ABSTRACT
In 1981, the Baltimore-based filmmaker John Waters, notorious for his underground cinema masterpiece Pink Flamingos (1972), released his new film Polyester through the fledgling Hollywood distribution company New Line Cinema. Partly an underground film featuring Waters’s Warhol-like company of misfit actors, most notably drag queen Divine, and partly a mainstream Hollywood parody of Douglas Sirk melodramas, Polyester represents a pivotal moment in the evolution of the underground cinema in the United States. The film successfully negotiated the transition from midnight movie to conventional Hollywood product, allowing Waters to spend the 1980s and 1990s churning out slightly off-kilter Hollywood films in various traditional genres: the musical in Hairspray (1988), the juvenile delinquent film in Cry-Baby (1990), and the slasher film in Serial Mom (1994).
