John Waters names the director who reinvented cinema: “The best thing he ever did”

Posted On August 21, 2024August 21, 2024

Relative to the number of people who’ve ever helmed a movie, the percentage of directors who genuinely reinvented the art of cinema is infinitesimally small, even if John Waters is confident he knows somebody who did just that.

While the ‘Pope of Trash’ was a transformative figure, trailblazer, and pioneer in his own unique and boundary-pushing way, he wasn’t a reinventor and would be the first to admit it. Waters made movies that were unmistakably his own and couldn’t have been made by anyone else, but he didn’t instigate seismic change that spread to every corner of the industry.

If he did, then cinema would be unrecognisable in its current form, considering the taboo-busting and often stomach-churning auteur built his brand on the back of approaching every new project with the idea that there wasn’t a single thing off-limits and the barometers of bad taste and acceptability had barely been brushed.

Curiously, though, Waters’ candidate for the face of filmic reinvention wasn’t even a filmmaker by trade. They were an acquaintance and friend, and also somebody who taught the ‘Duke of Dirt’ a thing or two about how carving out a distinctive niche can be immensely beneficial as a marketing tool.

Andy Warhol was an artist first and foremost, but his filmmaking efforts were every bit as experimental as the work he committed to canvases and installations. Whether it was his series of static films, six-hour and entirely descriptive epic Sleep, the equally accurate 35-minute short Blow Job, or the eight-hour Empire, Warhold sought to use cinema in a different way than anybody else.

“He was the first person I can think of who branded himself successfully,” Waters said to Rolling Stone about what he learned from Warhol. “Salvador Dalí tried, but he sold out his career by signing anything. That was greed. You never felt Andy was greedy. So I like sticking up for Andy. In every book, he’s portrayed as some kind of villain. Also, he reinvented cinema. One day his films will be known as the best thing he ever did.”

Warhol predated Adam West with the kitschy and unofficial fan film Batman Dracula, adapted A Clockwork Orange before Stanley Kubrick with the entrancing Vinyl, and blurred the lines between fact and fiction with the innovative construction and dual projection of Chelsea Girls, placing him well ahead of the curve during the 1960s when the ‘New Hollywood’ movement had yet to explode into life and make experimentalism from ambitious new voices the norm.

Unquestionably one of the most important and influential artists of the 20th century, Warhol’s filmmaking exploits arguably haven’t been placed on a similar pedestal to his work away from the camera, but Waters is adamant that they deserve to be, and there’s still an infinite amount of time for his prediction to come true.

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