There was a decade-long period between 1988 and 1998 when esteemed provocateur John Waters did something revolutionary: he dared to become mainstream. This period brought out his most culturally-significant works in Hairspray and Serial Mom, as well as the film that established him as more than just a vulgar filmmaker, but also someone who could make a film that the entire family could enjoy (although his anecdote about hoping that a wayward family loved Hairspray so much, they decide to rent another one of his films, to naturally disastrous results). His best work may not have been done during this period, nor the ones that define him solely as an auteur – no one considers him the Pope of Trash based on Cry-Baby – but it did see him attempting to corrupt a wider audience by infilitrating them from the inside, weaselling his delightful perversions into their living rooms through upbeat, charming comedies with recognizable stars and premises that seem like the folly of good-natured, mainstream entertainment. The one film from this period that always seems to be forgotten is Pecker, which is somewhat understandable. As a fierce devotee to Waters’ cinema, even I have always struggled to find something truly great about this film. It’s not necessarily a bad film, nor one that is poorly-made by any means, but rather a work that doesn’t reflect the best that the director has to offer. This certainly doesn’t mean that it’s not without merit, and of the four forays into the mainstream, Pecker is perhaps the one that sees Waters’ more controversial style trickling through. A recent revisitation of the film confirmed this to be towards the bottom of Waters’ filmography, but still one that is absolutely essential for anyone interested in understanding precisely why Waters is such an enigmatic artistic figure who resonates so much with audiences, critics and the industry, even if it took a little while.

At the surface, Pecker is a film about a sensitive young man, played by Edward Furlong, who discovers a passion for photography, spending his days in working-class Baltimore taking snapshots of the residents and the community at large, which he sees as nothing more than a hobby that keeps him occupied in between shifts at his job at a local burger joint. When he is discovered by a New York art dealer, Pecker is thrust into a position where he becomes incredibly famous, the newest addition to a growing canon of outsider artists that are the subject of considerable attention amongst the high-society art world. Based solely on the premise, Pecker doesn’t seem like much, and its certainly true that it often struggles to establish itself to have a particularly strong story, or even a loose-structure that would give it the depth it needed. Waters isn’t always a plot-oriented filmmaker, but one of the flaws with this film in particular isn’t that it lacks a plot, but rather seems to have one that is undercooked at best. Had the director taken more of a firm stance on one side or the other – whether having a more solid, guided narrative, or composing the film of a variety of fragments loosely connected to a central theme – there’d be no doubt that Pecker may have been a much stronger film, one that could exude a particular message without becoming caught in the crosshairs of a fierce tug-of-war between the director’s desire to tell a particular story, and the lacklustre execution of what may not have been the most riveting premise (being more akin to something we’d find in a short film, since it is almost anecdotal), but which still had a peculiar charm that worked in its favour.

However, this is simply looking at the general premise of Pecker, and as any adherent to the cult of John Waters will have you know, there is always something more to his work, which can only be uncovered by putting ourselves in the position of the director and looking deeper into what we’re presented with on screen. With the exception of his very early works, there is an argument that could be made that Pecker is Waters’ most autobiographical work, insofar as it most closely-resembles his younger days, such as being born into a middle-class Catholic family in suburban Baltimore, inspired to become an artist after his parents give him a camera, as well as spending his time with friends who are quite literally from the other side of the tracks (the presence of Matt, Pecker’s best friend with a penchant for shoplifting, evokes memories of Waters’ sharing his own experiences shoplifting with his friend Glenn Milstead, who would later go on to become the iconic Divine) – and a number of other details in this film seem to be drawn from the director’s own life, which is always a delight, since this is the kind of film that rewards those who may be more aware of Waters’ upbringing, which he has always been exceptionally candid and open about. It doesn’t mean that Pecker is dependent on this peripheral knowledge, because even without it, it’s clear that the director is making something that reflects a keen message about pushing the artistic boundaries, regardless of the cost. It is an incredibly resonant film that has one of the rare instances of a Waters film providing us with a happy ending, rather than one that sends us into a spiral of vaguely-nauseated, but thoroughly entertaining, existential despair. Perhaps the reason this film doesn’t do so well in retrospective discussions is purely because it seems too counterproductive to much of what the director is known for, which is a valid criticism rendered inconsequential when we see the traces of his distinctive personality scattered throughout.

Art has always been Waters’ passion, even when the general consensus is that he is someone who tends to push the envelope just for the sake of it. It’s not surprising that he has gone from being the definition of an outsider, rejected by audiences, his peers and critics, to one of the most beloved and cherished figures of the modern artistic world, an elder-statesman whose opinion on absolutely any issue has proven to be utterly vital. It’s all derived from his inability to make something boring, and his constant attempts to challenge everything we hold to be sacred. In a film like Pecker, he isn’t doing anything particularly revolutionary in contrast to what some of his contemporaries did – he was making a more family-oriented comedy about a young man finding a sense of self-worth in a vicious, unforgiving world, using art (an issue that the director knows better than most) as the means of having some insightful discussions. Looking beyond the simple premise, we see that Pecker is a renegade achievement precisely because of how it spins a particular narrative, looking at artistry as something that isn’t only meant to entertain, but also to unsettle and comment on the world in which it was created. It’s an abstract concept, but the theme of art being so reflective of its particular context, it becomes a critique of society in its own right, is one of the fundamental themes in Waters’ career, and certainly one of the more notable reasons why his films are so resonant, since the modern world has made it more common for alternative artists to go against the grain and tell their own stories without feeling the burden of needing to fit into the mainstream, which is precisely why it is distinctly a film by one of the pioneers of this laissez-faire method of filmmaking, where conventions aren’t only ignored, they’re entirely eviscerated and incinerated in a blinding display of boundary-pushing brilliance.

Pecker is, at its core, a film that allows all these disparate ideas to converge, becoming an endearing portrait of an artist as a young man as he fights against the system and goes in search of his own individuality. It may be relatively tame by Waters’ standards, with the exception of a few risque moments that prove that he wasn’t at all attempting to replicate the effervescence of Hairspray, but it still has a delightfully playful touch that shows that the spirit of its idiosyncratic director is still very much present, even if he’s slightly more detached from the controversial subject matter that made him stand out in the first place. It’s a solid and entertaining film (and worth it to see one of veteran character actress Mary Kay Place’s finest comedic performances, as the generous suburban mother with an enormous heart), but not one that represents the best that Waters has to offer. If anything, Pecker is the worst film to start with when exploring Waters’ career, since it lacks much of his subversive edge, and may lead one to believe all of his films may be aligned with this giddy, buoyant, happy-go-lucky comedy, when in actuality this is all the brighter moments of his otherwise more sinister (but still well-meaning) films condensed into a bewildering, but still oddly captivating, work of experimental fiction. It’s not the best demonstration of his talents, but its certainly one of the most entertaining, and while it may never reach the heights of his more notable works, it is still absolutely worth watching for those interested in seeing the evolution of one of cinema’s finest iconoclasts, which is certainly a worthwhile endeavour.