The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • Page 48

Today Page4E Tuesday, February 3, 1998 The Sun High Waters mark: The making of 'Flamingos' Yeager.from Page 1e vcrrr fk Pk i I It 2 Lrrr STEVE YEAOF.R Roll 'em: An intent John Waters focuses on a scene from "Pink Flamingos. film cost under $500,000. When Sundance accepted "Divine Trash," Yeager faced one more nerve-wracking test. On Christmas Eve, he delivered a copy of the film to Waters. "He said he might not be able to get to it right away because he had family coming for dinner," Yeager said.

"But he ended up calling back at 1 o'clock in the morning. He said, 'You can breathe a sigh of relief. I liked Waters recalled his own nervousness about the film. "I watched it totally from a selfish point of view," he said last week. "How mortified do I have to be? It was like watching 'This is Your but I thought it was very kind, very nice.

"I told Steve, 'you should hope I die, and then you'd have a very popular Late-night call At Sundance, moments after receiving his trophy, Yeager found himself on the phone to Baltimore, where Waters was asleep in bed trying to fight off the flu. "It means a lot psychologically for Waters said. "It's a very prestigious and popular award." Yeager hopes the award means a distributor will buy the film. The signs are promising. At least two have made offers, and others have asked to see the movie.

While documentaries are hardly as commer cial as dramatic films, a number of them, including "Crumb," "Hoop Dreams" and last year's "When We Were Kings" about the 1974 Muhammad Ali-George Foreman fight in Zaire, have found their way to sizable audiences. Yeager says he expects to sign a deal in the next few weeks. The trophy should also lead to financing for Yeager's next documentary, a history of underground film in America. But he doesn't expect Sundance to lead to riches. "Documentaries are a labor of love.

You're never going to make a lot of money, and you have to be obsessed with your subject, or you'll never get it made." Serendipity helps as well, Waters says. "I told Steve his laziness had finally paid off. If he had tried to do anything with that footage 20 years ago, nothing would have come of it." At the time, Yeager was a cine-matographer and director at Maryland Public Television. He pitched the idea of doing a series of pieces on Baltimore avant-garde artists a poet, a sculptor, a painter and an iconoclastic young filmmaker named Waters who was about to start filming a new movie in Baltimore. "There was already an aura around John," Yeager recalls.

"A bunch of us were making short, experimental films, but here was a guy who had already done two feature-length films and was about to do his first in color." Waters agreed to let Yeager film, and he shot about five hours worth of "Pink Flamingos" footage, including behind-the-scene moments from some of the movie's most memorable sequences: the burning of Divine's trailer, the transsexual exposing himselfherself and, of course, Divine's encounter with the dog, proof positive she was, as she claimed, "The filthiest person alive." Yeager even got to play a reporter in the movie. MPT never approved the proj-' ect. (In 1972, it was hard enough getting a Waters movie into an art-house let alone showing his out-takes on television.) So, Yeager moved on, pursuing a career in theater and directing commercials and films for corporations. He shot a documentary for the National Aquarium and for a couple years worked on "America's Most Wanted." In 1991, he directed a dramatic feature, "On the Block," shot in Baltimore's legendary porno district. From time to time, Waters would pester him about the old footage, and whenever Yeager showed it at film forums and festivals, audiences roared with approval.

But it was only three years ago that he and his co-producer, Cindy Miller, finally resolved to complete the documentary. Waters readily agreed to help, which left the remaining but formidable funding hurdle. Yeager's brother Tom bequeathed Steve-some money to help finish the film. Big Shot Productions, a Baltimore post-production company, came in as an investor a year and a half ago and, in September, the Independent Film Channel kicked in more. In total, Yeager says, the crazy.

Nobody turns down Sundance." The final print of "Divine Trash" wasn't ready until the day before the opening of the festival, where It would have six showings. What film-goers saw was a paean to John Waters, one that establishes him as a pioneer in modern cinema, a self-made, self-taught filmmaker whose promotional gifts matched his outlandish comic sensibilities. Photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, whose documentary on rock and roller Lou Reed also competed at Sundance, calls Yeager's film an education on underground filmmaking and a highly entertaining one. "It's a fascinating documentary," Greenfield-Sanders says, "because it doesn't only show you the making of 'Pink which is really a pivotal film because of the groundbreaking language and subject matter. It's also terribly funny.

What's lacking in most documentaries is humor. It's a real loving documentary but also very, very informative and well-structured." Three in one "Divine Trash" is actually three films in one. First, it's a biography of Waters and his early career, complete with home movies of him as a child at the beach. We hear his mother recalling his early attraction to the bizarre, grotesque and violent. "He became entranced with the wicked witch in 'Snow White' and Captain Hook in 'Peter Pan," a bemused Patricia Waters says in "Divine Trash." "He always seemed to go for the villain whereas most kids his age would rather go for the prince or the hero." By his teen-age years, his favorite amusement was movie-going.

Waters would often see two or three movies a day, and his cinematic favorites ran to the extremes. He loved the garishness and melodrama of exploitation, gore and soft-porn movies. But he was also drawn to the enigmatic artistry of foreign films, particularly those of Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini, and also to the experimentation in underground films, most notably Andy Warhol's. In "Divine Trash," Yeager sight of me, which is just thrilling," he says. "At the sight of me, not somebody else, not Elizabeth Taylor, but me." Toward the end of "Divine Trash," Waters pays touching tribute to his friend.

"He was my star, my Elizabeth Taylor, always," Waters says. "I thought of him as a great character actor. He started his career by playing a homicidal maniac and ended it playing a loving mother, which is a pretty good stretch, especially for a 300-pound man." That scene was one of Yeager's favorite moments. "I had two agendas with this film," he says. "I wanted to show how important John is to American film, and I wanted my film to be an homage to Divine.

I think he was a great actor." There at the start Yeager believes he is the only one who could have made the Waters film, in part because of that early footage but also because of his 30-year friendship with Waters. The son of a Pepsi salesman and a Baltimore homemaker, Yeager was among a group of filmmakers and artists who hung out with Waters at Martick's, a post-beatnik, pre-hippie coffeehouse on Mulberry Street. in one motion. Waters could just as well be filming "A Man For All Seasons" for all his seriousness. Part of what makes "Divine Trash" so enjoyable are the interviews with Waters, a sly, genial storyteller, as well as many of the performers who played such outrageous parts in his films: Mink Stole, Mary Vivian Pearce and the late David Lochary and Edith Massey Flamingos'" Egg Lady).

One of the most vivid and comic characters is Waters' great nemesis, Mary Avara, head of the Maryland Censor Board until it went out of business in 1981. Her battles with the director created indispensable promotion for his work. Avara has retired to Florida, but Yeager interviewed her at her son's home in Baltimore. "She was at the top of my list to have in this film," Yeager says. And so there is Avara in "Divine Trash," as revolted as ever by Waters and, as always, his foil.

Nearly 30 years after seeing his "Mondo Trasho," she hasn't recovered. "To have sex in church, my God, how low can you get?" she tells Yeager. Later she says, "I had my own rating Real Trash." But the most dramatic and moving presence of all in Yeager's film is Divine himself, whose over-the-top performances defined Waters' early style. "Pink Flamingos" made a celebrity of Divine, who died in 1988, and in "Divine Trash" he speaks with evident emotion about his pleasure in becoming a star after a childhood as a misfit. "People go bananas at Just the shows the influence of those different streams of movie-making on Waters while also making it clear that Waters is a filmmaker very much unto himself.

His own films have, in fact, inspired younger directors in their own boundary-shattering works. As director Jim Jarmusch of the says in "Divine Trash," Waters "gave me courage in a way. If you want to make movies about outsiders, if you want to make films in an outside way, there is an audience." Finally, "Divine Trash" provides an evocative, inside look at the making of "Pink Flamingos," showing a waifishly thin, chainsmoking Waters giving birth to his signature work. The movie should help end one of the enduring myths about his films: that they are improvised acts of creation. As one admiring but uninformed director (who is dressed in drag) says in "Divine Trash," "he would just call his friends the night before and say, 'Let's go out to the trailer park and make a movie.

It seems like such a spontaneous moment." But "Divine Trash" shows that Waters' movies are thoroughly scripted and that he discourages deviation (from his script, that is). It opens with Waters' rehearsing his most inflammatory scene, when a deliriously grinning Divine snacks on dog droppings at the end of "Pink Flamingos." In Yeager's film, we see Waters instruct Divine in exactly how he wants him to crouch behind the dog and scoop its business into his mouth Today's Horoscope 3 TUESDAY EtiEQWi CAREERS By Joyce Jillson CREATORS SYNDICATE more loyal to one another. In-laws have a change of heart; ask for financial or business help. Cancer (June 22-July 22). Keep in touch with a current love.

Romantic explosions lead to new understanding. Do what you can to have a clear conscience. Leo (July 23-Aug. 22). Domineering relatives can sabotage a new love if you don't take precautions.

Recognition is no substitute for money. Those around you may be supersensitive. Virgo (Aug. 23-Sept. 22).

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21206 FAX 410-426-9731 NO PHONE CALLS PLEASE Aries (March 21-April 19). You can influence the masses if you are willing to live out your vision without compromise. Keep asking until you get at the truth. TaiiniS (April 20-May20). Someone offers you a leadership position.

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Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 19). Taking a short trip could satisfy your restlessness. Be serious others have been taking your feelings lightly.

Others enjoy pleasing you, so ask for what you want. Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18). Expect some wonderful moments with family or those you admire.

Avoid power struggles about money. Others compel you to hear anoth- er side. Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20). Working leads to a new love.

Couples need time alone. A move is delayed but still possible. Business associates may forget that you have a life! If today is your birthday, this looks ta be a year linking marriage, money and a new home. Speculative business enterprises pay off in late March. New love is discovered this month.

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