John Waters, On a Role
The Pope of Trash on the People Who Shaped Him
By Elizabeth Thompson
[Ed note: A condensed version of this interview appears in PAPER's 2010 Summer Issue.]
John Waters's new memoir Role Models discusses the individuals who have inspired the gleefully grotesque filmmaker -- from teen-dream '50s crooner Johnny Mathis to outsider pornographer Bobby Garcia. We chat with Waters below.
This is an extensively researched book. Most memoirs don't have source material in the back.
Yes. Even if I knew something about Patty McCormack or Johnny Mathis, I needed to meet them again and go further. Most of the people in it I had never met, so it was like being a reporter -- an insane reporter who was fired from A&E Biography. Or someone who didn't have a real job but convinced people I did to get their information.
What do your role models have in common?
I'm always interested in subjects with no easy answer -- people who think they're normal but act peculiarly. Every person I wrote about had to be braver than me. This book has a little bit of irony but no bad taste. I write about people I truly care about, even if most of society doesn't.
Did you learn anything new about yourself while you were writing it?
Of course. It's like going to a shrink to write a book, anyway. You talk about your past and you compare your family to other peoples' families.... like [late Baltimore lesbian stripper] Zorro's daughter, who had this hair-raising upbringing but who turned out to be lovely. I think, 'Wow, my parents were so easy and I still turned out crazy. I don't get it.'
From their quotes in the book, your subjects seemed to really open up to you. Why do you think that was?
I was certainly probing into their lives, but people told me things because they think I won't judge them. They're right.
In the book's longest essay, you say that your friend Leslie Van Houten, who was part of the Manson family and who has been in prison for the murder of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca since the '70s, should be paroled.
I think that her case is a very, very special one. There are certainly prisoners who don't deserve to be released but her case is a terrible case, and one that can't really compare to anything else. When you're 19 and you meet a mad man who is so famous that he's a Halloween costume now...
And, as you note in Role Models, they were all on huge amounts of LSD.
Yes, but Leslie's so good about it. She doesn't blame it on drugs, she doesn't blame it on Manson. That's the easy way out. Nobody thinks she shouldn't have gone to prison and she takes full responsibility for her actions and says, 'A cultist is as responsible for following a leader as they are for giving him that power.' That's why I believe in her parole. It's so easy for someone to say, 'I found Jesus, please forgive me,' or, 'I was on drugs' or, 'I was in a cult.' All of those things are true, but really horrible things happened. And that's why I think she really owns what she did. And that has been really hard for Leslie. It's taken her years of therapy and remorse. She lives with what she did every day.
Sometimes we get to meet our heroes and it's disappointing. You touch on this in your chapter about interviewing Little Richard, one of your idols, for Playboy. He spoke to you pretty candidly about homosexuality and his sex life and then threatened to sue if you went ahead with the article.
But the thing is, I'd still like to meet him again! He was trying to please two audiences at the time: his religious following and his rock 'n' roll following. I kept thinking 'This interview is for Playboy.' What are your religious fans doing reading Playboy?' I could understand if I was writing for the Catholic Review or the Jewish Times -- Little Richard was Jewish then -- how my questions might seem inappropriate. I'd love to meet him again and start over. I'm still a fan of his music and him.
What was strange about that interview was that you were talking to him about those topics because he had discussed them in his memoir, which had just come out at the time. The information was already out there.
Yes, it was in his book, one of the greatest rock 'n' roll memoirs of all time, and we were doing the interview to promote the book. It would be like if you asked me about something in this book and I said 'How dare you ask me that!'
Above, left, "Lady Zorro" during her Baltimore stripping days in the 1960s; right, Zorro, smoking from an aluminum can, later in life.
Role Models also includes hair-raising tales of horrible mothers, including your FedEx man's.
She was both racist and insane. She said, 'I hate women, too!' There are people you find so appalling, so politically incorrect, you can only laugh about it. I ran into her another time and she yelled, 'Remember me?' I most certainly did.
The mothers in my book aren't the best mothers by other people's standards. They're only horrible to the outside world.
There's Esther Martin, who owns the very divey Club Charles bar in Baltimore, and who refuses to let her children complain or talk to her about their problems. And the stripper Zorro, who was an alcoholic and drug addict and whose young daughter had to take care of her. What's remarkable, though, is that you interview both women's children and they don't seem resentful.
I think they had animosity for them, but talking to me helped them view their mothers in a different way. Even Zorro's daughter said, 'I never really thought about her until we talked about this.' I asked her, 'What was it like to live in a real John Waters movie? And she said, 'Horrible.' I realize, of course, that they're great movie scenes but not exactly great experiences to live. Yet, she knew she was the pride of her mother's life. She was the only thing Zorro ever did that turned out well. At the end of our talk she said, 'Send me these tapes. I want my kids to hear about their grandma. She was quite a piece of work.' I think that shows that she's not hiding it. She's someone who looks back on her upbringing with bewilderment but also with a sense of bemusement. Nobody else grew up like that, nobody else was making $1,000 a night when they were eight-years-old and working at poker parties, nobody else was 11-years-old driving their mother's Lincoln Continental going to pick her up at a bar.
There's a chapter in the book about all of Baltimore's wonderful dive bars. Have you been able to find any good dive bars in New York?
No. They're infected by irony and fashion. Everyone comes to New York to be a version of something. For the people in these Baltimore bars, there's no irony. They're the opposite of trendy. People in Baltimore always say to me, 'Why did you get an apartment in New York?' Everyone in New York participates in irony. But no one in these Baltimore bars participates in it. It makes for a very different climate and one, for me, as a writer, that's a much more important one. These are the kinds of people who I make movies about. I love going to all the new clubs in New York; I try out all the new restaurants. I like it all. It's just not my material.
Role Models is out now via Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
John Waters's new memoir Role Models discusses the individuals who have inspired the gleefully grotesque filmmaker -- from teen-dream '50s crooner Johnny Mathis to outsider pornographer Bobby Garcia. We chat with Waters below.
This is an extensively researched book. Most memoirs don't have source material in the back.
Yes. Even if I knew something about Patty McCormack or Johnny Mathis, I needed to meet them again and go further. Most of the people in it I had never met, so it was like being a reporter -- an insane reporter who was fired from A&E Biography. Or someone who didn't have a real job but convinced people I did to get their information.
What do your role models have in common?
I'm always interested in subjects with no easy answer -- people who think they're normal but act peculiarly. Every person I wrote about had to be braver than me. This book has a little bit of irony but no bad taste. I write about people I truly care about, even if most of society doesn't.
Did you learn anything new about yourself while you were writing it?
Of course. It's like going to a shrink to write a book, anyway. You talk about your past and you compare your family to other peoples' families.... like [late Baltimore lesbian stripper] Zorro's daughter, who had this hair-raising upbringing but who turned out to be lovely. I think, 'Wow, my parents were so easy and I still turned out crazy. I don't get it.'
From their quotes in the book, your subjects seemed to really open up to you. Why do you think that was?
I was certainly probing into their lives, but people told me things because they think I won't judge them. They're right.
In the book's longest essay, you say that your friend Leslie Van Houten, who was part of the Manson family and who has been in prison for the murder of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca since the '70s, should be paroled.
I think that her case is a very, very special one. There are certainly prisoners who don't deserve to be released but her case is a terrible case, and one that can't really compare to anything else. When you're 19 and you meet a mad man who is so famous that he's a Halloween costume now...
And, as you note in Role Models, they were all on huge amounts of LSD.
Yes, but Leslie's so good about it. She doesn't blame it on drugs, she doesn't blame it on Manson. That's the easy way out. Nobody thinks she shouldn't have gone to prison and she takes full responsibility for her actions and says, 'A cultist is as responsible for following a leader as they are for giving him that power.' That's why I believe in her parole. It's so easy for someone to say, 'I found Jesus, please forgive me,' or, 'I was on drugs' or, 'I was in a cult.' All of those things are true, but really horrible things happened. And that's why I think she really owns what she did. And that has been really hard for Leslie. It's taken her years of therapy and remorse. She lives with what she did every day.
Sometimes we get to meet our heroes and it's disappointing. You touch on this in your chapter about interviewing Little Richard, one of your idols, for Playboy. He spoke to you pretty candidly about homosexuality and his sex life and then threatened to sue if you went ahead with the article.
But the thing is, I'd still like to meet him again! He was trying to please two audiences at the time: his religious following and his rock 'n' roll following. I kept thinking 'This interview is for Playboy.' What are your religious fans doing reading Playboy?' I could understand if I was writing for the Catholic Review or the Jewish Times -- Little Richard was Jewish then -- how my questions might seem inappropriate. I'd love to meet him again and start over. I'm still a fan of his music and him.
What was strange about that interview was that you were talking to him about those topics because he had discussed them in his memoir, which had just come out at the time. The information was already out there.
Yes, it was in his book, one of the greatest rock 'n' roll memoirs of all time, and we were doing the interview to promote the book. It would be like if you asked me about something in this book and I said 'How dare you ask me that!'
Above, left, "Lady Zorro" during her Baltimore stripping days in the 1960s; right, Zorro, smoking from an aluminum can, later in life.
Role Models also includes hair-raising tales of horrible mothers, including your FedEx man's.
She was both racist and insane. She said, 'I hate women, too!' There are people you find so appalling, so politically incorrect, you can only laugh about it. I ran into her another time and she yelled, 'Remember me?' I most certainly did.
The mothers in my book aren't the best mothers by other people's standards. They're only horrible to the outside world.
There's Esther Martin, who owns the very divey Club Charles bar in Baltimore, and who refuses to let her children complain or talk to her about their problems. And the stripper Zorro, who was an alcoholic and drug addict and whose young daughter had to take care of her. What's remarkable, though, is that you interview both women's children and they don't seem resentful.
I think they had animosity for them, but talking to me helped them view their mothers in a different way. Even Zorro's daughter said, 'I never really thought about her until we talked about this.' I asked her, 'What was it like to live in a real John Waters movie? And she said, 'Horrible.' I realize, of course, that they're great movie scenes but not exactly great experiences to live. Yet, she knew she was the pride of her mother's life. She was the only thing Zorro ever did that turned out well. At the end of our talk she said, 'Send me these tapes. I want my kids to hear about their grandma. She was quite a piece of work.' I think that shows that she's not hiding it. She's someone who looks back on her upbringing with bewilderment but also with a sense of bemusement. Nobody else grew up like that, nobody else was making $1,000 a night when they were eight-years-old and working at poker parties, nobody else was 11-years-old driving their mother's Lincoln Continental going to pick her up at a bar.
There's a chapter in the book about all of Baltimore's wonderful dive bars. Have you been able to find any good dive bars in New York?
No. They're infected by irony and fashion. Everyone comes to New York to be a version of something. For the people in these Baltimore bars, there's no irony. They're the opposite of trendy. People in Baltimore always say to me, 'Why did you get an apartment in New York?' Everyone in New York participates in irony. But no one in these Baltimore bars participates in it. It makes for a very different climate and one, for me, as a writer, that's a much more important one. These are the kinds of people who I make movies about. I love going to all the new clubs in New York; I try out all the new restaurants. I like it all. It's just not my material.
Role Models is out now via Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Your Comment
Posted at 11:01 on Jul 18, 2010
John Waters is working on a new film called "Meat Man" LOL cant wait.
Posted at 8:55 on Jul 27, 2010
I always loved John Water's work...ever since I saw the movie version of hairspray, the one with Ricky Lake as Tracy, I was a little girl when I first saw it and loved that movie ever since then...I just like how he focuses on the bizarre and the people who are considered weird in our society...
My generations should recognize his genius!