Pecker

Plot synopsis:
Set in a Baltimore neighborhood known for having the thickest local accent, Pecker tells the story of an unassuming 18-year-old who works in a sandwich shop and takes photos of his loving but peculiar family and friends on the side. Pecker, so named for his childhood habit of "pecking" at his food, stumbles into fame when his work is "discovered" by a savvy New York art dealer, Rorey Wheeler. Pecker's pictures, taken with a cheap Canon Canonet 28, are grainy, out-of-focus studies of unglamorous subjects, but they strike a chord with New York art collectors.
Unfortunately, instant over-exposure has its downside. Rorey's efforts to turn Pecker into an art sensation threaten to ruin the low-key lifestyle that was his inspiration. He abandons his trusty old rangefinder camera for a new, full-featured Nikon N50. Pecker finds that his best friend, Matt, can't shoplift anymore now that Pecker's photographs have increased his profile. Shelley, Pecker's obsessive girlfriend who runs a laundromat, seems especially distressed when the press dub her a "stain goddess" and mistake her good-natured "pin-up" poses for pornographic come-ons.
When his family is dubbed "culturally challenged" by an overzealous critic, they begin to feel the uncomfortable glare of stardom. Pecker's mother (Mary Kay Place) is no longer free to dispense fashion tips to the homeless clientele at her thrift shop. Pecker's grandmother, Memama, endures public ridicule when her experience with a talking statue of the Virgin Mary is exposed on the cover of a national art magazine. Tina, Pecker's fag hag older sister, is fired from her job emceeing go-go dancing at a gay bar because Pecker's edgy photographs chronicle the sex practices of the club's patrons. Even Little Chrissy, his six-year-old sister, feels the pressure of celebrity when her eating disorder is exposed, bringing unwanted attention from nosy child welfare agencies (she's mistakenly diagnosed with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and prescribed Ritalin.)
After Pecker's new-found fame disrupts the lives of his family and friends, Pecker turns the tables on the art world by refusing to participate in a scheduled show at the Whitney Museum of Art. Instead, he forces New York art collectors to come to Baltimore to see his latest photographs, which portray the same people who disparaged his family in an unflattering light (one photo shows Patricia Hearst adjusting her breasts in a mirror).
Pecker is then asked what he plans to do next. He replies that he would like to direct a film.

Tags: satire, prank

Review:
It is full of humorous characters and interesting situations, starting with the blithe, innocent Pecker (played appealingly by Edward Furlong) who likes to photograph almost everything he sees in every day life.
Other great characters include Pecker's friend Matt ("he's a thief, but he's really a nice guy"), Pecker's sister Chrissy (who is addicted to sugar), and Pecker's Catholic grandmother who discovers life in a statuette of the Virgin Mary in her room.The movie gently makes a point about how every day life has many riches to offer, and it succeeds in making this point without being too heavy-handed about it.
There is always a risk, when making messages about the value and dignity of "common people", of sliding into a kind of reverse "holier than thou" - but "Pecker" avoids these traps, allowing the audience to get the point while allowing enough breathing room for viewers to compare this message to their own thoughts on the subject.I recommend the movie mostly because it is a lot of fun..
In this time around, Waters directs PECKER, about how the seemingly normal photographs taken by an average small-town kid named Pecker (Eddie Furlong) become over- night successes by different art moguls.
Of course, many misadventures abound as Pecker encounters many people with different opinions about his "works of art."The performances are basically the main highlight of the film.
Low-key teen actor Brendan Sexton III steals the film as Pecker's best friend Matt, a go-go-dancing klepto, just the right kind of character found in a John Waters' flick!.
This is the most accessible  of any of John Waters' movies I've seen and I like that,  doesn't hit you over the head with weirdness.
There are some great characters here...Ed Furlong is wonderfully wholesome and believable as Pecker, Christina Ricci is terrific in a very intense way as a too normal no frills small city girl.
"Pecker" is a young, unknown photographer from Baltimore who becomes a big star in the public, the media and the local art scene with his pictures showing the dirty reality of all-day life just as dirty underwear or human excrements.
It's a typical topic of John Waters Baltimore-based independent comedies to show the weird sides of the American way of life between political correctness fashion and conservative backlashes by exploring the backgrounds of the middle class society of his hometown.Edward Furlong of "Terminator 2" fame plays Pecker, supported by Christina Ricchi, photographer Cindy Sherman, legendary Patricia Hearst and Water's long-time actress Mink Stole.
Although the pacing of the plot becomes a big flaw sometimes and can't compete with the fast and furious joke attacks of Water's brilliant "Serial Mom", it's still has some good laughs in it and some unforgettable scenes like a former junkie-girl who became a vegetarian by sniffing peas from a vegetable dish...
"Pecker" is a great comedy about the arrogance of the art scene, media hypes, middle-class sex angst and the strange ways of how to become a pop star without realizing it.
As I am no fan of almost any post-"Desperate Living" John Waters films, I warmed to "Pecker".
John Waters most accessible film to date is one of his better ones, considering it cut down on all of the campiness and outright vulgarity which seem to litter most of his previous work.
While diehard John Waters fans will be disappointed (There's no obese transvestites that eat dog feces or hilariously hideous trailer park characters) it was still an uplifting film with good performances and several laugh-out-loud scenes.
Yes. He's also known for dark humor;  but this film relied on harmless shock value.Edward Furlong plays the title character, a kid who takes pictures of everything he encounters in his sleazy Baltimore neighborhood.
To Photograph Life and Find Art In It. Pecker is another John Waters tribute to the less fashionable side of his native city of Baltimore.
Of course it wouldn't be John Waters without the double entendre.Pecker as played by Edward Furlong was given a camera as a kid and it's become an obsession with him, to photograph life and find art in it.
How and will he get it back is the story of Pecker.John Waters surrounds Furlong with a nice cast of supporting players with the usual Dickensian names for their characters.
Best are Christina Ricci as Pecker's girl friend, Baltimore's laundromat Queen, and Brendan Sexton as his best friend and professional kleptomaniac.Pecker is another of John Waters's lighthearted look at life and some of the strange things we find in it.
Once again John Waters attempts to "Shock" us with his "Bad taste" and "outrageous" casting, but does nothing but bore the audience to death with another pointless dumb movie.
Patty hearst makes an appearance as an art admirer or something and you just can tell John Waters thought it was just sooooo outrageous to cast her.
I wish John Waters would stay away from message movies, especially since the message is always the same:  Trailer trash good, everyone else bad.
This is flawed thinking, as any newcomer to Pink Flamingos would still be shocked at that film today (my co-workers can attest to that!).Pecker is a predictable story:  Boy takes pictures, boy gets discovered, boy discovers previous low-class existence was okay after all (There's no place like home).
His long suffering girlfriend (Ricci) is oblivious to art, and she pretty much captures the personality of the rest of us as we wait for Pecker to break new ground or for Waters to win us over with some great comedic relief.
One character that I found cute, but very underwritten (much like Christina Ricci's character) was the borderline kleptomaniac best friend of Pecker played by Brendan Sexton III, a terrific and underrated talent in the world of film.
Not to mention, the film's love affair with constant flat jokes.Waters' regulars like Mary Vivian Pearce and Mink Stole are here, but not in mass amounts.
Laugh at you must but it would (1) make Pecker more tolerable than it already is, and (2) be the perfect, out of place role for her since she did such a wonderful job in Female Trouble as a fourteen year old girl who didn't look any younger than thirty.I've always said that anyone can throw on a cheesy costume and make a parody, many can make an homage to their favorite film, but only few could pull of a very good satire.
However it's all done with a nice charm that makes it fly by, only occasionally does the film drag and the plot weaknesses are revealed.Waters used to have a niche market in camp and bad taste, however with so many people doing bad taste comedies nowadays he seems to have toned it all down a bit.
The support cast are also good as they have more of the characters that we expect from Walters as well as some famous faces (Lilli Taylor, Martha Plimpton, Patty Hearst)  Brendan Sexton III as Matt is really good but the award for funniest role goes to Hulsey for angry sugar junkie Little Chrissy.Overall I found this enjoyable despite the story not really moving anywhere fast.
It was a great movie where the characters were ridiculous, they all had some quirky idiosyncrasy and it all fit because it was set in the 50s and while telling a good story and being "just plain weird' it was a musical, which generally are a little weird, and it managed to indirectly make fun of the cheesy movies about teens that were played in theaters in the 50s...
Call me a conspiracy theorest, but I believe that John Waters made this bad film as a sort of in joke just to see which critics would give it good reviews.
Once we really start to know them, they all seem either fake (little Chrissy), uninteresting (the two homeless people; Why?), or just plain annoying in a bad way (Pecker's mom and sister).
The film is called 'Pecker' because that's the name of it's central character, but something tells me that Mr John Waters named the film so for other, more innuendo related, reasons.
This hobby, one day, attracts the attention of a New York art dealer and Pecker is transported into super-stardom, much to the dismay of his Laundromat obsessed girlfriend and the rest of his small town.Director John Waters directs the film in a very surreal style, which gives it a very unique edge, and instantly grabs your attention.
Pecker's Grandmother ("Full of grace!")  is particularly aggravating, and left me wondering when some heavy object (such as a piano, or maybe a large safe) would come loose from its overhead hoist apparatus and put an end to this pathetic attempt at a funny secondary character.This movie should be locked away in an underground vault somewhere,  where it would never see the light of day again for eternity..
He typically directs movies which seem inviting enough for me to rent, but are never good enough for me to like.The story, as you probably already know,follows a boy nicknamed Pecker, played by Edward Furlong of Terminator 2 and American History X fame.
Edward Furlong and Christina Ricci are an excellent couple and demonstrate it with their unique charisma featured in this movie.This is the typical "alternative" or indie movie with a plot that features a rare situation that suddenly becomes really important.Pecker is an average boy who has an old camera and his main hobby is to take photographs of the exotic habitants of the small town where he lives in.
It may seem boring or pretentious for some people but still I think it worths a watch only because it offers something "different" than Hollywood's typical standards.To describe in a few words: This is the typical Christina Ricci and John Waters movie.
Pecker loves to take all kinds of pictures of the people in a small suburb of Baltimore, Md., and manages to get the attention of a group of photo art lovers from New York City.
Along the way, Waters finds ample opportunity to satirize New York culture, Baltimore culture, and movies about how people's personalities are changed when they get their 15 minutes in the spotlight.
If your looking for a light hearted comedy than i recommend giving pecker a go.One of furlongs better films in that later of his career 7/10.
If you've never seen a John Waters film, then you don't know every penis joke in the book.
As is common in Water's films, the characters are as strange as can be, and for the life of me, I can't figure out why he decided to portray Baltimore as a small town.
I've seen several John Waters films and for the most part have found them to be pretty funny, but Pecker is just so far out there, that it's almost unwatchable..
The movie has all the signatures of a Waters film: very bad amateur actors in small roles, lousy and childish dialogues, and social satire which is far too obvious and unintelligent to have any kind of impact, comic or otherwise.
Edward Furlong displays little charisma in this film, and Waters would have been wise to make Christina Ricci the star.
By now, we know what to expect with a John Waters comedy: colorfully outré characters with quirky jobs whose lives are underscored with rude, snorting satire and odd, funny selections on the soundtrack.
His timing is so wobbly that many scenes border on being funny but ultimately miss the mark, while certain characters (like Pecker's bartender sister and his religious ventriloquist Memama) keep promising to be funnier than they are.
Like many of his recent films, the final act is just a hammy mess of over-playing, while the satirical points Waters hopes to make get lost in a deluge of happy-hearted sleaze.
That said, this is my all-time favorite John Waters movie because he tackles the story of an artist making his art on his own terms in a sweet and funny way.
This was a really cool movie and very funny, pecker was a great character.
Being a Baltimore native, I naturally love John Waters, particularly Pecker.
I had never watched many of John Water's films with the exception of Cry-Baby one of my all time favorites.
That's just cool!As ever, (except maybe Serial Mom) John Waters respects his characters and his audiences' intelligence, and it makes a film that, for all its bizarre subplots, is really warm and witty.I was most impressed with how well the movie flowed,  For example, with simple lines like "You know I don't like you going there!" Waters builds our expectations, making us ask "Where?
The best part of this film is the continous satire of the New York artworld, almost definitely inspired by John Water's early career in themovies and his later career being a photographer.
I thought the movie was hysterical and a deadly barb against the art world that takes itself far too seriously ( an expensively ).It's become chic to criticize John Waters movies for some reason, I guess metro-plex blockbuster overdoses do have their side-effects, but he still has his fans and people who "get" him.
Overall, the work of Mr. Waters and the acting of Edward Furlong is good.
Truly the best John Waters movie I've seen.
Any movie by John Waters is definitely worth watching!
One reviewer complained of "stiff, forced dialog" and a lot of people complained that this movie was too "tame" for a John Waters film.
Now I like John Waters, but why do people insist that directors have to keep making the same kind of movies over and over?To me, Pecker is a film that captures a real slice of life.
The film is definitely one of John Waters' best and the acting was excellent.
John Waters' PECKER is by far his happiest film to date.
Of course, home-style happiness is summed-up by Waters in a grand dance party featuring cross-dressing lesbians, talking statues of the Virgin Mary, gay male strippers in jockey shorts, New York art world gapers, homeless people wearing thrift store fashions, and (drum roll) Patty Hearst dancing on a table in her underwear!Mary Kay Place is super as Pecker's mom and Christina Ricci good enough as Pecker's love interest.
Nobody does it like John Waters - he's the best thing American movies have going.
That ability to straddle the fence is at the heart of this little gem of a film:  Waters knows what's funny about laundromats, butch dykes, Mary worshippers, rough trade and Baltimore hair-do's, but he doesn't separate himself so far from them that the humor is ever condescending.A terrific cast (I'm always left wanting more Bess Armstrong, but what can you do), sharp dialogue and an insider's perspective on both White Trash and the New York art scene makes "Pecker" one of Water's most pointed films while at the same time one of his gentlest.You probably missed this one in theatres, but it's worth renting at least once (particularly the DVD, for the afore-mentioned commentary track)..
I enjoyed Edward Furlong as the title character, a budding photographer whose lowbrow shots are seen by a New York art dealer who thinks he is the next big thing.
Another Waters' "feel good" movie about celebrating our differences and making the world a better place, at least for as long as the party lasts!
"Pecker" is also good - I think it's his only film besides Hairspray that could appeal to a "real" audience as much as the John Waters audience.
This and other crazy terms have been coined in John Waters latest wacky story called `Pecker' .It is not the sugar addicted little sister or the Grandmother who is a few books short of a bible, it's not the slapstick comedy or good performances all round that make this a good movie.
Although I am probably biased, seeing that I love John Waters in all his fury, I thought Pecker was excellent.
You can have your mainstream Hollywood movies with special affects and mountains of celebrities, but give me a "Pecker" or a "Hairspray" (another excellent John Waters film) over a "Titanic" or a "Godzilla" anyday!!.
Very Original and Funny Like a Nut. John Water's ("Pink Flamingos"...) "Pecker" is the best movie I've seen in a while.
Christina Ricci and Edward Furlong:great casting : made the film very unique and highly enjoyable.the plot was not the most complex and could of been developed, but the narration was told in such a way that its impossible not to find something in this film that you would love.i wanted to see this film when it was showing at the local cinemas, but i understand it didnt do very well at the box offices and so never got down to my area :-(if you are in doubt about this film, i would definitely recommend it, whether you have an interest in photography or nota feel good film that you cant possibly not enjoy!8/10 !.
Once you can get past the film's title, "Pecker" is a great film, perhaps one of John Waters' best.
It has only been a week since I saw my first John Waters film (Female Trouble), and I wasn't sure what to expect the second time around.While the previous film was outrageously over the top, Pecker is actually a funny film that satirizes the art critics in New York to a T.
I taped it out of curiosity and now that I've seen it, I can tell you that this "Pecker" sure is a lot better than "A Dirty Shame".In this movie we see how a young 'nobody' from Baltimore becomes an overnight sensation in the art world of New York.
I'm not saying that everything that you will see is great, but at least the characters have some meaning thanks to the performances of the different actors like Edward Furlong, Christina Ricci,...Overall this isn't a great movie, but thanks to its criticism and some good jokes - which never really go too far - this is an enjoyable movie.