Lorna Irvine reports from the icon's performance 'This Filthy World Vol 2', recently seen at the O2 Academy in Glasgow.
.jpg)
For the perfect finale to the Glasgay! festival, there could be only one. Bounding onto the stage in Comme des Garcons red tartan trews, the inimitable director, actor, writer and agent provocateur of fifty years, John Waters.
Possessing the energy of a man half his age and a steel-trap mind, he launches into a show which is both a chronological history of his films, and 'squat-down comedy', if you will. And he is still, at 68, as uproariously, jaw-droppingly lewd as ever, still as defiant of conservatism in its myriad forms, in spite of threatening a duets album with Justin Bieber, a la Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga.
It is this 'punk before the term was coined' spirit that is the key to Waters' continued success. He will always remain outside the mainstream, in spite of accidental hits like Hairspray and Cry-Baby. The DIY aesthetic of early works like Eat Your Make Up and Mondo Trasho may be a dim and distant memory, but without Waters we would have a colourless, bland film industry. He is fearless and heroic. Ostensibly a promotion for the new volume of hitch hiking book Carsick, it is really an excuse to give vent to his many passions and neuroses. There is also an intellectual undercurrent, referencing cultural touchstones such as Jean Genet, Cy Twombly, Diane Arbus and Susan Sontag. He is the most compelling raconteur around.
Pretty much every societal taboo is up for discussion, and the crowd eats up his every scabrous quip, all delivered in that thick Baltimore purr with barely a pause to exhale. Ruminating on the many non-binary terms for the LGBTQI community, which is growing ever more complex, as well as new terms for certain kinks, he believes some people should 'just get back in the closet, as it was easier in a way'- more fun. As an alternative, he suggests a Hetero Pride parade, off-season, in January.
Of course, no Waters show is complete without talk of his muses, the much-missed Divine and Edith Massey. He strips away the cinematic myths, poignantly revealing two sweet and warm people whom he loved very much—‘Divine for his generosity, even when he had no money; Massey for her childlike innocence... We are all gonna be buried together. Mink Stole and I will be buried next to them- we'll call it Disgraceland'. Yet he refuses to do the nostalgia circuits, and it is this forward-thinking ethos which keeps him fresh and focused. 'It is staying in that causes stagnation,’ he says. Hence hitching rides across the States with strangers, including families, a police officer, a couple with a gay son and, somewhat incongruously, the band Here We Go Magic.
Influenced as he is by early exploitation flicks, the censors are a constant bugbear of Waters. He still finds it difficult to comprehend the time he fell foul of the NC-17 rating law in America, making much of his work impossible to be screened nationwide. Of Pink Flamingos, pretty much everything fun was chopped from the film, but he was told 'the singing asshole was fine, as it didn't possess any kinda sexual threat... what?' Giving a talk in prison, where he screened the film to convicted murderers, the consensus was among the inmates: ''WHAT IS THIS SHIT? YOU SICK FUCK!''
Yet it seems even Waters has his limits. Some perverts he regards as a little hard to...er...swallow. 'Adult babies...eeeeuuuggghh, grown men in diapers, sucking lollipops and dummies—just fuck off,’ he chuckles. 'And feeders... pouring mashed-up cheesecake into a funnel until (US aerobics expert) Richard Simmons has to come in—please!''
During the Q & A at the end of the show, I ask if he would ever consider doing a fetish documentary. 'Well, it's pretty much all been covered in A Dirty Shame,' he says ruefully. Shame, would love to hear his travelogues featuring 'plushies' and the stars of clown porn...a gal can but dream.
For freaks of all persuasions. Hilarious, acerbic and unique. Long may his Odorama reek.
RSS