The Pope of Trash, Academy Museum of Motion Pictures (Beige Luciano-Adams)
Back in September I attended a press opening for a John Waters retrospective, now in its final weeks at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.
They say never meet your idols, but in the flesh he was witty, charming and conspiratorial, the avuncular villain you’d hope him to be.
He sat for group interviews with five or six journalists at a time. I was greedy with the questions; a minder reprimanded me. Others asked him about fashion, and whether Disney should be canceled for casting a woman (instead of a drag queen) as a fictional sea witch.
The assignment was a sort of reflection on a “free speech hero,” but my employer at the time was horrified (“This is not LA Weekly, Beige”) and it was never published.
After the interview, as a scrumlette of entertainment reporters circled him, Waters kept looking at me.
“You know, your hair is very Female Trouble,” he said finally, referring to his 1974 film. He was right, it was just my default look. The other girls at the party – one had Pepto-pink nails with roach silhouette decals in honor of Hairspray– shot me nasty looks. All very John Waters. I expected Divine to come skulking through in CHA-CHA heels and start a brawl.
“Put that on your business card,” a friend said when I told her I’d been anointed by the Pope of Trash. Among my favorite compliments, ever. But something else from that day stuck with me.
Having recently waded into the “dissident” or “heterodox” media space (or whatever the hell else you call the place for leftists who finally realize the Left has become an absurdist, malevolent caricature of itself and censorship is bad), I was still touchy about associations with the “wrong side.”
Fox News had asked me to come on their morning show – twice!– to discuss my reporting. I balked. I can’t go on Fox! I was hung up on what other people might think of me, of “platforming” the wrong people, or associating with those with whom I might disagree on certain issues.
Cute. I got over it. And something John Waters told me (full story below) that day at the museum still guides me.
Amid all the self-seriousness and pretension of the media, he reminded me to appreciate the perversity, delight in the chaos. Up is down, everyone drank the punch. Fox News is fun.
The Pope of Trash on free speech, mortal sins and Fox News
The Pope of Trash, Academy Museum of Motion Pictures (Beige Luciano-Adams)
LOS ANGELES– At a recent preview for his eponymous retrospective at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles, director John Waters was chipper and fresh – pencil mustache, print suit, purple socks. Subtitled “The Pope of Trash,” a sobriquet bestowed by William S. Burroughs in the 1980s, the exhibition is a fitting paean to Waters’ irreverent camp and recurring cinematic fixations.
Deeply satisfying and exhaustive, the show takes up 12 galleries at the Academy’s brand-new digs, with recreated sets, props, production sketches, wardrobe, ephemera and screenings from more than a half-century of filmmaking.
Since the 1960s, Waters has delighted in finding elaborate ways to offend sensibilities, luxuriate in bad taste and probe our psychological taboos. It should surprise no one that a director known for his hilariously disturbing (and self-proclaimed) cinematic “filth” is a free-speech “radical.”
“Believe me, I do believe in free speech – the radical (version),” he told me at the exhibition. “I think you should be able to yell FIRE in a crowded theatre. I don’t think Trump should have been thrown off [Twitter],” said Waters, who considers himself a liberal. “I fought for free speech. And today there is certain political correctness that doesn’t allow you to speak – I’m against that.”
Now that conservatives have finally given up on censoring him (“I’m a lost cause”), he says the threat comes from woke-scolds on the Left.
“I’m more careful about saying things for liberal censorship than conservative,” Waters said. “Today they don’t come for me. But I do Fox News whenever they ask me to. I always go on it. I love to go on it.” In a low growl, with mischievous delight, he added, “enemy territory!”
The Pope of Trash, Academy Museum of Motion Pictures (Beige Luciano-Adams)
Is he un-cancellable? I asked. “I’m not!” he insisted. “I watch what I say. But I go ridiculously politically correct the other way to make fun of them.”
Waters made perversity and transgression fun, never appearing to take any of it, least of all himself, too seriously. Humor runs through every vein of his work, from early outlandish DIY films to his more mainstream comedies (he wrote and directed “Hairspray,” the Broadway version of which won a Tony; his parents’ “proudest moment”).
Have we lost our sense of humor? According to this Pope, the only two sins are self-righteousness – “the ultimate mortal sin” – and pretentiousness. “I don’t like to be on a soap box, that’s not how you convince someone,” he said. “We don’t just want to be right for our own sake in spite of ourselves, and cut off our own liberal values.”
And yet, an entertainment journalist wanted to know what he thought of casting Melissa McCarthy in the role of “Ursula” in Disney’s live-action remake of The Little Mermaid. The animated character was reportedly partly inspired by Divine, the late drag queen and celebrated Waters muse. A backlash ensued over the role going to a woman.
“No, I’m not of the school where you have to be gay to play a gay person, you have to be Jewish… I think it’s called acting – you should be able to play a dog,” Waters said. “I think the point of acting is you become something you’re not. I don’t think a gay director has to direct a gay-themed movie. I’m not a separatist. Bring ‘em on.”
The Pope of Trash, Academy Museum of Motion Pictures (Beige Luciano-Adams)
At 78, Waters’ canonization is a welcome turn. But long-time admirers might find it all a little uncanny. “Pink Flamingos” (1972) used to be a raucous midnight arthouse affair; now you can just watch it on Turner Classic Movies, of all places.
One of Waters’ favorite quips – “I’m so respectable I could puke!” – perfectly summed up the incongruence of watching the Pope of Trash alongside Hollywood’s sanctioned tastemakers, awkwardly saluting him. (The event began with land recognitions and a corporate nod to inclusivity and diversity).
Now that quote is immortalized on the merchandise for sale at the end of the exhibition.
Sometimes, the culture swallows the counterculture.
Somehow, Waters is immune to it all. Outsider, insider, he remains irredeemably himself. For the rest of us navigating this paradoxically censorious liberal culture, a spirit guide.
“I like to argue with people. I read the Wall Street Journal to see how all the smartest people I don’t agree with think, and I read the New York Post to see all the dumbest. But you’ve got to know how they think.”
