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Starring Edward Furlong, Christina Ricci, et al. Released to DVD on February 23, 1999. ![[PHOTO]> Personally, I'm just glad that this film is on video now. I'm not sure if I could have handled going out to a theatre and having to ask the box office clerk for tickets to see John Waters' <I>Pecker</I>.</P> <P>Waters' la<A HREF=/Articles/test.html>test</a> entry into the annals of cinematic history is, go figure, an off beat comedy complete with strangely quirky characters and a Baltimore setting. Edward Furlong, most known for his turn as John Connor in 1991's <I>T2</I>, stars as Pecker, the photobug son of a blue-collar family living in Baltimore. Nick named Pecker because of his character's propensity for 'pecking' at his food, Furlong receives a second hand camera from his mother, with which he shoots the people and landscapes in his neighborhood. While putting on a quasi-photo show at the fast food restaurant where he works, Furlong is discovered by a New York art gallery owner, Lili Taylor. Faster than Jerry Krause dismantled the Bulls, Furlong has become the next big thing in the New York art world, selling photos for as much as $1,300 a piece at his first show. However, fame and fortune also have their downsides, and it is with those negatives that Furlong must deal.</P> <P>This is a relatively entertaining film to watch, but <I>Pecker</I> is, admittedly, rather slow to progress (for reasons of prudency the word 'unfold' wasn't used). As the movie opens, we are greeted with Furlong taking picture after picture of what appears to be nothing to the untrained eye. But, like Waters' own approach towards film, the character of Pecker is adept at spotting art and beauty where others see nothing; I'm not necessarily sure that the rest of the world would agree that an overweight woman flipping the photographer the bird is art, although if the MCA can hang a dead horse from the ceiling, who the hell knows.</P> <IMG SRC=](/photos/pecker1.jpg) The most enjoyable aspect of Pecker though comes from the repercussions that follow Furlong's overnight success story. Pecker's home is burglarized after the local newspapers reported that he would be in New York for the weekend opening a new gallery, and his favorite photographic subjects, his girlfriend, Christina Ricci, and his best friend, Brendan Sexton III, turn against him; Ricci because her experience working in a Laundromat earned her the title of "stain goddess" from Howard Stern, and Sexton because store owners have begun to recognize him as the shop-lifter in Pecker's photos. Waters' material in Pecker is light, fun, and entertaining to a degreeóWaters' dialogue about pubic hair and "tea-bagging" is priceless. When compared to other recently released films like Cube and Return to Paradise, Pecker stands out as a frothy, good-natured film with likeable and morally upstanding characters, something that earns this picture bonus points in my opinion. This wasn't Schindler's List, but then again, it wasn't supposed to be. Waters has nimbly created another film that will add to his legacy as a filmmaker.
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