Cinema: Lights! Camera! Pittsburgh!

(3 of 3)

Tacky, tacky, tacky. That is the aim and the achievement of Writer-Director Waters. The decor in Francine's home looks to be straight out of Lesser Homes and Gargoyles; her husband breakfasts on Pepsi and Kix; the family dog leaves the message GOODBYE CRUEL WORLD and hangs itself from the refrigerator door. As with most farce, the movie sags when it runs out of middle-class icons to desecrate. But for any suitably depraved moviegoer, it offers as many honest laughs as Airplane! It's a vision of Baltimore that H.L. Mencken might have loved. As the polyester queen, Divine is woman enough for two—a fleshly-fantasy Miss Piggy. And in one sense, Waters' picture is unique: it's as if you'd never smelled a movie before.

In another sense, Polyester is like all independent films. Whether the director has reformist ideals or dreams of big bucks, whether his mogul is an arts council functionary or a local businessman looking for a tax write-off, the game of scrounging and scrambling must be played. Dawn of the Dead and The Dark End of the Street jump the same financial hurdles. Making movies and Making It may be, finally, the same thing. And sometimes It pays off. More than a few members of the New Hollywood elite—David Lynch (The Elephant Man), John Carpenter (Halloween), Martin Brest (Going in Style), Sean Cunningham (Friday the 13th), John Landis (The Blues Brothers)—got started in the business with pictures that cost $100,000 or less. It can be done. Just follow the advice of another ex-scrounger, Martin Scorsese: "You should just start working wherever you can! Get out, knock on every door, sneak into the studio. Drive counts. This is Hollywood." Scorsese might have added that, nowadays, Hollywood is wherever people with drive and dreams get together to make movies. So watch out, L.A. The next star-struck generation may just want to go Pittsburgh.

—By Richard Corliss