Permission to be tawdry
A teenager in Baltimore saw the Kuchars' 16mm melodramas and decided he could make films too. He has said they mattered more to him than Warhol or Anger.
Hold Me While I'm Naked is a cheap, overheated Hollywood melodrama about a director whose star walks out, shot with friends, lurid colour and a straight face. It was paid for with unemployment cheques.
John Waters has called the Kuchars' films the pivotal films of his youth, bigger influences than Warhol, Kenneth Anger or The Wizard of Oz, and said they gave him the confidence to believe in his own tawdry vision. Pink Flamingos, shot in Baltimore with friends for about $10,000, followed six years later. Waters wrote the introduction to the brothers' 1997 memoir.
Acknowledged by the director