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John Waters’ four-decade career is as distinctive as his signature pencil-thin mustache. The writer/director’s early cult films reveled in copious amounts of fun, filth and depravity, culminating with his self-described “trash trilogy” — Pink Flamingos (1972), Female Trouble (1974) and Desperate Living (1977), all of which starred his transvestite muse Divine.
A series of amusing, marginally mainstream films followed, including Hairspray (1988), which in 2002 was adapted into a successful, Tony Award-winning Broadway play.
Waters, who still lives in and draws inspiration from his hometown of Baltimore, is something of a multimedia wizard theses days. His latest film, Fruitcake, and book, Role Models, are set for 2009 releases and recent years have seen him dabble in everything from music to reality TV. Then there’s his long-running interest as both a collector and creator of contemporary art.
Amidst it all, the 62-year-old raconteur has somehow found time for his one-man spoken-word tour This Filthy World, which headlines the Lite Brite Indie Pop and Film Test Sunday night at the Southgate House. CityBeat recently talked to Waters about his stand-up act, colostomy bags and the perils of modern filmmaking.
CityBeat: How did this whole stand-up comedy act start?
John Waters: I call it my vaudeville act.
I may be the only film director who has an actual stand-up act that has played in comedy clubs. I know Kevin Smith sort of has one. It started in the old days when I had no way to promote my movies. I’m talking even before Pink Flamingos in the ’60s. I had no stars that anybody knew and we had no money for budgets and so I would go to colleges and I would be kind of the opening act.
I would come on stage dressed like a hippy pimp in thrift-shop clothes. But they were all really hideous, like shirts with taranchulas and shrunken heads and terrible fabric. I had really long, stringy greasy hair. I came out and talked really seriously about the brilliance of nudist camp movies. It was stuff nobody did then. And then I would say, “And now, ladies and gentlemen, the most beautiful woman in the world,” and Divine would come out in character pushing a shopping cart — very similar to what she does at the end of Female Trouble — and throwing dead fish into the audience. And then we would cast whoever was the cutest hippie and put them in a stolen police outfit and a shorthaired wig. They would come out on stage to arrest Divine, and Divine would strangle him to death and everybody would cheer and the movie would start.
CB: This was to warm up the audience?
JW: Yeah, and at the colleges it really worked. I did it in stage shows, too. I used to travel around the country with the (film) print in the trunk of my car. So it grew from that basically. I became completely a one-man show. It’s more like a performance piece, and it’s completely written and I always update it and change it. I don’t use notes or anything, so hopefully it appears that I’m speaking off the top of my head, although not one word is adlibbed.
CB: You’re not as controversial as you once were. You’ve become this multimedia wizard with all these movies and books and CDs and art shows and stage plays.
JW: I’m really proud to be an insider now. It’s the most hilarious thing that’s ever happened. Everyone thinks they’re an outsider now, but I’m finally an insider. “Outsider” is the most overused word now. It’s like “edge” — it doesn’t mean anything anymore. Everyone has an edge. President Bush thinks he’s an outsider … well, he is! If I’ve done anything subversive in my whole career, it’s Hairspray, because whole families are sitting there watching two men sing a love song and cheering a play that encourages their white 15-year-old daughter to date black men.
CB: I read somewhere that you had a subscription to Variety magazine at age 12. What compelled you to do that?
JW: Originally, I used to get it in a department store in Baltimore, but they would only have one copy. I wanted to own a dirty movie theater when I was a child because the nuns would tell us all if we watched these movies we would go to hell. I’d never heard of these movies, so I would clip all the ads out of the paper and then make a scrapbook and redesign the ad campaigns in a more lurid way. I would pretend that I owned the neighborhood theater. There was one called The Rex in Baltimore. It showed all nudist camp movies and stuff.
Recently I found the owner of The Rex. He’s in a nursing home. I went and visited him and he showed me all of his scrapbooks. It was really touching. It was really a nice day. He fought censorship, which is why I’ve always been the friend of pornographers, because they break down the laws so artists can make art.
CB: Why have you stayed so faithful to Baltimore all these years? You’ve pretty much lived there your entire life.
JW: Don’t you like where you live?
CB: Well, most people in your position would have moved long ago.
JW: It inspires me. It is a city of people whose behavior interests me. People here think they’re normal, but they’re totally insane. I have apartments in other places where everybody thinks they’re insane but they’re normal. My movies have not been about bohemia but about regular people that act bizarrely, and I’m always inspired when I go to Baltimore. I mean, my house is still there, and I live other places, too, but my home is there, my office is there. Whenever I need to get an idea or a date, I go to Baltimore.
CB: So it’s an artistic inspiration?
JW: And sexual.
CB: Probably the two most important things…
JW: Yeah, they are! That’s a good reason to live somewhere.
CB: Why have you been so interested in mixing high and low art in your work?
JW: Yeah, I never work in the middle. I’ve run from the middle my whole life. I like extremes. I’m for the elitism of the art world and I also hang out in biker bars. I can take my art-world friends, when they come to Baltimore, to the scariest mutant bars and they love it because they don’t have that in New York. In New York it’s all fake, it’s all faux bikers. As soon as you move to New York, whatever you do is infected with irony. There isn’t irony in Baltimore.
Irony is snobbery and elitism, and I’m guilty of it. I’m an irony peddler. That’s what I should really put on my tax form. But I’m always interested in people who don’t have irony because they tell the best jokes and they have the best street-smart experiences and tell the most amazing stories. I met a guy in a bar in Baltimore and I said, “What do you do for a living?” And he said, “Can I be frank?” And I said, “Yeah.” He said, “I trade deer meat for crack.” I can’t write dialogue that like that. And he was serious.
CB: How do you keep this rabid curiosity alive? I heard that you have something like 10 newspaper subscriptions and read dozens of magazines each week.
JW: Yeah, I’m a news junkie. It’s because I’m a nosy person. I’m curious about how other people feel. The word “personality” is interesting to me because everybody has one and I’m fascinated by that. I like obscure details about things because I can take the tiniest little mention of something and turn it into an idea for a movie. I do press for my projects almost every day and I was a journalist for a while. When I wrote Crackpot (a collection of non-fiction essays published in 1986), most of those were journalistic pieces. If I wasn’t a filmmaker, I would be a journalist or a lawyer for criminal defendants that did it. I’d be a good defense lawyer.
CB: You actually worked as a teacher in prison for a while. Why are you so interested in criminals?
JW: It comes from always wanting to be a Disney villain when I was young. After that it was true-crime books. I’ve always been fascinated by behavior that I can’t explain. I taught in prison for a long time in the ’80s. I miss prison. I talked to a friend today who just got out of prison. I root for prisoners. …
What interests me the most are people who did something really terrible when they were young and that was the only bad thing they ever did. What can they do to ever make up for that? There is no real answer, which is why I’ve always been drawn to that subject. And in America, of course, I’m interested in it because it has become theater. Serial Mom (1994) was made right before OJ, and there are scenes in that movie that are exactly like OJ. My interest came from the spectacle of criminals in America being stars.
CB: Were you surprised that Pink Flamingos was so well received on its 25th anniversary re-release and subsequent DVD release?
JW: I was surprised it was the No. 2 best-selling DVD in America. No. 1 was Jerry Maguire and No. 3 was The Rock one week. That was surprising, especially since chains wouldn’t even carry it. The New York Times to this day has never reviewed it because it’s “not fit to print,” which I find hilarious. They took the advertising money.
I don’t know that I’m surprised by anything. I was equally surprised that Cry-Baby (1990) didn’t work on Broadway and closed after we got four Tony nominations. There are good and bad surprises. I know that anything can happen. That’s why I’m a proud American. I’m very suspicious of flag-waving patriotism, but I really do love America — where else could I have had this career? Where else would people have understood what I’m trying to do? And they do understand, at least enough do.
CB: What’s your take on the presidential race this year?
JW: I don’t care who is president. I care who’s on the Supreme Court, because they affect my life heavily. There’s even a line in Desperate Living where Mink Stole, for no reason, yells, “I hate the Supreme Court!” But I vote. I’m political. Humor is political. I’m always trying to get you to consider things you haven’t considered, but I know that if I preached you’d turn your back on me. I turn my back on people who preach to me.
CB: It’s curious that beneath the shock value and humor in your films there is often this exploration of gender or race or class.
JW: But my films are joyous. I don’t make fun of things I don’t like; I make fun of things I love and am amazed by. Even Pink Flamingos is not a mean-spirited movie. But, yeah, I vote. In This Filthy World I talk about how I think we should dress more sexually when we vote. People dress really badly when they vote. Did you ever notice that? Women wear maxi skirts with patch denim. Men always wear khakis with too many pleats. They don’t wear this stuff any other day. You don’t have to dress badly to vote.
And they decorate those places terribly. Couldn’t they look better? It’s so dreary when you vote. It’s no wonder people don’t want to go into those pits of dreary decorations. While I think young people will vote this time, they haven’t before because I think it’s such a dreary place.
CB: So that’s the key to getting out the youth vote: sexier polling places?
JW: Yes!
CB: How has filmmaking changed for you over the years?
JW: A lot. Today is the hardest it’s been in my lifetime. Independent movies are doing badly because there are very few (non-chain) movie theaters left. People don’t want to go out to watch movies as much. When I was young controversy made people run to theaters, and it doesn’t seem to work that way anymore. People want to go to be safe.
I don’t understand the concept when people say to me, “Oh, it’s a real feel-good movie.” I feel good anyway. I like a feel-bad movie — they make me feel good. I don’t expect a movie to give me happiness in my life. I feel good before I go into a movie theater.
CB: Yet you still go to movies on a regular basis.
JW: I do, though I’m having a hard time this summer. I’m in Provincetown (Mass.) and, even in theaters where they only used to play the most obscure art films, what are they playing? Get Smart.
CB: What is it about the experience of going to a movie theater that remains compelling for you?
JW: I like to go the day it opens and have the review waiting on my desk to read when I get home. I want to be the first to know. It’s so ridiculous when someone gives their opinion on a film eight months later. It’s like, “Oh, who cares, we were talking about that last year. You’re just seeing that now?” …
And it seems to me that going out is more fun. It seems like you’ve invested more, although today people have screens in their house that are bigger than some theaters in New York. I don’t. I have the most pitiful little television because I really only have television for pornography and war. There are two things that I think are really offensive when you go into someone’s home: a giant TV dominating the living room and reading material next to the toilet.
CB: You don’t like reading material next to the toilet?
JW: Well, if you want a colostomy bag. Get on and get off, any doctor will tell you that.
CB: Back to movie-going. One of the things that has hurt modern movies is this attack on the suspension of disbelief with all the behind-the-scenes-of-this and the-making-of-that on DVD releases or even before their theatrical release.
JW: I agree with you. The major thing that killed the mystique of filmmaking is video. Before you could only see it once — in a movie theater. Now you can stop it and go back and forth. It’s like showing somebody how to do a magic trick. The scariest thing on the business end is that if you don’t go to see a movie on opening weekend that movie will be gone. You don’t have time to wait anymore. Studios decide that Monday after it opens on Friday how wide the movie is going to play in the whole world. They can even — scarily and mostly correctly — predict now from how many people come to the first matinee, whether it’s six or 11 people, what the worldwide gross will be. So don’t wait: You don’t have time for word-of-mouth anymore.
You’ve got to “open” the picture, and that means you have to have an audience who is waiting to see your next movie. That’s why you have to work so hard to promote it and to make a movie that isn’t going to be like the next one unless you’re beyond the critics’ reach. I’m not at all at beyond their reach. I wish I was. I’m one of the few that isn’t.
Today there are many movies made that don’t even have reviews. People don’t read reviews anymore. To me, that’s a terrifying thing because it’s a different way you’re selling movies now. I used to depend on critics even if it was for bad reviews — I depended on them for that in the beginning. That doesn’t work anymore because no critic is that un-hip to rise to the bait. In the old days with Pink Flamingos our entire ad campaign was negative reviews. You couldn’t do that today.
CB: And it seems like studios just aren’t willing to take risks anymore.
JW: It’s crazy. They open a movie that gets all bad reviews in 4,000 theaters and it makes billions of dollars. I wish I could do that, but I can’t. All I can hope for is moderate success in every little country in the world.
CB: So are these issues we’ve discussed the reason you’ve only made a couple of films in the last 10 or 12 years (Waters most recent film was 2004’s NC-17-rated A Dirty Shame)?
JW: Yeah. First of all, I write them, which always makes the process longer. From the moment I sit down to write a movie, if everything goes perfectly, it’s at least two years, and it never goes perfectly. Then you have to edit it and promote it. The whole thing is a three-year process.
CB: That’s why I’m always shocked when I look back and see that Godard made 15 films in 10 years in the ’60s.
JW: Yeah, and look at Fassbinder. We forget that they got money from the government to make movies. They did not have to deal with whether they made money. They lived in a country then where the government paid for movies. The only thing the government did when I was young was to stop them, not help them. It was the exact opposite.
CB: Tell me about Fruitcake.
JW: We start shooting it in November. It’s a terribly wonderful children’s Christmas picture. What more can I say? Just think The Little Rascals directed by me. It will be a very hard PG-13.
CB: It seems like you’re perpetually optimistic despite the obstacles of modern moviemaking. Where does that come from?
JW: Well, I don’t believe in Christianity and I’m not spiritual in a conventional sense, but I do believe in the basic goodness of people. That’s spiritual to me. I do believe in that. I don’t judge people. People will sit next to me on an airplane and turn to me and say in a hushed tone, “My entire family had sex with me under the Christmas tree.” They expect me to say, “Oh, OK,” and I usually do. I like talking to them.
CB: So you’re like a priest in a confessional?
JW: They think that I will understand anything, and I do! They picked the right person. If there was anyone on that plane they should have said that to, it’s me.
CB: OK, one final question: Do you think you’ll ever shave off your mustache?
JW: If I commit a crime and have to go underground, then I would.
CB: That’s the only way?
JW: Yeah. That’s why in my will I say that I have to have a closed coffin — because I know they’ll put it on wrong.
Light Up at Lite Brite
John Waters headlines the 2008 Lite Brite Indie Pop and Film Test but is by no means the only attraction at the Southgate House. Here’s the complete schedule:
Friday
9 p.m.: Live musical performances by Light Pollution, Film School (see Sound Advice preview here) and Extra Golden (see interview here).
Gizmos and Gadgetry in Light by Lightborne throughout the evening.
Saturday
8:30 p.m.: The National on Film featuring A Skin, A Night (the making of Boxer) and Takeaway Shows
10 p.m.: The Best of the Ottawa International Animation Festival
12 m.: Live musical performance by White Girls (accompanied visually by John Parker)
Friday-Saturday evenings
Porchlite Cinema: A Retrospective featuring five years of the Lite Brite Test
Pabst Blue Ribbon Screening Parlour featuring Animation Nation and the Lite Brite Film and Video Expo (vote for your favorite 2008 Lite Brite submissions)
Sunday
9 p.m.: “The Best of the Test” Pabst Blue Ribbon People’s Choice Awards
10 p.m.: John Waters performs his one-man show The Filthy World, followed by a Q&A session
Tickets
Friday: $10, Saturday: $5, Sunday: $25
Three-Day Pass: $30
Tickets and passes are available at LiteBriteTest.com
This article appears in Jul 23-29, 2008.