The Gospel Accord­ing to Saint John

Many have tried to cen­sor John Waters. Many have tried to silence John Waters. Many have tried to, if you will, ​“can­cel” John Waters. For every per­son who is aghast at his brand of art, there is anoth­er try­ing des­per­ate­ly to get him to join their cause (some more hate­ful than oth­ers). For every con­tro­ver­sial state­ment he makes, anoth­er exists that makes him all the more endear­ing. Half a cen­tu­ry into his career, it’s clear that John Waters is a man who will con­tin­ue to say and cre­ate what­ev­er he damn well pleas­es, with no bound­ary oth­er than the lim­i­ta­tions of his own imagination.

This cease­less dri­ve to enter­tain and share his opin­ions and expe­ri­ences – be it by direct­ing films, writ­ing mem­oirs, mak­ing cameos in small films, tour­ing all over the world, donat­ing his art col­lec­tion, rank­ing his favourite films of any giv­en year – is one of the things that has kept Waters as some­thing of a cul­tur­al cen­tre­piece even near­ly two decades since his last fea­ture. But what real­ly shines about the artist, hav­ing been clear since Pink Flamin­gos (which now marks its fifti­eth anniver­sary with a fresh Cri­te­ri­on restora­tion) and still obvi­ous in his first nov­el Liar­mouth, is how much love he has for the ever fucked-up human race. 

In cel­e­bra­tion of Pink Flamin­gos final­ly mak­ing it to the Unit­ed King­dom in its com­plete uncut form after decades of bat­tles with cen­sors, Lit­tle White Lies sat down to talk to John Waters about why exact­ly he still both­ers with try­ing to make us all laugh and scream as hard as he does. 

LWLies: With your new nov­el ​‘Liar­mouth’, a spo­ken word tour come­back, and the restora­tion of Pink Flamin­gos com­ing out into the world, this year feels like a big return to the world for you since the pan­dem­ic shut things down. How does it feel to be back?

Waters: Well, it feels weird because I actu­al­ly did a Christ­mas tour this year and the one before, and the new strain hap­pened right on the last two days. The whole thing could have been can­celled, but I did do 18 cities, so oth­er­wise I was back and writ­ing the book the whole time. I write every day any­way in my house, so it didn’t make it eas­i­er or hard­er for me; it was kind of always the same. 

Being back now, I’m out full-tilt real­ly. I did five spo­ken word shows, did eight cities on the book tour, and now I’m going to Europe. I’m on the road again and it feels so good. I am hap­py to be in touch with my audi­ence and actu­al­ly see them, but Covid has changed every­thing, so it’s still scary. I think audi­ences are think­ing too: this might be the last night I ever go out. When they come to read­ings, I joke, ​“this might be the last book you ever read” and they all freeze, but then laugh. That’s kind of what the book does to you too, and hope­ful­ly all my work is like that.

Absolute­ly. If Pink Flamin­gos was the last movie I saw in the­aters, I wouldn’t be too sad about it. 

And you’re going to see it legal­ly in the UK for the first time! 

Which is so shocking! 

The BBFC has this amaz­ing arti­cle about all the dif­fer­ent times where they could have put in dif­fer­ent scenes, but nev­er all of them, for dif­fer­ent rea­sons and soci­etal change. So this is the first time that they have put every cut scene back in, restored for your view­ing plea­sure. Final­ly the UK is mature enough to be able to see Pink Flamin­gos with­out being rushed to men­tal institutions. 

While watch­ing the new restora­tion with a friend, he not­ed, ​“It’d be wild to see this in a screen­ing with peo­ple in this day and age because you’d have to give every­one the world’s longest list of trig­ger warn­ings possible.” 

It’s true and the audi­ence that comes to see it would laugh even more because of that. Des­per­ate Liv­ing is the film I’ve done that will prob­a­bly be the last Cri­te­ri­on ever does if they do them all, which would be my ulti­mate rea­son to be on Earth, but when they showed that [ed: which fea­tures Edith Massey order­ing guards to gang rape Mary Vivian Pearce] in Aus­tralia, the whole audi­ence yelled, ​“Seize her and fuck her!” before it started. 

I think everybody’s in on the joke. I always made fun of the rules of the soci­ety I lived in that was sup­pos­ed­ly ​“out­sider”. I made fun of hip­pie rules in Mul­ti­ple Mani­acs. I made fun of gay and trans rules in Des­per­ate Liv­ing. And I make fun of hip­pies, drag, taste and every­thing in Pink Flamin­gos. It is my war film. I didn’t go to Viet­nam, but I had that. 

It is polit­i­cal­ly charged, even though pre­sent­ed jok­ing­ly. ​“What are your pol­i­tics?” ​“Kill every­one now.” 

But that’s not real pol­i­tics. Divine was liv­ing inno­cent­ly in her trail­er, writ­ing her mem­oirs, just like Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor was in Boom! Then she was chal­lenged by peo­ple that were jeal­ous, were sec­ond-rate to her, and were bit­ter. She became vio­lent because she was attacked, but Divine let every­body live on their own. She was nice, unless she was attacked and those peo­ple had to pay. 

I feel like that very much stands to today’s pol­i­tics of how everyone’s rights are con­stant­ly being attacked and what we, maybe, should do. 

I think the first thing we have to be able to do is laugh at our­selves. It gives you the free­dom to do so many things in humour that you don’t get to do if you’re lec­tur­ing some­body. I think if you’re lec­tur­ing, mak­ing peo­ple have no fun and feel bad, they go to the oth­er side. It works sort of in reverse. 

All your films have this sen­si­bil­i­ty and, now with four releas­es by Cri­te­ri­on, they’re more acces­si­ble than ever. What’s the restora­tion process like for you? It’s wild how clean every­thing looks with­out ever sac­ri­fic­ing its orig­i­nal quality.

That’s right – but I didn’t have those scratch­es there on pur­pose. I would have tak­en them out then if I could have. What is the point of restor­ing a movie? Yes, you have to keep the orig­i­nal feel­ing of the movie, which I think they have, but there’s no way to clean up the script. Let’s make it look as good as we can, so more peo­ple can see it. 

It still has the feel­ing of the movie; it was so quick­ly shot on such cheap equip­ment and at a time when I didn’t know what I was doing yet. That’s still there. You can’t sud­den­ly make it look like a movie that everybody’s going to walk out of say­ing, ​“Boy, the cin­e­matog­ra­phy was good.” I always think that’s the first thing peo­ple say if the movie is bad though. 

Would you say it was sort of hap­haz­ard­ly put together? 

It’s not hap­haz­ard. The film was com­plete­ly writ­ten and rehearsed, actors had to mem­o­rise pages of dia­logue for each take, and it was shot as best I could. To me, Pink Flamin­gos looks bril­liant tech­ni­cal­ly com­pared to Mul­ti­ple Mani­acs. It was the first colour movie I ever made, it was shot on mag­net­ic sound, and we were learn­ing as we went along. There wasn’t a big crew or any­thing, I just rent­ed the equip­ment from this guy that ille­gal­ly got it from a tele­vi­sion station. 

There’s some­thing real­ly admirable about how much of it pops because of its scrap­py nature. Even some­thing as sim­ple as you hold­ing the cam­era on a trail­er as it burns down.

You could look at it two ways: it’s either bad edit­ing – yes, it’s too long – or pyro­ma­nia. We went through all that trou­ble, so I want­ed you to see every frame of it. At the same time, you start laugh­ing because I’m clear­ly wait­ing for the trail­er to fall over, and I should have cut out some mid­dle shots, but then the con­ti­nu­ity would have been bad.

There’s even a moment where Mink’s coat almost catch­es on fire.

She almost catch­es on fire, yes. My family’s busi­ness was fire pro­tec­tion equip­ment, and the only safe­ty we had there was my poor broth­er – who lat­er took over my father’s com­pa­ny and his daugh­ter runs it now – with one fire extin­guish­er in the mid­dle of the woods with thou­sands of dead trees and leaves every­where. The whole thing could have been worse than Bam­bi if we had run in the wrong direction. 

Noth­ing hap­pened, but we didn’t warn the neigh­bours or any­thing, so they pan­icked. Hav­ing heard that some hip­pies were up in the woods mak­ing a movie, they left us alone. When the fire hap­pened, we just said sor­ry and the fire engines nev­er came or any­thing, but you could see it was a big fire. 

It gen­uine­ly looks very dan­ger­ous on screen, espe­cial­ly because of the doc­u­men­tary-like qual­i­ty the whole thing has.

Yeah, it does look like a doc­u­men­tary and that’s why peo­ple thought it was real. Peo­ple lat­er used to say, ​“Do you still live in the trail­er?” Didn’t they see it burn? They thought it was real that Divine lived in that trail­er and ate dog shit. Yes, it was twen­ty hour shoot­ing days, but no, none of it was real. 

So what led to its birth originally? 

What led to its birth was after hav­ing Divine eat­ing a cow’s heart in Mul­ti­ple Mani­acs, that was train­ing wheels to eat­ing shit. What led to it was I had just been to the Man­son tri­al, and they actu­al­ly were the filth­i­est peo­ple alive. It was over­ly the­atri­cal and crazy and scared peo­ple. Then Deep Throat had become ille­gal, so there was noth­ing left that you couldn’t do. So we tried to say: well, what can you do that will make peo­ple crazy that isn’t even ille­gal yet? 

That ties into some­thing I noticed revis­it­ing all of your work. There’s a cer­tain sense of esca­la­tion and chal­lenge to every­thing: how far can I go?

Yeah, but it was all about how far Divine could go. How far you go is how all com­e­dy, even today, is made, and there’s very much an edge that you have to bal­ance on. That made my whole career. But I think, since I always make fun of things I real­ly like, that’s why I’ve last­ed this long, even if you hate me. 

It even shows up in ​‘Liar­mouth’ a lot, which I tore through. It’s like read­ing an end­less roller coast­er of absur­di­ty, with­out ever los­ing the ele­ment of surprise. 

I hope that’s because I’m try­ing to sur­prise myself. In writ­ing, I’m the first audi­ence I have. I’m try­ing to make myself laugh and sur­prise myself. If I can sur­prise me, then the audi­ence that comes along for the ride – that orders a book in advance, doesn’t wait to see if it’s well received, and believes in it – they’re the ones I want to make laugh first. It’s always a pleas­ant sur­prise when that laugh­ter trick­les over and I can go fur­ther and further.

Even though it’s crazy, I tried to write it like it’s very seri­ous, like every­thing can pos­si­bly hap­pen. The char­ac­ters believe in their insane mis­sions, no mat­ter what they are. I nev­er tried to wink at you. When you buy the book, you already knew I winked by call­ing it a ​“feel-bad romance”, so I’m just ask­ing you to laugh and keep turn­ing those pages. 

All of your work has this bal­ance of mak­ing char­ac­ters who are sort of insane but also very real and relat­able peo­ple in many years. 

It’s all pos­si­ble. There def­i­nite­ly are peo­ple that are obsessed with tram­polin­ing and I believe that dog facelifts are not that far away in our future. It could all hap­pen, but some­times it’s pushed to one lev­el too much. 

It’s always been there for you too. Jump­ing between filth, from chick­en fuck­ing and forced impreg­na­tion to mur­der and singing ass­holes, to sweet­ness, like Edie and the Egg Man, which is tru­ly romantic. 

It is roman­tic and, in the new ver­sion, there’s a whole scene that got cut where the Egg Man asks for Edie’s hand in mar­riage to Divine and Cot­ton. He talks about why he’s gonna love her, keep her safe and always bring her eggs. I like my char­ac­ters and I want them to be hap­py. Even the vil­lains, who­ev­er they are, and I don’t usu­al­ly think any­body real­ly is the vil­lain. Well, in Pink Flamin­gos the Mar­bles are def­i­nite­ly the villain. 

You say you love your char­ac­ters and I think it shows. Do you always have a cer­tain lev­el of empa­thy for them?

I wouldn’t ask you to spend time with some­body I hat­ed. Soci­ety might hate Masha Sprin­kle [the pro­tag­o­nist of ​‘Liar­mouth’], and you might hate her if you knew her or were one of her vic­tims, but at the same time, you’re root­ing for her and how ter­ri­ble she is. And she does actu­al­ly have a rea­son to be that ter­ri­ble when she final­ly con­fess­es her sex­u­al back­ground. It’s a ridicu­lous and ludi­crous mem­o­ry, but there is a rea­son why she acts like that.

It’s the whole con­cept of ​“trau­ma in art” tak­en to the most ridicu­lous lev­el. She just got a rimjob.

On her wed­ding. She thought that’s what romance was.

Which is so absurd and hilar­i­ous to laugh at.

And you’re laugh­ing with me who is telling the story. 

Laugh­ing with each oth­er seems key to your work and I’d love to know about sort of exist­ing with all the Dream­land actors and hav­ing this weird lit­tle fam­i­ly that you made movies with. 

They were just my friends. It was like a reper­to­ry group in a the­atre. So Pink Flamin­gos was just the next movie we were going to make. Peo­ple say ​“it only cost $10,000”, and actu­al­ly it cost $12,000, but that was a for­tune to us. That was a huge bud­get com­pared to Mul­ti­ple Mani­acs’ $5,000. It felt like we were work­ing in the big time and had rehearsals for weeks before­hand. Like Mink [Stole] says, ​“We went for it. That’s what all peo­ple do. You go for it.” You group togeth­er and you’re all run­ning. Even Dan­ny [Mills], who played Crack­er, was almost the real char­ac­ter. He said, ​“Should I bleach my hair?” and I told him no, y’know? We were all into it. It wasn’t like a polit­i­cal call to action to go make this movie to con­front the world. It was just us joy­ous­ly mak­ing the next movie. 

There’s some­thing kind of rad­i­cal about just being queer and mak­ing art.

Nobody was queer except me, Divine, and David. Mink wasn’t, Mary Vivian Pierce wasn’t, and Dan­ny def­i­nite­ly was not. When we had the whole scene where Divine blew him, they kept want­i­ng to laugh because they were friends and Dan­ny wasn’t one bit gay. 

It’s like this per­fect bundling togeth­er of dif­fer­ent iden­ti­ties in a famil­ial sense. 

Dan­ny was arrest­ed for the world’s largest LSD ring with his girl­friend lat­er and they asked me to be a char­ac­ter wit­ness. I said, ​“If I’m your char­ac­ter wit­ness, you’re going to jail.” I want­ed him to be Gater in Female Trou­ble and he wouldn’t because he was a draft dodger and was scared the atten­tion would get him arrest­ed. He was just in love with Mary Vivian Pierce when we made the movie. I think it was about all of us hang­ing around together. 

That’s what our life was like. We didn’t always hang around with all gay peo­ple, all straight, but we hung around with every kind of per­son that didn’t fit in. We cre­at­ed our own minor­i­ty. Still, to this day, I nev­er under­stand things like bear week because it’s so bizarre. Why does every­body just want to have friends or have sex with peo­ple that look exact­ly like them? Twinks? There are hun­dreds of them. It’s like a boy band con­ven­tion. I guess they all just like mir­ror images, which I nev­er did or else I would be mar­ried to Steve Buscemi. 

I would watch that queer rom­com though. 

Steve is my friend and we joke about it all the time. He is sick of it and told me peo­ple think he’s Don Knotts. And I think Don Knotts looks like Mick Jag­ger, who I think looks great. 

So how does it feel to know that the things you cre­at­ed have had such longevi­ty and impact in so many dif­fer­ent ways? 

Well, it’s incred­i­bly flat­ter­ing and grat­i­fy­ing and I’m real­ly proud of it. I thank audi­ences every time I’m in a space for allow­ing me to get away with this; allow­ing me to put out anoth­er book that’s total­ly crazy, to put out movies, and to keep hav­ing them come back. With­out their sup­port, it would have nev­er hap­pened, because in the begin­ning, no crit­ics liked them, so it was real­ly the audi­ence that made them be remem­bered. And now there’s new audi­ences! Half of them weren’t even born when I made Pink Flamin­gos. 

Includ­ing me. I think my first encounter with you was prob­a­bly The Simp­sons’ ​“Homer’s Pho­bia”, which I still cher­ish deeply to this day. I can’t help but think about how many only dis­cov­ered you through Drag Race or the Hair­spray musical. 

There are some who only know me from Seed of Chucky or the Alvin and the Chip­munks movie or an Yves Saint Lau­rent ad. I mean, on this book tour, they’re younger than they’ve ever been and I think that is the ulti­mate com­pli­ment. If you can get new young peo­ple that don’t say, ​“Oh, this is old hat. I’ve seen this before,” to me, that is amaz­ing and real­ly grat­i­fy­ing. My audi­ence is old and dying, you know, so you have to replace them and get new ones. 

That’s a tes­ta­ment to how fresh you keep everything. 

You’re right. I just wake up every day and try to be fresh­ly nuts.