Read the Oct. 11, 2007 interview in The Desert Sun.
Though his reputation precedes him, cult director John Waters does not hold his finger over the shock button.
"I'm never trying to shock," he says during a recent phone interview. "I'm trying to surprise the audience and make them laugh."
Despite a filmography that has stretched the borders of perversions and profanity, Waters, who'll perform a one-man spoken lecture at the Annenberg Theater on Saturday, feels his movies provide social guidance.
"My films teach you to mind your own business, not judge people until you know the details and accept your neuroses," he says.
Who better to represent the don't-judge-a-book-by-its-cover mantra than his late friend and cinematic co-conspirator, Harris Glenn Milstead, aka Divine? Acting as star or scene stealer in Waters' films until Milstead's death in 1988 following his last role in Hairspray, Waters claims to have created the drag diva.
Best known for his transvestite alter-ego, Waters insists Milstead never dressed as a woman off the set. As kids, the two preferred to make monster movies, and Milstead fell into the role of beast over beauty. Divine was born during his film debut as the Smoking Nun in Waters' short, "Roman Candles."
Waters' cast and crew of regulars, the Dreamlanders, were assembled from friends. "Just like all kids who make movies," Waters says. "But the serious ones rose to the top; Divine was initially not a lead."
What began as political action through film soon tested boundaries. "Even the ending of Pink Flamingos didn't seem shocking (to us) at the time," Waters said, referring to the notorious scatological closer. "But if I hadn't done it, Johnny Knoxville would have eventually done it," Waters says of the "Jackass" star, who had a role in the director's 2004 comedy, A Dirty Shame.
Now Waters grabs plot ideas from headlines that he believes will have staying power by the time a film is released. "It has to be so surprising and so bizarre. Larry Craig's case will lead to much comedy material." Waters also says "Anna Nicole Smith is the role all drag queens want to play."
A loyal Baltimorian by birth, Waters always films in his hometown and performs location scouts before the scripts are written. "(My films) praise the city for all the wrong reasons," he says. "What the Chamber of Commerce of Baltimore tries to hide. But I don't look down on neighborhoods -- I think I make them look good."
Waters was drawn to narrate the film, Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea, as it reminded him of the Baltimore portrayed in his film, Desperate Living -- "if all the water went away." He respected the locals who "happily live in extreme, isolated communities."
Regarding the late champion of the Salton Sea, Sonny Bono, Waters says, "I miss Sonny. There was never a short list (for his character in Hairspray)." Waters explains, "There was nobody like him."
Friends questioned the director's decision to hire a Republican considering Waters' openly gay lifestyle, but he appreciated Bono's early musical involvement in R&B -- a matter that gelled well with Hairspray's focus on integration.
Beyond the comic crudity infused in Waters' movies, "The messages of my films are actually pretty moral, if kind of clouded." Reflecting on a nearly-censored but ultimately Emmy-winning "The Simpsons" episode in which he guest-voiced a gay character, Waters explained how the writers presented the controversial subject of homosexuality. "They did it by humor," he says, "which is the best way to change peoples' minds."
"I'm not a very spiritual person, but I believe in transformation," Waters says of his desire to educate through comedy.
In the '80s, Waters' methods were more literal when he taught a film course to prisoners. "We made little movies that were very Dogma 95," Waters says, referring to the sparse film style. "A radio provided the soundtrack in the background and through the best improv exercise, I made (the prisoners) play the opposite of themselves."
Waters misses the teaching experience. "I got as much out of it as the students did. It made me realize just how close to regular people criminals are."