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Polyester (film)
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Wikipedia article
'Polyester' is a 1981 American comedy film directed, produced, and written by John Waters, and starring Divine, Tab Hunter, Edith Massey, and Mink Stole. It satirizes the melodramatic genre of women's pictures, particularly those directed by Douglas Sirk, whose work directly influenced this film, as well as a satire of suburban life in the early 1980s involving divorce, abortion, adultery, alcoholism, foot fetishism, and the religious right.
'Polyester' was filmed in Waters' native Baltimore, Maryland, as with many of his other films, and features a gimmick called Odorama, whereby viewers can smell what they see on screen using scratch and sniff cards, in a stylistic tribute to the work of William Castle, whose films typically featured attention-grabbing gimmicks.
Following 'Stunts', it was one of the first films that New Line Cinema produced.
Plot
Early 1980s housewife Francine Fishpaw watches her upper-middle-class family's life crumble in their suburban Baltimore home. Her husband Elmer is a polyester-clad lout who owns an adult movie theater, causing anti-pornography protesters to picket the Fishpaws' house. Francine's Christian beliefs are also offended by the behavior of her children—Lu-Lu, her spoiled, promiscuous daughter, and Dexter, her delinquent, glue-sniffing son who derives sexual pleasure from stomping on women's feet.
Francine's cocaine-snorting mother La Rue, a class-conscious snob, compounds her troubles by robbing her daughter blind, constantly deriding her obesity, and berating her for befriending her former housecleaner, Cuddles Kovinsky, a simple-minded woman who tries to console Francine with "seize-the-day" bromides and has inherited a large sum of money from a very wealthy former employer.
After Francine discovers Elmer having an affair with his secretary, Sandra Sullivan, she confronts them during a motel tryst and demands a divorce. Francine then falls into alcoholism and depression, exacerbated by her children's behavior: Lu-Lu becomes pregnant by her degenerate boyfriend Bo-Bo Belsinger (Stiv Bators) and announces she is getting an abortion, and after Dexter is arrested at a supermarket for stomping on a woman's foot, the media reveal that he is the Baltimore Foot Stomper who has been serially attacking and terrorizing local women.
Lu-Lu goes to a family planning clinic for an abortion, but anti-abortion picketers harass her. She returns home and tries to induce a miscarriage, causing Francine to call an unwed mothers' home. Two nuns arrive, force Lu-Lu into the trunk of their car, and take her to a Catholic home for unwed mothers. Bo-Bo and his friend, who have come to trash the Fishpaw house on Halloween night, shoot La Rue, but she retrieves the gun and shoots Bo-Bo dead. After Lu-Lu flees the unwed mothers' home, she returns home to find Bo-Bo's dead body and is so distraught that she attempts suicide. Francine comes home and faints after witnessing her daughter's suicide attempt—and the apparent suicide by hanging of the family dog, Bonkers, based on a suicide note left near the dog's dangling body.
However, Francine's life soon starts to change. Dexter is released from jail, having been rehabilitated. Lu-Lu suffers a miscarriage from her suicide attempt and is contrite about her past, becoming an artistic flower child who embraces macram. Francine quits drinking, confronts and rebukes her mother, and finds new romance with Todd Tomorrow. Todd proposes marriage to an elated Francine, but she soon discovers that Todd and La Rue are romantically involved and conspiring to embezzle her divorce settlement, drive her insane and sell her children into prostitution.
Elmer and Sandra break into the house to murder Francine, but Dexter and Lu-Lu kill them: Dexter steps on Sandra's foot, causing her to accidentally shoot Elmer, and Lu-Lu uses her macram to strangle Sandra. When Cuddles and her German chauffeur and fianc Heintz arrive, their car runs over La Rue and Todd, killing them. The film concludes with a happy ending for Francine, her children, and newlyweds Cuddles and Heintz.
Cast
* Divine as Francine Fishpaw
* Tab Hunter as Todd Tomorrow
* David Samson as Elmer Fishpaw
* Edith Massey as Cuddles Kovinsky
* Mink Stole as Sandra Sullivan
* Ken King as Dexter Fishpaw
* Mary Garlington as Lu-Lu Fishpaw
* Joni Ruth White as La Rue
* Stiv Bators as Bo-Bo Belsinger
* Hans Kramm as Heintz
* Rick Breitenfeld as Dr. Arnold Quackenshaw
* Susan Lowe as Shirley Evans, mall victim
* Cookie Mueller as Betty Lalinski
* George Hulse as Principal Kirk
* Mary Vivian Pearce and Sharon Niesp as Nuns
* Jean Hill as Gospel bus hijacker
* Leo Braudy as Abortion picketer
* Dorothy Braudy as Abortion picketer
* George Figgs as Abortion picketer
* Marina Melin as Supermarket Victim
* Jay Leno as Journalist On TV News (Uncredited)
Production
Waters' usual troupe of actors, the Dreamlanders, played minor roles in 'Polyester' compared to Waters' previous films 'Desperate Living', 'Female Trouble', and 'Pink Flamingos', which starred several Dreamlanders in major roles. Only two Dreamlanders, Divine and Edith Massey, received top billing in this film. This was also Massey's final collaboration with Waters before her death in 1984. Dreamlander perennials Mink Stole, Mary Vivian Pearce, Cookie Mueller, Sharon Niesp, Marina Melin, Susan Lowe, and Jean Hill played small roles in 'Polyester'. While their parts are integral to the plot, they are much smaller compared to their earlier roles.
Principal photography for the film took place over the course of three weeks in October 1979.
'Polyester' was the first Waters film to skirt the mainstream, even garnering an R rating (his previous films were all unrated or rated X—the equivalent of the Motion Picture Association of America's present-day NC-17 rating). The film was set in a middle-class suburb of Baltimore instead of its slums and bohemian neighborhoods, the setting of Waters' earlier films.
During an interview on The Ghost of Hollywood, cinematographer David Insley revealed that the helicopter used to shoot the opening scenes had to make an emergency landing on a nearby golf course while it was open. After the helicopter was cleared for safety, it was subsequently towed from the fairway using a flatbed.
This was David Insley's third film working for John Waters and his first as lead cinematographer. He would go on to shoot Hairspray and Cry-Baby as well.
Music
These are the only songs known to be in the film:# "Polyester" by Tab Hunter words and music by Chris Stein and Debbie Harry
# "Be My Daddy's Baby (Lu-Lu's Theme)" by Michael Kamen words and music by Harry and Kamen
# "The Best Thing" by Bill Murray words and music by Harry and Kamen
Women's pictures
'Polyester' was a send-up of women's pictures, an exploitative genre of film that was popular from the 195060s and typically featured bored, unfulfilled, or otherwise troubled women, usually middle-aged suburban housewives, finding release or escape through the arrival of a handsome younger man. Women's pictures were typically hackneyed B-movies, but Waters specifically styled 'Polyester' after the work of the director Douglas Sirk, asking David Insley to make use of similar lighting and editing techniques, even using film equipment and movie-making techniques from Sirk's era. By chance, Insley was able to view some of Sirk's films at a local screening celebrating the Director. He would use this experience when developing the visuals for Polyester.Odorama
Odors, especially Francine's particularly keen sense of smell, play an important role in the film. To highlight this, Waters designed Odorama, a "scratch-and-sniff" gimmick inspired by the work of William Castle and the 1960 film 'Scent of Mystery', which featured a device called Smell-O-Vision. Special cards with spots numbered 1 through 10 were distributed to audience members before the show, in the manner of 3D glasses. When a number flashed on the screen, viewers were to scratch and sniff the appropriate spot. Smells included the scent of flowers, pizza, glue, gas, grass, and feces. For the first DVD release of the film the smell of glue was changed due to, as Waters states, "political correctness". The gimmick was advertised with the tag "It'll blow your nose!"Neil Gaiman, Kim Newman, 'Ghastly Beyond Belief', Arrow Books, 1985, , p. 193
After being prompted to scratch and sniff a bouquet of roses, viewers are subjected to a series of mostly foul-smelling odors, and thus fall victim to the director's prank.
The ten smells (developed by 3M per John Waters in the supplements section of the DVD release) are:
# Roses
# Flatulence
# Model airplane glue
# Pizza
# Gasoline
# Skunk
# Natural gas
# New car smell
# Dirty shoes
# Air freshener
A video release omits the numbers flashing onscreen as well as the opening introduction explaining Odorama. This version, created by Lorimar-Telepictures, was shown on cable TV in the United States.
The Independent Film Channel released reproduction Odorama cards for John Waters film festivals in 1999.
Waters expressed his delight at having the film's audiences actually "pay to smell shit" on the commentary track of the film's 2004 DVD release.
Producers of 'Rugrats Go Wild' (Paramount) used the Odorama name and logo in 2003, somewhat upsetting Waters when he learned that New Line Cinema had let the copyright lapse.
The 2011 film 'Spy Kids: All the Time in the World' uses a scratch and sniff card now called "Aromascope", which is advertised as providing the fourth dimension in its "4D" format.
The film was re-screened by Midnight Movies at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in June 2011. The Odorama cards were recreated by Midnight Movies, Little Joe Magazine, and The Aroma Company to allow viewers to interact with the film as originally intended.
Critical response
'Polyester' received some positive reviews from the mainstream press. Said Janet Maslin of 'The New York Times':
The film holds a 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on reviews from 27 critics.
In popular culture
The 2000 single "Frontier Psychiatrist", by the Australian electronic music group The Avalanches, samples the film.
References
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