It’s American Bandstand all over again! Except, as Waters puts it in his short story, the idea of Corny Collins was based on Baltimore’s own The Buddy Deane Show, which he was obsessed with as a teenager. It’s what they rush home to watch every day after school and, if left alone by their square parents, they jump up and dance along at home to the contestants on the television show. The bottom line is that Hairspray, written and directed by John Waters, is a total gas! Get ready for bright, swirling colors and hairdos that defy gravity as teenagers lose their mind to the dance numbers being played on The Corny Collins Show. Also on board with this zany concept is Josh Charles as a teenage regular on a popular dance show AND Waters himself as a shrink desperately in need of medication. I mean, in what other comedy could you have the talents of Sonny Bono, Debbie Harry, Divine (in his final film role before his untimely death), and Jerry Stiller as parents to both Rikki Lake and Colleen Fitzpatrick? Plus, seeing Pia Zadora and Ric Ocasek as lunatic beatniks is pretty damn funny.

Granted, those pants might be tight drainpipe jeans but that kick, as one overweight teen takes to television to twist the night away and fight segregation, still bucks hard and deservedly so. 'The bottom line is that Hairspray, written and directed by John Waters, is a total gas!'īased on writer/director John Waters’ 1985 own short story “Ladies and Gentlemen… The Nicest Kids in Town!,” which appeared in his book Crackpot: The Obsessions of John Waters, Hairspray is still a wise-cracking kick in the seat of the pants.

1988 hairspray movie soundtrack