John Waters: Interviews

This Filthy World

188 This Filthy World Steve Appleford / 2007 From Los Angeles CityBeat, October 11, 2007. Reprinted by permission of Steve Appleford. America has somehow come around to the way John Waters sees things. The director with the razor-thin mustache still lives in Baltimore, where he began his underground career in the 1960s making wild farces of fun and filth. In those early films, there were scenes of naked men on pogo sticks, of his transvestite superstar Divine eating a dead policeman’s leg, and that notorious dogshit-eating coda at the end of Pink Flamingos—a moment Waters realizes will certainly be mentioned prominently in his obituary. He was just getting started. More recently, Waters has been tolerated and even supported by mainstream audiences with a series of amusing, off-center films (Hairspray , Cry-Baby, Cecil B. Demented, etc.). Hairspray was even remade into a Tony Award–winning Broadway musical and, this year, a big-budget Hollywood film starring John Travolta in the matronly Divine role. A stage musical version of Cry-Baby opens in New York in March. Between films, writing, and the occasional acting job, Waters tours the country, performing his one-man spoken-word show This Filthy World, which has now been taped for DVD release. Waters will perform the latest version of his stage act in Los Angeles this Friday at the Regent Showcase Theater in L.A. “It’s still my sermon,” Waters says, “my obsessions and my sermon.” CityBeat: You’re a pretty rare film director to also have a live onstage presence. And it’s not as if you’re reading from 3x5 cards. It looks spontaneous . Waters: It isn’t. [laughs] When I was in high school I went to see Judy Garland. You thought she was having a nervous breakdown on stage. steve appleford / 2007 189 I went back the next night and it was exactly the same! Not even one stutter or sob, and I thought it was so inspiring. That was showmanship. That was acting. CityBeat: One thing you say in This Filthy World is: “When I was a kid, ‘art’ meant dirty, and that’s the way it should stay.” Waters: Look at it today. You look at the Sotheby’s catalogue—rich kids can jerk off to them now. They have Jeff Koons, sex things, they have close-ups. They have everything. Hard-core in the art world is the only place that’s not prosecuted. I curated a show called “Andy’s Porn” at the Warhol Museum [in Pittsburgh], where they let me look through his pornography and his pornographic movies, and you couldn’t tell the difference . It was amazing to see that if you called it “art” you could get away with it. Look at Larry Clark’s work—that early work looks like seventies porn. It’s all hairdos. In porn you can always tell—they always have extreme hairdos of whatever year it is. I don’t know that there is that much of a difference anymore. CityBeat: Were there others who influenced your own onstage act? Waters: When I was young, the film societies at colleges were really first-run art houses. That almost was the only place you could see movies , especially outside of New York or L.A. I used to tour them all the time with Divine—that’s how this started, by doing campus appearances that would sometimes almost be riots when Divine would come out. I remember them as being really exciting. I saw people, too. I saw Warhol lecture when I was young, I saw all the filmmakers. And I remember that once you go see them in college, it’s like you know those people. And afterwards you do the autographs and the whole bit, so in a way it’s like a campaign. Elton John told me recently, “You never stop touring.” Sometimes he’ll just go to Omaha for one night. He doesn’t need the money. He still does one-night shows all the time. He said, “If you stop doing it, it’s over.” I think he’s right. Keeping in touch with your audience is a way to redefine yourself to whatever the next generation is. CityBeat: Has your audience changed? Waters: Yeah, they’re still young, and I’m not. That’s the best change of all. Not rich, not sexy, but young. The people that started out with my films, they come too but not as much...