Writer and filmmaker John Waters isn’t shy about giving advice. He wrote a book that was full of it: “Mr. Know-It-All – The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder.”
As he approached his 79th birthday on April 22, it seemed that much of the wisdom Waters imparted in interviews and during his spoken-word shows was about aging with grace and staying current.
In some cases, that was because he was responding candidly to audience or interviewers’ questions about his future. (Questions can be “about anything in the world,” he says before Q&A sessions.) At other times, he brought up the subject on his own. Either way, it’s clear that even though he just turned 79, he’s already given serious thought to the next milestone, 80, and how to avoid becoming an “old fart.”
True to his nature, Waters typically finds a way to laugh about the situation and make a self-deprecating joke. Along with the humor, though, is helpful advice for anyone who wants to stay young at heart.
One way he copes with the prospect of growing older, Waters quipped during a recent interview before an appearance in New Mexico, is to lie about his age. But instead of shaving a few years off the actual number, he goes in the other direction:
“When you’re young, you always say, “Well, I’m going on…” he told interviewer Carlos M. De la Torre with the TowerCast Podcast produced by Tower Productions and KTEP Public Media in El Paso, Texas. “Now I just tell people I’m 85 and they say: “You look good.’
He doesn’t dwell on the past.
“I hate people who say ‘it was better when I was young,’ ” he told interviewer Kyle Meredith, host of the ‘Kyle Meredith With…’ podcast on WFPK in Louisville, Kentucky. “That just means you’re an old fart. It means you don’t know what’s going on now.”
Waters also stays incredibly busy, booking spoken-word shows around the year and attending screenings of his movies, often tied to a major anniversary of their release.
It used to be that after doing 20 ‘A John Waters Christmas’ shows between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Waters would take something of a break. But this year he never stopped touring. His latest show is called The Naked Truth, and he’s done it more than a dozen times since the start of the year. And whereas Waters used to perform one or two shows for his birthday, this year he did a week of birthday shows – seven in all, from coast to coast.
Spreading out
Dubbed the Pope of Trash by William S. Burroughs, Waters clearly feeds off the energy he gets from making live appearances. He says he loves meeting a new generation of fans as they’re discovering him. He especially likes traveling to cities he hasn’t been to before, or hasn’t been to lately.
“I love to go places I’ve never been,” he told De la Torre in the Texas podcast. “I used to say to my father, ‘My career is really spreading.’ And he’d say, ‘Yeah, like cancer.’”
During March and April, Waters performed in a number of major markets – New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles. But he also hit cities and campuses not usually on his itinerary — New Orleans, Louisiana; Newton, North Carolina; and Las Cruces, New Mexico, near El Paso. On May 9, he’ll be at the Avalon Theatre in Easton, Maryland.
If he’s not performing his spoken-word program, Waters may be at an awards ceremony or on a television talk show. Hosts Bill Maher and John Mulaney both had him on their programs, “Real Time” and “Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney.” Maher called him “America’s cinematic master of the outrageous.” Mulaney introduced him as “an iconic filmmaker who’s delighted me my entire life.”
Off-screen, too, Waters is in good company. He took Blondie singer Debbie Harry to the Vanity Fair Oscars Party in Los Angeles and they were seated next to Mick Jagger. He escorted Mink Stole to the 27th Annual Costume Designers Guild Awards ceremony, where he honored the late Van Smith by posthumously presenting to him the Edith Head Hall of Fame Award. He gave a master class on filmmaking to students at The College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. He saw his friend Orville Peck on Broadway in “Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club” and met Grammy winner Chappell Roan backstage.
This week, Waters was one of several celebrities who honored director Pedro Almodovar with the prestigious Chaplin Award at New York’s Lincoln Center. Other ceremony participants included Dua Lipa, John Turturro, Rossy de Palma, Mikail Baryshnikov, Martin Scorsese, Tilda Swinton and Antonio Banderas.
While some award presenters may read a few sentences hastily scribbled on a napkin or the back of an envelope, Waters always puts time and thought into his remarks, and it pays off. He made headlines for boldly declaring Almodovar “the best filmmaker in the world” and ended with a tribute crafted almost entirely from Almodovar’s movie titles:
“Tie me up in high heels wearing the skin I live in,” he began. “That’s right: We’re matadors on the verge of a nervous breakdown. No bad education here. I’m so excited. I mean, what have I done to deserve this? No pain, all glory, ladies and gentlemen, and everybody in between and upside down.”
Of all the presentations on Monday, Waters’ speech was “the night’s most memorable and mischievous – no surprise from the ‘Pink Flamingos’ director and Pope of Trash,” declared Ryan Lattanzio of IndieWire.com.
‘Still Filthy’
Waters has been the subject of a slew of recent articles, podcasts and social media posts – including stories in The Los Angeles Times (“John Waters’ one-man show comes to the Wallis in Beverly Hills: ‘I’m so respectable, I could puke’”); The Guardian (“Cry-Bay, The Musical Review: John Waters’ teen rebels will have you in tears of joy”); Paper (“John Waters is Still Filthy”); etonline (“John Waters and Debbie Harry Have ‘Fancy’ Night Out for Oscars”) and W Magazine (“John Waters Looks Back at His Life in Parties.”)
In some recent interviews, Waters admitted that he’s probably not going to make a film version of his 2022 novel, “Liarmouth: A Feel Bad Romance,” despite earlier reports that he was writing a script and Aubrey Plaza wanted to star. That’s different from his stance more than a year ago, when he bristled at being asked whether the movie is moving ahead. Now he’s still being asked, but he’s quick to say it’s not happening right now, and that helps put the matter to rest.
When he addresses questions about “Liarmouth,” Waters points to changes in the motion picture industry that are making it hard for anyone to produce movies these days. “The movie business as I know it in Hollywood right now is non-existent,” he told De la Torre. He never shuts the door completely, always holding out hope that his movie might still be made one day, perhaps if a new studio head comes in, just not right now. “Things change,” he told Meredith. “People who run studios, they change every six months.”
It seems to be a relief to Waters that he doesn’t have to dodge the questions at this point. And if he’s not making the film right now, that leaves time for more shows and other appearances. “I’ve got plenty of jobs,” he assured Meredith. “I’ve got plenty of jobs.”
One of the most flattering recent articles was written for goldderby.com by Charles Bright, who suggested that Waters be considered for a Governors Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization behind the Oscars. The Governors Awards are annual, non-competitive trophies such as Honorary Oscars, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and the Irving Thalberg Memorial Award. The headline was: “John Waters, Isabelle Huppert, and 8 more suggestions for the upcoming Governors Awards.”
“Bestowing an honorary award on the Pope of Trash might seem a little bizarre, but Waters has had an incredible career,” Bright wrote. “He (along with longtime friend, Divine) was at the forefront of the rebellious cinema of the 1960s and ’70s with camp classics like “Pink Flamingos” and “Female Trouble” before finding somewhat more mainstream success with “Hairspray” and “Serial Mom.” In addition to his work as a filmmaker, he has also been a longtime champion of independent film, an author, actor, photographer, and all-around cultural icon.”
‘Don’t leave’
These articles and podcasts are gold mines for fans who wonder what Waters is up to and what’s on his mind. Depending on the interviewer, they’re almost as informative and thought-provoking as the Zoom sessions he did with fans in lockdown at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In his shows, Waters urges residents of small towns and ‘flyover cities’ not to think they have to move to big cities on the coasts.
“I always tell people: ‘Don’t leave where you’re born. No matter where it is. Just make it better there.’ And that would make America so great,” he told Meredith.
America’s cities are losing their character, he lamented: “The local color has vanished, definitely. Even in Baltimore, all the dive bars I wrote about in one of my books, they’re all gone. Every location for ‘Pecker’ is gone. It’s a different world.”
Even when he’s home in Baltimore, Waters stays busy. Social media is peppered with sightings of him at Ottobar and other local night spots that feature live music.
“I always have fun in Ottobar,” he said at his Valentine’s Day show at Baltimore Soundstage. His attendance one night got so much attention “because I’m old,” he reasoned. “That was the story: Why is this old man here?”
‘Buy a ticket’
He also watches movies.
“I go see everything,” he said. “I have a 10 Best list. I still go to the movies all the time.”
At the Valentine’s Day show, one audience member asked the filmmaker if he prefers streaming or going to a theater. He said he does both, and supports both.
“I watch movies at home,” he said. “I watch them on my phone, sometimes. I watch them in the theater. As long as you have a way to see them.”
From the perspective of a filmmaker and storyteller, he said, he’s glad there’s more than one option.
“To me, in some ways it’s more people I can pitch” to fund a production or be part of a production, he said. “I have more of a shot of somebody saying yes. It used to be, when I was young, no one would work in television. That was the lowest. But now TV’s better in some ways. So I don’t care, as long as you can see it.”
Above all, Waters encouraged his audience to continue supporting local theaters, so they remain in business and the motion picture industry stays alive.
He said he hears people grumble that they aren’t going to a certain theater, but “we need all the help,” he said. His answer: “Go buy a ticket. Even if you don’t go…You give all this lip service about going. But I see the grosses. They’re not great –anywhere. JUST GO TO THE MOVIES.”
No white shoes after Labor Day
Though he embraces advances in technology and tries to stay up-to-date, Waters said, he still adheres to certain old-fashioned rules of good taste and decorum.
“The only thing I’m right wing on is you can’t wear white shoes after Labor Day,” he told Meredith. “That really is a fashion sin…There are other things – you’re not supposed to wear velvet before Thanksgiving. You’re not supposed to wear patent leather before Easter. You can really get down to it, and I believe in all of it.”
Something else that doesn’t change is Waters’ taste in movies. Asked by IndieWire this week what sort of films he likes most, he gave the same answer he’s given for years: “I like feel-bad French movies with frontal nudity. It’s my favorite genre.”
He’s always surprised how much people think of him as a spokesperson for Baltimore. When the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed last year, he said at his Valentine’s Day show, he was contacted by The Wall Street Journal and a British newspaper looking for a comment.
“What was I supposed to say: ‘It’s a terrible tragedy. I’ll be doing a Valentine’s Day show…’? I didn’t know what to do about it. And then of course they called me – they didn’t call me at first – about Luigi…I said he’s not that cute. They were trying to find out if he’s gay. Not with those eyebrows.”
Youth spies
As busy as he is, Waters admits he can’t be everywhere at once, even though he seems to be. One solution, he says, is that he has “youth spies” who help keep him abreast of the latest trends in music, art, fashion and other subjects.
“You need youth spies,” he told Meredith. “Everybody needs several youth spies. It’s a position that’s always open in my office.”
Waters said in his Baltimore show that he’s talked about youth spies so much that he’s started to get applications from fans, “like it’s a paying job.” (The trouble for the job seekers is that there are plenty of others who will do it for free.)
Even with youth spies, he said, “you’ve got to go out still.” The ideal situation may be when he goes out on the town with one of his youth spies. He said he recently went to a club with a “new youth spy” and learned something he didn’t know about fashion: how much Goths hate blue jeans.
If someone wears Levis to a Goth concert, “it’s the worst possible thing,” he told the audience. “It’s like wearing a fuzzy sweater to the Mine Shaft. I didn’t know that Goths hate blue jeans to the point of murder. So you learn things.”
One activity he probably won’t be doing very much at 80, Waters said, is stage diving – jumping from a concert stage into the crowd below. He noted that he hosts the Mosswood Meltdown punk rock festival in Oakland, California, every summer, and is fully capable of stage diving, “but it just has to be really rehearsed.”
One audience member asked Waters point blank what his plans are for his 80th birthday.
“For my 80th birthday, they’re going to have me working,” he said, as if someone else controls his schedule. “For my 80th? God knows…I’ll be doing birthday shows for six months.”
