John Waters, This Filthy World!

Written by Martin Gallery

Legendary filmmaker and pop culture icon John Waters takes us on an outrageous and eye-popping journey celebrating his illustrious film career.

JOHN WATERS’ THIS FILTHY WORLD is a trash cinephile’s wet dream. Legendary filmmaker and pop culture icon John Waters takes us on an outrageous and eye-popping journey celebrating his illustrious film career. With a remarkable body of films that includes his breakthrough film Pink Flamingos, the cult classic Polyester and the unforgettable Hairspray (which inspired the hit Broadway musical and the all-star Hollywood remake), Waters has proven over the past four decades that when it comes to pushing the envelope, he has become a master.
Inspired by his own book, Filthy – The Weird World of John Waters, this film proves that he’s not only one of the most flamboyant filmmakers but he’s also a hilarious stand up comic.

He has been to Australia many years back, touring the show to appreciative audiences. When it’s suggested he tour the updated show again, perhaps as part of a future Mardi Gras festival, he answers, “I’d love to come back to Australia. I’ve only been there once, but I’d love to come back. I don’t know if Mardi Gras would be the time I’d want to come, though. Mardi Gras in New Orleans is my least favourite place in the world – too many drunken tourists. Is it like that there? I guess everyone’s on ecstasy there. A drug that makes you love everyone? That’s my idea of hell! I couldn’t think of anything worse, it’s all too much! I just like to sniff glue now, that’s my speed!”

This Filthy World has had limited exposure in Australia since it first screened at ACMI in Melbourne, then was a high-profile addition to Queerscreen’s QueerDoc Film Festival before it’s eventual DVD release. So how did the project come about in the first place? “I was actually the one who got the film going. I’d been doing the stage show for so long (35 years and counting), that I wanted someone to put it out as a film. I found out that NetFlix (like our own BigPond Movies here in Australia) were starting to make movies so I had them come see my show at The Warhol Museum and they hooked me up with Jeff Garlin (of Curb Your Enthusiasm fame). He’s directed other one-man shows. It all happened really quickly after that.”

After such a long time touring a show (it’s been constantly updated to include new film projects and contemporary takes on his subjects), surely he’s seen many locations and a strange bunch of people (after all, this is the outrageous John Waters). “I’ve been to almost every state in the country, except for Alaska and Hawaii. I’ve done the show at Oxford, in Australia, I’ve done France, Switzerland. I think I’ve done almost every college there is! Then I’ve also toured punk clubs, prisons, regular theatres. I’ve even done a convention for people who make ceramics – I’m not quite sure of the connection there. They call themselves “Mud people”. Then I have a Christmas version. I do the John Waters Christmas Tour every December. This year I’m going to Toronto, Montreal, Detroit, New Jersey and Milwaukee.

I’ve performed the show for my father’s Rotary Club. Believe me, that was an audience I never expected to do the show in front of!”

I ask him if he’s ever been heckled, thinking I’ll get some crazy, Pink Flamingoes-esque story of revenge. “I never get heckled,” he answers, sounding almost disappointed, “It’s not like I’m just playing a regular standup act at a comedy club where people come and see whoever is playing. When people come to see me they’re pretty sure of what they’re going to get. The only times you have problems is if you have a fan who is too much of a fan and they’re drunk. Then for the first 10 minutes they laugh too much at everything you say. Then they vomit and pass out. As much as they mean well , they’re actually ruining it by being too enthusiastic. The closest I came was a teacher at a college told me “Chrsitine Jorgensen drew more people than you did.” Oh well.” Jorgensen was famous for being one of the first to undergo sex reassignment surgery in the early 50’s, becoming the inspiration for Ed Wood’s trash classic Glen Or Glenda).

In This Filthy World, Waters talks in depth about each of his films, giving us a funny and revealing look behind the scenes of everything from 1964’s Hag In A Black Leather Jacket to the remake of his 1988 classic Hairpsray. So what’s his favourite John Waters film and character? “Oh they’re all the same to me. The cliché is that they’re all my children. Well, my children are retarded. We always love the ones that didn’t do as well. Whenever they ask me to pick one I never pick Pink Flamingoes or Hairspray because everybody’s seen them. I think all my films are basically the same. A Dirty Shame and Hairspray basically have the same values in them, but they’re just told in a different way. One’s for the family and one clearly isn’t. As for a favourite character, I would say Dawn Davenport in Female Trouble because we saw her whole life. We saw her embrace the criminality within her and how her world culminated in getting the Academy Award while sitting on the electric chair. In my latest films, I think Cecil B. DeMented is appealing to me as an insane director. If only film tastes were so extreme that there were tanks in the streets and one city would wage war on another city because of different tastes in film. If an arthouse theatre attacjed a multiplex then everything would be so much more exciting to me. So even though there is no such thing as movie terrorism, I kinda wish there was.”