John Waters: Interviews

Artist in Dialogue

5 Artist in Dialogue John G. Ives / 1992 From the book American Originals: John Waters by John G. Ives (New York: Thunder ’s Mouth Press, 1992), 23–59. Reprinted by permission of John G. Ives. John Ives: How did you feel when you first saw your own footage? Was it what you had envisioned? John Waters: No. I thought it was going to be black, no image on it. (Laughs.) Ives: So it was a relief . . . Waters: . . . that it turned out at all, that you could see anything. The scene in Hag in a Black Leather Jacket where it’s double-exposed? That was accidental. I put the same roll of film back in. But people thought it was arty. (Laughs.) I don’t even know if you could do that today. When I saw the footage, I thought, “What’s this? They gave me somebody else’s roll of film.” We would shoot whole days on Pink Flamingos and it wouldn’t turn out, because I didn’t know what I was doing. The film jammed and came back with big scratches down the middle of it. I didn’t have an editing machine, so I would edit it and then put it back through the projector to look at the cut. Can you imagine? With no work print. The original. Pink Flamingos had no work print. To this day I don’t know how that’s possible. I put it through hundreds of times. Ives: What about now? Waters: I go to dailies every day. [Dailies are screenings of the visual and audio workprints of each day’s shooting, usually held the next day, so the director and others can mark their progress.—JI] They’re torturous. They never look as good as you want. But making a film is always like that to me; the day you think up the idea is the best. Making that real is always downhill. 6 john waters: inter views It’s never as fresh as the day you thought it up. I think it’s probably like that for everybody, but you’re not supposed to say that. Ives: Can you picture ever doing anything besides filmmaking? Waters: Yeah. Writing books. But I certainly don’t want a career change. I have back-up things, but the only time I think of them is when I can’t make a movie, for some reason. Then I think about writing—journalism or books. But if you mean suddenly saying, “Oh, I’d love to give all this up,” no. I don’t ever have that fantasy. What would I do? Maybe open a bookstore when I’m real old—a really good one where you didn’t have to make money or anything. You’d just have the best books, and you could be mean to customers. Ives: I’d open a movie theater again. Go back to Provincetown, dust off the doors. But that was a tough business. You had to convince people who came down from Montreal in pedal-pushers to look at scenic New England to come in and see Now, Voyager or Pink Flamingos . . . Waters: . . . to go into a movie theater when they might be missing valuable drinking time. I used to hand out flyers when I rented the Art Theater [in Provincetown, to show the films] and when we showed them [in Baltimore] in churches. The Provincetown Bookshop would give me the whole window and I’d turn it into a billboard. And we would go out in costume and hand out all the flyers for two weeks. When it was in the Art Theater, I had to guarantee my percentage of every seat. If nobody came, I’d owe thousands of dollars. Ives: Did you make it? Waters: Oh, it was sold out every time. He [the owner] was sort of astonished . The cast and I really went out and worked to sell it. For Eat Your Makeup—that was shown in the church—we gave out candy lipstick. And we did all sorts of promotion. You have to do that. We used to give away door prizes, like to the worst restaurant in town. You’d get a dinner for two at The Doggie Diner. We did that in San Francisco. Ives: Isn’t that how you met Cookie [Mueller]? Waters: Yes. That was the Little Tavern in Baltimore. Ives: Tell me about when you first went to New York. Waters: Before NYU, I would...