{"id":227955,"date":"2026-03-20T03:46:31","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T03:46:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/227955\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T03:46:31","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T03:46:31","slug":"frameline-anniversary-bash-brings-iconic-john-waters-to-castro-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/227955\/","title":{"rendered":"Frameline anniversary bash brings iconic John Waters to Castro"},"content":{"rendered":"

While the normies of the world were out chugging Guinness at Irish pubs<\/a> this past St. Patrick\u2019s Day, hundreds of Bay Area \u201cfreaks and weirdos\u201d<\/a> gathered outside the newly renovated Castro Theatre for a screening of John Waters\u2019 \u201cSerial Mom\u201d \u2014 presented ahead of Frameline Film Festival\u2019s 50th anniversary celebration. (The annual LGTBQ film festival returns June 17-27<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Yes, 50 years. Organizers marked the occasion the only appropriate way, by bringing the Pope of Trash<\/a> himself to San Francisco.<\/p>\n

\u201cSerial Mom\u201d is, at its core, a loving skewering of serial killer stan culture: that particular strain of true crime obsession that turns murderers into celebrities and their crimes into content.<\/p>\n

Adding to the occasion\u2019s particular magic was the presence of local horror royalty: celebrated drag queen and Bay Area institution Peaches Christ brought her killer presence to the crowd. Some cinema lovers may know her from \u201cAll About Evil,\u201d another iconic camp horror film shot at San Francisco\u2019s own Victoria Theatre. These days she\u2019s theater-hopping across the Bay \u2014 from the Castro to the \u201cTerror Vault\u201d immersive horror show to Stanford Drag Fest \u2014 haunting every venue she graces.<\/p>\n

John Waters is not only a legend of queer cinema but also a part-time San Francisco resident, which made his appearance at the Castro feel especially poignant \u2026 and, frankly, inevitable. He delivered exactly what was expected of him: maximum sass, neon orange sunglasses, and a complete willingness to boss around the photographers on exactly how they should be holding their cameras.<\/p>\n

People had lined around the block two hours before showtime to catch a glimpse of him. As it turns out, that level of vigilance may not even be necessary. When asked whether he moves freely through the city\u2019s streets, Waters confirmed that not only does he get recognized regularly, he routinely runs into people he used to know around San Francisco. As an illustration, he recalled a recent encounter: a homeless man approached him on the street and said, \u201cHey John, do you remember me?\u201d Waters confirmed that he did. When asked from where, Waters replied: \u201cA bad night.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSerial Mom\u201d centers on Beverly Sutphin, a picture-perfect suburban housewife who kills people for violating the rules of polite society, and who, naturally, develops a devoted fanbase in the process. Waters puts a sharp spin on the culture he\u2019s satirizing, though: in real life, Beverly Sutphin might eventually get a Netflix documentary, but she certainly wouldn\u2019t get the Ted Bundy treatment. Society has a well-documented tendency to go feral over a male killer (the dangerous charisma narrative practically writes itself) but when the murderer is a woman, the cultural machinery reacts very differently. \u201cSerial Mom\u201d gleefully subverts that phenomenon, and it does so in the style that is classic Waters: blood, guts, filth, and trash, delivered with immaculate comedic precision.<\/p>\n

As for the question of how the film fits into the broader cultural canon, Waters delivered a possibly devastating blow to those fans who for decades have hailed it as a cult classic of camp cinema. \u201cCamp,\u201d he declared, is \u201cdead and dated \u2026 Camp is two old gay men standing in an antique shop talking about Rita Hayworth in 1963. \u2026 \u2018Serial Mom \u2018is NOT camp.\u201d<\/p>\n

Condolences to every Serial Mom fan who now has to go back and revise their Letterboxd reviews.<\/p>\n

If camp is dead, then the natural follow-up is: how does provocative filmmaking continue to evolve? Waters had thoughts on that, too. \u201cShow me children smoking in a Satanic temple,\u201d he said. \u201cThink of a new way to get on my nerves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Challenge accepted, presumably. But whether or not John Waters holds the official word on camp\u2019s time of death, one question lingers, perhaps the most pressing one of the evening. If camp is truly dead, then what does that make everyone who packed the Castro that night, shrieking in collective ecstasy at a genuinely, triumphantly outrageous film? What does that make every \u201cSerial Mom\u201d devotee who has ever clutched the movie to their chest as a sacred text \u2014 including, it must be said, you, reading this right now?<\/p>\n

If camp is dead and we still can\u2019t stop loving it \u2026 what does that say about us?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While the normies of the world were out chugging Guinness at Irish pubs this past St. Patrick\u2019s Day,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227956,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[21856,69324,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-227955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-castro","tag-john-waters","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}