This Cockeyed Maturity is Driving Me Crazy!
May 21, 2019 8:09 AM   Subscribe

Somehow I became respectable. I don’t know how—the last film I directed got some terrible reviews and was rated NC-17. Six people in my personal phone book have been sentenced to life in prison. I did an art piece called Twelve Assholes and a Dirty Foot, which is composed of close-ups from porn films, yet a museum now has it in their permanent collection and nobody got mad. What the hell has happened? By John Waters
posted by chavenet (30 comments total) 27 users marked this as a favorite
 
"Personality disorders are a terrible thing to waste." I'll treasure this quote forever, but I'll never make any use of my AvPD.
posted by hat_eater at 8:16 AM on May 21, 2019 [11 favorites]


What happened? Robot Santa has forgiven him and visited.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 8:18 AM on May 21, 2019 [1 favorite]


He was just on Fresh Air as well.
posted by maudlin at 8:22 AM on May 21, 2019


The past becomes a source of nostalgia and respite from the present, even if it was worse
posted by Going To Maine at 8:23 AM on May 21, 2019 [10 favorites]


Somehow I became respectable. I don’t know how—the last film I directed got some terrible reviews and was rated NC-17. Six people in my personal phone book have been sentenced to life in prison.

*record scratch* *freeze frame* Yup, that's me. You're probably wondering how I ended up in this situation.
posted by duffell at 8:28 AM on May 21, 2019 [25 favorites]


a little story:
my dad is an incredibly straight laced, devout catholic corporate lawyer. Not a jerk by any stretch of the imagination, but he has a conservative kind of vibe (not in a voting sense, just in manner and appearance)

he and my (now-wife, then girlfriend) were talking on a walk (I think this was maybe the first time we'd stayed with them as a couple, this was over Thanksgiving or something) about books they'd been reading, and my wife mentions off hand that we'd been at a book signing recently. My dad asks what the book was, and my wife was trying to awkwardly explain John Waters's whole thing (the book was Carsick). Midway through he stops her and says "Oh, is this that Carsick book?" Turns out he'd read it.

He pauses, gets a little grin on his face and says "well now I know what kind of books YOU read"
posted by dismas at 8:29 AM on May 21, 2019 [32 favorites]


Ugh I love it

Think he’s taking father figure applications or would that only horrify him further
posted by schadenfrau at 8:31 AM on May 21, 2019 [7 favorites]


I've been going to see John Waters speak since the 80s, when he'd come to our college campus and talk about his cult films and it felt more rebellious. He's been talking about how weird it is that he's become respectable since at least the 1990s, which I can understand (his sensibilities, even today, aren't really mainstream), but part of his persona now is keeping the confusion about how, exactly, he became the Elder Statesman of Bad Taste going.
posted by xingcat at 8:35 AM on May 21, 2019 [7 favorites]


"Realize all childhoods are treacherous, followed by teenage years of further torture. Being an adult should finally be a relief.

Truer words.
posted by Capt. Renault at 8:40 AM on May 21, 2019 [19 favorites]


As a child in kindergarten I always used to come home from school and tell my mother about the twisted little boy in my class who’d only draw with black crayons and never talked to the other kids. I yakked about this unnamed friend so much that my mother eventually mentioned him to my teacher, who looked confused and then blurted, “But that’s your son!”

Send Shirley Jackson the check.
posted by thelonius at 8:42 AM on May 21, 2019 [34 favorites]


I think it's because the bulk of his work isn't offensive, it's just bad taste. It's camp. The tragically absurd! The absurdly tragic!
posted by explosion at 8:43 AM on May 21, 2019 [6 favorites]


The pride of Baltimore. I couldn’t believe (even knowing how hollow the fashion industry can be) that no one brought John Waters or at least referenced him or Divine at the Camp-themed Met Gala.
posted by sallybrown at 8:44 AM on May 21, 2019 [31 favorites]


O also: at some point late-career successful artists become known as the people who did art and not the people who made that thing you didn't actually see or would have hated.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:47 AM on May 21, 2019 [8 favorites]


"I used to be disgusting now I try to be amused."
posted by octobersurprise at 8:48 AM on May 21, 2019 [9 favorites]


Ooma mow mow, papa ooma mow mow.....
posted by Freelance Demiurge at 9:02 AM on May 21, 2019 [7 favorites]


That was a great essay. Thanks for posting it.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:05 AM on May 21, 2019 [2 favorites]


...and it continues here for those who want more.
posted by robself at 9:11 AM on May 21, 2019 [4 favorites]


. . .and it continues here for those who want more.

The part left out of the Paris Review is the really good John Waters stuff that keeps me coming back for more while covering my mouth with my hand and saying “oh my god” over and over again. Not so much a warning as a promise—guaranteed to offend (screw you John, I’d rather be dead than cook from Cooking Light magazine!).

Hip young queers appreciate how you modern hetero dudes sometimes experiment with us homos but need to understand that many straight guys just can’t hack performing fellatio, no matter how well intended, and feel much like the late actor/performance artist Spalding Gray, who, after trying to give a first-time blow job on a one-night stand in Greece just to see what it was like, wrote in his journal, “I find that I’m choking on what felt like a disconnected piece of rubber hose.”

Oh my god!
posted by sallybrown at 9:26 AM on May 21, 2019 [9 favorites]


For a short time I lived in Oliva, Spain, with a retired (not by choice) baker/gangster. The first time I went to his house, where I was being... 'employed' to look after his turtle and dog, he refused to let me in until I did a shot of rum. (I hate rum.) He kept the bottle and shot glass by the door. I quickly learned that every single person who knocked on his door was "forced" to partake or he would just close the door in their face. UPS? Yup. Neighbor in need of help? Yup. Best friend? Yup. Didn't matter. You knocked, he opened, you drank. And, for the 3 months I was in Oliva, he never once washed the glass.

However, the dude himself didn't drink. He was very weird.

Anyway, I tell this story because when he did it to me, I immediately remembered my favorite story about John Waters: for over a decade he took a Polaroid of every single person who knocked on his door and then wrote their name, and their reason for knocking, on the bottom of the picture. When I read about this, I thought it was awesome.

In the same article with that tidbit -- which I believe was in Nest magazine in the 90s or 00s -- Waters mentioned that there was a room in his house, behind a velvet rope, that was a "recreation" of a room that a bomb maker would use. He'd hired an artist to create it and had to have official documents to prove it was "art," so he wouldn't be arrested by the cops who, for reasons I forget, often searched his place.

The magazine with the article had pictures of Waters' Polaroids and his bomb room.

Interesting guy.
posted by dobbs at 10:03 AM on May 21, 2019 [19 favorites]


I think it's because the bulk of his work isn't offensive, it's just bad taste. It's camp. The tragically absurd! The absurdly tragic!

The difference between John Waters and, let us say, a GG Allin type is that John Waters's first priority has never been to offend the morally traditional. His first priority has always been to entertain via material that is horrifying to the morally traditional.
posted by delfin at 10:11 AM on May 21, 2019 [22 favorites]


I couldn’t believe (even knowing how hollow the fashion industry can be) that no one brought John Waters or at least referenced him or Divine at the Camp-themed Met Gala.

There was this nod to Divine: Lupita Nyong'o Wore Makeup Inspired by Iconic Drag Queen Divine to the 2019 Met Gala.

And while looking for that, I came across this article in W: John Waters on Camp, Political Incorrectness, and His Enduring Passion For Justin Bieber.
posted by Lexica at 10:11 AM on May 21, 2019 [9 favorites]


Probably one of the least consequential of Waters’ artistic endeavors, but one which gave me a frisson of joy, was his bit role in an episode of Dead Like Me. On Halloween, he recognizes one of the young reapers, Daisy Adair, as an actress who died 60 years earlier. His reaction and demeanor at recognizing a young woman from his memory who should now be dead — or at least eighty years old if alive — was just perfect: a blend of slowly dawning surreality and Waters’ own inimitable affect. Delightful!
posted by darkstar at 10:35 AM on May 21, 2019 [15 favorites]


This is the classiest way I've seen someone go from epatering the bourgeois to being recuperated into the superstructure, although I do kind of wish he was just a little bit more given to structural analysis.

But I dunno, i'm trippin.
posted by nixon's meatloaf at 10:48 AM on May 21, 2019 [5 favorites]


Thanks for posting this! I enjoyed Waters' obvious affection for his parents. I'm amused thinking of how perplexed they probably were by their lovable little weirdo kid, though it sounds like they were loving and just basically let him be who he was. It's like a sweeter version of Larkin's "This Be The Verse."

I also quite liked his comments in the full essay that robself linked to about how we need radicals like Andrea Dworkin even if--perhaps because--we do not agree with every argument they make: "...we must revel in all extreme sexual liberation movements, no matter how insane, to fully understand the human condition. We hold these truths and nontruths to be self-evident."
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 10:48 AM on May 21, 2019 [7 favorites]


Of course John Waters is respectable. He's earned our respect. By being a wholly decent person - albeit one with unusual taste - in public for four decades. I don't think I've ever heard him say anything mean (though I might be editing sentimentally), and that counts for a lot.
posted by Grangousier at 11:13 AM on May 21, 2019 [21 favorites]


Waters has been dining out on his brief spates of “non-respectability” for decades. I was a huge fan of his when I was younger, but there’s only so many books you can buy/talks you can attend before you can more or less stand up and give the talk/write the book along with him.
posted by 41swans at 11:26 AM on May 21, 2019 [3 favorites]


More than twenty years ago, at the Pink Flamingos anniversary, he autographed a box of Jujyfruits for me. It's still on my shelf, and I'm certain the contents are no less edible today than they were then.
posted by Faint of Butt at 12:01 PM on May 21, 2019 [10 favorites]


Good Lord, I’m seventy-three years old and my dreams have come true. Couldn’t you just puke?
I'm gonna need this t-shirt.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 1:42 PM on May 21, 2019 [5 favorites]


He used to buy me pancakes at the Buttery (of Blessed Memory) many moons ago when I used to work overnight shifts and regale me and my friends with tales of the weird. We swore he never slept. Those are the things I think about the most when I find myself desperately homesick for Baltimore.
posted by extraheavymarcellus at 1:45 PM on May 21, 2019 [17 favorites]


One of my mother's dubious claims to fame was being the second to last woman John Waters ever slept with.
posted by dmd at 5:35 PM on May 21, 2019 [14 favorites]


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