If you love John Waters, and I mean truly love him and know his life story from reading his books "Shock Value" and "Crackpot," then you will love "Pecker." If you don't, you will probably be disappointed. Luckily for me, I love the man and his films, even if I don't agree with him at times.

"Pecker" is a semi-autobiographical love-letter Waters has written to himself. I can think of no one better to do the job. In it, for the first time in one of his films really, he makes a statement or two. He talks about art, and truth and the nature of beauty. He talks about individuality and being true to oneself. He makes pointed insights about how nice it is to be naive and young and in love with life. He examines the corruption found in fame and the ability of others to mire your love and your art in phoniness and pretension. Quite a lot to be said in a Waters film.

The titular "Pecker" is actually Waters himself, played by Edward Furlong. The former teen idol hasn't grown much and still looks 15 even though he is in his 20's. Furlong is perfect here, although not Waters' true doppelganger, but a rather naive and squeaky-clean, sober version of one. Furlong's has two awesome moments in the film. One when he gives an "aw shucks" reply to a gay nudie club owner who tries to get him to strip and dance in order to "show his scrawny ass and make some real money" and a second when he and his love-interest Christina Ricci discuss the beauty of everyday life before making love in a voting booth.

And while Furlong and Ricci form a nice and likeable couple (she's rather amusing here), Pecker isn't a uptight heterosexual. And here is where Furlong becomes a truly awesome actor by making Pecker a wonderful character. He does this by seeming so honest, so sincere and so at-ease with this material. Pecker not only sees the beauty in fat women and graffiti and his grandmother, and rat's copulating, he also sees the beauty in the male strip club dancers and takes artistic photos of them. Waters uses the gay aspect of the script for numerous humorous moments, as is his wont. But he also paints it as ordinary and normal. There is nothing seedy about this angle of the film. Waters makes it simple, light- hearted, good clean American fun because Pecker sees the intrinsic and simplistic beauty in these people. Furlong makes this love of the "common uncommon" seem so pure and so, well, normal, that we truly feel lovingly towards him. Waters, as he has always done in his films, and Furlong, acting here as Waters's alter ego, make all of these rather odd people and the squalid lives they lead, seem beautiful.

In the film, Pecker, this vision of Waters as a youth personified by Furlong, isn't a movie director but a photographer. He loves his camera and he loves the everyday life around him. He takes beautiful black and white photos of his Baltimore world and the people who inhabit it and displays them in his Baltimore work-place, a greasy restaurant. He sees the beauty in his elderly grandmother even if she is a bit crazy. He sees the beauty in his friends and family and of the people in his neighborhood. Pecker's photographs, like the people in them, are works of art.

And the main crux of the story is Pecker's photos and the people in them. His photography makes him a star. His mother (Mary Kay Place), a thrift store owner; his father, a bar owner who complains about the nudie club that opened next door; his sister (Martha Plimpton), a fag hag and a half who works as an announcer in the male strip club; his best friend, a petty thief (Brendan Sexton III) (who eventually dances in a pair of boxers!) and local assorted Baltimore folk and homeless people become stars in the glare of Peckers rising popularity in the New York art world. The subject of his photos become the impetus for his fame. And in the process, these simple, pure and honest "uncommon" people become "celebrities" themselves. This is mainly thanks to the photos he takes of them and exhibits, first in Baltimore then in New York.

This happens after Pecker is discovered by Lili Taylor, one of my favorite indie actresses, who plays a New York art dealer who happens upon Pecker's "show" in Baltimore. See, here's another way Pecker is like Waters: The young director often put up flyers around Baltimore promoting his films in his early days and got his friends to star in them and his family to finance them. Those who are not in the know won't get the beautiful symmetry with which Waters draws Pecker in relation to his own story.

Anyway... "Pecker" is a sweet, charming and wonderful film from Waters, who is now in his 50's and still as unusual as ever, still the "crackpot," still in love with the uncommon. He may have mellowed some, but his film is still full of wonderful subversion including numerous gay references, close-ups of naked body parts, and hilariously political statements. One of my favorites is when Furlong tells Taylor, "You're not supposed to have sex with people you're trying to help." Another is when Furlong, in a moment of amorous angst tells Ricci, "I love you more than Kodak!" The film has heart. It shows us what it's like to be put in the spotlight. It shows us how uncomfortable that spotlight can be when shined upon you. But most importantly, it tells us to be ourselves and to let others do the same regardless of the glare. And to see the beauty in that as well as in the world around us. Pretty heady stuff from the offbeat director we've grown to love. Yet, also something he has been telling us, in his own uncommon way, since day one.

Note:

Also with Patti Hearst, Mink Stole, Bess Armstrong, Mary Vivian Pearce, and Brigid Berlin. Waters has a voice cameo as a pervert who calls Ricci. Several of Water's regulars appear in the film or work behind the scenes including Pat Moran, Vincent Paranio and Van Smith.

Score by Stewart Copeland. Pecker's photos by Michael Ginsberg.

(Review written in 1998)

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