Pecker

You kinda have an idea what you’re getting into when you sit down to watch a John Waters’ movie. Part raunch, part over-the-top characters and a hefty dose of satire. Oh, and it’ll be set in Baltimore, too. You can expect bad taste, non-PC humor and exaggerations cranked up to eleven. Pecker is definitely a John Waters’ film. It may not have the pure rawness of Pink Flamingos or Female Troubles but it still has its fair share of smut humor. It may feel at times like a film aimed at adolescences but it earns its R rating.

Right out the gate the tone of Pecker is evident. The jolly music of Paul Evans singing Happy-Go-Lucky-Me plays over Pecker’s (Edward Furlong) slapdash photography. It sets a tone for the film as well as foreshadows where it will go. Throughout the course of this song and shortly afterwards we are introduced to the primary cast of characters. Pecker is the young photographer who takes candid black and white photos of everything and everyone around him. His girlfriend, Shelley (Christina Ricci), is the singleminded owner of a laundry mat who’s obsessed with her work and enforcing her rules of the business. His mother, Joyce (Mary Kay Place), runs a thrift store, apparently just for the homeless people in the neighborhood. His father runs a bar across the street from a strip club and has an unhealthy obsession with the strippers bearing it all. His sister, Tina (Martha Plimpton), works at a homosexual men’s bar with exotic dancers. Grandma (Jean Schertler), referred to by everyone as Memama, has a ventriloquist doll of The Virgin Mary that she speaks through with a religious fervor, believing it to be a legitimate miracle. Last in the family is his baby sister, Little Chrissy (Lauren Halsey), who has an addiction to sugar so bad it might as well be cocaine. 

All of these people’s lives get uprooted when Pecker has a small exhibition at the hamburger joint he works at and his art gets discovered by art promoter Rorey Wheeler (Lili Taylor). She thrusts the young photographer into the limelight and the sudden fame has many unexpected consequences. His mother finds herself stifled in her ability to clothe and accessorize the homeless. Pictures taken in the gay bar lead to Tina getting fired. Religious zealots show up at Memama’s and are not impressed with the “miracle” causing the Virgin Mary to fall silent. Even Shelley is struggling now that Pecker’s fame has lead to her clientele causing disruptions at work in an attempt to get photographed by Pecker. Perhaps worst of all, Pecker’s best friend Matt (Brendan Sexton III), a kleptomaniac whose various thefts and pranks were a subject of many of the photos, finds himself getting busted repeatedly now that the locals have seen the photos and knows about his thievery. 

Pecker is a quirky film. But it also has a message that it wants to make clear almost out the gate. Success changes people. Too much success in a short period of time can often overwhelm and overturn someone’s life, making them despise what they loved about what they were doing in the first place. It can also bring out the jealousy and hatred in people around you who hate you for your success. After the first professional gallery of Pecker’s photographs, people who were more than willing to allow him to snap quick photos of them now threaten to sue him for failing to get a release form signed for their likenesses. Others break into his home and steal stuff, justified in their actions by him profiting from their images. The jabs at celebrity are far from subtle here. They’re also without any real teeth as these threats never get resolved. Even Tina losing her job feels lesser as she seems none the worst for it in the final scene, still doing what she did before.

This film seems like an attack at sudden fame and, in its own words, the flavor of the day. The jabs are not subtle, yet it somehow works in the context of the film. This is in large part due to the performance given by its star, Edward Furlong. While this is not an Oscar worthy performance here, Edward is playing Pecker to the hilt, earnest and in over his head. We never doubt his love for his family and his support for them in their own lives. He’s obsessed with his photography, though, and, even when those around him do not want him to take pictures, he is helpless in not doing so. When a man is acting lewdly in Shelley’s laundry mat and begging Pecker to take his photo, Shelley stops Pecker multiple times from doing it, yet, as she turns away, that camera comes right back up anyway. It’s an obsession, much like her’s with her own business. 

John Water’s script takes shots at anything and everything. It is this that gives the film a cacophonous tone and makes it hard to maintain focus. Everybody has an obsession and they’re all fair game for absurdity. It becomes a little too much at times. This becomes all the more apparent in the characterization of Little Chrissy who starts out as a sugarholic, sneaking into the kitchen to eat raw sugar right from the bag. She later is put on medication by child welfare to deal with her addiction, eventually swapping the sugar out for an addiction to vegetables, snorting peas through a rolled up dollar. This type of stuff is a step too far in an already over-the-top film. We get that Pecker’s art is disrupting everyone’s own obsessions but up until this point it’s been somewhat grounded in reality. 

Tonally this film is all over the place. But this is, after all, a John Waters film and that is to be expected. But the best of Waters’ films have a balls-to-the-walls absurdity to them that tells the audiences nothing is sacred and everything is a target. This is occasionally the case here but it just doesn’t hit as hard as it could. Perhaps the most John Waters moment in this film is inside the strip club where a lesbian stripper is berating the male clientele as she dances for them. It’s harsh, kinky and absurdly hilarious all at the same time. If the rest of the film maintained that tone this might have been top-tier John Waters. It’s not, though, but that doesn’t mean it’s not well worth watching. There’s plenty of laughs and many of the jabs hit home. It just needed a bit more focus and a target that was a little less overexposed.

Release Date: September 25, 1998

Running Time: 86 Minutes

Rated R

Starring: Edward Furlong, Christina Ricci, Mary Kay Place, Martha Plimpton, Brendan Sexton III and Lili Taylor

Directed By: John Waters