PECKER

Last night I was blessed with insomnia and tossed a great movie in the DVD player, John Water’s Pecker.  I am a huge John Waters fan and while Pecker is not one of his most gruesome, weird or trashy movies, it is, in my opinion, one of his best.  If you haven’t seen it, rent it.

The movie acts as a critique of the New York art scene.  A boy (named Pecker) buys a used camera from his mother’s second-hand store and uses it to take photos of his neighbors, family and Baltimore neighborhood.  He decides to display his photos in the sandwich shop in which he works and sells his first photograph to a person that runs a New York art gallery.  Soon Pecker’s photos are the latest buzz in an art scene, he becomes rich and famous and his family travels to New York for his gallery debut.

While the plot is fantastically entertaining it has very little to do with why I love this film.  What really makes this a great film is what all the characters have in common: they love their lives.  John Water’s characters somehow manage to adore lives that most others would define as detestable.  

Pecker works in a Sub Shop.  His mother runs a used-clothing store.  His grandmother sells pit beef sandwiches outside their home.  His girlfriend runs a Laundromat.  His sister is a hostess at a gay strip club.  His father runs a failing restaurant whose greatest asset is a “claw machine.”  His best friend makes a living through shoplifting.  His younger sister has a sugar addiction.  They all have horrible lives yet somehow don’t seem to know it.

Unlike the world in which I live, these characters do not rush to homogeneity, struggling to match some mold of beauty, wealth or success.  Rather, they struggle to express individuality in a world that attempts to force feed a single definition of happiness.    There is a comfort in heterogeneity.  I would love to live as these characters do.

Besides the fun group of characters there are some great lines including:

“They took my Liza Minnelli CD’s too!”

“I’m the best shoplifter in Baltimore and I can’t even get laid.”

“If you teabag one more time Mister Nailbox will fire your ass.  There’s no teabagging here at the Fudge Palace.”

“Some things are more important than pit beef.”

John Waters is a genius.

11:56:28 PM