Desperate Living

Director: John Waters

1977 / 90min / 35mm

By his own confession Waters never liked punk music half as much as its dumpster diving aesthetic and sneering, spitting attitude. Both these things are very much on display in his bad taste blowout, which follows fugitive housewife Peggy Gravel (Liz Renay) and maid Grizelda (Jean Hill) as they light out on the lam and arrive in the wasteyard shantytown of Mortville, a community of social outcasts ruled with an iron fist by the despotic Queen Carlotta (Edith Massey). A masterclass in punk sartorialism, concluding with an eruption of anarchic anger that represents the spirit of anti-authoritarianism at its finest. Cookie plays a character named “Flipper,” so named for reasons that are potentially offensive, but of course you wouldn’t be watching Desperate Living if you easily took offense.