Hairspray

INSIDE TODAY WHAT THEY'RE SAYING TODAY'S SUN COLUMNISTS Our pinup governor Just call him the model official. Gov. Martin O'Malley is on the cover of next month's Irish America magazine where he's discussing -- among others -- his band and his Pirate Queen descendants. Maryland baltimoresun.com/vozzella New remake, same ol' Baltimore Another day, another Hairspray -- and another police commissioner. Baltimore doesn't forget its past, yet it just keeps repeating it. Maryland baltimoresun.

There's a certain giddy if twisted glow that John Waters brings to his beleaguered Baltimore. The cheerfully perverse -- or is it perversely cheerful -- Waters clearly was born to play bard to so battered a burg. He sprinkled some of his anti-Disney dust at The Charles movie theater Wednesday night, where the latest version of his Hairspray -- the hometown ode that was a movie, then a Broadway show and now a movie again -- premiered locally. Fresh-faced teenage girls, all Lilly Pulitzer-ed up, jammed the sidewalks or joined the rest of the shiny, happy, $150-a-ticket people parading into the Chuck -- a more pastel-clad and better-heeled crowd than you tend to see in these parts when Hollywood, and a teen idol and Hairspray star named Zac Efron, hasn't come calling.

John Travolta stars as a woman in John Waters' Hairspray, which opened nationally today. What was the last Travolta movie you saw and liked? Why? Please send your thoughts in a brief note with your name, city and daytime phone number (and Such a Critic in the memo field) to arts@baltsun.com. We will publish the best answers we receive.

It's time to get over the hurt from not having Hairspray shot in Baltimore. Yes, it would have been great to have the movie shot in the city where it is set, in the hometown of the man who first brought its characters to life, in the place where beehive hairdos and people calling each other "hon" are the rules, not the exceptions. All things being equal, it should have been shot here - and would have been shot here, had our legislators in Annapolis approved enough financial incentives to enable filmmakers to work here as inexpensively as they do in Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Canada or any of the dozens of other places that seem more anxious to attract the economic benefits of filmmaking than Maryland is. So the movie was made in Toronto.

Sure, the stars turned out for Hairspray at The Charles cinema last night - Amanda Bynes, teen heartthrob Zac Efron, newcomer Nikki Blonsky. John Waters was there, too, along with his family, both real (his mother and sister) and adopted (a few hundred starstruck Baltimoreans). But no one worked harder to prepare for last night's Baltimore premiere than 10-year-olds Auburn Stephenson and Eleni Sabracos. On a night rife with Hollywood glamour and Baltimore chutzpah, no one caught the spirit of movie better than these girls.

John Waters' original thought was to cast Divine as both Edna Turnblad and her daughter, Tracy, in his 1988 film Hairspray. But common sense won out, and he ended up casting a real teen as Tracy, rather than the 42-year-old, cross-dressing Divine. In a canon dedicated to turning Hollywood stereotypes on their head - in Waters' films, the pretty girl never wins - Waters struck a populist chord. With Tracy, that cheerful and chubby champion of dance-floor integration in 1960s Baltimore, the writer-director created rare opportunities for hefty young actresses and launched award-winning careers.

Beehives. Pencil skirts. Tight sweaters. Eyeliner. Skinny pants. Sharkskin suits. Banlon shirts. Florsheims. It was 1960s Baltimore, and these were the looks - expertly captured in the latest film version of Hairspray, which premieres tonight at the Charles Theatre. The fashions of the musical represent the silhouettes and styles of a well-known time period - the calm before the civil rights storm; the iconoclastic Jackie O years. But Hairspray is set squarely in Honville; the movie is as much an ode to ole Bawlmer as it is a colorful commentary on differences and dancing and doing the right thing.

Hometown fans and film workers shred their garments and tore their hair when producers decided to shoot Hairspray the movie musical - based on Hairspray the Broadway musical, based on Hairspray the 1988 John Waters film - in Toronto instead of Baltimore. But the moviemakers have put a sheen on Charm City. Though it's debatable they had to go North to do it, maybe it took their outsiders' eyes to bring out the Emerald City in East Baltimore. HAIRSPRAY PREMIERE / / With John Waters, Adam Shankman, James Marsden, Nikki Blonsky, Amanda Bynes, Zac Efron, Elijah Kelley, Craig Zadan and Neil Meron.

Nikki Blonsky, the latest dynamo to fill out the role of big-hearted Tracy Turnblad in Hairspray, will be joining fellow cast members Amanda Bynes and Zac Efron for the movie's gala Baltimore premiere July 18. Besides Bynes, cast as Penny Pingleton, and Efron (Link Larkin), others expected to be on hand include Brittany Snow (Amber von Tussle) and Elijah Kelly (Seaweed J. Stubbs), along with director Adam Shankman and producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron. And John Waters, on whose 1988 film the musical is based.

Details are still being ironed out, but plans call for a major Hollywood-style bash when Hairspray has its Baltimore premiere at the Charles on July 18, two days before opening throughout the country. Members of the cast and crew will be on hand, and the public will have a chance to attend the premiere, with proceeds benefiting AIDS Action Baltimore and Baltimore Homeless Services. Hairspray, starring John Travolta, Queen Latifah, Michelle Pfeiffer and newcomer Nikki Blonsky, is the film version of the Broadway musical that won eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical.