It has been a long day of shopping for school clothes for my nephew. While out, we stopped by a used book store called Kathy's Book Store. The store used to be a gas station, and when it was a gas station, some guy named George Lindsay used to work there. Then he left for Hollywood. I'm not really sure what happened to him after that.

At the book store, I picked up Stephen Ambrose's Band of Brothers, which is what the miniseries was based on. I've already read the first chapter. The book is not, as I thought, a story with "characters" based on real events. It's the simple telling of what happened with quotes from the real men of E Company.

Last night, I watched John Waters Pink Flamingos. Now, I'm not saying the movie was bad. It's just is. It is. But it's suppose to be. The movie has worse acting in it than Bloodfeast, and if you've ever heard of Bloodfeast, then you know what I'm talking about. And to be honest, I was not prepared for Pink Flamingos. I thought I knew what it was about, how it was shot, and what happened in it. I was mostly wrong about the movie.

First, the way it was shot. The movie seems to have been shot with a single camera that's static 90% of the time. There are a few times when the camera zooms in, but they are often shaky, almost unsure about what they are zooming in on or when they are supposed to zoom in. The scenes are often very long with no cutting. Actors had to memorize several pages of dialogue for each scene and perform as if in a play. If they messed up, they had to start all over again. I paid close attention to this stuff because when I start making movies, I'll probably have to do stuff like this. Though, I do hope to have better actors. Most were okay in the sense they memorized their lines and believed what they were saying. Divine, no joke, seemed to be the best of the bunch. The woman who played Divine's mother, however, and God bless this woman, was horrible. She opens the movie talking about eggs and the egg man not coming anymore. Maybe that was a metaphor for menstruation. I don't know. The lady was up in age and in a bra and slip and quiet large. She was also kind of dirty and sitting in a playpen. This is when I started to get the feeling the movie was a tad be more on the b-side of things than I had previously thought.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not bashing the actors who were in the movie. I don't think it was meant to be serious. They were mostly, if not all, friends of John Waters. And you can tell the movie was made as an act of love and everybody seemed to have a lot of fun doing it. There's nothing wrong with that. It's silly and fun. The movie isn't being mean with the over the top characterizations either. It does, and this is just me, seem like it was poking fun at people who think gays, transexuals, and swingers are really like those in the movie.

I haven't seen all of John Waters' movies, but I do love Cry Baby and Serial Mom and actually kind of like Hairspray. Pink Flamingos does have that feeling that the '50's never died. I love that. And maybe this was on accident, but the good guys drive a white Cadillac, probably a '57, and the bad guys drive a black Cadillac, a '58 or '59. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Now, what was the movie about and why was a bit nauseous at times? Well, I really don't want to give too much of the movie away. Not because I don't want to ruin the movie for you, but because you'll stop reading. The movie started off with a bit of stupid white trash fun and then just kept on building. It became icky and perverted and disgusting. The plot is that Divine is famous for being the filthiest person alive but a pair of swingers are tired of that and want to be known as the filthiest people alive. So they aspire to take Divine out or something. I did not know that movie was rated X and it was rated X for a reason. John Waters said he wanted something to top Deep Throat, and he did that. And if you have seen the movie, I just want to say a few words: chicken fucker, semen, "Moma, lick my balls," and poodle. If you haven't seen it and want to, good luck. But please think about these words: chicken fucker, semen, "Moma, lick my balls," and poodle.

Finally, did I like the movie? Yes, but for wrong reasons. I take joy in, "I can't believe somebody actually put that in a movie."

  ¶ 9:11 PM