Happy 80th Birthday to The Pope of Trash: An Interview With John Waters
To celebrate the cult movie director’s 80th birthday, we bring you our interview with John Waters from Hi-Fructose Isssue 69. You can still get a copy in print of this issue here. Happy Birthday to The King of Puke!
ABOVE: Portrait of John Waters, photo by Greg Gorman, © Academy Museum Foundation
Early on in the retrospective John Waters: Pope of Trash, which ran at Los Angeles’s Academy Museum, there’s a handwritten advertisement from around 1959, announcing the future filmmaker’s return to puppeteering after a year-and-a-half absence due to “school obligations.” The young John Waters hypes his rate as “Earth!! Shatteringly” low, written in large bubble letters and surrounded by comic book-style bubbles reading “bang,” “boom” and “pow.” It’s bold, enthusiastic, charming, and a telling sign of what was to come with Waters’s now-legendary career in film.
“We now have access to his childhood writings and all the things that you see in his movies over and over again were there from the beginning,” says Dara Jaffe, who co-curated the exhibit with Jenny He. The two Academy Museum curators are longtime fans of Waters’s films who have been digging into his career for this exhibition since 2020, often working in collaboration with the director during the process. “There was even a time where he wanted to check the date on one of his earliest films. He literally went down to the public library and looked through old microfiche to look at old articles to give us the exact date,” says Jaffe.
From underground films like Multiple Maniacs and Pink Flamingos to relatively more mainstream fare like Hairspray and Serial Mom, Waters has spent decades making films that now fall under the cult classic banner. Although his most recent directorial credit, A Dirty Shame, is nearly twenty years old, Waters has remained busy as an author (his novel Liarmouth came out in 2022) and spoken word performer. He has also hosted events like John Waters Easter at San Luis Obispo’s iconic Madonna Inn and the music festival Mosswood Meltdown in Oakland.
Waters’ reputation for shocking audiences often overshadows his knack for satirizing modern life through heartfelt stories, from Dawn Davenport’s quest for beauty and fame in Female Trouble to the struggle against bad movies in Cecil B. Demented.
“His way of shocking people, it isn’t one-dimensional,” says He. “John has figured out how to see what is relevant and what is okay to make fun of and then also evolve in terms of what provocation is.”
Yet Waters’s films retain aesthetic and storytelling qualities that are distinct, from the use of Baltimore as the setting and location for his work, to his frequent on-screen and behind-the-scenes collaborators known as “Dreamlanders.” They are films that Jaffe describes as “radically inclusive,” which may be why they have resonated with multiple generations of fans. Yet, at the same time, Waters’s work always feels deeply personal. “I’m every character. There’s a little bit of everything I write in me,” Waters says by phone from Baltimore when we caught up with him after seeing Pope of Trash.
So, scroll on down this page already and enjoy my conversation with John Waters.
WHATEVER THE RULES ARE. WHATEVER THE RULES ARE IN THE SOCIETY THAT I LIVE IN ARE THE RULES THAT I MAKE FUN OF.”
ABOVE: “Still from Pink Flamingos”, 1972, courtesy of Warner Bros., photographed by Lawrence Irvine, Baltimore Bumper Sticker, Gas can prop from “A Dirty Shame”, John Waters: Pope of Trash. Published by Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, Los Angeles | Delmonico Books D. A.P., New York
Liz Ohanesian: You got your star on the Walk of Fame the same week that the Academy Museum exhibition opened. What were those two experiences like for you?
John Waters: It was one of the best things that ever happened in my life that week. It was astonishing. I still look back on it with astonishment, that the whole thing even happened, and so did everybody I knew that was there that had grown up with my films and worked on them all these years. It was very emotional for everybody. It was a great experience, are you kidding?
LO: It sounds like a dream come true.
JW: It was. It definitely was.
LO: And speaking of everybody that you’ve worked on your films with, you’ve had so many both on-screen and behind-the-scenes collaborators that are longtime collaborators on your films. What has been the benefit of working closely with the same people for so long?
JW: It’s shorthand. You don’t have to re-educate everybody about what I like. People know what I like. Vincent Perenio, who did all the production design for all my movies we barely had to talk. Same with Van Smith, who did the costumes and makeup. We had done so many films together that it was like shorthand. They knew how I thought, what I liked.
LO: My favorite movie of yours is Polyester. And one thing that I really loved about Polyester—thinking about it, rewatching it—was the experiences that Lulu had, first with the abortion protestors and then being taken by the nuns to the pregnant girls home. They seem ridiculous, but they are real things that happen.
JW: Certainly. I did know a girl. The first thing that I ever had published was in Fact Magazine, which was kind of a Ralph Ginzburg publication. He also did Avant Garde. He was kind of sensationalist and Fact Magazine always did real stories that were shocking. I sold a piece called “Inside an Unwed Mother’s Home” by Jane Wiemo (I guess that’s my drag name, J.W.) but it was based on—it wasn’t me—but a friend of mine did get sent to an unwed mothers home and they did take them on hayrides so that could naturally lose their babies from the bumping. So, that story was almost true.
Now, of course, at the time, that was one thing that people were very uptight about: all the abortion jokes. There were abortion jokes in that movie. I still do abortion jokes in my newest spoken word show, but at the time, it was really touchy—it’s still touchy—but in a way, people I know still quote the line where she says she’s getting ready to rob me of every bit of fun I deserve to have. That is what a teenage girl thinks.
LO: I saw it as a teenager, and I went to Catholic school, so I had an awareness that these were things that really happened.
JW: Things change. The woman that played the nun in the movie was Sharon Niesp and she was a dear friend of mine. She died last week and I went to the funeral. At the very end, she had a bedside conversion and wanted nuns to come. But guess what? They couldn’t find a nun in New York City. They don’t have them anymore. You can’t get a nun when you need them these days.
LO: Are there things that you set out to satirize and has that changed?
JW: Whatever the rules are. Whatever the rules are in the society that I live in are the rules that I make fun of.
LO: What do you find inspiring now?
JW: The news, even though it’s so grim. Certainly the news. Eavesdropping. Watching people. I’m in an airport almost every day of my life because I do my spoken word show forty, maybe fifty, times a year. So I watch people. I listen. I eavesdrop. I watch their behavior and that’s what always inspires me. The most interesting people are the ones that are really crazy, but think they’re normal. That’s usually who I make movies about.
LO: One of the interesting things that I learned from the exhibition is that you’ve been a part of the Wesleyan archive since 1986. I was wondering how that happened.
JW: They called me and asked me. I looked and said, “Well, they have
Ingrid Bergman. They had Clint Eastwood. Martin Scorsese. Well, Elia Kazan. This is great company.” I didn’t hesitate. I was thrilled to be there and it was one of the best decisions that I ever made.It was run by Jeanine Basinger, a brilliant film writer with a sense of humor. You don’t find that so often and she was the head of it, so she was a big part of it too.
THEY COULDN’T FIND A NUN IN NEW YORK CITY. THEY DON’T HAVE THEM ANYMORE. YOU CAN’T GET A NUN WHEN YOU NEED THEM THESE DAYS.”
ABOVE LEFT: Stained Glass window from featuring Jean Hill inside the chapel installation at the John Waters: Pope of Trash exhibition at the Academy Museum, ©Academy Museum Foundation, photo by Owen Kolasinski. Jean Hill (1946-2013), a Baltimore, MD native, starred starred in John Waters’s Desperate Living.
ABOVE RIGHT: Stained glass window of Divine, from the chapel installation, inside the John Waters: Pope of Trash exhibition at the Academy Museum, © Academy Museum Foundation, photo by Owen Kolasinski
LO: Does being part of a film archive at a university change how people might look at your work, like, now you have generations of young students who have been studying from your work?
JW: Well, it’s bizarre because I got thrown out of every school that I ever went to, practically—except for grade school. So they didn’t want me, but it was great that Wesleyan asked to have my film archive. I’ve done three commencement speeches and got an honorary doctorate from RISD and the School of Visual Arts twice. It’s odd. I have always lived on either end of the spectrum, and the middle has always been problematic. And guess what? That’s where I am now—finally!—because the extremes on the left and the right suddenly I rebel against. So I’m a middle of the road radical now.
LO: That seems like it’s kind of a cool place to be.
JW: Yeah, I think so too.
LO: For at least the last decade now, I’ve been seeing Female Trouble pop up as a meme every Christmastime.
JW: Oh, yeah, the Christmas tree thing. The one that pops up the most is Mink [Stole] in Desperate Living—”I hate the Supreme Court,” which she yells out for no apparent reason in the movie, but now, there are plenty of apparent reasons, so it pops up all the time as a meme too.
LO: Have you seen memes change your fanbase or add to your fanbase or how people respond?
JW: My fanbase, if they were the young people, were just my original fanbase, it would be a graveyard. They get younger and younger. That is the only thing you can’t buy, is getting the next generation and having it still work for them. That’s what I’m the most proud of.
LO: That’s an amazing thing. Hairspray was your first movie I saw and I was probably in middle school and now I see kids or young adults getting into it and they could be my kids.
JW: Yeah, that’s true. All the kids that were really on that dance show that I based it on, they’re great-great-grandparents now. It just shows that good music and dancing and comedy is timeless and it works. You can’t plan that. I just try to make movies that made me and my friends laugh. Luckily, other people came along for the ride.
..THE MIDDLE HAS ALWAYS BEEN PROBLEMATIC. AND GUESS WHAT? THAT’S WHERE I AM NOW—FINALLY!—BECAUSE THE EXTREMES ON THE LEFT AND THE RIGHT SUDDENLY I REBEL AGAINST. SO I’M A MIDDLE OF THE ROAD RADICAL NOW.”
LO: I also enjoy seeing your film lists, the ones that you’ve done for Artforum, and was wondering what you enjoy looking at in films today as a viewer.
JW: Well, I like feel-bad French movies, and full-frontal nudity is my favorite genre, but I like movies that are hard to like. I think that you have to suffer for cinema sometimes and I don’t expect people to like the movies that I pick every year, because they are difficult ones, but I never understand when people say, “I go to movies and I want to feel good.” I feel good anyway. If a movie can make me feel bad, it must really be a powerful movie.
LO: For me, those are like the ones that I can only see once because they’re really amazing movies, but I was so depressed afterwards.
JW: Yeah, you’re not going to get into a costume, go at midnight, sing along, and shout out the dialogue of the characters in Irreversible.
LO: Do you like to keep an eye open for new art and music as well?
JW: I went to a heavy metal concert the other day. It was in all the papers. What’s the news of that? But, yeah, I do go to see new music as much to see the audience and what they’re wearing and how they react, especially in Baltimore, I do it.
LO: What are you listening to these days?
JW: I like all the Baltimore groups. Beach House and Future Islands. Snail Mail. Dan Deacon. There are lots of them. They all stayed in Baltimore, which I think is great.
LO: What are you working on right now?
JW: Well, I’m working on trying to get my next movie made. I can talk about it now that the writer’s strike is over. It’s called Liarmouth and it’s based on my novel that was bought, optioned for a movie. We’ll see what happens. That’s my next big project.
My Christmas tour, which is nineteen cities in twenty-one days.
LO: Have you started the tour already?
JW: No, I just finished writing it this morning. Now, I’ve got three weeks to memorize it.
LO: What do you enjoy about doing the Christmas tours?
JW: I have a fear of not flying. I get to see my audience. It’s like being a politician when you’re in show business. You’ve got to keep circulating. You’ve got to meet the people. You’ve got to tour. You’ve got to see your fans. You’ve got to get the real reaction in public to your sense of humor, so I think that it’s just part of what I do. It’s a big part of the job.
LO: So going back to the exhibition, what was your favorite part of it?
JW: Just walking through it and I’m seeing all the years. I was just as obsessed by doing it when I sent out those puppet show ads for birthday parties when I was twelve years old as I was making my last movie. I was always driven. Thank God, I always knew what I wanted to do, even when most people wouldn’t let me, but my parents were horrified and proud. I think that’s the best way to put it.
LO: Did that help you keep going?
JW: Of course. Subconsciously, it did, but I always had audiences. I never opened to empty theaters. There were always enough crazy people that came. The critics didn’t like it, but in those days, the critics: it was us versus them. It was a whole kind of different atmosphere than today. We used bad reviews. We welcomed them. We used them in the ads. That would never work today. They would be too smart to hand you that ammunition. The critics power is so weakened today. I miss that power. I thought it was much more interesting.*
BELOW: photos from John Waters: Pope of Trash, Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. Photo by: Charles White, JWPictures/©Academy Museum Foundation
This article originally appeared in Hi-Fructose Issue 69 and has been edited slightly for online reading. You can get the full issue in print in Hi-Fructose issue 69 here.
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