“Eat Your Makeup” Premier in Local Church

"Eat Your Makeup", a short film written, directed, and projected by John Waters, took to the big screen for its first and only showing in 1968. Sure, it may seem reasonable, until you realise the "big screen" just happened to be that of a local church!

 Imagine, the late 60s, all different types of people fighting to be heard, all trying to be different from the rest, and, out of no where, emerges John Waters with one of the strangest film ideas ever imagined.

 "Eat Your Makeup" was the original title but the original plot? A deranged nanny who kidnaps young girls and forces them to model themselves — to death — in front of her boyfriend and their crazed friends.

 And the casting? Waters first started with real-life convicted criminals for a few characters here and there, but what really changed the film was when he began distributing the characters between his friends.

His name was Harris, "The Drag Queen of the Century" (People magazine), and also one of Waters's childhood friends. Later, when Harris started acting and singing, he adopted the stage name Divine as well as a female persona. After this change, he started performing female roles in various theatrical acts.

 "Eat Your Makeup" was no exception to the drag queen's new persona. He was cast as Jackie Kennedy, the wife of John F. Kennedy, and made the movie a little bit stranger than it already was.

BUT IT FIRST PREMIERED IN A CHURCH? 

Honestly, yes. It was never actually shown commercially and this showing was both its first and final play.

Why did that play it? Though the movie was not precisely about God, the church had good expectations for it. It emphasized the honest impurity of mankind, a view this specific church had been searching for since the beginning of time. Young girls were portrayed as objects, as innocent damsels in need of saving, and the boyfriend was portrayed as their owner. The church highly agreed with these gender roles.

Needless to say, their expectations were completely fulfilled, and then some.

 And this movie was the very beginning of Waters's successful career with the film industry. In 1971, his next movie, "Pink Flamingos" hit the home theaters followed by "Hairspray" in 1988 (both also starting Divine). Without the church's first push in the right direction, there is no doubt in my mind that Waters could have gotten nearly as far as he has today. I'm proud that the wonderful church helped him to jump to fame!

 God bless them.

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