Pope of trash John Waters will return to direct­ing with an adap­ta­tion of his own novel

Any­thing is pos­si­ble, as we’ve learned from this year in movies; Todd Field, David Cro­nen­berg, David O. Rus­sell, and Sarah Pol­ley all emerged from long hia­tus­es with the new fea­tures many nev­er thought would come. And now, an even longer-dor­mant mas­ter of the form has announced that he will return to grace us with his genius once more, a real­i­ty that many had accept­ed as a beau­ti­ful dream nev­er to be realized.

This could refer only to the Pope of Trash him­self, John Waters (the lead inter­view of our recent Pink Flamin­gos issue), who gave Dead­line the seis­mic exclu­sive that he’s set­tling back into the director’s chair after eigh­teen long years. He’ll adapt his own nov­el Liar­mouth: A Feel-Bad Romance for his grand rein­tro­duc­tion, with the bul­letin includ­ing a state­ment that he hopes to spread the ​“dement­ed joy” that is his sig­na­ture to movie­go­ers around the world.

The recent­ly pub­lished book chron­i­cles the mis­ad­ven­tures of one Mar­sha Sprin­kle, an all-around flim-flam artist liv­ing life on the lam like so many of Waters’ past imper­iled anti­heroines. The includ­ed syn­op­sis paints a vivid pic­ture: ​“Dogs and chil­dren hate her. Her own fam­i­ly wants her dead. She’s smart, she’s des­per­ate, she’s dis­turbed, and she’s on the run with a big chip on her shoul­der. They call her Liarmouth―until one insane man makes her tell the truth.”

As he gears up for pro­duc­tion on his sur­prise come­back, Waters will enter a world much changed since 2004. An inter­net-besot­ted cul­ture has a more cor­dial rela­tion­ship to cult cin­e­ma and in par­tic­u­lar his oeu­vre, still con­sid­ered a wacko nov­el­ty act as he made his last film and more wide­ly under­stood as bad-taste vir­tu­os­i­ty today. A gen­er­a­tion of actors wor­ship­ping at his altar of gross-out gags would line up for a chance to be in one, though this rais­es the ques­tion of which name-brand stars wouldn’t scan as unnat­ur­al in a film by John Waters.

How­ev­er things shake out, this rep­re­sents a vic­to­ry for sick­os, per­verts, skeeze­balls, trench­coat mas­tur­ba­tors, and assort­ed degen­er­ates every­where. As goes the par­lance of our time, ​“YES… HA HA HA… YES!”