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This Filthy World (15)

• Consumer Advice: Contains strong language, sex and drug references
• Run time: 1 hour 26 mins

• Genre: Documentary
• Release date: 28th September 2007

• Starring: John Waters
• Directed by: Jeff Garlin

• Distributor: Revelation Films

Plot Synopsis

THIS FILTHY WORLD is JOHN WATERS' one-man show, a "vaudeville" act that celebrates the film career and tastes of the man William Burroughs once called "The Pope of Trash." Focusing in on WATERS' early negative artistic influences and his fascination with true crime, exploitation films, fashion lunacy, and the extremes of the contemporary art world, this joyously devious monologue elevates all that is trashy in life into a call to arms to "filth followers" everywhere.

"Filth" as irreverent high comedy has always been writer/director JOHN WATERS' signature. With a cannon of films that includes his 1972 breakthrough film PINK FLAMINGOS, the 1981 cult classic Polyester, the slyly affectionate 1960s send-up HAIRSPRAY (which inspired the hit Broadway musical as well as the all-star Hollywood reinvention currently on release), and his most recent A DIRTY SHAME, WATERS has proven over the past four decades that when it comes to pushing the line of good bad taste in terms of satire, he has become a trash master.

THIS FILTHY WORLD gives a glimpse of what WATERS is up to when he isn't directing Kathleen Turner as a suburban mom with a penchant for killing those who insist on wearing white after labour day (as in 1994's SERIAL MOM), or Melanie Griffith being kidnapped by underground film terrorists (as in Cecil B. DeMented). Directed by JEFF GARLIN (TV's "Curb Your Enthusiasm"), THIS FILTHY WORLD is a filmed concert performance of WATERS' alarming but never mean-spirited monologue of the same name, one that he has been perfecting and expanding over the course of 35 years, to the delight of audiences and cinephiles everywhere.

Filmed in 2006 over two nights at the Harry De Jur Playhouse in New York City, THIS FILTHY WORLD offers WATERS' insights on everything from the director's own childhood to his obsession with Michael Jackson, capital punishment, artistic censorship and why he always admired the Wicked Witch of the West more than Dorothy.

WATERS began making movies in the mid '60s, ultimately self-distributing his films MONDO TRASHO and MULTIPLE MANIACS as midnight screenings in various art-house theatres across the country. With little more than a film print in his trunk, WATERS travelled from city to city, handing out flyers on corners as the promotional means to get bodies into theatre seats. The director's stage performances began at this time as well, with WATERS introducing his films and also his long time star, Divine, who would come out on stage horrifying and delighting audiences by throwing fish and having "mode ling fits." Over time, WATERS soon took this act on the road to film societies at various colleges, punk rock clubs, comedy clubs, traditional theatres and even Oxford University. THIS FILTHY WORLD is the culmination of this irreverent stand-up/nightclub routine as it has changed and mutated over the years.