Met up with Jadie in the line outside Ryerson for the screening of John Waters’ “This Filthy World”. Jadie was chatting with the parents of the girl who would become Peaches – internationally known smut-electro-rock-queen. I knew Peaches back when she was Merril Nisker in Fancypants Hoodlum. And she is still Merril, except that she is living out her dream fully. It was cool to meet her parents who seem very happy about all her success, including her last album “Fatherf***er” which she recorded in Los Angeles. They were there for the screening because I believe Peaches did a performance with John Waters in Los Angeles not more than three months ago (that I wished I had attended!).

Anyhoo, “This Filthy World” is a essentially a live comedy taping of John Waters’ doing auto-biographical standup, directed by Jeff Garlin, a regular actor on “Curb Your Enthusiasm”.

It is certainly insightful and enriching to hear the reasoning and motivation behind John Waters’ works, as told by John Waters. The film itself could use some more editing. Strange shots of the world’s ugliest audience are used as cutaways asGarlin cuts between a variety of performances. To his credit, you’d never know the show was taped on different nights – which is why you wonder why the hell the director is cutting away to this audience.

The film was packaged by CAA and paid for by Netflix, so I am not sure how it will show up n the marketplace – maybe as a Netflix exclusive? The Netflix production/distribution company is called Red Envelope Productions, whatever that is.

The Q&A was as wierd as one might expect of a John Waters’ screening, although the strangest thing about it was that John Waters seemed the only reasonable gentlemen among the members of the crowd. Even Flyerman, that notorious pinhead egomaniac tragic starfucker was there in the front row, asking decoy questions so he could stand up an flash the audience with his sparkly Flyerman lightshow jacket. But it was, again, poignant in a way. Isn’t the lust for fame by whatever means, the parents of an international smut rock Queen, the madhouse being run by the patients, isn’t that what any and every John Waters film is about?

The only thing I was left wondering – what is John Waters’ role, when his mission has been to push the limits of depravity and keep the boundaries loose, in the Internet age, where the lid has been blown off the Pandora box of depravity?

He answered a similar question in the Q&A in a manner that surprised me – where I thought he might have conceded to that impossible to outpace phenomenon, instead he inferred that he would just have to try harder to find what is depraved. Good luck to him. I guess indeed, someone will have to show us where are boundaries are, so at least we are conscious of it – and John Waters wants to be your man. Long live the ghost of Divine.