit."
And why not? John Waters went from underground outsider to Hollywood icon to the Pope of Trash, currently being honored with his own exhibition at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles. "Today, Pink Flamingos is on Turner Classic Movies," he noted, asking, "How could that be? You don't ever know what's gonna happen, I promise you."
Cry-Baby comes out for the first time on 4K UHD on May 28.
