John Waters, 'Pope of Trash,' turns 80!

Summary

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Fresh Air: John Waters, 'Pope of Trash,' Turns 80!

Aired: April 17, 2026 Host(s): Terry Gross, David Bianculli Guest: John Waters

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Overview

Marking John Waters’ milestone 80th birthday, Fresh Air pays tribute to the legendary filmmaker, writer, and provocateur known for celebrating outsiders and gleefully subverting cultural norms. The episode lovingly revisits Waters’ interview highlights (2019, 2014, 2000) with Terry Gross, offering a rich portrait of his upbringing, creative philosophy, and enduring legacy as pop culture’s “Pope of Trash.” It features clips from his cult films, reflections on his Baltimore roots, his penchant for taboo, and the playful tensions between rebellion and belonging. Waters’ irreverent humor and candor permeate the conversation, making this a lively tribute for fans and newcomers alike.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Early Life, Family, and the Birth of Eccentricity

• Conventional Family, Unconventional Child

  • Waters describes growing up in a loving, stable household (“My parents had a happy marriage for seventy years… I had a pretty good role models from them.” — 06:01) yet felt “miswired” from birth, craving individuality and rebellion.
  • “I think right from the beginning I didn't want to be like anybody else… I needed a little original sin and they wiped it all away… I think that was the problem. I was a teacup baby that was over bapt[ized].” (06:39)

• Childhood Eccentricities and Obsessions

  • He confesses to fears like being unable to hammer (“Even the sight of a hammer made me cry as a child.” — 07:20) and play-acting car accidents, which mystified his parents (“That wasn't in the Dr. Spock book of what to do if your kid is obsessed by car accidents.” — 08:29).
  • Waters underscores his parents’ confusion yet tolerant approach to his unconventional interests.

• The Preppy Upbringing vs. Fascination with the ‘Other’

  • Sent to private school, Waters longed to mingle with “juvenile delinquents” and working-class teens, a fascination that would shape his filmic antiheroes.
    • “I'm attracted to people that are the opposites of me. Me and so to go to that neighborhood… They were like Elvis… We didn’t have juvenile delinquents in my school but… I made friends with one across the street. I basically based Cry-Baby on this person.” (11:09)
  • Access to Life Magazine and encyclopedias exposed him to the forbidden and the subcultural (“I was corrupted by the things that my parents brought in for educational reasons… but not for the educational reasons they had in mind.” — 11:58)

2. Queerness, Pop Culture & Finding Identity

• Discovering Sexuality via Pop Icons

  • Elvis was pivotal: “Elvis made you realize you’re gay.” (13:05)
  • Waters relished the genderbending in musical acts and fantasized about drag performance, “But if I had to lip sync to a woman's song… it would be Eileen Rodgers.” (14:39)

• Performing for an Audience of One

  • As a child, staged elaborate bedroom plays for his aunt, complete with costumes and lip-synced numbers. This early self-indulgence found constructive expression through art (15:49).

3. Tabloid Culture & Satirizing Highbrow Taste

• Obsession with Sensationalism
  • Waters discusses his satirical art works—faux tabloid covers targeting intellectuals (“Joan Didion hits 250 pounds!”).
  • “I would love to have that magazine for real… You’d be hiding outside of intellectuals’ doors trying to get swimsuits pics.” (17:25)
  • His decades-long subscription to tabloids reflects genuine curiosity about alternate realities, as well as a love for the absurd and darkly comic (“I still get six newspapers delivered every day… I was really sad when Jet went out of business.” — 18:21)

4. Filmmaking: From Transgression to Acceptance

• Outsider Status as Trademark

  • Waters’ films like Pink Flamingos revel in shock, bad taste, and the celebration of outcasts (“These are obviously jealous people… How could anyone be filthier than Divine?” — 01:28)

• Stunt Casting & Building a Bigger Family

  • As his fame grew, celebrities flocked for cameo roles. Waters delighted in ludicrous ensembles and cross-over appeal — “He was addicted to stunt casting too… in Cry-Baby Johnny Depp… makes the most out of his outrageous role.” (02:34–03:16)

• Insider Reflections on Being Embraced by the Mainstream

  • “Suddenly the worst thing that can happen to a creative person has happened to me. I am accepted.” (05:01, from memoir)

• Perfectionism Behind the Chaos

  • “How could I have made all those movies on no money with my friends if I didn’t plan?… I was never on drugs when we made them because it was too hard.” (35:17)
  • Recounts the universal anxiety filmmakers feel about technical mishaps (“Hair in the gate” — 19:32).

5. Memoirs, Art and the Blending of Genres

• Blurring Art and Trash
  • Waters uses the art world’s gravitas to lampoon both pop culture and intellectual snobbery — his museum retrospectives feature “imaginary tabloid covers” and humorous installations (16:34–17:25; 19:32).

6. The Great American Hitchhike (‘Carsick’)

• Embracing Adventure Over Predictability

  • At 66, hitchhiked cross-country for his memoir Carsick: “I wanted to have a midlife crisis that didn’t involve buying a sports car… so I came up with something more ridiculous.” (22:56)

• Best and Worst Case Fantasies

  • The memoir chapters are divided into dream scenarios, nightmare scenarios, and what really happened. Waters does a dramatic reading of a worst-case horror fantasy featuring a deranged fan who hates cult filmmakers and tortures him (“You think eating a dog turd is funny?” — 26:52–29:51).

• The Real Experience and Etiquette of Hitchhiking

  • Waters discusses the etiquette and risks, including turning down rides and facing harsh weather (“You’ll get in any car, believe me… when you’ve been standing there for ten years and those Kansas winds are ripping your weather-beaten face.” — 35:58).
  • Shares stories about a young Republican councilman (the “Corvette Kid”) who gave him long rides and became a friend, highlighting the odd-couple, transformative nature of the journey (37:18–38:20).

7. Home Movies, Birthday Parties, and Childhood Fantasies

• Family Footage
  • Waters reminisces about home movies, elaborate birthday parties—often with villain themes—and teaching his nieces/nephews the “coat hanger hook” game (39:28–40:45).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Childhood Eccentricity:

  • “All I know is I was born with a screw loose. So when you wrote that you were born slightly miswired, I didn't know how literally to take that… I was a teacup baby that was over bapt[ized].” — John Waters (06:18–06:39)

• On Queerness and Art:

  • “I am so gay that even the sight of a hammer made me cry as a child.” — John Waters (07:20)

• On Parental Confusion:

  • “What parent would be happy their child made Pink Flamingos? Really, none.” — John Waters (09:07)

• On Influence of Working-Class Teen Culture:

  • “I always was kind of just amazed to see these bad, supposedly bad kids hanging out and you know, I went to the Elvis movies, Jerry Lee Lewis—all that stuff, so I knew about juvenile delinquency. I was always corrupted by Life Magazine…” — John Waters (11:09)

• On the Allure of Tabloid Culture:

  • “I remember the Midnight used to be the one even before that… I still get six newspapers delivered every day… I was really sad when Jet went out of business.” — John Waters (18:21)

• On Dangerous Dreaming (from Carsick):

  • “We pull into the Las Vegas city limit. Time flies when you’re being tortured. I see the ridiculous skyline… a place filled with tourists I have spent my lifetime trying to avoid…” — John Waters (29:13)

• On Filmmaking & Planning:

  • “How could I have made all those movies on no money with my friends if I didn't plan?… I was never on drugs when we made them because it was too hard.” — John Waters (35:17)

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Notable Clips, Stories & Timestamps

• Waters as Divine in "Pink Flamingos": 01:28–01:46

  • “How could anyone be filthier than Divine?” — Divine (as quoted by Waters)

• Cry-Baby Film Clip: 03:36–04:15

  • Cry-Baby confesses his tragic backstory—satirical parody of pop melodrama.

• National Brainiac Tabloid Art Discussion: 16:34–17:25

  • “Joan Didion hits two hundred fifty pounds... I think that’s hilarious— the idea…” — Terry Gross
  • “I’d love to have that magazine for real…” — John Waters

• Carsick Worst Case Scenario Fiction Reading: 26:43–29:51

  • Waters reads a fever dream of cult film director torture at the hands of a deranged fan.

• On Being a Film Set Perfectionist: 35:00–35:43

  • “How could I have made all those movies on no money with my friends if I didn’t plan?… it was too hard.”

• Pirate Parties & Childhood Hook Game: 39:48–40:45

  • “A hook adds a definite edge to a dull outside fit.” — John Waters

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Tone & Language

Waters’ playful irreverence and delight in camp, bad taste, and the absurd shine throughout. He’s candid, often self-deprecating, but always with a wry compassion for outsiders—himself included. Terry Gross’s questions draw out both his subversive side and the thoughtful observer beneath the gleeful trash aesthetic.

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Conclusion

Fresh Air’s birthday tribute to John Waters is a heartfelt, uproarious celebration of a singular American artist. Through stories about family, forbidden fascinations, the lure of the “other,” and his journey from “filth elder” to pop culture icon, Waters offers a masterclass in creative resilience, wit, and self-acceptance. The episode weaves film history, biography, satire, and personal reflection—an essential listen for lovers of cinema, camp, and boundary-busting personalities.

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Transcript

[Terry Gross]

this message comes from capella university that spark you feel that's your drive for more capella university's flexpath learning format lets you earn your degree at your pace without putting life on pause learn more at capella edu this is fresh air

[David Biancolli]

i'm david biancooli the multimedia artist john waters has spent his life being a champion of outsiders redefining norms and celebrating individuality and eccentricity his career path has gone from outrageously standards defying filmmaker to popular avuncular tv host and elder statesman of bizarre pop culture his eightieth birthday is next week on earth day april twenty second and we're taking time today to celebrate john waters waters was born in baltimore maryland in nineteen forty six and filmed most of his movies there as a teenager water one of his best friends was glenn milstead an actor singer and drag queen who in his drag persona went by the name divine waters cast divine in his early underground films mondo trasho in nineteen sixty nine and multiple maniacs in nineteen seventy and cast divine again as the star of their big breakthrough film pink flamingos in nineteen seventy two the plot of that film had people competing for the title of filthiest person alive and and it was a robust sometimes scatological competition these

[John Waters]

are obviously jealous people jealous of our careers of all of our press why else would they sign that the filthiest people lied everyone knows that that title has become my trademark why to use it in this way is only to insinuate that they are filthier than i how could anyone seriously believe that how could anyone be filthier than divine divine

[David Biancolli]

also co starred in the movie that brought waters into the mainstream nineteen eighty eight's hairspray in which ricki lake played a dance obsessed teen in nineteen sixty two baltimore when she performs on a local tv show her parents watch in bed disapproving of some of the other contestants the mom is played by divine the dad by jerry stiller the actor who eventually would play george costanza's dad on seinfeld i watched that tramp and

[John Waters]

i'm embarrassed to be white you know

edna i've been reading about these kids maybe tracy could be some sort of campus leader wilbur it's the times they're a changing something's blowing in the wind

fetching my diet pills would you hon

[David Biancolli]

as his films gained praise as well as notoriety waters found that celebrities lined up to appear in a john waters film and he was only too happy to oblige he was addicted to stunt casting too so his ensembles were wildly diverse the original hairspray movie in addition to divine also featured sonny bono pia zadora ruth brown and deborah harry crybaby which waters wrote and directed in nineteen ninety featured polly bergen iggy pop troy donahue joey heatherton former x rated movie star tracy lords and patty hearst and the title role of crybaby was played by a young johnny depp who made the most out of his outrageous role of a rebel with a cause and with a tattoo of an electric chair on his chest in this clip he's in a park making out with his girlfriend allison when lightning strikes a nearby tree and shatters the mood causing crybaby to rip open his shirt in anger

[Terry Gross]

what's the matter crybaby everything's the matter it's just a thunderstorm heat lightning it's

[John Waters]

sexy it's not sexy electricity makes me

[Singers/Performers]

insane why crybaby why here's why electricity killed my parents they died in the

[John Waters]

electric chair that's right alice my father was the alphabet bomber he may have been crazy but he was my pop only one i ever had god i

[Terry Gross]

heard about the alphabet bomber bombs exploding in the in the airport and barbershop

[John Waters]

that's right all in alphabetical order car

[David Biancolli]

wash drugstore from there john waters kept getting even more accepted hairspray became a hit broadway musical then was refashioned as a popular movie musical he kept making outrageous movies such as cecil b demented and a dirty shame and kept insanely busy in many other arenas as an actor he appeared in everything from homicide life on the street to the marvelous misses maisel this fall he'll appear in the newest season of fx's american horror story opposite ariana grande jessica lange and kathy bates fittingly it's the show's thirteenth season he's written a memoir called mister know it all the tarnished wisdom of a filth elder he's had exhibitions of his visual art at the baltimore museum of art and at new york's new museum of contemporary art and he's hosted tv shows from a true crime series to an overview of some of his cinematic favorites he called that series john waters presents movies that will corrupt you the films included the dark cult movies freeway and baxter and he hosted the show from his own baltimore home hello

[John Waters]

i never mind who i am no cops followed you here did they in today's climate you can never be too careful when i'm showing a sexploitation film i get a little nervous come on in we're going upstairs to my bedroom

[David Biancolli]

in his memoir john waters writes suddenly the worst thing that can happen to a creative person has happened to me i am accepted he spoke to terry gross in twenty nineteen when he had published his memoir he told her he came from a conventional middle class family

[John Waters]

in baltimore my parents had a happy marriage for seventy years they both lived to be about ninety so i really had i'm wondering why i'm kind of as nuts as i am really because i had a pretty good pretty good role models from them well speaking of

[Terry Gross]

as nuts as you are you write that you were born six weeks premature quote a little boy slightly miswired all already not following the rules all i know is i was born with a screw loose so when you wrote that you were born slightly miswired i didn't know how literally to take that like if you think you're cognitively different you

[John Waters]

know well i think right from the beginning i didn't want to be like anybody else and i think i was overly baptized because in the catholic church they keep baptizing you and you know i needed a little original sin and they wiped it all away so i think that that was the problem i was a teacup baby that was over bapt but did you you know the one thing like that great ad campaign for it's a lot there's one thing wrong with a waters baby it's a lie and kind of i think i was a little like that but there's

[Terry Gross]

a difference between not wanting to be like everybody else and being incapable of being like other people well i'm both

[John Waters]

i couldn't you know no matter how hard i tried i couldn't play football very well and i am so gay that even the sight of a hammer made me cry as a child that's the one thing i cannot do yeah we had to hammer the next day in school and i remember waking up screaming in the middle of the night of this horror that i had to hammer and i still can't hammer and my father would take me down and show me it's easy this is what you have to do and i know he was mortified that i was panicked that's about the gayest thing i ever

[Terry Gross]

did this fits into something else you write which is i realize now how hard it must have been for my parents to understand my early eccentricities so in addition to your terror at seeing hammers what were some of your eccentricities when you were really young well i

[John Waters]

was obsessed by car accidents and i played car accidents and my mother would take me to junkyards and walk around with me and i'd think oh there's been a terrible one over here look at this and i think what did the junk man think what is this little ghoul

[Terry Gross]

what did your mother think

[John Waters]

i don't know that wasn't in the doctor spock book of what to do if your kid is obsessed by car accidents and my parents were very straight what straight used to mean was not gay or straight straight used to mean you didn't smoke pot or you were not following the rules in the sixties but my parents were very very conservative in a way my mother was liberal later in life but still i don't know but they didn't know what to do really but they didn't freak out too much they were confused by it and what parent would be happy their child made pink flamingos really none yeah

[Terry Gross]

yes at the time really at the time absolutely not yeah so in your acknowledgments in your new book you write and finally great gratitude to my late parents john and patricia waters for giving me the foundation of good taste to rebel against that's completely true what was that foundation what was the good taste

[John Waters]

that they had well the foundation is my mother would always say my favorite thing is who is that creature she used to say about friends that i gathered she didn't approve of or when i would hang rockabilly male singers like eddie cochran and elvis and everything on my wall my mother would always say who is that creature and some of the people that came home that i would bring home my friends she would just be horrified but she was polite i remember when we made multiple maniacs at my parents house and filmed the cavalcade of perversion on the front lawn divine came in afterwards in a bloody one piece white woman's bathing suit carrying an axe and my mother served us tea as if princess di had come over really

[Terry Gross]

so we were talking about your parents and your family and how differently wired you were and how you rebelled against like your family's good taste yeah so you write that you were raised to be preppy you were sent to private school but you yearned to meet the underclass and you're right i first saw real working class men when my dad took me downtown to see his new company building my parents once took me to a bowling alley they didn't at first realize it it was also part pool hall here i saw juvenile delinquents for the first time boys with their shirt collars turned up pompadours freshly greased girls with tight black long skirts ballet slippers and headscarves tied around their deborah padgett hairdos how i longed to be with them talk more about the influence of like working class teen

[John Waters]

culture on you well i was so it was the opposite of me and i still like to be around people that are the opposites of me i'm attracted to people that are the opposites of me me and so to go to that neighborhood and say well to see these kids together they were like elvis they were like juvenile delinquents that i would read about all the time we didn't have juvenile delinquents in my school in my preppy grade school but we did have one that lived across the street and i made friends with a family and really he had a car and looked just like crybaby i basically based the character i wrote crybaby on this person that lived across the street and of course my mother would say who was that creature same thing but i always was kind of just amazed to see these bad supposedly bad kids hanging out and you know i went to the elvis movies jerry lee lewis all that stuff so i knew about juvenile delinquency i was always corrupted by life magazine because we got it every week and it always covered beatniks drug addicts everything that i was interested in i would read every word of it and then my parents got the encyclopedia the world book encyclopedia i think and that had everything in it i would look up everything everything in there that you weren't supposed to so i was corrupted by the things that my parents brought in for educational reasons in our house but not for the educational reasons they had in mind what are

[Terry Gross]

some of the things you looked up in the world book encyclopedia i used

[John Waters]

to look up was it the wolfden report that was the united kingdom's study on homosexuality i used to look up drug addicts i used to look up always tennessee williams always beatniks always bohemia leroy jones as he was known at the time everything about trouble in the arts i looked up so you loved

[Terry Gross]

rockabilly you loved elvis presley and you're right that elvis made you realize you're

[John Waters]

gay yeah he did when i saw him twitching and acting like a space person singing those first early songs that's when i realized and then later i was confused by it because then i loved clarence frogman henry too and remember he sang i ain't got no home and he would sing like a man and then he would sing like a girl which seemed kind of gay and then he started singing like a frog but i was so young i thought is there trisexuality are people attracted to frogs that hadn't happened to me yet but i was open minded to it if it was coming mercifully it didn't

[Terry Gross]

so i wanna play a song that you write about and this isn't gonna be elvis because you write i never wanted to be a drag queen but if i had to lip sync if i had to lip sync to a woman's song even today it wouldn't be judy liza or cher it would be eileen rogers a nightclub singer and one time understudy for ethel merman had you ever heard of her no i had not okay yeah no i had not but this is what youtube is for so i went on i found the record that you write about which is called the treasure of youf love let's listen to it and then we will talk

[Singers/Performers]

if i could have a mountain made of gold and diamonds like the stars above the treasure i would most be longing for would be the treasure of your love if i could have a silver ship to sail and all the pearls within the sea oh i would gladly give them all away if you would give your love to me

[John Waters]

oh god she was a drama queen yes yes yes i'm trying to picture her i bet she was dressed kind of like kate smithish wouldn't you think i don't think she was any kind of sex bomb but she was an understudy for ethel merman so think of that she could belt it out so

[Terry Gross]

why is that the song you'd lip sync to if you did a drag

[John Waters]

i don't know i just remember hearing it as a child and i had the record and i played it over and over but i was obsessed by in my bedroom i had a stage my parents built me a stage almost like divine has in female trouble when the dachshunds say oh a little stage i had a stage at the top of the steps with curtains and everything and a costume box and i would put on self indulgent plays for my one poor aunt who would put up with it and i can't imagine what she thought where i would tape record all the top ten off the radio and then perform all the numbers and stuff like a crazy person but i was allowed to do that so i got all that stuff stuff out of my system early so you had an

[Terry Gross]

art retrospective like recently like a couple years ago was it no it was

[John Waters]

last year was it the baltimore museum of art and then it went to the wexner center in ohio yep yeah and so and then i had one maybe ten years ago at the new

[Terry Gross]

museum in new york oh okay okay so the one from the baltimore museum of art has a nice like hardcover catalog of the work from the show and so i want to discuss a couple of pieces from the show one of them is your like imaginary tabloid covers and so one of them is called like national brainiac and the headlines are joan didion hits two hundred fifty pounds philip roth dates seventy year old woman it's about time readers say mfk fisher has cellulite help i've got writer's block joyous carol oates sobs i mean i think that's like hilarious the idea

[John Waters]

of i would love to have that magazine for real and i would love to be i would love it but you'd be after you terry gross swimwear pict i mean you'd be hiding outside of intellectuals doors trying to get they didn't have to die you know and i still do get the tabloids although the enquirer is nothing like it used to be it used to be fun ever since it went on the trump thing now it's the same pictures that are in the globe it's not as much fun except the meanest one they have every year is who will die next and it has the celebrities on it and the odds who's it gonna be which must be nice when you're just in the grocery store and see your on the COVID but i do think a tabloid like that would be fascinating and i could do a good one i wish i could really do that tabloid for real so when did

[Terry Gross]

you start being interested in tabloids oh

[John Waters]

always i think i've had a subscription to the enquirer and the globe for thirty years and i remember the midnight used to be the one even before that that i think i wrote about in one of my books i forget but i still get six newspapers delivered every day i still i used to get one hundred and some magazines a month but as you know that is really dwindling but i still get lots of them i was really sad when jet went out of business i got that for thirty years there was a lot of magazines that i got that i felt that i had a peek into a world that i would never know about or never be there so i still get a lot of magazines but the tabloids aren't as good i mean the new york post is still pretty hilarious i mean the COVID was it today of mayor running for president and had everybody looking at television laughing meanly it was such a great new york post cover have you ever been

[Terry Gross]

in a tabloid not like cause what

[John Waters]

do i not admit to what are they gonna use what are they gonna use against me john waters saw john waters saw a romantic comedy this weekend

[Terry Gross]

so getting back to your museum show and there's a catalog of it one of your series that was in the show was still photographs of things that can go wrong in movies like hair in the gate and that's when you see like one hair on the screen

[John Waters]

well the thing is that's a ritual that you do whenever you're shooting a movie and let's say you've done three takes you've got the take you're moving on to the fourth before you move on ad always says check for a harry in the gate so they blow it and check well i never in my life found a hair in the gate so i tried to imagine what it would be like if they didn't find one in the biggest most expensive scenes of the biggest epic so basically the red sea parting in the ten commandments with the big hair in it or clark gable in the middle of gone of the wind embracing her and it's a hair in it so i just tried to imagine all the things

[David Biancolli]

that would go wrong john waters speaking to terry gross in twenty nineteen after a break we'll hear excerpts from another of their conversations and justin chang reviews the new steven soderbergh film the christophers i'm david biancooli and this is fresh

[John Waters]

air i'm not a juvenile delinquent no

[Singers/Performers]

no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no i'm not a juvenile delinquent do the thing that's right you'll do nothing wrong life will be so nice

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[NPR Up First Host]

up first the trump administration and iran do not have a peace deal now the president says the strait of hormuz is under a us blockade what that means for the ceasefire in iran remains to be seen and what it means for gas prices those will likely continue to climb follow the latest developments we'll have them every morning on up first listen on the npr app or wherever you get your podcasts we're celebrating the

[David Biancolli]

eightieth birthday of filmmaker and writer john waters whose birthday is april twenty second he's violated many taboos and created intentionally perverse scenarios in his films most notably in pink flamingos his movie hairspray was adapted into a family friendly hit broadway musical and then into a musical film starring john travolta when waters was sixty six he began a cross country trip hitchhiking from his home in baltimore to his co op apartment in san francisco he chronicled his adventures and frustrations on the road in his book carsick terry spoke with him in twenty fourteen parents this interview has a couple of moments that probably are not appropriate for young children but hey it's john waters john

[Terry Gross]

waters pleasure to have you back on fresh air what made you think of hitchhiking cross country as the idea for

[John Waters]

your book i don't know i don't do dating sites i don't do facebook i don't do any of that i just thought i wanted to meet some new people and i wanted to have a midlife crisis that didn't involve buying a sports car or doing ridiculous things so i came up with something more ridiculous an adventure so i used to

[Terry Gross]

hitchhike all the time in college i used to pick up hitchhikers all the time i never see anyone doing it anymore i wouldn't dream picking up a hitchhiker now what made you think you

[John Waters]

would yeah yeah but the whole time when i hitchhiked across the country from when i left baltimore to san francisco i saw one hitchhiker and i was in the car with somebody else and i said don't pick him up i can't believe i did that you'd think that would be such bad hitchhiking karma but when you hitchhike alone you don't want to share your ride with somebody believe me i'm not a communist hitchhiker

[Terry Gross]

so you assumed people would think you were either an older homeless man or that you were john waters so how did it divide up between the people who recognized you and the people who thought you were a pathetic sad destitute

[John Waters]

person there was a little of both because what happened is people would drive past me and think well was that john waters but no why would i be standing there doing that and they'd come back and pick me up other people didn't know and pulled over and tried to give me money or help me and then realized and started laughing and screaming and many people didn't recognize me and when i did tell them during the normal conversation in the car that i was a film director they just looked at me like i was so deluded as a homeless person that believed he was a cult film director so generally i didn't care because it didn't matter to me i wanted to hear their stories i was relieved if they really didn't know who i was but yet i'm a hypocrite because when i get stuck i would shamelessly use it if i could to try to

[Terry Gross]

get a ride oh you even carried around a fame kit i did that

[John Waters]

helped with the policeman it was for if the cops stopped me so what

[Terry Gross]

was in your fame kit to prove that you were really a movie director and not a destitute person you know

[John Waters]

fame id which is your directors guild of america card your writers guild of america card and the most ridiculous my academy of arts you know the oscar voting card which i really wanted to like use that what do you mean you can't put me in jail i vote in the oscars every year but it did work the one only time i ever used it no i used it twice once i used it for the policeman that stopped me and he gave me a ride the second one i used it when i was stuck in a rest area hanging outside of bathrooms begging people to give me a ride which really made me feel like

[Terry Gross]

a pervert so there's three parts of your book the first part is fictional stories you imagine that are best case scenarios of what would happen if someone picks you up and then you have part two which is fictional stories of what would happen in the worst case scenarios and then you have part three which is what actually happened so there's an excerpt of a story from part two the worst case scenarios that i'd like you to read and the setup of this chapter is that you get picked up by a member of a group that he calls react and he says it's a trucker citizen band radio emergency channel organization made up of volunteers to assist other motorists in times of disaster but it's actually this guy who who really hates cult directors and wants to kill all of them including you he hates the rocky horror picture show he hates herschel gordon lewis who did blood feast he helps el topo and todd solons david cronenberg quentin tarantino pedro almodovar and he's come to give you your last ride and i'd like you to do a short reading about this

[John Waters]

ride all right i've never read this

[Terry Gross]

one out loud okay and i'll say we've edited this for radio

[John Waters]

hold it hold it i yell hoping to buy time we are just writer directors trying to do our job i'm sorry if my films offended you you think eating a dog turd is funny randy demands with terrifying hostility no no i i was just commenting on censorship laws at the time of deep throat i beg yeah yeah yeah randy sneers before whipping out a pocket knife and stabbing me in the leg that he roars looking at the blade still stuck in my flesh is funny ha ha ha just repe it's only a movie it's only a movie it's only a movie but this old catch line from an exploitation ad campaign doesn't do the trick and that birth scene in female trouble he charges like an obscenity prosecutor was absolutely disgusting before i can even plead my defense he shoots me in the other leg i howl in agony i scream for my life we pull into the las vegas city limit time flies when you're being tortured i see the ridiculous skyline of the town a place filled with tourists i have spent my lifetime trying to avoid look randy i groan through spasms of pain just let me out here i promise i won't make any trash films again i'll go make mainstream movies i swear it's too late for a career change randy snarls with murderous rage as he pulls his truck off the road into an abandoned drive in movie theater theater it's been a long time since any movies were shown here there's not even a screen anymore and the concession stand has been burned to the ground the few remaining poles for the speakers have been stripped clean of working parts randy slams on his brakes with a sickening finality get in the back randy orders no randy please i argue let's go see the avengers let's go see hollywood tentpole blockbusters his answer a bullet into my right foot i almost pass out when he grabs me and throws me into the opening he has carved between the truck and the trailer he's pulling inside is a cult movie director torture chamber josie cotton's cover version of the theme song from who killed teddy bear is playing on some sort of sound system beneath movie posters for el topo is the decaying body of jodorowsky whom i thought was still alive until randy tells me differently and takes credit i see george romero's amputated head hanging in a basket surrounded by posters for night of the living dead and all its sequels enough is all randy offers an explanation before i can scream i trip over what appears to be a corpse clawed apart by wild animals randy kicks it and i realize this poor human is still alive i try to look away but randy grabs my head in a chokehold and forces me to gaze upon this nauseating face oh my god it's herschel gordon lewis and he chuckles when he sees me he's still got a sense of humor even as he approaches death randy pushes me forward into the bloody pit

[Terry Gross]

of horror and that's from one of the fictional sections of john waters new book carsick about hitchhiking across america that's an example of one of the worst case scenarios he imagines yes hopefully it's not the best right that's right how many of the things that randy does to you in that fictional scene have you done to other people in your

[John Waters]

films oh in my films that's what she's been in real life i've harry in my films well i've certainly cut off people's heads i've certainly yes i've probably done all of them in my films but for comedy and in this writing your death as comedy is sort of fun to do too so i've probably done all of them except the sexual parts that you cut out and i might have done them too in my movies not in real life that's a chart terry you'd have to make me i'd have to diagram this chapter for you to tell me what's real life what's fantasy what i have done and what i've done in my movies

[Terry Gross]

that's a gray area that's hysterical so one of the best case scenarios in your book one of the imagined best case scenarios in your book is that you're picked up by your favorite porn star johnny davenport the star of power tool and he is or was a famous porn star in reality who in reality did star in power tool one of the great titles there's some other

[John Waters]

good ones too but i can't say

[Terry Gross]

them right yeah no exactly why would that be your dream run well because

[John Waters]

of what happens to me you know i picked up by a porn star who also is friends with extraterrestrial aliens that take us aboard and have sex with us and then i meet connie francis so really it's you know when you think up the best and the worst that gives me freedom you know i mean to imagine the best and the worst those are extreme words the best and the worst and i have read many people that do really believe that they were kidnapped by spacemen and had sex with them that's what gave me the ideas and i read a couple of those books just to see and so i wanted to go to the most pitiful ones that look like zsa zsa gabor set you know of queen of outer space and they ate liver that's the only thing i added like space aliens that before they had sex with you had to eat liver

[Terry Gross]

dinners so i imagine you've actually watched a lot of porn films in your time so what are some of the

[John Waters]

well once once i was the judge for the porn oscars so they sent cases of them and i actually heard yeah and i heard another judge say i'm raw from the studio and the porno oscars were held in a howard johnson's that spun around so people were like sick you know have a bunch of drinks at the porn oscars and the party was at howard johnson's in l a that spins so you kept finding yourself you had to be like a ballet dancer make eye contact with one building every time it went around so you wouldn't get the whirlies wait

[Terry Gross]

so is this the real version of the prize that dirk diggler wins in

[John Waters]

boogie nights well there is the avn awards i get avn which is the adult video news which is the trade paper for the porn business which is great i mean they have interviews with people says oh yes my mother handles all my fan mail i mean she does you know and she's so happy that i'm and then these titles are so ludicrous you know so i'm all for that magazine which always gives me ideas and probably did help this chapter

[David Biancolli]

john waters speaking to terry gross in twenty fourteen more after a break this

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[Terry Gross]

fees may apply let's get to the real thing what really happened to you john waters while you were hitchhiking cross country and you write can i really give up the rigid scheduling i'm so used to in my life me the ultimate control freak who plans weeks ahead the day i can irresponsibly eat candy and i never thought that you were that much of a schedule that you actually planned in advance the week you

[John Waters]

would eat candy i do my hangovers are on my schedule three months in advance i carry four pennies always in my pocket so i'll never get more

[Terry Gross]

change wow that's actually very smart but very very planning ahead yeah i do

[John Waters]

plan ahead i think i got that

[Terry Gross]

from my father it's certainly nothing i ever would have imagined from your early movies that you would have been so kind of orderly and precise in your planning because the movies are just like so transgressive and so like if there's a boundary i'm crossing it i'm defying

[John Waters]

it but how could i have made all those movies on no money with my friends if i didn't plan that can't happen magically it happened because we were kind of obsessed the same time everybody said oh you must have been on drugs when you made those movies no we weren't on drugs when we made them i was on drugs when i thought them up and i was on drugs when we showed them but i was never on drugs when we made them because it was too hard

[Terry Gross]

so you know another question you ask yourself is what is the etiquette of hitchhiking if a car stops but if there's something you don't trust about the driver do you politely decline the ride will you end up insulting the driver if you do that did you have to do that at all during your

[John Waters]

hitchhiking time here's the thing i wrote about that in the prologue but when the real life when you're out there as i said i would have gotten in ted bundy in his volkswagen with his arm in a sling in the front seat you'll get in any car believe me all your rules all your things that you imagine go out the window when you've been standing there for ten years and those kansas winds are ripping your weather beaten face it is the worst beauty regimen ever to hitchhike i would go in the motels at night and look in the mirror and i have in my office a little mirror a hand mirror that i got from a joke shop where you pick it up and look at yourself and it screams well that's what every mirror that's what every mirror did when i hitchhiked across america it let out a shriek of horror when they saw hitchhiking face a new thing that i want to invent a product and i thought no wonder people aren't picking me up because i had a hat that said scum of the earth which was a dumb fashion choice to take with me isn't a weird little exploitation movie i like but i should not have worn that hat but pecker would have been worse that was the other one i had i thought that really weird movie

[Terry Gross]

title of yours yeah yeah yeah so one of your rides you got picked up in myersville maryland by a twenty year old republican town councilman and he drove you to ohio and it was a great ride you call him in your book the corvette kid he was

[John Waters]

only going to lunch to get his lunch at the subway shop when he stopped and it was pouring rain and gave me a four hour ride which

[Terry Gross]

was very nice and then you met up with him again and he gave you an even longer ride yes he

[John Waters]

came back he kept texting me but i thought he was just kidding me that he wasn't gonna come back and finally i got stuck in ohio and bonner springs kansas so it took a long while and i was gonna he kept texting me saying i'm gonna come get you again i thought he was kidding so i got a great ride with this kansas couple who is coming to the signing in baltimore and they took me really a long way all the way to denver and he wrote and said what do you mean i've been driving forty eight hours at eighty miles an hour to catch up with you and he finally did and then took me to reno and then i just gave him the keys to my apartment said go stay in my place in san francisco and he was great his parents were horrified because if they google me it's not good if you google my name from a parent's viewpoint that your son is missing with in a car on the other side of the country it is not comfortable so

[Terry Gross]

did the young republican town councilman know your work and what was his reaction when you described it he didn't know

[John Waters]

my work and he did google me on the way and saw at least it was true i don't know to this day if he's ever seen my movies but we certainly became friends he stayed longer in san francisco when we got there and then he came to my christmas party this year i'm still in touch with him i think it gave him confidence he looked great he looked great before but he was we were just an odd couple i mean his friends were texting him saying way to go you're in reno with a gay man in a motel you know that's great for your campaign right and he was we just laughed about it because it was so ridiculous the whole thing was completely innocent we on the way met some swingers that kept trying to hook up with us by texting him which really in another hotel the maitre d came and knocked on his door in the middle of the night i thought hey what about me it was kind of funny we just laughed

[David Biancolli]

the whole time john waters speaking to terry gross in twenty fourteen she also spoke to him in two thousand when he had just released his film cecil b demented do you have any home

[Terry Gross]

movies at home yeah this one no

[John Waters]

no i mean half my films no

[Terry Gross]

but i mean i mean like movies your parents made of you growing up your birthday parties they had some of

[John Waters]

that was was in steve yeager's documentary about me divine trash and in bad taste they have some of that yeah those footage are in there yes eight millimeter movies my parents have certainly i

[Terry Gross]

don't have them how do you feel when you see those

[John Waters]

well you look at it and it looks so happy when you look you think why did i ever need to go to a shrink and i'm with my parents in a nice house my parents never did anything that horrible i can remember why am i this nuts what were your birthday parties like oh themes i had pirate parties where i got to be captain hook i had a pirate party every year so i could be captain hook and once i was the wicked witch of the west the only time i was ever in dragon my entire life and just because i wanted to be green i didn't care about the dress i wanted to have green skin i was always a disney villain every year and i had costume parties a lot certainly and they do have pictures of that the pirate party and i was captain hook when i always put that coat hanger it's a great game i've taught my nieces and nephews to play it take a coat hanger you bend it and you put it up your sleeve and you too can have a hook and it's a good look a hook adds a definite edge to a dull outside fit

[David Biancolli]

john waters spoke to terry gross in two thousand the writer and director of pink flamingos and hairspray turns eighty years old next week

[John Waters]

happy birthday john happy birthday fatso you are no longer the filthiest person alive

[Singers/Performers]

we are happy happy birthday baby

[David Biancolli]

coming up justin chang reviews the new steven soderbergh film the christophers this is fresh air in the new dark comedy the christophers michaela cole known for her emmy winning miniseries i may destroy youy plays a gifted artist who takes a job working for a famous london based painter painter played by ian mckellen the movie which is now playing in theaters is the latest from the director steven soderbergh our film critic justin chang has this

[Justin Chang]

review after steven soderbergh's terrific twenty twenty five double bill of presents and black bag i almost wish that purely for the sake of variety i could say that his new movie the christophers is a dud but i can't it's terrific and it's the latest confirmation that soderbergh is working with a nimbleness that no other american director at the moment can match you might have to go back to the workhorse days of the old hollywood studio system for such a consistent abundance of quantity and quality the christophers which was written by ed solomon is a spry and witty chamber comedy most of it's set in the ramshackle london townhouse of a famous painter julian sklaw played by a superb ian mckellen not long after the movie begins julian takes on a new assistant laurie butler played by michaela cole what he doesn't know is that laurie is a skilled art restorer and that she's been hired to infiltrate his home by his two greedy grown up children played by james corden and jessica gunning laurie's mission is to find several of julian's unfinished paintings all portraits of his former lover christopher and finish them in julian's style the plan is that when julian dies perhaps someday soon the forged christophers will be discovered and sold for millions laurie will get a third of the proceeds soderbergh has a deft way with heist and home invasion movies and the christophers is as you'd expect full of twists and reversals laurie has some moral qualms about taking on a forgery job but she also has a personal gripe to settle with julian that leads her to say yes also she needs the money as ever soderbergh is keenly attuned to his character's economic straits when she starts working at julian's townhouse laurie mostly keeps her head down and pretends to know nothing about her boss or about art but julian can sense that his new assistant is more clever than she lets on and in this scene he begins asking her about her personal life laurie am i

[John Waters]

allowed to ask if she has a

boyfriend i mean no no she doesn't no you're not allowed

noted why not

though well firstly we're at work nonsense

it's not like we cease to be ourselves simply by crossing some conceptual boundary here i am at work and here i am at home asking away at work don't you dare all yours you

can't ask me in either place because because you are my employer which means you hold the power and i should

use it to ask if you have

a partner if you'll explain its relevance

the relevance is that i'm curious it's

[Justin Chang]

no surprise to learn that julian experienced a close brush with cancellation years ago owing to some impolitic remarks he made about women artists it's one of many reasons his career has floundered in recent years that plus a general lack of inspiration and productivity mckellen has a sublime ability to combine gravitas with mischief and he gives his strongest performance in years as this incorrigible old soul i was reminded of his great oscar nominated turn in gods and monsters as the hollywood director james whale another queer artist in the twilight of a legendary career but mckellen is matched nuance for nuance by cole an intensely magnetic screen presence whose work here is mesmerizing in its poise and restraint it's no spoiler to note that julian is too smart to be deceived by laurie for long and once the truth begins to emerge their battle of wits doesn't just deepen it turns inside out despite their differences in race gender class temperament and worldview view julian and laurie are more alike than they realize and what's thrilling about the christophers is the way it becomes a tart yet tender portrait of two kindred spirits julian for all his bloviating turns out to be a more empathetic listener than he appears and laurie for all her initial reserve turns out to be julian's rhetorical and intellectual equal in the movie's best scene laurie dissects the history of julian's entire christopher's project balancing rigorous analysis of his materials and techniques with unsparing insight into what each painting reveals of his emotional state at the time mckellen and cole make such splendid company that i'd have gladly watched them simply trade insults for two hours but soderbergh and solomon have grander ambitions and every scene of the christophers is spring loaded with ideas they know that it's never been harder for artists to make a living doing what they do it's no coincidence that both julian and laurie rely on side hustles just to get by the filmmakers also know the absurdities of the fine art world where the price of a painting can fluctuate wildly according to the whims of the market soderbergh not for the first time seems to be commenting at least in part on the struggles of independent filmmakers not unlike the new york pro sports milieu in high flying bird or the florida male strip club in magic mike the studios and galleries of the christophers can feel analogous to the movie industry itself a place where against crushing odds art somehow manages

[David Biancolli]

to find a way justin chang is a film critic for the new yorker he reviewed the new film the christopher on monday's show nobel peace prize winner malala yousafzai on her life before and after she was shot by a taliban gunman payback for standing up against the taliban and advocating for her right and the right of all girls to go to school she's serious about her ongoing advocacy but has a delightful sense of humor i hope you can join us to keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews follow us on instagram at nprfresh you can subscribe to our youtube channel at youtube dot com this is fresh air fresh air's executive producer is sam brigger our senior producer today is roberta shorrock our technical director and engineer is audrey bentham with additional engineering support by joyce lieberman julian hertzfeld and deanna martinez for terry gross and tanya mosley i'm david biancooli