John Waters – Parkway Theater – Minneapolis MN – October 29th 2021

The Parkway Theater presents John Waters

Review and photos by Todd Johnson

The Parkway Theater, which was built in 1931, has had a Renaissance of sorts in the last couple of years. They did a beautiful restoration of the Art Deco style theater back in 2018 which was the first one they have had in around 40 years. They added some beautiful LED lights that compliment the light fixtures on the ceiling. They also added an arcade as well. They show movies there, some in 35mm film, but they also have audience interactive event movies like “Rocky Horror Picture Show” (with “Transvestite Soup”) which the Parkway Theater is a  new home to since the unfortunate closing of the Uptown Theater last year. This year for Halloween they pulled out all the stops and invited famously infamous legendary filmmaker John Waters here for a two night stand at the Parkway. I personally have only seen a couple of his films, but Waters, with his pencil thin mustache, is quite well-known for his biting sense of humor and love of kitsch (and hater of ‘whimsy’.) I knew his films were funny, but i had no idea how hilarious he was. And John Waters was absolutely positively hilarious! He did a practically non-stop monologue about COVID and politically correct culture and how some of feelings have changed a little after getting older. He also talked about some of the more infamous non-actor actors that starred in his movies including”Mondo Trasho” and “Pink Flamingos”. The jokes were very rapid fire and were very impressive.