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192 Love and Frogs: Dating John Waters Michael Franco / 2007 Originally published by PopMatters.com, February 14, 2007. Reprinted by permission of PopMatters.com. Preparing to interview John Waters is an intimidating task. So many questions race through the mind: Will he be deliberately obscure? Will he bait me with his humor, only to laugh when I miss a reference? Will he reek of pretension, as so many film aficionados do? Will he, in other words, be a difficult interview? It’s only natural to expect this from a man often referred to as the Pope of Trash, a man whose tastes are so far removed from what’s deemed “normal.” Turns out, John Waters is—quite unbelievably—a very normal person . No, not normal in a jeans and t-shirt and minivan way, but normal in a down-to-earth, laid-back way. There are no airs about him, no inflated sense of self-importance. He doesn’t even seem weird or odd or bizarre, which is how you envision the man responsible for exploring endless taboo topics—or what he likes to call “extreme tastes.” To the contrary, he seems like any other person who is truly passionate about a topic: engaging, exciting . . . excited. The slightest mention of something he finds intriguing is enough to prompt explosions of stories, witticisms, and innuendo. He converses like you wish you did. At the present, Waters has several projects in the works. His film Hairspray was turned into a Broadway musical, and now the show, in turn, is being made back into a movie starring John Travolta. Waters has also finished shooting his parts for a new television series on, of all stations, Court TV. Titled Til Death Do Us Part, the show chronicles real-life tales of marriages that end in murder. Waters serves as both a character and narrator, cleverly named the Groom Reaper. Not only does Mr. Reaper appear in the reenactments of the marriages, he also narrates the tragic fall from eternal love to murder. michael franco / 2007 193 On this particular day, however, Waters is not discussing film or television . Instead, he’s discussing another project, this one involving music . In 2005, Waters decided it would be interesting to compile yuletide tunes for an album titled A John Waters Christmas. Featuring such tracks as “Santa Claus Is a Black Man” and the innocently creepy “Happy Birthday Jesus,” the album was a look into the fascinating mind of one of pop culture’s most infamous figures. And if that isn’t disturbing enough, Waters decided to take the idea a step further by compiling a collection of . . . hold on . . . love songs; released in time for Valentine’s Day, it’s titled A Date With John Waters. What becomes most apparent during our conversation is that Waters truly loves what he does. He doesn’t try to seem off-kilter or exploit his topics for attention; no, he’s truly fascinated by outsider culture. And, yes, while the idea of a John Waters love album seems strange, it’s a damn fine compilation. Moreover, as Waters himself explains, it’s designed with the goal of getting laid in mind. I told you he’s a very normal person. Franco: This is your second holiday compilation, the first being A John Waters Christmas. How did you come up with the idea of compiling holiday albums? Waters: Well, you know, actually, this album is coming out for Valentine ’s Day because it’s a great tie-in, but you can have a date with John Waters any week of the year. I’m open, right? So it’s really not like a Christmas album that really could only be on the shelves at Christmas. You know, a date with John Waters could happen any time of year; I just thought that Valentine’s Day is a really good time to tie it in with. I mean, later I want to do a Mother’s Day album, President’s Day. You know, I want to do the reverse of Hallmark greeting cards for every single holiday. I’m the anti-Hallmark here. Franco: The Fourth of July has inspired some terrifically bad songs. Waters: The Fourth of July, yes! [laughs] But I don’t have bad songs. I basically think that I find songs that are incredibly original and maybe alarming, but I don’t think any of them are bad. I think they’re so good, they’re great—they...

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