John Waters is the fine-mustachioed incarnation of a grindhouse film. He lives in a lovingly dirtied domain of the explicit and extreme. He is a double feature of trash and auteurism.
And although Waters never disappoints when it comes to outrageous subversion of social standards, his roguish "good bad taste" is hardly predictable.
What's next from the man who brought you spirited filth-fest Pink Flamingoes or that "back door" sex scene a la Catholic Church-pew in Multiple Maniacs?
A children's film would be the perverse guess. It also happens to be the correct one. Waters' new project-he calls it a "wonderful children's adventure" that's still a John Waters film-has yet to be greenlit, but the plans are to begin shooting this winter.
Although it's safe to say that Waters' audience hasn't been composed largely of children, it has included a more youthful majority-one that he has and continues to receive with enthusiasm.
"It's amazing to me how the kids in the Upper East Side Manhattan and the kids in the South and the kids in Middle America are almost exactly the same," he said. "I like to be in touch with a younger audience because that seems to be who has been my audience always. That's the only kind of crossover I'm looking for, is the next generation."
Waters has welcomed the college audience for almost 40 years-most recently traveling through the South for a series of lectures. He will arrive at Page Auditorium Sept. 21 for a scheduled talk courtesy of Duke University Union.
"I'm looking forward to coming there," Waters said. "I live in Baltimore, which believe me, is the South. People might think it isn't, but if you've ever been here, it is."
Waters' name has long been associated with the city of his upbringing, Baltimore. His attentions have gone to the city's extremes, an effort he said is shared by Baltimore's other creative outlets-HBO's The Wire, which he said loves, and the films of Barry Levinson, although his vision takes a more "serial killer suburban housewife" approach (Serial Mom).
Waters and his troupe of native Baltimoreans, gathering under the moniker Dreamland, have for 40 years provoked and entertained with a blend of counter-culture comedy and-to refer to his famous Simpsons cameo-"the tragically ludicrous, the ludicrously tragic" camp.
He drolly shelves the term "camp" as outdated and evocative of "an 80-year-old man in an antique shop" or more pointedly, a Hollywood code word for "faggy."
Waters' appeared in the episode "Homer's Phobia" as a look-a-like antique shop owner whose sexual preference throws Homer into a fit of prejudice and eventual acceptance. Waters didn't write the part, but thought the cameo might do some good.
"They called me up and I was thrilled to be asked to be in The Simpsons," Waters said. "Humor is the best way to change anyone, and anybody who would be homophobic would still watch that show. Usually the way to change people's minds is to make them laugh first and that's why I did it."
Kiddies may flock to Waters for his animated cameo-and Chucky bit part-but the rest of the world knows him best for writing and directing the original cult film Hairspray (1988). Starring man-in-drag Dreamland star and Waters muse Divine, the film was adapted into a hit Broadway musical with Harvey Fierstein and more recently reinvigorated as a celebrated and star-studded blockbuster movie-musical.
A less abrasive telling of the Baltimore-based tale of prejudice and segregation, the film nevertheless offers a distinctly Waters-esque cameo: seedy flasher man.
"It's the only dirty thing in the PG movie, which I was proud to be," Waters said. "And it's right in the first minute of the movie so the audience sees me and thinks, 'Oh, he must approve!'"
And approve of the film Waters did, joining the cast to premiers in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles ("Johnny Knoxville was my date," Waters added with a laugh).
Waters, who actively consulted in the creative process, was nevertheless "amazed and delighted" at the final product. And far from taking offense at its transformation from movie to musical to movie-musical, Waters is proud of the reinvention in all its acquired finesse-including John Travolta's less-grunt, more-prance approach to Edna Turnblad.
"Each time it had to be different or it wouldn't work," Waters said. "I think when they reinvent it every time it's hard to do, but it's the only way it can be successful."
For the consummate Waters' collector, however, Hairspray was the friendly aberration in a career of violent and sexual extremes, one which drew on artists as diverse as Iggy Pop and Ricki Lake, and served as launch pads for actors such as Johnny Depp (Cry Baby), Adrian Grenier and Maggie Gyllenhaal (Cecil B. Demented).
"And they've all gone on to be stars," Waters said. "I love working with young people. Casting is the most important thing in a movie to me-casting and writing."
With a paired knowledge of highbrow and lowbrow cinema culture, this long time fan of art house and exploitation films wouldn't mind seeing a few more genre films added to the modern mix. Waters' favorites from the pickings this year include David Lynch's Inland Empire, German drama The Lives of Others and psychological thriller Zodiac. But it's the Rodriguez-Tarantino double feature Grindhouse that wins the place of honor in his list of recent favorites.
"I think it was excellent and perfect. I went to those theaters. I saw them all," Waters said. "But I'm afraid the audience didn't know what it was and had never been to a double feature. Certainly I was amazed the film was not a success because to me it was a brilliant art movie that captured what that experience was like."
But always a man of the times, Waters noted that with the demise of the midnight showing, creators have to adjust to what moviegoers like and want without being repetitive.
"I think I'm always reinventing myself," Waters said. "I made my first movies 43 years ago. You have to keep reinventing yourself every decade to keep up with your audience."
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