Trivia / Hairspray (1988)

• Acting for Two: Divine plays both Edna Turnblad and Arvin Hodgepile.
• Creator's Oddball: For director John Waters. Ironically, this actually led to a lot more controversy due to parents getting such earlier Waters material as Pink Flamingos for their kids, which in at least one case resulted in a 911 call. Yes, Hairspray is for the whole family. Anything else by Waters prior? Not even close! As expected, Waters himself found the situation hilarious.
• Descended Creator: Director/writer Waters plays Dr. Fredrickson.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Ricki Lake began rapidly losing weight due to the intense dance lessons she had to take for the film. She reportedly had to "eat like crazy" in order to stay plump.
• Deleted Scene: There are a few, including:
  • A scene of Tracy working at her father's joke shop.
  • After the Record Hop, there was to be a scene where Tracy and Link get into a fight with some local toughs, and Tracy utilizes a can of hairspray as a weapon. The thugs are still given credit.
  • One taking place before Tracy's Corny Collins debut where she skips school to break into the Von Tussle household, where she vandalizes Amber's room and dyes her hair. This scene explains why Tracy's hair changes from brown to blonde between scenes. The removal makes the sudden hair color change an Orphaned Reference.
  • A scene was filmed where Tracey finds cockroaches in her hair. It was based on an urban legend about a girl whose brain is eaten by cockroaches that were living in her beehive hairdo. While it never made it into the final cut, it explains all the references to roaches in the latter part of the film.
• Playing Against Type: During interviews, Divine made it perfectly clear his role as Edna was not one of his usual drag queen roles. As he put it: "What drag queen would allow herself to look like this? I look like half the women from Baltimore."
• Referenced by...: Alaska from RuPaul's Drag Race, who showed up for the reunion of All Stars 2 dressed in Tracy's roach dress from the final scene.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Divine was originally going to play both Tracy and Edna. However, he got sick of doing drag for film roles at the time of production, so Waters had him play Arvin instead.
  • Mamie Van Doren was originally picked for Velma in the original film.
  • The character names of Wilbur, Tracy, and Inez were originally planned for "Flamingos Forever", the cancelled sequel to "Pink Flamingos".

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