John Waters will appear in five of the 13 episodes of “American Horror Story: 13” when the new season premieres on Sept. 24. He has a talking John Waters doll coming out. He’ll travel to 19 cities on his nationwide tour of spoken-word performances between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The title of his latest show is: “John Waters: Let’s Take Over the World.”
That’s just some of the news that came out of Camp John Waters, the annual gathering for several hundred John Waters superfans that takes place every September at Club Getaway in Kent, Connecticut, where many of the Campers come every year.
But the biggest news involved the Camp itself, which started in 2017: After nine years, this month’s gathering was the last one that will ever be held, and the fans who participated were the very last “filthy Campers.”
Waters, 80, announced in September of 2025 that this year’s gathering would be the final one for the four-day event, which has been called ‘An All-Inclusive Dreamland Sleepaway Weekend’ and a ‘Campy Getaway with the Pope of Trash.’
“Yes, we will be gone, gone, gone,” he told last year’s Campers. “But let’s remember the nights we dismembered our filthy times together. We promise you, outside world, we will never let you rest in peace.”
On Friday, the first day of Camp, Waters talked about the event and the decision to end it during a half-hour radio interview with Mona Dehghan of wfmu.org. They spoke from the Moose Lodge on the campgrounds.
Dehghan started by asking Waters why the Camp event was ending.
“I don’t know the real reason,” Waters said. “It basically is a huge amount of work for the Camp, I think, and they were so supportive and so great about it…We sold out in one second when it said ‘the last one.’ I think we just wanted to go out when everything was well. We didn’t want to give it a chance to kind of peter out in a way, which it really hadn’t done. I really wasn’t involved completely in the decision, but I certainly went with it and I understand it and here we go. It was a great thing and it was something I will remember certainly for the rest of my life. I didn’t go to college. This is my reunion.”
A good cult
Waters said the Camp was the idea of his two promoters, Toffer Christensen and Ian Brennan.
“I think it was Toffer’s idea, came up with it, and it was a really good one and I went for it right away,” he said. “It worked right from the very beginning. It just turned into something that became – I’ve joked it was Jonestown with a happy ending. Everybody has a good time at it. People from all over the world make friends with it. Wherever I go to do my show all year, someone from the Camp is in the audience. People got married at it. It became something that none of us ever imagined would really happen, which was where people came and made lifetime friends.”
Starting as an annual reunion of diehard John Waters fans, the Camp evolved over the years.
“We came up with lots of things that we developed as we went along,” Waters said. “We had all the different famous counselors, all the people that were in my movies. And every one of them said yes. We can do the list: It was Tracy Lords; Ricki Lake; Kathleen Turner; Johnny Knoxville…Everybody came. Almost everybody that was the star of my movie — Colleen Fitzpatrick from “Hairspray” – put in an appearance. This year it’s Matthew Lillard, who got his first part in “Serial Mom” and went on to have an amazing career. And Ricki Lake, who’s been there a lot. And Mink Stole, who’s been there every year. So it is exciting. It’s the good meaning of the word, cult.”
The Camp John Waters website describes the event as “four days of debauchery, creativity, chaos and all things gloriously trashy” and “the ultimate playground for misfits, dreamers and lovers of all things camp.”
Activities included a costume contest; themed dance parties; a talent show; Bloody Mary Bingo; Meet-and-Greets with Waters and the counselors; a screening of “Hairspray” and one of Waters’ spoken-word performances. One surprise guest this year was Sam Waterston, who played Eugene Sutphin in “Serial Mom”– the father of Matthew Lillard’s and Ricki Lake’s characters and the husband of Kathleen Turner’s character.
‘That’s why they band together’
Waters has observed that his fans are people who don’t fit in with their own minorities.
“I like people that can’t fit in their own minority, and I think our Camp is filled with them,” he said Friday.
Part of what the Campers have in common, they say, is that they have had ups and downs in their lives, and experienced losses and disappointments, and Camp John Waters is one place where they can find kindred spirits.
Dehghan noted that the reunions are times when the Campers think about losses in their lives as well as highlights.
“Over the years, both my parents have passed,” she told Waters. “It just reminds me of how much we’ve all been through, the Campers. We’ve lost some Campers. People have lost their partners.”
“I have in my own personal life,” Waters said. “Everybody has. That’s what you go through. Everybody’s had bad [expletive] happen to them. At the Camp, maybe the Campers, maybe many of them have had some tortuous past. But maybe that’s why they band together. Maybe that’s why nobody can shame us because we take what other people have given us trouble about and turned it into a style and [come] together with other people. Maybe we’re proud of being damaged because we’ve dealt with it.”
Favorite memories
Dehghan asked Waters to list some of his favorite memories of Camp.
He said one memory involves “a guy that came as Straight Divine, which I think was really funny. He was walking around in the red dress and the wig from ‘Pink Flamingos’ saying, ‘How ya doing?’ How are you?’ That was really funny.”
Waters also recalled the time Ricki Lake judged a dance contest where the final two contestants ended up completely naked doing the Twist. “I think that’s maybe my favorite memory.”
One year, he said, the Campers made hate bracelets. And the first year, he said, “some Camper brought little notes that said ‘I’ll Get You Pussy Face’” – a line from “Serial Mom” – “and slipped them under everybody’s door when they went to sleep the first night, which I find completely funny.”
Another story: “I don’t know if it’s true, ‘Waters said, “that one year somebody was in the tent and they were having an orgy and they accidentally hit the emergency phone and the cops came and [saw that everyone was naked] and they said, ‘Ohhhh,’ and just laughed.”
“They called the police on themselves,” Dehghan said.
Waters said he doesn’t have any regrets about Camp itself.
“I think every year, the Camp has been run really well and they really go out for it,” he said. “It certainly turned out better than I think anyone ever imagined it would.”
Two more memories: “One year, someone said, ‘Would you marry me?’ Waters recalled. “I said, well I don’t do that but if you’re in line…So they were in line with their parents, the wedding party, everything, and I married them. And another year, a person asked in front of everybody if she could eat a dog turd and I said, “Well I guess,” and she took out a little sample and did…I didn’t really encourage it but I said ‘Do it.’ If it was on her bucket list, knock yourself out. It was little. I wasn’t like chowing down on a giant…but still, I was a little surprised. Can you imagine?”
Looking ahead
Waters said he’ll have a lot of gay terminology in his new spoken-word show.
“Do you want to tease us?” Dehghan asked.
“No, no, I’m not giving it away,” Waters said. “I don’t give any new material away. That’s why I don’t understand why people have blogs. Because I’m not giving away material for free. You’ve got to pay and come see it…There are many really nice web sites that follow me, but they aren’t me. I sneakily spy on them but I don’t control them or own them or run them. I want to be harder to reach, not easier.”
Waters told Dehghan that he’s working on a project that involves reissuing his movie soundtracks, but he can’t talk about it. “There’s a really good project that I think is going to happen,” he said.
He said he’ll be in five episodes of “American Horror Story: 13” but can’t talk about it or “I get fined my entire salary.”
He said he’s going to be in two other shows besides “American Horror Story: 13,” but he can’t name them. “I’ve got a lot of projects that I can’t talk about yet,” he said.
He said the movie version of his 2022 novel “Liarmouth: A Feel-Bad Romance” is “never going to happen. It costs too much. It’s an expensive movie.”
A film version of “Fruitcake” “might have more of a chance,” he said. “That’s going to maybe be animation, but we’ll see. It’s not happening now.”
Waters said he hopes to win the Grammy Award for Best Spoken-Word Performance this year for reading his six screenplay books that came out in 2025.
“I did an audio version where I play every single part,” he said. “I had two nominations before for Best Spoken Word, for reading Role Models and Carsick. I want the Spoken-Word Grammy for this because no one can listen to it. Seven hours of me playing every role. No one could possibly listen to the whole thing.”
He vowed he’ll never get a facelift.
“I get jobs because I look old. I do!” he said. “How do you think I got the Yves Saint Laurent campaign? Not because I had a facelift. Even though Ricki Lake got a great one, and she talks about it I think so I’m not spilling any beans. She got a great one and she talks about it all the time. She overshares about her facelift. But the thing is, it’s really good and I hope she got a discount for talking about it so much because it’s really a good one.”
Unlike Lake, “I want to look old,” Waters said. “I don’t want to look surprised.”
‘Irreplaceable’
Dehghan noted that Waters always tests new material for his next spoken-word show on the Campers, as he prepares for his fall tour, and asked what he’ll do in the future.
“What are you going to do without us, without testing on us?” she asked.
“Well, I don’t know,” he answered. “I’ll have to [do it] somewhere else.”
He shut down the idea of moving the Camp to another location.
“I think that the Camp is sort of irreplaceable,” he said. “I don’t want to do a poor imitation of it somewhere, so I don’t know if there’s ever going be another one.”
‘The American sense of humor has changed’
Toward the end of the interview, Dehghan asked Waters what he’s most proud of that’s he’s created.
“I’m most proud that I’ve been able to have this career for 60 years and films now are loved by people that weren’t even born when I made the last one,” he said. “So to me I think the thing I’m most proud of is how each generation somehow discovers them and embraces them, and that’s hard to do.”
Waters said he thinks his films are “even worse now” than when they came out, in terms of dialogue.
“They’re definitely worse – the stuff that’s said in them,” he said. “But who would have ever imagined that Criterion would have put out “Desperate Living?” Who would ever have imagined that the Academy Awards Museum would have given me a 12-room show? All these things happened and the movies are still just as hideous as they always were. So I haven’t changed, but the American sense of humor has changed, I think…We can really laugh at ourselves now. And I’ve never been mean-spirited. I’ve always laughed at myself first. I think that’s the first thing you have to do. You can’t make the enemy feel stupid, even when they are.”
