THINGS THAT SHOULD BE ILLEGAL

John Waters was the guest of honor at the BUT Festival in Breda, The Netherlands in September 2009, where some of his classic movies, like PINK FLAMINGO’S, DESPERATE LIVING, FEMALE TROUBLE and POLYESTER, were shown with him in attendance. At the festival, Waters was interviewed by Barend de Voogd. It’s a great talk, with Waters switching from giving an earnest answer to irony and back so fast you don’t even notice it. ‘It’s true, I deal in irony, the same way a drug dealer deals in drugs. I’ve done that my whole life. But it is wrong.’

You’re here as a guest of the B-Movie, Underground and Trash Festival. You must feel right at home.

Yes, this is certainly where I started. You don’t even hear that term anymore: underground movie. It’s all indie or independent now. But there still exists an underground in terms of film. The last film I did was probably an underground Hollywood movie. Two things at once. But this is great, a whole festival dedicated to these films. That’s why I wanted to come, to see what the kids are doing these days. It’s the same spirit.

The only difference is that now people are celebrating these kinds of films. When I started out, the first festival I entered, they stopped my movie halfway through. They said it was pernicious, a word I didn’t know, but which is a pretty good word. It means: evil in a really serious way. They called the tax people, the IRS, because I was showing the film without paying taxes in a church. That’s the kind of reception I got when I first entered a festival. So, things have changed very much in forty years. It’s a lot better now.

You were very much influenced by underground filmmakers like Kenneth Anger when you started out, right?

Yes, Anger and the Kuchar Brothers and Andy Warhol.

What attracted you in their movies?

Their lurid sensibility. Their non-traditional casting. And the obsession of it. Kenneth Anger, certainly, was breaking obscenity laws. He was also the first person ever to use pop music ironically. Now, every film has that. I did it also, but Kenneth did it first. Andy Warhol was the first person to have gay people and drugs in his movies. When I say gay people, I mean hip gay people. Scary gay people on amphetamines. And finally, the Kuchar Brothers celebrated the thrift shop aesthetic of lurid Douglas Sirk imitations but done on no money, in their mother’s apartment. Those three were my main influences.

I heard you talk about how people tend to forget that underground films also had a political dimension to them.

Well, to break obscenity laws and censorship laws, that was in itself political. What could and could not be seen, was changed by film makers and artists. They changed the laws. I mean, when I was young, Lenny Bruce went to jail for saying the word fuck. Today, you can say it on television. There’s even a movie called FUCK. So, a lot has happened in a short time. That’s because the brave people before me and after me made censorship laws change. There’s censorship now too, of course, it’s called the Motion Picture Association of America, which rates movies. They say there’s nothing wrong with an NC-17 rating. Well, there wouldn’t be, if movie theaters would play them! But they won’t. Newspapers won’t take ads for them. It’s a worse kind of censorship in a way.

The scariest censors are the liberal censors, the smart censors. You see, usually censors are dumb and easy, because they’re so stupid. In Maryland, where I started, we had a censor board and the woman on it would say to me: Don’t tell me about sex, I was married to an Italian. [Laughs] But the smart liberal ones are difficult, because now you have to debate for real.

Were your first movies very much hurt by censorship?

Well, no. Because they never got a rating. They didn’t play in normal theaters. At that time, being controversial helped. In the underground cinema movement of the sixties you had to be controversial, because no one would come to see your film otherwise.

Were you deliberately trying to shock?

I was deliberately trying to surprise. And I was trying to make people laugh at the fact that they could be shocked by anything. In 1972, when PINK PLAMINGOS came out – it was made in the fall of 1971 – DEEP THROAT had become legal. That was a huge thing. It sort of ended underground movies, because you could show anything. So, I was asking myself: What can’t I do? What is illegal still? What would shock hippies? And the stuff I came up with… Who would do that today? Oh, I’ll tell you: Johnny Knoxville would do it today. It’s similar to what they do. It’s about anarchy. So, yes, I was trying to shock people, but with humor and wit. Because it’s easy to be shocking. It’s hard to get people to laugh at their own ability to be shocked. That’s what I was going for.

You called Divine a drag terrorist.

Because he was a drag terrorist. People were really afraid of Divine. I wrote a speech for him once, which he did at [the first] Miss DeMeanor [Beauty Pageant] at the Peoples Temple in San Francisco, which is a real church, and he was going: I follow hippies to their house and I kill their pets. I eat white children. They were all loving it! Drag queens hated him though, because they knew he was making fun of them. They would run from him.

We had an act at colleges, where I would show my movies. First I would come on stage, dressed as a hippie pimp, and I would talk about nudist camp movies, you know, movies that nobody ever praises. Then I would say: I would like to introduce the world’s most beautiful woman in the world. And Divine would come out, dressed in drag, and rip a telephone book in half, like a muscle man would do, then he would throw dead fish in the audience. And I always brought along a stolen police uniform and in every city I would find the cutest hippie I could find and put him in a short wig. And he would come on stage as the police officer and pretend to arrest us. Divine would strangle him to death. Then everybody applauded and the movie would start. That’s how we traveled.

There’s supposedly a new documentary coming up on Divine.

Yes, there is one. They just started shooting it. There was a good one that E! Network did that was two hours long, but they can’t show it anymore because of a rights issue. I think it’s going to be good. Everyone is cooperating.

Do you think his legacy as an actor has been done justice to?

Yes, he is way more famous now than when he was alive. When the new HAIRSPRAY came out, all the reviewers praised the brilliance of his role in the original. I wish he was alive to see that. But he did get good reviews for HAIRSPRAY when it came out. He died a week after, but at least he got to read them.

It still shocks me that he’s dead. He would be my age now. That’s the thing when you have friends who die, you continue to think of them at the age they died. He would be 63 now, but I don’t think of him that way.  

The persona of Divine, did you create it together?

I created it in the beginning, but certainly with him. He was not a real transvestite. He didn’t walk around in drag. Before we made movies I had seen him in drag maybe three or four times. He would dress up as Elizabeth Taylor and pick up a girl on a date that way. What did she think? What did her parents think? Mother, I’d like you to meet my date. Twenty five years later, Divine and I are doing a talk show, and he whispers to me: Oh my God, that girl is in the audience! She came up to him afterwards and they became friends again. I saw her at the funeral. She’s the Widow Divine in a way. She had actually made pictures that night he picked her up at her parents’ house dressed like Elizabeth Taylor.

Aside from underground movies, the horror genre was also an influence on your work, right?

Yes, but bad horror. Not the Hammer movies. Stuff like William Castle or Herschell Gordon Lewis.

You acted in one of his later films, right?

Yes, I was the child molesting priest in BLOOD FEAST 2. I had actually met him before, because I interviewed him for my book Shock Value which I wrote in 1980. I think I sort of started that whole Herschell revival. He’s in his seventies now, but he looks great. He’s still very active, very successful too. He teaches marketing on internet. He’s got these books out on the subject. He has this whole other life. But he’s remaking another one of his movies right now, I believe it’s THE GORE GORE GIRLS. [This remake never came to pass – Ed.]

Did you ever meet William Castle?

No, but I wrote about him, and I met his widow and his daughter, whom I’m still friends with. Then I wrote the introduction to his book when they re-released it. I’ve done William Castle festivals all over. He was dead by the time this all happened.

Was it the showmanship that influenced you especially?

Oh yeah. The smell-thing. All his gimmicks and his advertising I loved.

You’re also doing a lot of these small roles, like in SEED OF CHUCKY.

Yes, I was in that and I was also going to be in a FINAL DESTINATION movie. I love these movies. I was going to play a theater owner whose theater blows up. But sadly the schedule didn’t work out for me, because I was on tour. When I saw the movie, I was mad that someone else had taken that role. I also want to be in the next ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS movie.  

As what?

Anything! I’m sexually attracted to Alvin. I went to see the movie alone on Christmas day, and it was all little children with their parents and one man alone, me. All the mothers were saying to their kids: no, no, no, let’s sit over here. They all thought I was some sort of pervert. [Laughs] But to see that movie with all these kids, and to hear them scream, I almost levitated. It was a religious experience.

Coming back to horror films, I do believe you still follow the genre closely.

It got to a point, after SCREAM, that you couldn’t make fun of them anymore. Then they started with that whole torture porn thing, which is a genre I totally respect but is not my favorite. I like some of the directors that do them. They’re talented people. So, now I’m curious to see what the next thing will be. I liked the new FRIDAY THE 13TH because they got some really sexy teenagers in it. That is the most important thing. You just gotta get cute kids in it.

The only thing they should change is, it’s still the teenagers that have sex that get killed first. I say: kill the ones that don’t have sex! That’s how I would do it.

There’s a slasher movie that does exactly that, it’s called CHERRY FALLS.

See? It’s very hard to parody the genre anymore. It’s been parodied once, twice and then went back to real.

Let’s talk about Baltimore, your city and an important element in your work. What’s so special about it?

Baltimore is a city where everyone thinks they’re normal, but they’re all completely crazy. And no one understands why you’d want to leave. If you’re going to live in New York, no matter where you live, people would understand that. In Baltimore they’d ask: Why?

I’ve always liked it. It’s a pretty edgy place, believe me. It’s got a lot of problems. But we’ve also got a great sense of humor there. It’s outside the curtain of irony, which starts in Philadelphia and surrounds New York. There’s no real bikers in New York, only faux bikers. If you move to New York, just by moving there, it proves you have irony. But in Maryland there are real bikers, real hillbillies. It’s not a fashion statement. They’re not dressing like that one night of the week in a night club.

But isn’t irony also your thing?

It is. It is. But irony is also elitism. If you’re so poor that you don’t have food, can there be irony? Are some things so bad they’re good, even if you’re hungry? Is there irony in Albania? I’m just saying it’s elitism, really. You have to have some sort of position to be able to say: This is so bad it’s good. It’s true: I deal in irony, the same way a drug dealer deals in drugs. I’ve done that my whole life. But it is wrong.

You’ve written some very memorable dialogue and memorable lines, like Who wants to die for art? How do you come up with them?

Well, that’s my job. Everything I do is about the writing. How do I came up with this one? I was probably influenced by all the snuff movies I saw. No, just kidding. I’ve never seen a real snuff movie. I don’t even believe there is such a thing. The way I work is: every morning I think of some fucked up things and in the afternoon I sell them. That’s what I do.

Your last movie was from 2004, have you been working on a new one?

Yes, of course. I’ve been trying to get the next one off the ground. I got a development deal, I turned in a script they liked and then the disaster of this economy happened. Now, you’ve got basically two types of movies: the ones that cost eight hundred thousand dollars to make and the ones that cost eight hundred million. There are almost no independent movies being made with modest budgets of say, five million. Because they all depended on foreign sales, and that’s not being done anymore.

One title I saw floating around was a movie called FRUITCAKE.

That’s the only one, really. Did you see any other titles?

Well, HAIRSPRAY 2.

Oh, that! Yes, I did do the treatment. It was a very detailed treatment. It contained every single thing that would happen in the movie. I turned it in and they said they liked it. But I don’t know, because it was really crazy. The original HAIRSPRAY has been told three times already, the sequel has to be different. It has to be the sixties: drugs and sex and revolution. That’s all in there. But it’s not quite as lovable. Well, to be honest, I think it is lovable, but when I think something is lovable, most people would disagree.

So, what’s going to happen with it?

Well, I only wrote the treatment. Now, someone else will write a screenplay and put all the musical numbers in it. I did suggestions for the musical numbers in my treatment. I turned in tapes of songs that capture what the music should be like. If the movie is going to be made, Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, who did the great music for the musical, will also do the music for the sequel.

HAIRSPRAY was the film that pushed you into the mainstream.

Accidentally, yeah. I didn’t know it would , but it did.

You said: I would love to sell out…

… but no one would buy me. Yes, I said that. And it’s true. Well, they did offer me something after HAIRSPRAY. I went through all the major studios, and everyone of them wanted to make CRY-BABY with me. That’s never happened to me before or after. That was the only time I got a real Hollywood treatment.

Was CRY-BABY the only time you had a big Hollywood budget?

No, it was actually on SERIAL MOM that I had enough money to make the film the way I wanted to. It was about twelve million dollars. Kathleen [Turner] got a lot of it. [Laughs] But she deserved it.

Was there a drawback?

No, I loved Kathleen.

I mean a drawback to having a bigger budget.

Oh, there was some nightmare with the distributor, but eventually, the movie that’s out is the movie I wanted to make. There were battles to get there, but there always are. Unless you pay for everything yourself. Don’t ever pay for your own movie!

But how did you finance your early films then?

I borrowed money. From my father and from other people. But I could always pay them back. Everyone I ever borrowed money from got their money back. I borrowed money up to POLYESTER. From that movie on I financed them the traditional Hollywood way.

You joked about becoming a sell-out just now, but were there fans of your early work who thought that you had sold out in earnest when you did HAIRSPRAY or CRY-BABY?

Well, they said that about all my movies. After PINK FLAMINGOS there were some that thought FEMALE TROUBLE was a sell-out. That’s just because nobody ate dog shit in that movie. And if I had tried to top that, I wouldn’t be working today. I knew after PINK FLAMINGOS that there was no use in trying to beat that to the ground. You always have to re-invent yourself in any business. I’m having a hard time right now to re-invent myself during an economic depression.

Was A DIRTY SHAME your attempt to get back to your more provocative beginnings?

It was a parody on sexploitation movies, but I never thought it would get the NC-17 rating that it did. My contract said I couldn’t deliver a NC-17, so it was really a battle. And I lost it. Then I see BRÜNO, a film that I actually really liked, and that got an R-rating? It was really filthy. Funny too, I should add. Mine was less filthy, I think. But it came out around the same time those horrible Iraq torture pictures were in the media, and I think that made it really difficult to be joking about perverted sex in any way. It was really around that same time. Not that anybody brought it up, but the mood of the board was… They always hate sex, while violence is fine. In Europe violence and sex are fine, which is healthier. Do you have censors in The Netherlands?

No, we don’t. There’s stuff you can’t do because it’s illegal. That’s it.

Yeah, sure. You can’t do a snuff movie. There’s some things you cannot do. Like paedophilia. These are things that should be illegal. I’m against those two things.

Is FRUITCAKE a children’s movie?

It’s a parody of one. It’s about a boy named Fruitcake. He and his parents run a meat thief company, which is a real thing in Baltimore. They knock on your door. You yell: Who is it? They yell: It’s the meat man. You open the door and say: I want three steaks, two pounds of hamburger and so on. Then they go out and shoplift it for you. You pay half of what it says on the label. They take orders around the neighborhood. In the movie they are a very loving, functional family despite what they do. On Christmas Eve Fruitcake gets caught and gets separated from his parents. He runs away with this little black girl who has bad gay parents. They make her celebrate gay Kwanzaa. She’s trying to find her real mother. They get lost in Baltimore and they fight their way back to their parents and meanwhile they get meat for the neighbors. It’s really heartwarming. But because of the economy, it seems the financing has fallen through. So in the meantime I wrote a book.

Role Models.

Yes, it comes out this August. I’ve been working on it for two and a half years. I’m excited about it.

And you do television.

Yes, I was the host of a show called ‘Til Death Do Us Part, where I play the Groom Reaper. And there was another show I was supposed to host, but it fell through. I like doing that.  And I had a show called John Waters Presents Movies that Will Corrupt You. I would show movies that, believe me, otherwise would never have been shown on television, like IRREVERSIBLE or WHO KILLED PASOLINI. I was amazed that they let me do that.

One of things that strikes me about the movies you make, is that you seem fascinated with crime.

Yeah, I taught in prison. And I liked doing it. I’m very interested in people who have led extreme lives. Sometimes you end up in prison when you lead an extreme life. And I believe some people can be rehabilitated, so I’m for second chances. Obviously, I believe that. Otherwise I would not teach in prison. I would be crazy if I did! Or maybe I’m just failing every one of my students to pay them back for their crimes! [Laughs] But seriously, what I find fascinating is that a lot of times, people who have done really terrible things are just like you and I. There’s not that much difference. Still, something went wrong. What? I don’t know. I just don’t believe you’re born that way. These are questions that have no fair answers, and they are interesting questions. When the question of rehabilitation comes up, it’s never a cut-and-dried issue.

For example, I’ve been trying to get one of the Manson women out of jail. She’s been in there for more than forty years. In Europe they’re a little more forgiving on cults. Like the Baader-Meinhof group. People that were in that, have been released. In Leslie [van Houten]’s case, she was nineteen when she met a mad man and did a terrible thing. I’m not saying she should not have gone to jail, but forty years is not nothing. And she was brainwashed, but she is too intelligent to use that as an excuse. She says: It was my fault, I made him my leader. I take responsibility for every act I committed in that house. You have to acknowledge your guilt. But on the other hand I also understand the victims’ families who say she shouldn’t get out. I can’t say anything wrong about that.

Do you still go to trials?

Not so much anymore, because I always get recognized. They always think I’m going to make a movie about it. And I’m afraid if the jury hates my movies, they’ll give the defendant more time.

And they’re always trying to get me for jury duty, but I’m excused every time. They ask: Is there any reason you shouldn’t be on this jury? Then I just tell them my best friend was sentenced to the gas chamber. Then I get excused. My friend always answers that question by saying: I have AIDS really bad. And he does have AIDS, by the way. But the funny thing is that they don’t know what to say.

Let me ask one more movie related question. When you get to a festival like this, are there any young directors whose movies are inspiring to you?

I hope so. That’s the whole point of a festival. That they get seen, written about, talked about, hopefully get a distribution deal. I’m still friends with people I met at festivals thirty years ago. It’s very good for the whole community of these filmmakers. You can help each other, learn about the business.

I hope you can make FRUITCAKE soon.

Yes, and I will be back with it at this festival, and we’ll have an audience of only children. Just really weird children.

Back to the homepage

This interview first appeared in a shorter version in the Dutch fanzine Schokkend Nieuws. Above is the full version of this talk, edited only for clarity.