A Conversation with John Waters at the Jacksonville Film Festival

I was privileged to attend "A Conversation With John Waters" as part of the Jacksonville Film Festival on May 19, 2007. The conversation, which was a Q&A between filmmaker Waters and Bob White, Executive Director of the Cultural Council of Jacksonville, took place at the historic Florida Theater. There were approximately 250 people in attendance, which made for a very casual setting. Although the conversation was an hour long, one felt a thousand hours would not be enough to encompass the wisdom Waters has gained in his vast life experience.

White began by asking Waters about his recent and upcoming projects. Waters had just watched the entire dress rehearsal for "Crybaby:The Musical" on Friday May 18. Jerry Mathers, known to television audiences as "the Beaver," is playing the father in the play. Waters said that he did not know what to say upon meeting "the Beav" for the first time so he simply said, "Oh, I know David Nelson (another child star of the 1950s)." With the humor that would characterize the entire conversation, Waters said that in the play Mathers sings a love song to a man, which he called "poetic justice" for someone known as "the Beaver."

Waters also added that he has a children's Christmas movie called Fruitcake coming out but he did not want to jinx the film by saying too much about it.

Waters was amused by the scope of his fandom, as many people know him only from his Court TV show, "Til Death Do Us Part," or from his cameo in the movie Seed of Chucky. He is most often recognized on the subway for those two roles. And although he is known as "the king of filth" for films such as Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble, he came to mainstream attention with 1988's Hairspray. "People will say to themselves, 'we loved Hairspray; let's get another Waters movie' and then they call the police," he quipped.

Waters spoke at length about his longtime muse, the late Divine. The two met as young teenagers when Divine's family moved into Waters' neighborhood. He said that Divine was beaten up every day at school and that Divine's parents "raised him to be a hairdresser; it was hairdo abuse." Divine was not a transsexual and "only did drag seriously for about 10 minutes," but did go in drag as Liz Taylor to the prom with a female date. Waters reminisced about himself and Divine taking LSD together and said that "the acid was so strong in the 60s that when you took it, you were the chair." He added that young Divine would do entire Dionne Warwick albums while tripping. Female Trouble was his favorite movie with Divine.

On the social scene of the 1960s, Waters said that he was a hippie but also made fun of hippies. He went to his first gay bar in the 60s and described the experience as, "I may be queer but I ain't this." Every weekend, it seemed, he and his friends went to a riot which was "like a rave; I hope people don't go to raves anymore." He continued, "believe me, at riots you could always get laid."

Waters met frequent cast member Mink Stole while living with her sister in a tree fort in Provincetown, MA and said Stole was "like a librarian wanting to go bad." He met another of his favorite cast members, Edith Massey, "the egg lady" from Pink Flamingos, while she was tending bar at a hotel. "Edith was my Gracie Allen, " he said.

On his appearance in Jackass 2 Waters remarked upon the informality of his experience with Johnny Knoxville. "He would pick you up in a regular car in the morning, and there would be Mc Donald's wrappers all in the floorboard. Jackass was like Pink Flamingos, except they were getting paid 100 million dollars." He added that "Knoxville would have eaten dogshit if Divine hadn't (in Flamingos)."

On politics, Waters said that humor is political in that "if you can make people laugh they'll listen to you." He said that to change the minds of politicians who are against gay marriage, "send drag queens to their houses to insult their wives." He added that the best way to make gay marriage legal would be for a Democrat not to make it part of the campaign platform, but then make it legal the day after being sworn in. To tumultuous applause, Waters said, "humor is terrorism." Returning to the theme of his hippie days, Waters admitted that he had actually urinated on the Pentagon building.

Finally, Waters also offered advice to young filmmakers. The thing that is better for indie filmmakers today is that "studios are looking for weird movies." But there is no time for word of mouth advertising anymore, he continued. If a film doesn't make money on opening weekend it is gone. It used to be that you could count on films doing well in Europe even if they bombed in America, he said, but now European theater owners go by how the films do in America. He said that a good movie is "when a director brings me into his world, even if I don't like that world." He also advised that filmmakers make a movie everyone in the world can understand, and pay for your music rights or use music you can afford. All first movies are too long, he observed, saying "if you think you should cut something out, cut it. And put your friends in your movies. Rent a hall, invite your friends, and open the movie yourself."