PINK FLAMINGOS
The seminal trash classic all
dressed up with somewhere to go
BY GARY MORRIS
Cinema, like any art form, has its milestones — the first "story film" in The Great Train Robbery (1903), the first international movie star in Denmark’s Asta Nielsen, the first sound film in The Jazz Singer (1927), the first film noir in The Maltese Falcon (1941), and so on. Bringing up the literal rear of this exalted company is John Waters's Pink Flamingos, which, thanks to an eager star and an accommodating poodle, became the first commercial feature to end with the star eating dogshit. (Actually, it was a Hungarian sheepdog, not a poodle — distinctions, distinctions!) Of course, one could point to the chicken-****ing scene as another breakthrough, but even this dizzying melange of feathers and come is eclipsed by Divine’s canine coprophagia as a primal gross-out.