Offense? Nun Taken.

John Waters recalls the nuns who set him on his path to film-making glory.

‘The first thing I can remember rebelling about really, was when I was about 8-years-old and every Sunday we’d go to church. Once a year they’d read us this pledge that we had to take for the Legion of Decency, which was the Catholic Church rating the movies — what you could see and what you couldn’t — and the condemned ones were the ones they’d tell us you’d go to Hell if you saw these movies.

waters

Well, I remember refusing to do this pledge and my mother was kind of shocked, but I was just a child, and she didn’t make a big deal out of it. And on Sundays, the nuns would read us this list, with this voice like the Devil, and you know, seeing this nun stand there saying, “Love Is My ProfessionMom and DadThe Naked Night.” I thought “What are these movies?” I’d never heard of them — they didn’t play at my neighborhood, believe me — but I would go and see them, or read about them, and clip the little list and keep a record of all these condemned movies.  The Mom and Dad poster is hanging right in my hall — it’s still that much of an influence. But it made me want to see these movies I’d never, ever heard of. So, in fact they encouraged me, [the nuns] encouraged my interest, without ever knowing it completely.’

It’s a variation on what would come to be known as the Streisand effect, I suppose, and it delights me.

[hat tip to — and image via — Dangerous Minds]