If you know John Waters’ work, skip this intro. As an aspiring Dreamlander, deviant or “drape,” you don’t need to be told to see this legendary filmmaker, tastemaker, artist and raconteur delivering his holiday-themed monologue at 24 Oxford. You’re probably already there, so skip to the Q&A.
However, if you’ve never read any of Waters’ books (particularly Crackpot or Carsick), or seen Pink Flamingos, Polyester or Hairspray—you’ve never seen Hairspray? Seriously?—go watch some of those movies and/or do the reading. Then, and only then, will you fully understand why A John Waters Christmas is a special event for Vegas, having been touched by the Divine.
Why a Christmas show? I’ve always enjoyed Christmas. I’ve been doing this show at least 25 years, and I rewrite it every year; in fact, I’m rewriting it right now.
We can’t escape Christmas. No matter what—if you hate it or if you love it, no matter what religion you are, what race or anything like that, you can’t escape it in America. So, it’s about how we deal with it. Christmas can be frightening, it can be loving, it can be expensive, it can be horrible things like Christmas trees falling over on people. All sorts of disasters happen … Eartha Kitt died on Christmas! So did James Brown. JonBenét was murdered on Christmas. All sorts of things happen on Christmas that we have to remember, good and bad.
Do you have your own Christmas traditions, aside from this show? I used to decorate the electric chair that was in Female Trouble; it sat in my hall. But it’s in the Academy Museum now, so I can’t decorate it this year.
Is Vegas still trashy enough for you? We’re tilting dangerously towards respectability these days. I don’t know. I mean, sometimes you try to be trashy. My favorite thing there—I think the Liberace Museum is gone, right? I think Pia Zadora had that little club [act at Piero’s]; I hope she still has that. And I’ve been to both the prisons there; the one you drive to, and the other one where O.J. was. But is it trashy? Let’s just say that certainly it’s something that European tourists love to see, because to them it’s everything they think America is.
[I can’t] imagine doing a residency there. I mean, you’d live there, forever, in the hotel room. That’s hard for me to fathom. I guess it’s like doing a Broadway show; you do it every night in the same theater and it’s the same thing. But that seems like an extreme way to live. Where do you spend your money? I’m not a gambler.
Most locals aren’t. The slots are Vegas’ donation plate. I’m jealous because Elvira has a slot machine with their name on it. I want one where you always lose. It’s for people like me who think “Ah, I’m gonna lose $100; let’s get it over with.”
You’ve more than earned a branded slot machine. You’ve got that show at the Academy Museum [John Waters: Pope of Trash, through August 2024] and were recently awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. You’ve reached the summit. Yeah, my profile couldn’t be much higher. I’m so respectable I could puke. The Academy Awards museum is sponsoring 12 rooms of my movies. It’s astonishing to me. So, I don’t feel ironic; I don’t feel [like it’s] revenge. I think, “What a wonderful thing to be alive and to have this happen.”
If you could design a Vegas resort, what would its theme be? Hmm. Maybe a whole thing for Liberace’s boyfriend [Scott Thorson]. Is he still alive?
He is. Last I heard, he was released from that Nevada prison O.J. was in. Well, maybe he would do a naked show, and Pia Zadora would sing in it, and all the understudies for Celine Dion would come out and do a show. And then Iggy Pop would come flying over the whole thing on a harness.
[Thorson] called me once. I wrote about his book [Behind the Candelabra] in Vogue … The Liberace Museum is really gone, right?
Yes, but there are many folks here that are keen to resurrect it in some form. It was so little and seedy; it was in some shopping mall. I thought it was great. The women that worked there were, like, cult members. They might as well have had “Liberace” carved on their foreheads.
Finally: In your opinion, who’s truly subversive these days? Who’s doing wrong right? That’s a good question. I have a new show called Devil’s Advocate where I’m saluting the new sexual revolution that has done the unthinkable: it predictably made right wing people uptight, but it also scared the left wing, so I’m now a middle-of-the-road madman. The world we live in has more rules than my parents’ world did, and there’s a certain humor in that.
To me, the ultimate sin is self-righteousness, no matter what your politics are. If you want to win, you don’t make your enemies feel stupid, you make them feel smart. Then you get them to laugh, and then they’ll listen. That’s how we’re gonna win.
A JOHN WATERS CHRISTMAS December 6, 7 p.m., $48-$153. 24 Oxford, virginhotelslv.com.
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