Some people wonder how the possibility of going to prison would affect Donald Trump’s chances of getting reelected president. Writer and filmmaker John Waters wonders how going to prison would affect his hair.
“In jail, you pay the guards to sneak in cell phones,” Waters observed last week. “He’s going to have to sneak in Just For Men, Honey Blond.”
The prison showers could lead to particularly bad hair days for Trump, Waters mused.
“I only want to see that one shot: In the shower, when they louse you down, when that one piece of hair is hanging there. That’s the one I want to see.”
At the same time, Waters said, Trump might avoid prison time, but that could lead to a different sort of fallout.
“If he gets home detention, you will hear Melania scream all the way from Trump Tower to the White House.”
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, was found guilty last Thursday on 34 felony counts of falsifying records to hide a $130,000 payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels as part of an election conspiracy to kill stories of alleged affairs that threatened to derail his 2016 presidential campaign. He’ll be sentenced on July 11.
Trump’s sentencing options came up for discussion when Waters appeared on HBO’s “Real Time” with host Bill Maher, one day after the jury rendered its verdict. Waters’ appearance was pegged to the May 28 release of a “deluxe 4K Blu-ray” set of his 1990 film “Cry-Baby.” The so-called hush money case combines several subjects in which Waters has a keen interest: court trials, prison life and hair.
One of Waters’ best-known movies is “Hairspray,” in which he paid homage to ‘hair hoppers’ and cast Baltimore television personality Rhea Feiken as a teacher lecturing Ricki Lake’s Tracy Turnblad about hair dos and hair don’ts.
Known for his pencil moustache, Waters also created “Hairball,” a work of art that celebrated a 70s-era gift shop item for the follicle-ly challenged: the Self Adhesive Chest Wig, a tuft of faux hair “designed to fit any size chest.”
“So many of these details that came out of this trial were just perfect for you,” Maher told him.
The ‘Woke Pope’
Waters, 78, was Maher’s first guest on Friday, and they spent 15 minutes talking about a wide range of topics, from Catholicism to porn stars to intimacy experts in today’s movies to Pride Month. Maher introduced Waters as “America’s cinematic master of the outrageous,” and initially mispronounced the name of his film as Cry-Berry.
Originating from California, the show marked one of Waters’ first TV appearances since he was hospitalized on May 6 following a car accident in Baltimore County and discharged the next day. Maher noted the incident briefly on air, telling Waters: “I’m glad you’re recovering from your accident.”
If anything, the segment showed that Waters is as sharp as ever. Some of his sharpest remarks were about Pope Francis, following recent media reports that he told Italian bishops that he believes gay men shouldn’t be allowed to enter the seminary. Some reports said the pope may have used a vulgar Italian word, frociaggine, which translates roughly to ‘queerness’ or ‘faggotry.’ The pope has since apologized for using the term.
“He ought to be against child molesters,” Waters told Maher. “That’s who he ought to be watching out for.”
“He is not anti-gay,” Maher said, noting that Francis has been called the “Woke Pope.”
“Yes he is,” responded Waters, who is gay and was raised in a Catholic family. As head of the Catholic Church, Waters argued, Francis could do more to push for changes in church doctrine to allow for the blessing of gay unions and the lifting of other restrictions, if he wanted to.
“Here’s the thing: He’s the f***ing pope,” Waters said. “So say it’s legal. Who cares? He could do it in one second.”
Waters said the problem with the church isn’t gay people but pedophiles.
“Who chooses to be a pedophile?” Maher asked. “Nobody.”
“But the people that know they are and hide them, they’re more guilty morally,” Waters said.
Pride Month
Changing the subject, Maher asked Waters what he thinks about Pride Month.
“It used to be called…Gay Pride,” Maher said. “Now you would never say that because it has to [include] L, G, B, T, Q and all those other things. I’m sorry I don’t know all the letters now. But are you for that?”
“I’m for it, but my parents never asked me if I was gay,” Waters said. “They feared it was something worse. To me, I think gay is a good start, but it’s not enough.”
Beyond “the gay thing — because it’s so accepted now — I want new minorities,” Waters said. “I want strags. That’s straight guys who only sleep with fag hags. There’s nothing wrong with the term ‘fag hags’ either, by the way. They’re in our community. There’s also trag kings. That’s trans who go further and get in drag as what they were before and more exaggerated. And there’s not beatniks but neatniks: the cleanest people alive, who snort Ajax and vacuum their front lawns and hang out in laundromats. I’m trying to come up with new perversions.”
Waters said he feels sorry for young people and what they’ve missed in life.
“They never had crabs,” he said. “Our pubic past is something that we have to remember. People my age should all get crabs again for nostalgia.”
Waters said he’s glad intimacy experts weren’t required when he made his early movies, including “Multiple Maniacs” and “Pink Flamingos.”
“Imagine. You know they make you have them now,” he said, imitating one: “Oh, would it be all right to eat shit? Do you have breath mints?”
In “A Dirty Shame,” “we had extras that had to make out and French kiss each other all day,” he said. “They didn’t complain. They had fun.”
‘Cultural appropriation’
In the after-show “Overtime,” Maher asked Waters what he thinks about straight people playing gay roles and gay actors playing straight roles. “Is that cultural appropriation?”
Waters said he doesn’t have a problem with that. He noted that Tom Hanks, who is straight, played a gay man with AIDS in “Philadelphia” and “he got it financed” by starring in it.
“I think that everybody should be able to play anything,” Waters said. “It’s called acting. That’s the thing. You become something you aren’t. That’s the whole point.”
