The supporting case includes various local weirdos, including Pia Zadora as a “Beatnik Chick” (I quote from the credits).

It is some kind of commentary on the decivilizing ‘80s that Stiller and Divine and Bono and Harry, who would have qualified as sideshow exhibits in the real ‘60s, look in the context of this movie like plausible parents. The plot of the movie loosely involves Tracy’s attempts to win a talent show and win a place on the Council and the attempts made to stop her by Amber and her ambitious parents ( Sonny Bono and Debbie Harry). Tracy dances in front of her TV set and knows all the right movies and is tolerated in her fantasies by her parents, who are played by Jerry Stiller and Divine. One kid who hungers to be on the show is Tracy ( Ricki Lake), who is fat, but who can dance better than Amber ( Colleen Fitzpatrick), who is not. They are “popular.” They are on the Council, a quasi-democratic board of teenagers who advise Corny on matters of music and supervise auditions for kids who want to be on the show.

The kids on Corny’s show are great dancers with hair piled in grotesque mounds atop their unformed little faces. It takes place in 1962 in Baltimore, where a program known as “The Corny Collins Show” is at the center of many local teenage fantasies. John Waters’ “Hairspray” is a movie about that time and those kids and the sinking feeling. Where did they get these kids? Did they hire professional teenagers from other towns? Nobody I knew dressed as cool or danced as well as the kids on “The Hop,” and there was a sinking feeling, on those long-ago afternoons in front of the TV, that the parade had passed me by. Everybody I knew watched “The Hop.” Nobody I knew ever appeared on it.

1988 hairspray movie soundtrack