Has there ever been an imagination less likely to result in a show on the Strip? The god of trash, John Waters, has been a fringe cultural icon since Pink Flamingos in 1972 (the film that made a legend of its star Divine for her outrageous on-screen antics, including eating dog poop). Waters' most recent film, A Dirty Shame (2004), pulled an NC-17 rating for star Tracy Ullman's portrayal of a working mom turned into a sex addict in Baltimore. But Waters has also made films like Hairspray (1988) that, with Divine (a transvestite) as a housewife and a heavy actress (Rikki Lake) as a romantic lead, managed to be non-conformist without being at all obscene. Waters was as surprised as anyone that Hairspray, a hilariously campy film (which had roles for Sonny Bono, Pia Zadora, and Debbie Harry) somehow was turned into a blockbuster, Tony Award-winning Broadway musical. And yet in another way, this would be exactly what John Waters would expect. In fact, it could be the plot of one of his films.
Las Vegas Weekly caught up with Waters by phone from his New York apartment (though he still also has a house in Baltimore). Waters doesn't need questions; once he gets the gist of the topic he is off on a free-range enterprise of wit, camp and snark. Mentioning a recent viewing of his latest release A Dirty Shame, he cuts in with—
"I hope you got the NC-17 version. At Blockbuster they have the horrible neuter version: In case you want to have a children's birthday party about sex addicts, here is the perfect movie to show. I don't know who would ever want to watch that version."
Were you surprised to get an NC-17 rating on it?
Beyond surprised. Horrified. It was a nightmare, and it hurt the movie. They (the Motion Picture Association of America) said there was nothing I could cut. They are a very hard group to fight, because they are nice liberals: the scariest kind of censors there are.
In the essay you published this year with the screenplay of Hairspray, you imagine a sequel to the film in which all of the characters have disastrous lives.
Yes, that is what I want to do when all the road shows and movies and high-school plays, with drag queens and fat girls in it, are over, then I want to do the nighttime soap opera where the shows are over and they all fall apart.
Will you come to Las Vegas to see Hairspray open?
Not for this. I am in the middle of 500 projects. I wish I could. I am really proud that they are opening in Las Vegas. Who would have ever thought this would open in Las Vegas. Actually, this has gone so far beyond, "Who would have ever thought ..." Usually when I come to Las Vegas I visit my friend in prison, but he is not there anymore.
What do you do when you are here?
Visit my friend in prison. Oh, and I see my friend Liz Renay there, the star of Desperate Living.
How surprised are you to have done a movie being turned into a big Vegas production show?
Well, I guess if you had to pick any of my movies and you think which one it would be, I would have picked that one. I was ambitious. I made 16 movies. I certainly wasn't an idiot savant sitting in Baltimore where this thing mysteriously happened. And I've always believed anything can happen in America. The Hairspray experience has been a joyous one from the moment it started. Nothing seemed to ever go wrong. Even the new Las Vegas version that is shorter—I guess for me, when I edit my movies, they have to stop me now or they would all be 10 minutes long if I could keep going, because I just want to keep the best parts, then the best best parts and then the very best parts. So I will definitely see it there. I am dying to see it. I am proud that it's once again being reborn in a different way.
M
iddle America is not a group you would normally share a lot of common ground with. What is it do you think about Hairspray that people find so universally appealing, that resonates with them?
Everyone is fat in America. I don't mean that meanly. All fat people in a way experience more prejudice than anybody. You ask any people who are overweight and they'll tell you when they walk down the street, no one will look at them. That's different than when only white people won't look at you: All people won't look at you. I think an overweight person is the perfect symbol for all outsiders, of anybody who has ever been the underdog who wins. The real girl who was the star of The Buddy Dean Show, the show in Baltimore that I semi-based this on, she was the model for Amber, the most popular girl on the show. She said, "A black girl can get on easier than a fat girl can."
What gave you the idea to make race a subject at the center of Hairspray?
Because I grew up with that. Baltimore was racially tense. The real Baltimore show, The Buddy Dean Show [that] Hairspray was based on, actually had an unhappy ending. It went off the air because they didn't know how to integrate. The movie is very fictitious. The ending is a happy ending that didn't happen in real life. I experienced all of that.
Was there something about the R&B music from the period that encouraged integration?
In the movie it was all the real music I grew up on, except for the title song "Hairspray," sung by Rachel Sweet. In Baltimore all the white kids listened to the three great black stations. It was totally rhythm and blues, which was so bizarre because it was a segregated dance show with all black music. And they really did have Negro Day one day a month where blacks came on. But there were no black regulars. This is all based on very much the truth, in a way. This is something I remember. This was a volatile time. Everyone thinks of the '60s as the Beatles and long hair, and this was a different time in the '60s. It was only like two years it was like this, it was after the '50s. Those teenage hairdos in Baltimore, they weren't rebellion. In certain working-class neighborhoods, you and your mom would both have that hairdo. In some places in Baltimore you can still see those giant hairdos. But they really are a vanishing breed. Most switched to bad Farrah Fawcett hairdos, which they still have.
Why is Baltimore so central to so many of your movies?
Baltimore is a city where everyone thinks they are normal but they are insane. And I love that. That's what my subject matter is. I don't make movies about arty people in New York. I make movies about people who think they are very, very, normal and yet are bizarre without knowing it, and that just interests me. Baltimore is a city made out of neighborhoods, and many times generations won't leave that neighborhood.
Frank Zappa was a contemporary of yours who grew up in nearby Maryland, and those same R&B records in Hairspray were very important to Zappa.
Well, they were important to all of us. That is how we grew up. They were freedom. They represented freedom. It was a very liberating experience to me.
What is your favorite of those old dances from that period?
Certainly, the Bug, which is at the end of Hairspray the movie. It was where you catch a disease and throw it to another person. That was one I loved doing because you could be gross and funny and act like you had ants in your pants.
Did you ever dance on The Buddy Dean Show?
Yes. I was on as a guest and asked to leave for doing the Dirty Boogie, which is the dance they do at the black record shop and at the black record hop in Hairspray the movie.
Were you surprised to be asked to leave?
No, we knew you weren't allowed to do it. That's why we did it.
Back to the subject of weight. You once said you meant some of your movies to showcase the beauty in Divine ...
And rage.
Excuse me?
To me, beauty and rage are the same in a young person. I've already joked that Divine, in the beginning, was my Jayne Mansfield and my Godzilla. He ended playing a loving character actress, a mother no one thought was a drag queen. When Divine was dressed as Edna in a house skirt, housedress and scuffies, he would be on the street talking to the working-class mothers, he would blend in and they would have no idea he was a man in the movie or anything. That is very different than how he started with me. He started as a way to frighten hippies in a humorous way. Drag queens then were very straight. They wanted to be showgirls. They wanted to be their mothers. They wanted to be Bess Myerson. They wanted to wear mink coats. Divine was 300 pounds, had fake scars on his face and carried a chain saw.
He was your childhood friend?
Yes. We had a great time using each other's anger and lunacy to create these characters.
That scene in Pink Flamingos [in which Divine eats dog poop], did you know when you shot it how notorious it would become?
The first time I ever saw it with an audience, I knew it worked. But did I think 35 years later or whatever it is, I would still be talking about it? No. It was a publicity stunt. But it is hard to remember the time. Deep Throat had just become legal, and with pornography legal it was a comment on what could still surprise an audience that had seen everything. So it was a joke. It was one joke in a movie and it worked.
Did you write the role of Edna (in Hairspray) for Divine?
Yes. Actually, in the original script, Divine was going to play Tracy and her mother (Edna). But I was wisely talked out of that as Divine was something like 35 years old.
That would have meant a different life for Rikki Lake.
Well, Rikki certainly made that part her own.
Would you agree Hairspray is a sweet movie?
It is the most subversive movie I ever made, because families are now sitting together watching a musical where two men sing a love song and thinking it is lovely. They are watching a show that encourages their teenage white daughters to date black men and they embrace it.
Do you think the barriers that existed in 1962 are still present in our culture?
In some ways they are worse, because no one will say it out loud now. Kids don't slow-dance anymore. But let's say they did, can you imagine if they did a national television show with white and black kids dancing together? I can't.
Doesn't MTV have that on dance shows all the time?
They don't slow-dance. I'm 60, but I still watch MTV, and I don't think they do. They don't hold each other up close and dance cheek to cheek. They dance without touching. The visibility of something makes it less threatening to people. All of my movies, in a way, have been about surprising people so that they change their opinions about something through laughter. The only way to get people to listen is to make them laugh first. I don't think any of my movies, from Pink Flamingos to Hairspray—I guess that is equal ends of the spectrum there—are mean. I don't condescend. I love the things I laugh with.
In 1962, could a fat girl star in a movie?
That wasn't even a question. No one would ever think then to have a fat girl star in a movie. Even when we made Hairspray very few tried out. After it was a hit, when we made Cry-Baby, a hundred fat girls showed up. So it is a different time.
I read somewhere that you thought your old fans would be upset with you when you found out Hairspray had received a PG rating.
I was shocked when Hairspray got a PG rating. I was as shocked as when A Dirty Shame got an NC-17. The distributor at one point brought up, do I want to put the word "shit" in so I'll get at least a PG-13? But I wisely said no, because this was the shock value, that there was a John Waters movie anyone could see. That was a big surprise.
Have you gone more mainstream or has the mainstream moved closer to you?
Do you think A Dirty Shame is mainstream? I think they've moved closer to me than I've moved to them. At the same time, this is America, where anything can happen, where I have been able to have a career despite breaking all the rules of what makes you successful in America. It's delightful for me. I've always been a guarded optimist. I am not a religious person at all. But I do believe in the basic goodness of people. But I am 60 years old. I don't have the rage in me that would produce Pink Flamingos, certainly. I have a good career that has been accepted from the very beginning. I don't have any complaints.
Not to intellectualize too much, but in some ways could it be fair to say that in your movies, your characters—transvestites, the not- traditionally beautiful, minorities—go at the American dream with a straight face and no irony?
The characters might, but there is irony in the script for the people watching it. The direction I tell all my actors is never wink at the camera. Play the most ludicrous lines like you believe every word. Like Tracy Ullman had to say (in A Dirty Shame) to her daughter, "I am so sorry I spoke harshly about your vagina this morning." She said it exactly like she believed every word. But when you buy a ticket you are winking.
Hairspray isn't an angry movie.
None of them are, really. They have rage in them. But I think it is healthy to have rage if you are against bad politics and against oppression and against prejudice. But at the same time, I like my characters. I don't hate the subject matter that I do. The proper people lose in my movies.
Is it true that it is common for actors and actresses to cry on your sets after they see the wardrobe?
Yes. I can name who cried on each movie. On Hairspray it was Ruth Brown. Christina Ricci cried in Pecker. Everyone who makes a movie with me, in a way, part of accepting it is that you can laugh about your image and the whole show-business thing. You are serious about making a good movie, but you still have to have a sense of humor about the double-edged side of show business.
What was it like the first time you saw the Broadway version of Hairspray?
Well, I was involved from the beginning so it would really be a table reading. It's the cast, but they don't dance, they just sing and do the dialogue sitting at a table. I went alone, because I was so fearful what it was going to be. I actually did cry, because I liked it so much and I thought secretly this could be a giant hit, but I didn't want to say it out loud and curse the entire thing. It was a weird feeling of being proud. It was also uncanny seeing Harvey (Fierstein), because of Divine (both play Edna) dying about a week after the movie came out. That was bizarre for me. But Harvey was certainly very conscious of that and made his own character. It was a very good feeling. Nothing went wrong. You get very few moments in life like that. Let's hope Las Vegas continues it.
Do you still tour giving speeches?
Yes. Vegas is the only place I haven't played. I want to play Vegas. I have a one-hour monologue.
Maybe now, with Hairspray here, we can get you to come.
Well, my speech is a little different than the show. It is definitely not PG.
Do you think a lot of people who enjoy Hairspray would be surprised to learn you are the imagination behind it?
I think everyone knows now. It used to be in the old days when the movie came out, people with families would say, "Let's get another John Waters movie." And they would rent Pink Flamingos and call the police. It happened a lot. But that doesn't happen so much anymore. It is just another irony in a lifetime of ironies.