He’s been called America’s maven of bad taste, but for cultural icon John Waters, it’s just a question of being true to himself
ARNOLD WAYNE JONES | Life+Style Editor
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THIS FILTHY WORLD
The Kessler, 1230 W. Davis St. May 29. Doors at 7 p.m. $40.
WordSpaceDallas.com.
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John Waters was gay when gay wasn’t cool — hell, it wasn’t even legal.
He was an underground filmmaker when countless hippies and counterculture types were experimenting with art forms, sexuality and the limits of popular culture. But even in that group, Waters stood out.
“I never fit in,” he says. “I went to my first gay bar in Washington, D.C., called the Chicken Hut. I walked through the door, looking around and thought, I may be queer, but I’m not this. I was looking for Bohemian. I’m against separatism; I love being in a bar that’s mixed and you can’t tell who’s what.”
Seeing things differently is a large part of the contest of This Filthy World, the one-man spoken-word show he brings to the Kessler later this month, though it’s not the first time here for the out-and-proud Baltimore native.
“I remember coming [to the USA Film Festival] a lot — I met Dorothy Malone there. She was one of my favorite actresses. I hope she’s alive and kicking in Dallas,” he says. (She is.)
He may talk about Dorothy Malone at his upcoming chat, but probably he’ll stick to his perversely enlightened ideas about society.
“I talk a lot about [things such as] what is the politically correct word for gay men who can marry but choose not to?” he says. “It has been amazing how quickly [marriage rights have spread]. I campaigned for it with Gov. O’Malley in Maryland … and then I was shocked that it passed! Personally, though, I think we have enough gay people. I’m for coming in — you should have to audition in front of a panel of experienced perverts, and only then do you get your card.”
SMOKE ON THE WATERS | Filmmaker-cum-lecturer John Waters has had a varied career with many occupations, which he’ll talk about at the Kessler in Oak Cliff on May 29.
That aesthetic defined not only Waters — in early movies like Female Trouble, Mondo Trasho and Pink Flamingos, and later hits like Hairspray, Cry-Baby and Serial Mom — but an entire genre of kitsch: The full-frontal trash-wallow comedy. Who else would have a drag queen eat dog poop on screen and let the fat girl get the hot guy and become a TV star?
Of course, for decades the genre was one unto Waters alone. No one was doing what he did, which included notorious stunt casting — he made more-or-less-mainstream movie stars out of Patty Hearst, Pia Zadora and Traci Lords.
“I wasn’t rediscovering them — I never forgot them!” he says. “I never hire someone because I think they are so bad; I do because they are so great. I got Pia Zadora great reviews in Hairspray. On Cecil B. Demented we had Adrian Grenier, Michael Shannon and Maggie Gyllehaal before they were famous. I’m really proud that we’ve used folks either going up or coming down.”
He’s especially proud of the “image rehab” he did on Johnny Depp for Cry-Baby.
“People forget — Johnny was like Beiber at the height of his teen idolness, so we made fun of it and it went away. Who wants to be a famous victim? No one. Once you satirize, it goes away, but you have to have a sense of humor about it.”
That was also the last movie he stunt-cast.
“Everyone came to expected it,“so I stopped doing it,” Waters sniffs. “Now everyone does it — badly.”
There is also the humor that goes into awkward places. People called it bad taste; he has another name for it now.
“Bad taste became American taste!” he exclaims, embracing his reputation as the maven of muck. “They called it sick humor. What I did as a kid is what Hollywood does — I never changed, but the rest of the word did. So whatever anybody does, it’s not shocking to me. I went to court to show pubic hair; [now] someone can shoot a load in Cameron Diaz’s hair. I haven’t done everything that’s in my movies. Johnny Knoxville [might] have. I like to say, with my movies, I paid my rent … but he buys houses. Which I think is great.”
Clearly, Waters sees society as having caught up with him, rather than the other way around. Even though it’s not something he ever sought out. He was fine being on the fringe, since he seemed to have a place there.
“I was on the cover [of a gay magazine early in my career] not because I was brave, but because no one else would put me on their cover!” he says.
And then came Hairspray.
“Hairspray is really the only subversive thing I ever did — it has the same values that Pink Flamingos teaches. All my movies have the same message: Exaggerate your uniqueness! Somehow that one snuck in [to the mainstream]. When I wrote it, I never thought I’d make money or it would cross over. Talk about cross-over! Everyone gets it!”
Still, Waters has — proudly — never fit into a mold. Call him a filmmaker? He hasn’t released a new feature in 10 years, though he has one in the works (a children’s film, if you can believe it). And he’s in no rush to prove anything.
“I might not ever make another film. I think of myself as a writer because every single part of my career I write — my movies, my books, my narratives. When I was 12 years old, I was a puppeteer and wrote the puppet shows. I’m an art critic sometimes. I have many careers that are all equally interesting to me,” Waters says.
And equally interesting to his remarkably diverse audience, which runs the gamut in terms of age, sexual orientation and social strata.
“My audience gets younger and younger,” he says. “That’s the one thing you can never buy: young fans. The average age at my spoken word events is 25. Eventually I’ll be to the point where some of them weren’t even born when I made my last film.” Many of them know Waters not from his unrated movies, but from voiceover for Disney shows, appearing in a Chucky film, from his show on Court TV or his role on an especially good episode of The Simpsons. (“Kids do come up to me and remember me from that,” he says, insisting that his last residual check for it was made out to one cent.)
“The only thing you don’t dare ever ask me is if I have a hobby. Them’s fightin’ words!” he laughs. Only not really. But how, then, does he explain his documented interest in photographing (originally with a Polaroid, now with a Fuji camera) every single person who has stepped into his living space for the last 25 years?
“That’s not my hobby — that’s my diary,” Water says. “No one can see it until I am dead. Every person who has ever been in any place I’ve ever lived is there. I take a pic from the governor to Johnny Depp to the phone man to a trick. And they all kind of become equal. It’s very personal if you come into my house. It is varied. And it’s [actually pretty] depressing — many are dead, or they are sad or sick or broke up.”
So, accepting that he’s given up stunt-casting, I still have to ask: Is there’s someone in pop culture whose reputation he would love to rehabilitate, given the right role in a movie?
“I don’t know,” Waters hems. “… Casey Anthony?”
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition May 16, 2014.
