Friendly filth

>> John Waters on sick jokes,
censorship, integration and the new film
version of Hairspray

by MATTHEW HAYS

The Baltimore-accented drawl on the other end of the line is unmistakable. John Waters is basking in the sun at his summer getaway in Provincetown. And he’s also soaking up the warm reviews for the latest rethinking of his 1988 movie Hairspray.

That film came after a seven-year absence from the big screen for Waters. He had first gained notoriety, of course, as the enfant terrible of the ’70s midnight movie circuit, with intentionally offensive films like Pink Flamingos (1972), Female Trouble (1974) and Desperate Living (1978). Perhaps most famously, Waters ended Flamingos by having his leading lady, Divine—who Waters once called a “terrorist drag queen”—pick up still steaming dog feces and chew on it.

But in 1988, Waters did something that surprised even him: he took a turning point in American history—racial integration—and made a comedy dance musical out of it. Leave it to gay theatre queens, who manage to turn anything and everything into a musical, and a dozen years later, Hairspray was transformed into a hit Broadway show. Now that in turn has become a movie, with John Travolta filling the high heels of the late great Divine. (Not surprisingly, this casting call has raised more than a few eyebrows.)

The new film—which is hugely entertaining—arrives in cinemas this week. And the Cinéma du Parc is feting Waters with a retrospective of many of his greatest films, while also screening the hilarious documentary about Waters, This Filthy World. The Mirror caught up with the charming Waters to talk about the new movie, what has changed in American culture, la Travolta and Divine madness.

Mirror: I first saw your ’70s films when I was 18 in London, and—

John Waters: At least you were legal.

M: Those films completely changed my perspective on the universe.

JW: That’s good, I’m glad to hear that. I felt the same way about certain things in my life. When I first read Tennessee Williams, or read Genet, or saw a Russ Meyer film. It’s the same kind of thing. I’m not comparing myself to them, but it makes you think, “Oh, thank god, I don’t have to listen to what they tell me in school!”

Culture shift

M: What’s the main way you think culture has changed since you made those films in the ’70s?

JW: I think that the main difference is that the sense of humour has really changed. When I was a kid I used to buy these paperback books called Sick Sick Sick Jokes. But that’s normal American humour now. It’s not thought of as sick anymore. Pink Flamingos is showing on American television now, on basic cable, uncut. That even shocked me. How could that be? I have more censorship problems in cinemas than on television. And in Canada, they burned the print of Multiple Maniacs. Ontario didn’t send the print back forever, and I kept writing to them about it, and finally they sent a note back that said simply “DESTROYED.” They just burned it. I thought, “Well, that’s the best review I ever got.” The Ontario censor board used to be one of the strictest ones. But you know, that censorship always did the opposite of stopping something. People want to rush to see things when they’ve been banned.

M: Do you have a favourite film?

JW: No, it’s far too hard to say. Gus Van Sant said something that was so funny, he said you usually like the one that did the worst, because you feel badly for it. I don’t look at my films, except sometimes when I go to college to speak about them. The old cliché is that your films are like your children, and they really are, so it’s like Sophie’s Choice, you can’t choose between them. Mine all have learning disabilities, some can’t speak very well, some can’t edit. I’ve learned as I went along how to do things better. But as Cecil B. DeMille said, “Technique is nothing but failed style.”

From the margins to the mainstream

M: So Hairspray was turned into a hit Broadway musical which has in turn become a big-budget movie with an all-star cast. Has the mainstream devoured you or have you devoured the mainstream?

JW: I don’t think we’ve devoured each other. I mean, it’s still hard for me to get my next film financed. It’s a children’s film called Fruitcake. We’ll see with Hairspray. I like the movie, and I loved the stage version too, which shocked me. I didn’t think I’d like them that much. It’s like being a proud grandfather. It gets reinvented every time. I always said that Hairspray was the most perverse thing I ever did, because I remember the day we got the PG rating, I thought I’d never work again. I swear I thought we’d get an R rating because of Divine or me. It’s the weirdest thing, because right now on Broadway, the most conservative, rabid Republicans could go and see a musical on stage where two men sing a love song to each other, a show that really encourages their white daughters to go date black men. And they don’t ever seem to be upset—they seem to be moved by it. So I’m happy about that. If you can make people laugh, they’ll listen to you. People will never listen to you if you’re angry and screaming all the time.

M: I do think it’s amazing that you made a dance movie about integration.

JW: And it’s a comedy. I think at the time, it was harder that I’d made a comedy about integration. It is from a white man’s perspective. I was very nervous about how it would be received because it was a comic take on integration.

M: Are you unnerved that the U.S. Supreme Court has made a ruling just this summer that many see as a huge setback in terms of American law and integration?

JW: What precisely did the decision say? Because my understanding was that it was complicated, but that the court ultimately said you can’t discriminate the other way?

M: Basically, but the dissenting justices wrote a scathing critique of the majority decision, and it was read in its entirety, which is very rarely done in the court. It took them 20 minutes to read every word of it. They really slammed the decision and said it was a dangerous turning back of the clocks.

JW: There’s a line in one of my movies, in Desperate Living Mink Stole yells, “I hate the Supreme Court!”

DRAG AND RACE: The latest version of Hairspray

Divine memories

M: There is one thing I never thought I’d see in my life, and that is John Travolta playing a role originated by Divine.

JW: I don’t see what’s so shocking about it. He did a Quentin Tarantino movie. He’s always taken chances. The first I heard of him doing it, I thought he’d be great. I wrote him a letter urging him to take it. The whole thing is amazing what’s happened to Hairspray. I don’t think Harvey Fierstein [who played the role on Broadway] copied Divine, and I don’t think Travolta copied Divine, I think they’re three very unique performances. None of them played it as a drag queen. If you look back at Divine’s performance, he’s playing it quite real. And Travolta plays it like an old Russ Meyer girl who got fat as she got older.

M: What do you think when you look back at the dog-do-eating scene that ends Pink Flamingos?

JW: I don’t think about it every day. But I would say that it was a very good ending. An ending of the movie is when people decide what a word of mouth will be. It was a publicity stunt that worked well beyond anything I could have imagined. But you know, if I hadn’t done, it, Johnny Knoxville would have in one of the Jackass movies. It was done for anarchy, not for sexual reasons. I’ve never felt the need to try to top that scene.

Hairspray opens This Friday, July 20

This Filthy World and the John Waters
retrospective open this Friday, July 20 at
the Cinéma du Parc (note that most films
will be screened from DVD)

Interviews with both John Waters and
Divine appear in Matthew Hays’ new book,
The View from Here: Conversations with Gay
and Lesbian Filmmakers (Arsenal Pulp Press)