Waters later said that The Diane Linkletter Story was not conceived as a carefully scripted production at all. He and his friends were testing a new synchronous-sound camera—the same equipment later used for Multiple Maniacs—when they improvised the story and filmed it. Despite its disturbing subject, the short received only a very limited release in the early 1970s, usually playing in art houses as a short before screenings of Pink Flamingos. Its audience expanded much later through the 1990 videotape A Divine Double Feature, which paired the film with a live recording of the off-Broadway production The Neon Woman, also starring Divine. In a 2015 British Film Institute interview, Waters dismissed the work as the worst of his films and again emphasized that it had essentially been an accidental camera test rather than a fully planned movie.
Preparing the daily feature…
AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1970s–1990s
The Diane Linkletter Story Began as a Camera Test and Later Became a Cult Film Curiosity
The Diane Linkletter Story / 1970s–1990s
Waters later said that The Diane Linkletter Story was not conceived as a carefully scripted production at all. He and his friends were testing a new synchronous-sound camera—the same equipment later used for Multiple Maniacs—when they improvised the story and filmed it. Despite its disturbing subject, the short received only a very limited release in the early 1970s, usually playing in art houses as a short before screenings of Pink Flamingos. Its audience expanded much later through the 1990 videotape A Divine Double Feature, which paired the film with a live recording of the off-Broadway production The Neon Woman, also starring Divine. In a 2015 British Film Institute interview, Waters dismissed the work as the worst of his films and again emphasized that it had essentially been an accidental camera test rather than a fully planned movie.
The daily feature is taking an intermission. There’s still an entire archive to explore.