The big day has finally arrived. After months of build-up, Baltimore writer and filmmaker John Waters turns 80 today, April 22. Earth Day is John Waters’ birthday.
But April 22 isn’t just a big day for Waters. His birthday is also a welcome occasion for his fans, because it’s a time when he gives lots of interviews about what he’s been doing and thinking and what’s coming up on his schedule.
Over the past month, Waters has given more than a dozen interviews to local and national outlets about the spoken-word tour he’s been on, “Going to Extremes: A John Waters 80th Birthday Celebration,” and other projects.
In addition to his first-ever appearance on “The View” last week, he’s spoken with writers and editors from Baltimore Magazine; Variety.com; sfgate.com; laist.com; the @brooklynvegan podcast and others.
The result is a torrent of information about Baltimore’s legendary “Filth Elder,” on the eve of a milestone birthday. Some of it he’s shared before and some of it is a fresh response to recent events.
One impressive aspect of Waters as an interview subject is that he always tries to save something different for each interviewer, to keep things interesting for them and their audiences. He also likes to drive home certain themes that are on his mind, and likely of interest to his fans.
Following are gleanings from some of the interviews he’s given leading up to his 80th birthday.
How does it feel to turn 80? “It’s great,” he told editor Bill Pearis of the @brooklynvegan podcast, which released an interview with him on April 13. “All the attention is kind of staggering. But it is amazing even to me that I’m 80. I can’t imagine that could be true, that it ever could happen. You never think when you’re young that it would ever be such a thing. And it sneaks up on you. When you’re young, I remember when you’re 12, you always said, ‘I’m going on 13’ because it took so long for the next year to come. Now you say, ‘that was about five years ago’ and it was 20 years ago…I’m busier than I’ve ever been in my life. I haven’t slowed down.”
Is there an upside to turning 80? Audiences are quicker to clap for you, he told Monica Bushman and Julia Paskin of laist.com. “People applaud and I say, ‘Why? I haven’t even said anything yet.’ It’s ‘cause I’m still alive.”
Is there anything he hasn’t done that he still wants to do? In an interview with Marc Malkin of variety.com that was published on April 11, Waters said he’d like to host the Academy Awards show.
“What gay kid hasn’t done an Oscar acceptance speech?” he said. “I’d rather be the host of the Oscars. I hosted the Spirit Awards many times, so I’ve already auditioned.”
Anything else, writing wise? “Maybe I’ll write a play one day,” he told Malkin. “I’ve never done that. That’s about the only thing left.”
Anything sex-wise?: “I always joke I’m going to turn hetero at 80 and perform cockeyed cunnilingus for the first time,” he told Malkin.
Where is he going to celebrate his birthday, after his multi-city tour of spoken word birthday shows ends on April 23?
“I’m taking a friend to Europe,” he told Amanda Bartlett of sfgate.com. “We’re going to the south of France, where the Marquis de Sade’s castle ruins are in a little town. I’m praying there’s a gift shop and then I’ll get a birthday present.”
How he celebrated past birthdays: “On my 30th birthday, I had it in a punk rock bar in Baltimore and a stripper – well, it was a stripper I knew, Sue Lowe, who played Mole in “Desperate Living” – she jumped out of a cake and broke her leg,” he told Bartlett. “And then I had my 40th birthday in an old age home I rented and had walkers on the invitation. My 50th birthday was in New York at Pravda, a fancy club before it even opened. My 60th was in New York also. For my 70th I took five friends first class to Paris.”
In the ‘radical middle’
Where Waters fits in politically: “I’m in the middle now,” he told Pearis of @brooklynvegan. “For the first time ever in my life, I’m in the radical middle. I hate the left and the right, for the first time ever. Because neither side has any humor any more. They both now are woke, in different ways. And so I like to be radically in the middle, where I can talk to everybody and I can get along with everybody.”
How he’s lasted so long and avoided being cancelled: “I make fun of the values that my audience and myself live by, not what we rebelled against. And oddly enough, in 50 years, the rules that my world lives by are stricter than what my parents’ [rules] were, about what you can do and cannot do. So I find it all fascinating…I am making fun of myself too, so I think that’s why I’ve gotten away with it for so long and why I’m not really mean spirited.” (@brooklynvegan).
Using humor as a weapon: “I believe you use humor to win in politics,” he told the ladies of “The View” on April 16. “You make people laugh and you can change their mind and they’ll listen.” (www.theview.tv).
Is it harder to be shocking or to be provocative? “To me, it’s hard to be provocative,” he told Bushman and Paskin of laist.com, in an interview posted on April 10. “It’s easy to be shocking. But shocking isn’t always that good or funny or doesn’t change anything. What’s more intriguing to me is to go to that edge where you can’t walk and have both sides laugh with you, and at themselves first, and then that’s change. That’s the only way we’re going to solve this. That’s the only way we’re going to bring the country together.
Where he gets inspiration for storytelling – and where others can too: “My inspiration comes from being alive and spying on people,” he told Bartlett. “Writers are never bored. You just watch people. I’m in airports constantly. I watch people. I listen. I eavesdrop. I imagine them naked.” (sfgate.com).
About the house he just bought in Provincetown, Massachusetts, to go along with his residences in Baltimore, New York City and San Francisco: “What man buys a fourth home at 80?” he asked Editor-in-Chief Max Weiss in an interview for the April issue of Baltimore Magazine. “An optimist.”
Odds and ends from the past
An unusual book signing: “I had a signing at [Amoeba Records in San Francisco’s Haight district] where a straight guy was waiting in line nude and wanted to sit on my lap for a picture for his mother,” he told Bartlett. “I love Amoeba Records, and I’ve always had a history there, so I was proud to be asked.” (sfgate.com).
He’s still a fan of CDs: “I still buy CDs and put them in my sound system because I like the covers. I like to hold something. You’re not going to ever [have] a collectible stream.” (@brooklynvegan).
Happy-Go-Lucky: He loves the Happy-Go-Lucky-Me song by Paul Evans that was used as the main theme of his 1998 movie, “Pecker”: “I hope they play that at my funeral.” (@brooklynvegan).
An unexpected revenue stream: Waters said he still receives royalties for writing a song called “Gas Chamber” that L7, as the fictional band Camel Lips, performed during the Hammerjack’s concert scene in “Serial Mom.” “I actually still get royalties,” he said. “Every once in a while, like 15 cents, for airplay in Czechoslovakia or something.“ (@brooklynvegan).
Does he cash the 15-cent checks? “Yes, because I want the [bookkeeper’s records] to balance.” (@brooklynvegan).
Appearing in drag: “The only time I ever was in drag my entire life [was] when I was about eight years old. I was the Wicked Witch of the West.” (variety.com)
What relaxes him: “Staying home and reading a good book and not having to go out to dinner at night.” (variety.com).
Is he a cat person? “I’m not lonely, so no. People get crazy when I say that. I like cats, but they hide from you. If you take their cat box out, they reward you by bringing you a dead mouse.” (“The View”).
What his parents used to give him for Easter: “They used to leave me an Easter basket with a carton of Kools surrounded by black jelly beans. It would be a great Diane Arbus photo actually today, but it wasn’t even thought of as a weird thing to do. We were allowed to smoke in Catholic school in ninth grade. There was a smoking area. So that kind of thing is so weird when you look back on it.” (sfgate.com).
More Odorama: Waters wants to see more movies made with Odorama, the scratch-and-sniff cards he used in “Polyester” as a parody of the 1960s films with Smell-O-Vision: “I always tell Criterion, who I work with a lot — they’re putting out “Hairspray” and “Desperate Living” this year in 4K, which is really hilarious — that they should do all the art movies in Odorama. Like the coppery smell of suicide in Bergman movies or, I don’t know, the different smells of violence in Quentin Tarantino movies. There should be smells for every kind of movie, especially melodramas.” (sfgate.com)
New John Waters merchandise coming out in collaboration with artist Seth Bogart: “We’ve got some new ones coming out that I don’t think I can talk about yet, but some really good ones. The cum rag and the puke bag, we cannot keep in stock. We have a whole new bunch of stuff coming out soon for Mosswood Meltdown and I don’t think he’s revealed it yet. One I’m really excited about.” (sfgate.com)
Merch as humor: “I think that the merchandise is important. It’s just another sense of humor I have of putting out things that most people would never dare…I’m sure I have no competition on a celebrity cum rag.” (sfgate.com).
The bane of his existence, online retailers who knock off his merchandise: “I stop stuff like that all the time. Every day on eBay, because I have many marketing deals. The worst is Etsy. Oh God I do hate them.” (@brooklynvegan).
Thoughts about Donald Trump:
Waters’ participation in a ‘No Kings’ rally: “I don’t know if you saw it, there was a shot of me at a ‘No Kings’ march in Provincetown that went pretty viral. My sign said, ‘TRUMP RUINED BAD TASTE.’ That’s not even fun any more. It’s not even fun. It’s over. He ended trash, filth, camp, everything. He ended it, because he has no humor about it and he doesn’t care and he’s glad we hate it. He ended it. Another thing to add to his war crimes.” (@brooklynvegan).
The only times he found Donald Trump funny: “I will say he has said two funny things. When he was in the debates with Kamala Harris, he said, ‘Biden hates you.” That was funny. And when he called Elizabeth Warren ‘Pocahontas,’ that was funny.” (variety.com).
Trump’s taste in art and architecture: “His whole decoration looks like a bad imitation of Jeff Koons, his artwork. Jeff Koons would hate it, but Trump looks kind of like he was influenced by it. If he could buy a solid gold Franklin Mint piece for the front lawn, he would.” (@brooklynvegan).
Would he go to the opening of Trump’s ballroom if invited?: “I would absolutely not attend, although I might be being a hypocrite because I went to the Nixon White House.” (@brooklynvegan).
Why he went to the White House: “I was invited by [Republican political operative] Lee Atwater, who was probably as bad as any of the Republicans today but I didn’t know that and he was just a fan of my movies. I went with my boyfriend. It was just the two of us and [Atwater] showed us around. I saw the bathroom with the button next to the toilet that Nixon could push if it was the end of the world. It was scary. It was like being over at someone’s house when they were babysitting. And he just wanted to talk about B. B. King. He didn’t want to talk about the Willie Horton campaign that he thought up…He was a huge fan of rhythm and blues music and exploitation films and that’s why he liked me. And I guess he didn’t even know that my uncle was Undersecretary of the Interior for Nixon. I got along great with that uncle. He was really good to me always and gave us a big donation for the AIDS benefit for ‘Serial Mom.’” (@brooklynvegan).
The World According to Waters
Fashion advice: “I think you should never wear an outfit in the same city you bought it in. And I really believe you should never wear white after Labor Day. But I’d go further: You can’t wear velvet before Thanksgiving and you can’t wear patent leather before Easter. That’s the only right wing thing I am about.” (@Brooklynvegan).
Other fashion don’ts: “Trump was right about how people dress on airplanes. They should be arrested. I don’t care if you’re comfortable. I don’t want to look at you in a filthy ripped T-shirt and pajama bottoms and bare feet. (@brooklynvegan).
How did he get to feel so strongly about not wearing white? “My mother completely believed that. We were brought up with that. She was right. You can wear winter white. That’s wool. But when I see people [wearing other white clothing]. They still wear it. They wear it all the time now and they’re wrong. I look at them and I judge them.” (@brooklynvegan).
His definition of beauty: “I think that beauty is just believing in yourself…You can take everything that society uses against you and exaggerate it, and make a style out of it, and win. That’s what Divine did. That’s what all my movies are about, in a way, creating a new kind of beauty that makes fun of the old rules. (sfgate.com).
His thoughts about Artificial Intelligence (AI): “I want AI to cure cancer. I want AI to cure AIDS. I want AI to cure COVID. I want AI for science, and I’m all for it, if that works.” (laist.com).
Is he tired of all the hoopla surrounding his 80th birthday?: “I will be so sick of my birthday once it’s over. I’m never celebrating it again until I’m 100, I think.” (@brooklynvegan).
Will he do an 81st birthday tour? “Oh sure I will. I do birthday shows every year. The 80th one, they moved it to bigger theaters. It’s more exploitable.” (@brooklynvegan)
He hasn’t had enough attention? “No one in show business has ever had enough. I used to say in my show that I will die onstage. You can do selfies, and if you dig me up for sex, oral only.” (variety.com).
His advice for growing old: My advice is that it goes quickly, and old chickens make good soup. (@brooklynvegan).
Where he gets his optimism: “Being glad I’m alive and wanting to do everything since I don’t believe in an afterlife. I want to do every single thing I can while I’m here this one time.” (variety.com).
Besides the previously-mentioned interviews, National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air” program has made available a mix of two interviews with Waters, from 2014 and 2019, to commemorate his 80th birthday. The link is www.npr.org.
Finally, no recap of Waters’ words of wisdom would be complete without including the 12-minute commencement speech he gave to the graduating class of the Rhode Island School of Design on May 30, 2015. He turned it into a book entitled Making Trouble, and it contains some of the best advice he ever gave. Here is a link:
