John Waters admits he didn’t know much about film editing when he started making movies in the 1960s.
He says he was surprised when he got word that the American Cinema Editors (ACE) society wanted to give him one of its top prizes, the ACE Golden Eddie Filmmaker of the Year Award, at its 2024 ceremony in Los Angeles.
“It is ironic I’m getting an Eddie Award since when I made my first film, ‘Hag in a Black Leather Jacket’ in 1964, I didn’t even know what editing was,” he said at the awards ceremony on March 3. “I was 17 years old, my grandmother had given me an eight-millimeter movie camera, and I just filmed all the shots in order of the plot and Presto! – the movie was done. No editing necessary. Very Dogma ’95. Very Lars von Queer.”
Waters noted that one of his best known scenes, the one at the end of “Pink Flamingos” where Divine devours dog droppings, is famous for its editing – it was intentionally not edited after filming so no one could say it was faked.
“There is not one cut in the final scene where Divine eats dog feces,” he noted. “Straight from the dog’s anus to the talent’s lips in the master. That’s what I call a great editing decision even if I have to say so myself.”
Hundreds of Hollywood’s best and brightest gathered on the UCLA campus for the 74th annual ACE Eddie Awards ceremony, held to recognize achievement in both television and motion pictures.
The Golden Eddie Award, short for ‘editing,’ recognizes an artist who exemplifies “distinguished achievement in the art and business of film.” It’s the latest of several industry honors that Waters has received over the past year, including a star the Hollywood Walk of Fame and a career retrospective at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles.
Past Golden Eddie recipients include Christopher Nolan; Martin Scorsese; Spike Lee; Quentin Tarantino; Guillermo Del Toro; Gina Prince-Bythewood; J. J. Abrams; Norman Jewison; Robert Zemeckis; and George Lucas.
Waters, 77, has written and directed 16 films, from so-called ‘celluloid atrocities’ such as “Female Trouble” and “Multiple Maniacs” to more mainstream fare such as “Hairspray” and “Serial Mom.” His last movie was “A Dirty Shame” in 2004. He’s currently working with Village Roadshow Pictures and is aiming to start production on a film adaptation of his 2022 novel, “Liarmouth: A Feel-Bad Romance.”
Pink flamingos and feather boas
Waters’ movies were used to set a campy tone for the ACE event, which included a red carpet area where celebrities were photographed when they arrived; a tented lawn for brunch; the two-and-a-half hour awards ceremony inside historic Royce Hall; and an after-party outside the auditorium.
For this year’s event, the grounds at UCLA were festooned with flocks of plastic Pink Flamingo lawn ornaments just like the ones used in Waters’ 1972 comedy. The dress code was formal, and guests at the after-party were given pink and blue feather boas to wear.
Presenters during the ceremony included Mink Stole and Ricki Lake, stars from Waters movies. The host was Nina West, the stage name of Andrew Robert Levitt, a drag performer and “RuPaul’s Drag Race” alum who played Edna Turnblad in the 2021-2022 national touring production of Hairspray. West finished in sixth place and was voted Miss Congeniality on the eleventh season of “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” West also paid homage to Waters several years ago in a music video entitled “Cha Cha Heels,” a mashup of scenes inspired by “Female Trouble,” “Serial Mom” and “Hairspray.”
According to ACE spokesperson Lea Yardum, “this was not only the first time that a Drag Queen performer hosted the ACE Eddies — it’s actually the first time that we know of any awards show being hosted by a Drag Queen. Nina West was chosen because of her incredible talent and creativity, and going in that direction was definitely inspired by Mr. Waters being ACE’s special honoree. The spirit of fun and fancy was contagious.”
No Odorama
Waters was introduced by director Kevin Smith, who said the Baltimore filmmaker was a big influence on his own work. The director of “Clerks,” “Mallrats,” “Chasing Amy” and “Dogma,” among other films, Smith told a story about growing up in New Jersey and wanting to see “Polyester” when he was 10 years old because it featured Odorama cards that movie-goers were supposed to scratch and sniff during the movie. It also had an R rating — with parental guidance about sex, nudity, violence, gore and profanity – plus romantic scenes between Divine and Tab Hunter. Smith said he didn’t know anything about the plot or what Polyester meant, “even though it described my mom’s entire wardrobe at the time.”
Smith said his father, not realizing the movie wasn’t intended for children, agreed to take the whole family – mother, father and three kids – to see it at a local drive-in. From that decision alone, Smith said, “Polyester was making us a tighter-knit family.” But when they got to the drive-in, the theater didn’t have the promised Odorama cards. ‘What kind of stupid shit is that?” his father asked the ticket guy, irate. “What kind of stupid shit takes three kids to this movie?” the ticket guy shot back.
Smith said he learned a lesson from that experience: He realized that he wanted to grow up and make the kind of “f****d-up” movies that kids aren’t supposed to see, just like John Waters. And he told the audience he has pretty much done so – making New Jersey his version of Baltimore, even casting two actors that Waters worked with, Johnny Depp and Traci Lords. He described Waters as “a true American icon, a true American original.”
Sharing ‘truths’
In his acceptance speech, Waters shared some of the “truths” that he’s learned about film editing over the years:
“If you ever think you should cut a scene out of your movie, you should.”
“No comedy should be longer than 90 minutes.”
“There is no such thing as a good long joke.”
“If the audience hears a narrator in a movie, they know it tested badly. The editor had to cut out plot points that didn’t make any sense without explanation. Use music lyrics instead of the human voice. It’s sneakier, works better and the audience is none the wiser.”
“As Cecil B. Demented says, technique is nothing more than failed style.”
Ironclad advice
Waters also offered some “iconclad friendly editing advice” for directors:
No smoking: “Never have a character smoke cigarettes in your film, even in a period piece,” he told the audience. “Not for health concerns, but for continuity issues. You want to snip out a boring bit of dialogue? You can’t cut back to the first smoking character because the cigarette is a different length.”
No watches: “Never show anybody looking at their watch in a movie. It shows it down and the audience will do the same thing.”
Pay attention to the music: “Make sure the end-credit crawl music is lively, funny or shocking. That’s when audience word-of-mouth begins, when they’re walking up the aisle to leave.”
Censorship and other editing pressures
Discussing his work, Waters observed that the editing process can be influenced by a variety of factors besides artistic or aesthetic reasons, including some that editors can’t foresee at the start of production.
Making “Female Trouble” in Baltimore, he said, he was confronted with “a different kind of editor: the Maryland censor board lady, who handed me a pair of scissors and made me cut out, right in front of her, ‘one cunnilingus scene,’ as the receipt she gave me back reads. I’m not kidding. You can see that receipt displayed in the Academy Museum show that’s still up right here in Los Angeles.”
Waters has spoken about how he had to make a sanitized version of “Serial Mom” that could be shown on airplanes – even though he’s not sure “Serial Mom” was ever shown on an airplane. One of the edits is that he had to replace a threatening note that Kathleen Turner’s Beverly Sutphin sends to a neighbor in the original cut, “I’ll get you pussy face,” with a supposedly more palatable threat in the edited version, “I’ll get you prune face.”
For “A Dirty Shame,” he said, “we had to fight the MPAA [Motion Picture Association of America, now just the Motion Picture Association] and make a family-friendly version of “A Dirty Shame” that wasn’t rated NC-17, for the chain video stores. Try cutting a film about sex addicts to be suitable for a children’s birthday party. That’s a task no editor should ever have to tackle.”
Censorship wasn’t the issue with “Pecker,” which received an R rating. In that case, Waters said, the movie had to be edited because it was eight minutes shorter than the length wanted by the production studio, New Line Cinema. “We had to sneak the cast and crew back in town and film extra footage to add to the front-credit bus ride to make it the 90-minute running time that New Line demanded,” he said. “They never found out. Until today. Sorry [New Line founder] Bob Shaye.”
Disco ball
A prelude to the Oscars, the Eddies ceremony is one of the film industry’s major annual events, considered a barometer for the Academy Awards’ Best Picture and Best Editing categories. Royce Hall, a 1929 theater that seats more than 1,800, was nearly full for the event.
Waters had a reserved table for the brunch and after-party, complete with a miniature disco ball as part of the centerpiece. He was joined by Mink Stole [Nancy Paine Stoll] and her husband; Janice Hampton, the film editor on many of his movies; Academy Museum curators Jenny He and Dara Jaffe; and others.
Unlike some awards programs, the Eddies ceremony doesn’t cut speakers off after a certain time. One of the days’ longest speeches came from award presenter George Lucas, who took nearly half an hour to introduce Walter Murch, one of two honorees for “Career Achievement.”
Other Eddie awards went to film editors behind “Oppenheimer,” “The Holdovers,” “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” “The Bear,” “Beef,” “How I Met Your Father,” and “The Last of Us,” for its “Long, Long Time” episode. Timothy Good, the editor recognized for “The Last of Us” episode, like Smith pointed to Waters as a big influence on his career.
Respecting the theme of the event, Waters wasn’t as long-winded as Lucas. At the end of his acceptance speech, Waters followed his own advice and edited himself down to six final words – “Thank you for this wonderful award!” In an earlier email message about receiving yet another honor, he summed up his reaction in two words: “Astonishment continues.”
