For many cinephiles and cultural misfits alike, it’s hard to pinpoint where or when we first got introduced to the work of John Waters. Whether it’s Hairspray or one of his earlier movies like Female Trouble or Pink Flamingos, it’s safe to say that nonetheless, many of us have had that special moment.
Multidisciplinary artist Seth Bogart understands this obsession. “People are so obsessed with [John] that all you really have to do is say his name,” Bogart tells PAPER. Bogart’s own relationship with the self-proclaimed “Pope of Trash” goes back to when he was nine years old. “My mom took me to go see Hairspray at the movie theater, so that was my first time being ruined by John.”
Seth Bogart by Nick Delisi
Now, the two friends and frequent collaborators have released their latest project, a clothing and merch line inspired by the 78-year-old director’s famous brand of filth. Available for purchase through Wacky Wacko and in select stores, the collection is entirely on-brand for Waters. “I think the cum rag is the first celebrity cum rag,” Waters says. In addition to the cum rag, the line also includes a pillowcase, laundry bag and barf bag — all featuring the outline of Waters’ iconic smirk.
In 2025, it’s safe to say that Waters is as relevant as ever. With more to come from the two collaborators in the coming months, it’s only the beginning of this kitschy and kooky creative project. We got to catch up with Waters while on his annual Christmas tour to discuss his personal style, the New Jersey drones and Luigi Mangione.
Hello, John!
How are you?
I’m good. I’m home in Houston right now. What about you?
I'm in Cincinnati in the middle of my Christmas tour. I think I've done 11 out of 16 shows.
What’s been your favorite spot on the tour?
It doesn't matter, because I'm never in real life. I'm on the plane, I'm in the car, the hotel, I go to sleep, I get up, I rehearse, I go to a club or the theater, do the show, do the whole evening, come home and go to the next flight. I mean, all my fans are wonderful. They get dressed, they look good. It's been great. Crowds have been great. It's been nice. I don't have a real favorite, I guess. I guess San Francisco has always been a great one, and I always end in Baltimore. That's really my favorite, because I get to go home.
Tell me about this collection with Seth Bogart. How did this collaboration come about?
Well, I love Seth. I've known him from the punk rock world. I host a big punk festival every year called Mosswood Meltdown in Oakland. He's appeared many times with Hunx & His Punx. I know him as an artist. We already teamed up when he did all the swag for my Academy Museum show. So we just continued it with this line. I'm thrilled. It's selling great on the road. We can't keep the cum rags or the barf bags in stock.
The barf bag is probably my favorite.
Well, I think the cum rag is the first celebrity cum rag.
I might have to ask the PR if they can send me one. What made you want to make this collection? Have you done a merch line like this before?
Oh, yeah. I’m in the new Yves Saint Laurent campaign for the second time. I’m in the Nordstrom campaign. Yeah, I've done a lot of fashion lines for other people. I've had my own, too. I had a line called Filthy that was more of a kind of horror crowd. I've done action figures. Yes, I've done other lines, but this is the first clothing line that I’ve had with one person doing the whole thing. So I’m excited about it. I think Seth is a good artist on his own.
You have such an iconic personal style. My friend recently met you and posted the photo on Instagram, and everybody thought that you were a cardboard cutout.
I almost am a cardboard cutout, but not quite. I’m more of a vaudeville performer or a carny, because I’m on the road all the time. But the whole swag line has just been great for a Christmas tour, but it’s also sold at nice stores. It’s sold at MAP, my favorite clothing store in Provincetown. It’s sold at Atomic Books, which is my kind of headquarters in Baltimore where I get all my fan mail. It’s in the San Francisco museum gift shop, so it’s getting around. It’s spreading, as they say.
At what point in your career did you realize that your look was becoming iconic? Or did you not even think about it like that?
Well, I made my first movie in 1964, so that’s 60 years ago. I’ve been doing this a long time. And I always knew that marketing was important. I always had stills to advertise my movies, I always did the posters, and I always went out there to publicize it because we didn’t have money for advertising. So today, the fact that it’s become something to market along with everything else I do, it’s just another way to use humor. The whole [clothing] line never takes itself too seriously and always uses humor. That’s the best way to get fans, it’s the best way to change people’s minds, and it’s the best way to have fashion. If you’re too serious about fashion, come on. It’s ludicrous. But at the same time, when I see someone walk by accidentally with one of my T-shirts on or something, it’s really a thrill. It’s a shock and a thrill.
I mean, one of my favorite stores to get clothes is Wal-Mart.
Really? I’ve never been in a Wal-Mart in my life. That makes my sister so mad. Well, once I had to go in when I hitchhiked across the country. That’s the only time I’ve ever been in one. My favorite store is MAC in San Francisco, that’s where I get all my clothes.
I was gonna ask, in 2024, where do you like to shop?
Well, I get them from Comme des Garçons, too. On my Christmas tour, I’m wearing Walter Van Beirendonck. I’m wearing a lot of his outfits on my tour. But I’ve never gone out with my T-shirt on. It’s kinda like, duh, that’s me. I’m probably the last person that will ever wear it. But I’m certainly giving it to nieces and nephews. I hope my family wears it. They’re definitely getting it for Christmas, whether they like it or not. I also like GAP for boxer shorts.
I saw you once describe your audience as the minorities who don’t even fit in with their own minority.
Well, that is 100% still true. And now, young people don’t even have [labels]. They’re not gay, they’re not straight, they’re not anything. So it’s a whole different world out there now. The fact is that getting the next generation is the only thing you can’t buy with advertising, it’s from word of mouth. Even at the shows, I see what people are buying and it’s mostly young people who are buying the T-shirts and the laundry bags and all that stuff. So it feels great to see that they wanna wear it. It’s good! I don’t trust anybody my age who says, “Oh we had more fun when we were younger.” No we didn’t! That just means you’re an old fart and don’t know what’s going on.
I feel like it’s hard for young people to even sit down and watch a full movie nowadays.
No wonder! Most of them are so bad!
And I saw you just released your annual favorite movies of the year list on Vulture, and there were a lot of headlines surprised that you put Joker 2 on it.
I don't know why. If you see the movie, it's great, well-developed. It's just that people don't understand that they sing showtunes. I absolutely loved it, and I stupidly believed the critics, although I like that film director a lot. So actually, it's the only movie I ever in my life watched in a hotel room. I didn't even know how to do that. It was $31. It was a las- minute thing because I had a nagging feeling that this movie’s gonna be good. That director makes great movies, I like all his movies. The critics were wrong on that one, as far as I’m concerned. I thought it was wonderful. I read later that Quentin Tarantino really liked it, too, so it definitely has its followers, but I think we’re a little too late to help with it.
What’s your relationship with film critics?
Oh, half of the films I picked the critics do love, so it’s fun. I miss film critics. None of them have power anymore. There used to be film critics with personalities and everything. Nowadays, no local papers do it. The only ones are the LA Times, New York and maybe San Francisco. But across the country, no cities have critics anymore.
I did notice that a lot of the interviews you do are with local publications, which I found really nice.
Well, you know, I still live in Baltimore. I like Baltimore. Everywhere is cool now, though. There are cool people in every city.
Do you have any favorite memories from New York at the time, like the ‘80s and ‘90s?
Oh, I mean I’ve written five books that are memoirs, so I don’t know. Yeah, certainly many wild nights out with the PAPER crowd. Kim always used to tell me what the new club was going to be. Every ten years, I have a birthday party, so I had my 40th and my 50th, and I used to rely on Kim telling me what the next bar that’s gonna open that’s gonna be a cool place. She always had the right ones.
Yeah, I guess people will find those spots on TikTok nowadays.
I know, and I look online, but I don’t look at TikTok. I have youth spies. They tell me.
Youth spies, I love that.
I always have them. They’re very important to have. People have actually sent me job applications for real to be my youth spy, thinking that it’s actually a paid position with healthcare [laughs].
That would be nice!
It isn’t yet, but it really made me laugh when I got job applications for them.
You are practically the face of Baltimore at this point. What about Baltimore still makes you excited after all these years?
The new bohemia there. It’s still cheap there, it’s still scary there. That’s when bohemia begins. That’s where there are bad neighborhoods that gay people can move in and redevelop. That’s where there’s a terrible street where the cool new restaurant will open. That's where the kids hang out, and gay people in heavy metal bars and black punk rockers and everybody mixing up the crowds to confuse even young people. That happens in Baltimore a lot.
Photo via Getty Images
I saw that the alleged CEO killer is also from Baltimore.
He’s from Towson, even, where literally my parents’ house is a mile from there. Divine went to Towson High. Divine’s grave is in Towson.
Yeah, so there’s some new attention on the Baltimore area right now, I guess.
Well, I guess. I mean, he’s not that cute. He’s alright. I did say in one of my early books, “Everybody looks better under arrest.” I think that has something to do with it. But yeah, it is a phenomenon. Another phenomenon.
I think he’s one of the cuter alleged killers I’ve seen in recent memory, for sure.
I don’t like to say that because, to be honest, I taught in prison. I help people get out of jail. I have to take that a little more seriously today. He was a terrorist, is what he is, and it was a terrorist act that worked certainly. But he definitely is a terrorist. You know, I don’t know that man. I feel bad for his family that he got shot while walking down the street. Because some religious lunatic could do that to you because you work at PAPER Magazine, or to me. Just because you don’t like someone, you can’t [do that]. I understand the phenomenon, but people will forget him quickly. They always forget assassins. Well, they didn’t forget some of them, but it doesn’t help you get out. It’s harder to get off in court. He will have good lawyers and everything. Obviously if I was his lawyer, eventually he would plead some kind of diminished capacity or insanity. But he planned it pretty well. He left a big trail. It’s a phenomenal case that certainly, right now, they ask me every night in the show. I get a question about it every night.
At first, I thought, “Oh God, I wonder if he was ever in one of my movies,” but no, he’s too young. I was relieved to find that out. I know his school, it’s a really good private school. But they’ve been rocked with other scandals.
I saw recently that he’s gonna be losing his inheritance. His grandma left him like millions of dollars or something, and now he’s not getting any of it.
Well, his back hurt. That’s all. He was an incel maybe, I don’t know! I don’t know anything about it. He doesn’t need me commenting on it. He’s in enough shit.
Everyone was immediately tagging Ryan Murphy, and James Franco was trending.
I mean, I love James Franco. I understand why people were talking about Ryan Murphy. There were all sorts of comments on the John Waters websites, everybody using lines from all my movies about him, which were kind of clever. “Crime is beauty,” and all those lines from Female Trouble.
With the Menendez brothers popping back up in the culture this year, and now this, it seems like these beloved murderers are a trend this year.
Yeah, but I covered that. I made Serial Mom as a parody of that decades ago. So I’ve already done that.
Is there anything you’re hyper-fixated on or obsessed with right now?
No, I wouldn't say there's one thing. I love to collect books. But no, I don't have a brand new thing or something that I'm obsessed with, something in the news or a new case or anything like that. I still read seven or eight newspapers a day. I'm still obsessed with the news and what's going on. There's not one new obsession I have, but I'm always looking for the next
one.
What’s your take on these drones that are flying over New Jersey?
I don’t know. You know, science fiction is the one genre I have absolutely no interest in. So to be honest, I don’t care about them. Should we be worried about them? I don’t know, we’ve got a lot more things to be worried about in the next year that’s coming up with the government than a fucking drone. Right?
Yes.
Like Kimberly Guilfoyle, the most franken hair hopper that is now going to be an ambassador. You’ve got to be kidding. What is she gonna do? She is the most hideous public speaker I’ve ever heard. She sounds like she just failed an audition for Multiple Maniacs. And now she is also under investigation for sexual harassment of her staff by showing them her nude body. What is she gonna do as an ambassador, declare war on NATO as she flashes them?
Is that the one who got caught in the movie theater giving a hand job or something?
No, this is the one that dated Trump’s son and was married to Governor Newsom. A hair hopper from hell.
This whole cabinet rollout has been like a movie.
Well, it’s exactly what he said he was gonna do. So stop whining and do something about it!
You’re currently finishing up your Christmas tour. Do you have a favorite Christmas song of all time?
Yes, the one I just released. I covered the barking dogs singing “Jingle Bells.” “Arf arf arf arf arf!” I wanted to release the worst cover record ever, and it’s selling quite well from the Sub Pop label.
Well, thanks so much for taking the time today!
Say hello to everybody at PAPER. Bye bye.
Photography: Greg Gorman
