If this country were a more sensible place, John Waters would be hosting the Tonight Show. Barring such a possibility, Steve Yeager’s entertaining 1997 documentary about the making of Waters’s first midnight-movie hit, Pink Flamingos (1972), has the advantages of a proud Baltimore perspective and interviews with Jeanine Basinger, Steve Buscemi, Hal Hartley, J. Hoberman, Jim Jarmusch, the Kuchar brothers, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Jonas Mekas, Paul Morrissey, the local film censor, countless cast and family members, and Waters himself. (As a closing title tartly points out, only Kenneth Anger and Russ Meyer declined to appear.) This affectionate piece of historiography snubs practically everything after Pink Flamingosincluding my two favorites, Female Trouble and Hairspraybut it’s so deliciously exhaustive about Waters’s humble beginnings that I can’t really complain. 105 min. (JR)