Backstory: Cry-Baby and John Waters' Journey to Broadway

Good Morning, Baltimore
Childhood could not have been more unassuming for future “Pope of Trash” John Waters, born in 1946 to an upper-middle-class Catholic family in suburban Baltimore. There were no painful divorces his parents are still married, no violence or abuse to offset his proper upbringing; he went to Sunday school and visited his grandmother on holidays though there was one Christmas when the family found Grandma, uninjured but clearly chagrined, trapped under her own fallen Christmas tree, a scene so twisted it later made it into one of Waters' films. But the signs that he, possessed of a mind from which the scandalous gross-out film Pink Flamingos would spring, was…well…different from the other kids, materialized at an early age.

To say that Waters had an inclination toward film may be an understatement. A fan of any flick denounced by the nuns at his Catholic school, Waters would watch B-movies at the local drive-in through binoculars on his roof; as a teen, he snuck in via car trunks. Sometimes he would go on two- or three-day film binges, leaving theaters only to sleep and use the restroom. He was captivated by shows like Howdy Doody and Leave it to Beaver, and recalls charging admission to his own neighborhood puppet shows and “scare houses” at just 10 years old.

He also was fascinated by the peculiar or forbidden, idolizing local juvenile delinquents or “drapes”, which later became the inspiration for Cry-Baby, rock 'n' roll, shoplifting, criminal trials and movie villains the Wicked Witch of the West is cited frequently.

For his 17th birthday, his parents gave Waters an 8mm camera, transforming their son into a bona fide filmmaker who pursued his craft at NYU's film school until he was expelled during freshman year for smoking marijuana on campus. After Waters' less-than-glorious return from the big city, the same camera inadvertently turned his family's well-groomed lawn into a studio-come-soundstage for low-budget flicks, most funded by his father and one scored by his mother playing piano. These included Hag in a Black Leather Jacket and Mondo Trasho, which starred his own cast of bohemian, “post-beat, pre-hippie” outcast friends—including one neighborhood star-to-be.

Divine Intervention
Waters met awkward, overweight Harris Milstead, who lived just down the block, in high school. Not surprisingly in 1950s Baltimore, the effeminate Milstead had problems fitting in at school, but absolutely no trouble existing in the bizarre world of John Waters. It was Waters who helped transform Milstead into an epic cross-dressing diva of stage and screen, and he who christened “her” with the name Divine. Using the innovative skills of costume and make-up talent Van Smith who invented Milstead's lentil-filled prosthetic breasts, Divine became a willing conspirator and unchecked phenomenon in nearly all of Waters' films, most notably Multiple Maniacs, Pink Flamingos and Hairspray, in which he created the role of larger-than-life mom Edna Turnblad.

At the end of the 1960s, Waters and his rag-tag crew began screening their underground, subversive films in coffeehouses and local church basements, advertising through leaflets and word of mouth. Most of his work outraged the community. One scene in 1969's filthy Mondo Trasho got Waters arrested for “conspiracy to commit indecent exposure.” College students, outcasts and artists, however, celebrated Waters' trash-tastic body of work, starting a midnight screening revolution in Baltimore and carving an audience for 1970's Multiple Maniacs. In 1972 fledgling New Line Cinema distributed Waters' infamous Pink Flamingos and went on to release Female Trouble 1974, Desperate Living 1977, the “Odorama” read: scratch and sniff classic Polyester, and, in 1988, an unexpected mainstream hit: Hairspray.

The Drape Sympathizer
The family-friendly Hairspray did more than just propel Waters into the mainstream; it paved the way for his first big budget film in more than 20 years of filmmaking. “This was the only time ever that every studio wanted to make my next movie,” Waters explained in the documentary It Came From Baltimore. "Hairspray had just come out—it was a huge sort of success. Everybody thought it was a bigger deal than it was. There was a bidding war! That'd never happened to me before.”

The bidding war was for Cry-Baby, Waters' rockabilly tale of Wade “Cry-Baby” Walker, a Baltimore “drape,” and his class-defying love for upper-class local “square” Allison Vernon-Williams, a good girl who wants to be bad. The director ended up with a budget of more than $12 million Hairspray, by comparison, was shot for just $2.5 million, with Imagine Entertainment footing the bill. The film was, in Waters' eyes, his first full-scale musical, set to classic '50s songs lip-synched by the cast. “Everyone thinks Hairspray was my big musical because it's a big Broadway musical now,” Waters told documentary director Mark Rance in 2005. “That was my dance movie. THIS was my musical.”

The story was loosely motivated by headlines from the Baltimore Sun newspaper, which reported frequently on the bad behavior of drapes and their supposed threat to the community during Waters' youth. As a proud “drape sympathizer,” Waters says he began to formulate his story after The Sun covered the murder of young drapette Carolyn Wells, a Baltimore teen found strangled to death. “It was very, ‘this is what happens to girls who hang out with drapes,'” he said of the scandal surrounding the case. The director, ever the fan of rebellion, felt drape persecution to be unjust—a class issue in his own backyard. And so the story of bad boy-with-a-heart Cry-Baby was born. “The inspiration was a guy who lived across the street from me when I was seven years old that had a hot rod, that was a drape, that I never talked to, that I was scared of, and that my parents hated,” Waters told Broadway.com. “He was Cry-Baby.”

Hip to be Square
Then a fresh-faced heartthrob, actor Johnny Depp would become Cry-Baby—reluctantly. The young actor was cast as the film's hero but was concerned the role would only solidify his unwanted 21 Jump Street image as a hunky teen idol as legend has it, Depp was once caught defacing his own picture on a Jump Street billboard. The actor also was a self-proclaimed bad dancer. “I mean, I just don't dance. I don't get it,” Depp commented. “So John [Waters], of course, was ‘Ah, you'll be fine, don't worry!'” Waters was right. After convincing Depp that mocking his image would be the antidote to typecasting, the star's performance caught the eye of director Tim Burton, who cast Depp in his breakout role as Edward Scissorhands, beginning a fruitful collaboration that has continued through the recent big-screen version of Sweeney Todd.

For Cry-Baby, Depp was joined by a unique cast, including Amy Locane as Allison, plus Polly Bergen, Iggy Pop, Ricki Lake, Troy Donahue, Joey Heatherton, Patty Hearst and former adult-film star Traci Lords. “The wildest movie I've ever made!” Waters said in reference to the eclectic mix though he declared Iggy Pop, a notorious drinker, a “complete gentleman”, who would meet at his Baltimore home for pre-production rehearsals.

Despite eager stars and a generous budget, Cry-Baby proved a complicated undertaking. Waters battled near constant rain, on-set flooding, an onslaught of technical problems and even interference from the FBI, who appeared onsite to arrest Traci Lords in relation to a federal case Lords was in good company: “Every person on that set had been arrested!” Waters said. The director also encountered a career first: answering to a major studio. “It was a really hard movie to make because it was so big,” costumer Van Smith said of the project.

The film opened in 1990 at a star-studded Baltimore premiere. Though critical reviews were mixed, the sweet, candy-colored homage to 1950s class-issues was received warmly by fans and industry folk; at Cannes, the film moved the crowd to a standing ovation during its screening. Since, it has become one of the director's friendliest cult classics.

On Broadway
Inspired by the huge success of the stage adaptation of Hairspray. which won seven 2003 Tony Awards and is still going strong in its sixth year on Broadway, director Jack O'Brien turned to book writers Thomas Meehan and Mark O'Donnell to re-team for Cry-Baby. The new musical features an original rock ‘n' roll and doo-wop score by David Javerbaum a multiple Emmy winner for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Adam Schlesinger of the pop group Fountains of Wayne. O'Brien tapped Mark Brokaw, a director known for his skill at shaping ensemble performances, to direct and cast newcomer James Snyder in the title role.

In the wake of Hairspray, John Waters has found himself an unexpected darling of the Broadway community. “I've always been an outsider, but now I'm an insider, which is even funnier,” he explained to Broadway.com. “It's the ultimate, final irony of my life.” So it's seemed only natural that Cry-Baby: The Musical would find a home on the Great White Way as well. But after the Tony Awards and accolades, the validation from outsiders and elitists, the dalliances in the art world and even a Christmas album, what on earth will be next for Waters? “Cry-Baby was the only musical I ever did make, and Hairspray was a dance movie—so now I want Pink Flamingos to be an opera!”