--- title: John Waters on Maisel and His Busiest Year Yet description: "I'd drop dead if I retired," he says in a lively interview on his varied career, lockdown experience and philosophy of radical acceptance. canonical: https://time.com/6148756/john-waters-interview-maisel-2022/ author: Judy Berman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2022-02-17T13:30:10.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:42:34.818Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: America's Filth Elder John Waters Isn't Slowing Down og:description: "I'd drop dead if I retired," says the filmmaker, in an interview in advance of his Marvelous Mrs. Maisel appearance og:url: https://time.com/6148756/john-waters-interview-maisel-2022/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4950aebfe6866c15/698a228416d8849504c3a571/john-waters-03.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2400 og:image:height: 1350 og:image:alt: John Waters og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: America's Filth Elder John Waters Isn't Slowing Down twitter:description: "I'd drop dead if I retired," says the filmmaker, in an interview in advance of his Marvelous Mrs. Maisel appearance twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4950aebfe6866c15/698a228416d8849504c3a571/john-waters-03.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # America's Filth Elder John Waters Isn't Slowing Down > Sponsored content. 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Peter Fisher for TIME  by [Judy Berman](https://time.com/author/judy-berman/)  ## Judy Berman TV Critic Feb 17, 2022 1:30 PM UTC Conventional wisdom holds that 2021’s much anticipated [hot vax summer](https://time.com/6127626/new-words-that-defined-2021/) never happened, but John Waters knows different. Cinema’s Pope of Trash rents a home in [Cape Cod’s queer party destination Provincetown](https://time.com/longform/lgbtq-bars-after-stonewall/) every summer, and last year “it was like the movie [_The Swarm_](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078350/), but with gay people,” Waters laughs. Although the season marked the filmmaker, author and cultural icon’s 57th in Ptown, the convergence was like nothing he had seen before. “I hid,” he says, writing in the mornings and spending afternoons on the beach. The town made headlines in July after hundreds of mostly vaccinated revelers [contracted the delta variant](https://time.com/6084040/covid-19-surge-fall-2021/) there. But Waters blames the state government’s abrupt transition out of masking-and-distancing mode, not his rowdy neighbors, for the outbreak. A self-described “[filth elder](https://time.com/4055686/john-waters-commencement-address-book/)” who spent his 20s making movies transgressive enough to send his parents’ generation into conniptions, the [_Pink Flamingos_](https://entertainment.time.com/2012/09/17/gross-point-blank-10-most-disgusting-eating-scenes-from-movies/slide/pink-flamingos/) auteur sympathizes with the youth, whose decadent and libidinous urges he knows well. “I feel bad for them,” he says. “They’re quarantined and aroused, horny and lonely. That’s not fair when you’re young.” Now 75 and no longer a slave to hormones, Waters simply hunkered down and worked through the darkest days of the pandemic. In fact, he tells me over video chat from an art studio in his beloved hometown of Baltimore, he has never been busier than he is right now. Dressed mutedly in a dark jacket, turtleneck and scarf that offset a backdrop papered with the bright, glittery character portraits that [fans mail him via his local bookstore](https://atomicbooks.com/pages/john-waters-fan-mail) and press into his hands at events, he has ostensibly logged on to promote his guest appearance in the fourth season of Prime Video’s [_The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel_](https://time.com/5042687/marvelous-maisel-retro-heroine-modern-times/) (premiering Feb. 18). The man behind [_Hairspray_](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,966796,00.html) and [_Cry-Baby_](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,969927,00.html) makes an apt addition to a midcentury showbiz comedy, and Waters had a ball shooting on location in downtown Manhattan. “The whole Village was shut down,” he enthuses. “Behind us were vintage buses, cars, hundreds of extras in costumes. It was old-school Hollywood, in a great way.” But his character is still being kept under wraps, and anyway, he has so many upcoming projects to discuss that he’s had to make himself a cheat sheet. --- ### John Waters Speaks at RISD Commencement 2015 --- Just two months in, Waters is already booked solid for 2022\. In March, he has an [art show](https://www.cgrimaldisgallery.com/upcoming) opening in Baltimore. He’ll celebrate his birthday in April, with spoken-word dates in New York and Atlantic City. (He’s titled his pandemic-era show _False Positive_.) May brings his biggest release of the year: his debut novel,[ _Liarmouth_](https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374185725/liarmouthafeelbadromance), for which he’s planning a live book tour, COVID-willing. From there, it’s a marathon of hosting gigs, charity events (he’s staging a gourmet dinner at the P-Town dump to benefit the local film festival), his annual fan confab Camp John Waters in September and a couple dozen performances of his show [_A John Waters Christmas_](https://entertainment.time.com/2013/12/10/a-christmas-conversation-with-john-waters/).  BALTIMORE, MD - FEBRUARY 14, 2022: Portrait of director and writer, John Waters, in his Baltimore home. CREDIT: Peter Fisher for TIME Peter Fisher for TIME “People say, ‘Why don’t you retire?’” Waters scoffs. “I’d _drop dead_ if I retired. I jump out of bed every day to go to work.” After six decades of productive perversity, slowing down would pretty much require shutting off his brain. “I have to think up something weird every morning!” Maybe it isn’t so surprising that Waters is more in demand than ever. In some depressing ways, we live in an America his movies anticipated—with charlatans, extremists and malignant narcissists crowding the public square, as constant altercations break out between a repressive far right and a radical-chic far left. The same day I spoke with Waters, Georgia congresswoman [Marjorie Taylor Greene](https://time.com/6120939/marjorie-taylor-greene-republican-party-future/) gave a bizarre interview decrying “[Nancy Pelosi’s gazpacho police](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/02/10/gazpacho-gestapo-marjorie-taylor-greenes/6734942001/)” that immediately went viral. (She meant _Gestapo_.) If you didn’t know better, you might think Greene was a character played by Mink Stole, the Waters lifer who specializes in snippy villains. The difference between his outré work and the hysterical pitch of our current public discourse—besides, of course, that no one’s drafting laws based on his absurdism—is that his intentions are always playful and good-natured. Waters likes to poke fun at what he still calls “political correctness,” not because he’s joined the self-serious war on wokeness or cancel culture or any other term pundits invoke to protest the march of progress, but because he thinks humor is the best route to social change. He wants to see liberals form mock “pronoun police” forces and hand out tickets. So you want to upstage the insurrectionists who relieved themselves in the halls of Congress? “Maybe _we_ should form fecal flash mobs,” he chuckles. **_Liarmouth_** **is very much** in this punkish tradition. A road novel with an outrageously Watersian attraction at every rest stop, the book follows self-styled criminal mastermind Marsha Sprinkle and a doting accomplice as they grift their way up the East Coast. (Scammers may be trendy right now, but they’ve been a staple of Waters’ oeuvre since 1970’s _Multiple Maniacs_ cast his friend and muse, drag queen Divine, as a freak-show impresario who robs audiences at gunpoint.) “I think it’s the most insane thing I’ve ever written,” Waters says. If _Liarmouth_ seems merciless in its skewering of political correctness, he notes that the criticism is intended “in a good way, because I secretly think I _am_ politically correct.” Which is to say, he shares the inclusive aims of today’s activists, minus the appetite for sanctimonious Twitter threads. (Waters’ ubiquity does not extend to social media.) A pioneer of LGBTQ representation—though one whose LGBTQ characters are just as deranged as their straight counterparts—he had a suite of gender-neutral bathrooms [named in his honor](https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/filmmaker-john-waters-unveils-gender-neutral-bathroom-baltimore-museum-of-art-1234609042/) at the Baltimore Museum of Art this past fall. Elizabeth Coffey, a trans trailblazer who appeared in _Flamingos_ and 1974’s _Female Trouble_, was the guest of honor at their dedication. “She came down and cut the ribbon and used the bathroom for the first time to christen it,” Waters recalls. “Officials were there, all the news teams. It was an event that really did say something about a serious subject, but in a way that brought everybody together.” An optimistic read on why everyone wants a piece of Waters these days, and one I’m inclined to embrace, would be that changing times have revealed the humanism underlying his grotesque spectacles. As the aura of transgression surrounding even his earliest, most extreme movies fades, what remains is the filmmaker’s endless fascination with his fellow man. What kind of person wouldn’t adore Tracy Turnblad, the plucky, plus-sized, integrationist heroine of _Hairspray_? But Waters also has affection for Divine’s monstrously vain Dawn Davenport, from _Female Trouble_, whose mad pursuit of beauty ultimately lands her in the electric chair.  BALTIMORE, MD - FEBRUARY 14, 2022: Portrait of director and writer, John Waters, in his Baltimore home. CREDIT: Peter Fisher for TIME Peter Fisher for TIME “Everybody I write about, even the crazy people in _Liarmouth_—I love them,” he says. “I want to spend time with them. And I’m amazed at human behavior. That’s what keeps me going: to try to understand why people act the way they do. If I didn’t do this,” by which I assume he means make art in any and every feasible medium, “I’d be a good shrink.” Waters has, in his personal life, made a point of showing kindness to people whom most might judge unworthy of compassion. For years he’s been campaigning for the release of [Leslie Van Houten](https://time.com/5111299/leslie-van-houten-parole-denied/), the reformed and remorseful 72-year-old who has spent half a century in prison for her role in the [Charles Manson murders](https://time.com/5633973/last-manson-interview/), and whose favorable parole-board decisions have been repeatedly overturned by gubernatorial veto. (She was most recently approved for parole in November, pending California Governor Gavin Newsom’s signature.) “When the worst thing that can happen to you does,” Waters writes in his 2019 book _Mr. Know-It-All_, “I try to be a friend.” Would it be fair to say that, throughout a career commonly associated with the gross and the subversive, Waters’ guiding principle has always been radical acceptance? “Completely!” he exclaims, energized. “I try not to judge people’s behavior because I don’t know the backstory.” For those of us who grew up loving him, it’s gratifying to see Waters, in his filth-elder era, enjoy the same open-mindedness he’s promoted for decades. Call him an accepted radical, cherished by cinephiles and cultists as well as the little kids who flock to him at airports following his cameo in an _Alvin and the Chipmunks_ movie. Waters had a recurring role in the recent final season of madcap millennial self-parody [_Search Party_](https://time.com/6137793/search-party-season-5-review/); one of its stars, John Early, [told Seth Meyers](https://www.nbc.com/late-night-with-seth-meyers/video/john-early-was-overwhelmed-working-with-john-waters-for-search-party/168485977) that the director “created the entire sensibility that the show lives in.” Waters says he’s flattered by the comparison—and he gets it. “_Millennium Maniacs_ would be a great title” for the show, he jokes, pointing out that his character, who sells babies to gay couples, parallels a story line in _Flamingos_. (Once banned in multiple countries, that movie entered the National Film Registry last year and will get a 50th-anniversary Criterion Collection reissue in June.) Waters is, of course, thrilled to support young people in satirizing the pieties and excesses of their generation. “I’ve always made fun of rules,” he says. “In the ’60s I made fun of hippie rules, even though I was in that world and my audience was in that world. But there’s always extreme people, in all worlds, that can laugh about it. And I think they’re the survivors.” ## Transcript [ APPLAUSE ] Oh, all right. [ LAUGH ] Welcome and good afternoon President Summerson, Chairman Spalter, honored guests, parents, faculty, staff, and mostly the 183 graduates and 486 undergraduates here today. [ APPLAUSE ] I should say right off that I am really qualified to be your commencement speaker. I was suspended from high school. Then kicked out of college in the first marijuana scandal ever on a university campus. I've been arrested several times. I've been known to dress in ludicrous fashions. I've also built a career out of negative reviews, and have been called the Prince of Puke by the press. And most recently, a title I'm really proud of, the People's Pervert. I am honored to be here today with my people. [ APPLAUSE ] Okay, I'm supposed to inspire you. [ LAUGH ] How's this? Somehow I've been able to make a living doing what I love best for 50 years without ever having to get a real job. [ LAUGH ] But how can you be so disciplined, friends always ask when I tell them my job is to get up every day at 6 AM, Monday to Friday, and think up insane stuff. Easy, if I didn't work this hard for myself, I'd have to go work for somebody else. Plus, I can go to my office one room away from my bedroom in my own house, dressed in my underpants if I want to. You're lucky. When I went to school, my teachers discouraged every dream I ever had. I wanted to be the filthiest person alive but no school would let. I bet [??] would have. You can possibly even make a snuff movie here and get an A +. Hopefully you have been taught, never to fear rejection in the workplace. Remember, a no is free. Ask for the world and pay no mind if you were initially turned down. A career in the Arts is like a hitchhiking trip. All you need is one person to say get in and off you go and then the confidence begins. Of course, play is equally as important to your education as work. And in the fine arts, play is work, isn't it? What other fields allows you to deduct as business expenses from your taxes, gangster rap, [ UNKNOWN ] movies, even vintage porn as long as you use it for research? [ LAUGH ] Remember, you must participate in the creative world you want to become part of. So what if you have talent? Then what? You have to figure out to work your way inside. Keep up with what's causing chaos in your own field. If you're a visual artist, go see the shows and the galleries that are frantically competing to find the one bad neighborhood left in Manhattan to open up in Watch every movie that gets a negative review in the New York Times and figure out what the director did wrong. Read, read, read. Watch people on the streets, spy, be nosey, eavesdrop. And as you get older, you'll need youth spies that will keep you abreast of new music That nobody your age has heard of yet, our body piercing mutilations that are becoming all the rage. Even budding sexual transmitted disease. You should go to any length to avoid. Never be like some of my generation who say we had more fun in the 60s. No we didn't The kids today who still live with their parents who haven't seen them in months but leave food outside their bedroom doors are having just as much fun shutting down the government of foreign countries on their computer as we did banning the bomb. [ LAUGH ] [ APPLAUSE ] Today may be the end of your juvenile delinquency, but it should also be the first day of your new adult disobedience. These days everybody wants to be an outsider, politically correct to a fault. That is good. I hope you are working to end racism, sexism, ageism, fatism But is that enough? Isn't being an outsider so 2014? Maybe it's time to throw caution to the wind, really shake things up, and reinvent yourself as a new version of your most dreaded enemy, the insider? Like I am, the final ironing, a creatively crazy person who finally gets power. Think about it, I didn't change. Society did. Who would have ever thought a top college like RISD would invite a filth elder like myself to set an example to it's students? [ LAUGH ] [ APPLAUSE ] See there is hope for everybody! [ LAUGH ] You need to prepare sneak attacks on society. Hairspray is the only really devious movie I ever made. The musical based on it is now being performed in practically every high school in America. And nobody seems to notice it's a show with two men singing a love song to each other. That also encourages white teen girls to date black guys? Pink Flamingos was preaching to the converted, but Hairspray is a trojan horse. It snuck into middle America and never got caught. You can do the same thing. [ LAUGH ] Listen to your political enemies, especially the smart ones and then figure out a way to make them laugh. Nobody likes a bore on a soap box. Humor is always the best defense and weapon. If you can make an idiot laugh, they'll at least pause and listen before they do something stupid to you. [ LAUGH ] Refuse to isolate. Refuse to isolate yourself. Separatism is for losers. Day is not enough anymore. Its a good start but, I don't want my memories to be in the A section near the true crime at the back of the book store next to the bathrooms. No, I want it upfront with the best sellers. And don't heterosexual kids actually receive more prejudice in art schools today than the gay ones? [ LAUGH ] Things are a changing. It's a confusing time. [ LAUGH ] This might be time for a trigger warning. The amazing concept I've heard about is where you're supposed to warn students if you're gonna talk about something that challenges their values. I thought that's why you went to college. My whole life has been a trigger warning. But you have been warned. [ applause ] so the trigger warning is effective. Now back to the prepared speech. Don't hate all rich people. They're not all awful. Believe me, I know some evil poor people too. We need some rich people. Who else is going to back our movies or buy my art? I'm rich. I mean- [ APPLAUSE ] I don't mean money wise. I mean that I have figured out how to never be around **** at any time in my personal and professional life. That's rich. [ APPLAUSE ] And not being around **** should be the goal of every graduate here today. It's ok to hate the poor, too, but only the poor of spirit, not wealth. A poor person to me can have a big bank balance, but is stupid by choice, uncurious, judgmental, isolated and unavailable to change. I'm also sorry to report there's no such thing as karma. So many of my talented great friends are dead, and so many fools I've met in loads are still alive. It's not fair, and it never will be. [ LAUGHING ] Parents now it's time to talk to you. [ LAUGHING ] God these kids can be brats, can't they. Entitled little bastards. Do they think you're made of money? Can't they give you a second to adjust to such social changes, sexual reassignment surgery, horn implants, and the political rights of the adult baby community. And young adults, maybe today is the day you stop blaming your parents for every problem you've ever had. Yes, it's a drag you were kept locked in a [ LAUGH ]. Yes, it's a drag you were kept locked in a cardboard box under their bed and daily whipped with a car aerial, but it's time to move on. We've all been dealt a hand, deal with it. Whining is never appealing in a college graduate. And parents visa vera, you don't get to order up your kids either. Maybe your daughter did tattoo her entire face, well work with what you got. Think positively. Maybe she'll open up a fancy tattoo parlor in Paris. I'm touched to sometimes see distraught parents bringing their angry and defiant teenage children with them to see my spoken words show in a last ditch effort to bond. At least both sides are trying. The truth of maturity will come to families if every member is patient. I look back and wonder at how understanding my parents were. Doctor Spock didn't have a chapter in his child rearing book on how to handle your son if all he wanted to do as a child was play car accident. Yet, my mom took me to junkyards as a toddler and let me wander around, fantasizing ghoulishly. My dad even paid me the money to make pink flamingos and I paid him back in full with interest. But looking back, did I really expect him to be thrilled that I had made one of the " Most stupid, vile, repulsive films every made ." as variety called it. My parents made me feel safe and that's why I am up here today. That's what you should try to do to your children too, no matter where you get your children these days. Contemporary art's job is to wreck what came before. Is there a better job description than that? To aspire to? Here's another trigger warning and, pardon her signing Go out in the world and **** it up beautifully [ APPLAUSE ] Design clothes so hideous so they can't be worn ironically [ LAUGH ] Horrify us with new ideas. Outrage outdated critics. Use technology for transgression, not lazy social living. Make me nervous. And finally, count your blessings. You got through college, you didn't commit suicide, oh dear, have a nervous breakdown. And let's remember the ones who did. It's time to get busy. It's your turn to cause trouble. But this time in the real world. And this time from the inside. Thank you very much. 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