Waters sparkles in Filthy World
One-time king of trash settles into elder statesman role
Distressing as it may be for his film fans, John Waters does not sound even slightly bothered by the possibility that his movie career has hit a rough patch.
It’s hard to believe that Baltimore’s most beloved purveyor of trash cinema has not had a film in theatres since 2004’s A Dirty Shame.
But John Waters is far too busy being John Waters these days to worry about such things.
On the line from his Baltimore office, the filmmaker seems most excited today about a recent interview he gave to Rookie, a web magazine aimed at teenage girls in which he cemented his reputation as everyone’s favourite eccentric uncle. He talked fashion, film, rebellion and art in a lengthy one-on-one that reportedly caused an online stir among teen girls who were quite taken by his views.
“They were writing in and all the comments were like: ‘Adopt me!’ ” he says. “It was just sort of funny to me. I do like kids and I get along with kids and I try to tell them how to be creative juvenile delinquents because they’re not doing their jobs, fashion wise. They’re hacktivists. They’re shutting down American Express. But they’re not setting a new fashion style because they are in front of their computer. It’s important. There’s not a new thing to get on people’s parents’ nerves.”
The 65-year-old auteur was once vilified as a corrupter of youth for cheerfully profane early work such as 1972’s Pink Flamingos and 1974’s Female Trouble. Without losing much of his subversive edge, he began flirting with mainstream success with 1988’s Hairspray (since remade as a John Travolta-starring blockbuster and Broadway musical) and 1990s Cry-baby with Johnny Depp. And now, after eight years and counting of cinema silence, Waters seems to have settled nicely into an elder statesman role when it comes to advising others on transgressive behaviour.
“Today, parents bring their problem children to see my show,” Waters says. “It think it’s their last-ditch effort when they don’t know what to do. And I find that touching because when I was young, parents called the police when they saw my movies.”
The show Waters is referring to is This Filthy World, a one-man theatre piece that the filmmaker will bring to town Thursday as part of the Calgary Underground Film Festival.
It’s among many off-road excursions that have become primary careers for Waters while his next film project rests in a particularly stubborn pre-production limbo.
“Every part of my career is going better than it has ever been in my entire life except movies,” he says. “But I have an art career, I have a speaking career, I have a book career. I have all these other careers that are going great.
“I do have a film I’ve been trying to make for the last four or five years that still hasn’t happened. I still have meetings about it, I had a meeting about it last week. I’m not trying to do it. But I learned a long, long time ago that you can never have too many careers. To me, I tell stories. I just need a way to tell stories. This spoken word thing ended up being large portion of how I make my living.”
This Filthy World is a constantly changing show that finds Waters discussing everything from current affairs, to art, to his opinions on filmmaking, mental health, religion, crime and “even the Easter Bunny.”
“I have a gay version, I have a version I do for the art world, I have a version I’ve done in prison,” he says. “I never make people angry anymore because I’m never mean, I don’t think. If I make fun of something, I’m in awe of something. I secretly love it. Not even secretly, I might be amazed by it and not want to do it myself. But it interests me.”
And Waters is still interested in the world of cinema even if he watches from afar these days. It’s a golden era for a new generation of scrappy filmmakers who approach the medium with the same fierce DIY attitude that he did, he says.
“The movie business is still great; I’ve made 16 movies,” he says. “It’s not like I’ve never made one. I want to make another one. The issue is not that they don’t like the script. The issue is that it costs $4 or $5 million, which used to be a moderately priced independent movie and today is an unbelievably expensive one. What the studios are looking for today is what I was when I was 20, making a film in the field with a cellphone camera. I had an 8-mm camera but it was the same thing. It’s the best time ever for kids to make movies because the studios are looking for it. They weren’t when I was doing it. They wouldn’t have gotten near me.”
If I make fun of something, I’m in awe of something.
JOHN WATERS