Photo: Greg Gorman
by Steve Desroches
John Waters just got out of jail. But it’s not what you think. It’s not some conservative reactionary force that locked him up for his reverence for filth nor a cancel-culture mob retroactively offended by a film he made 50 years ago. It is rather a testament to his imagination and continued kindness and generosity to Provincetown, a place he’s been coming to every summer for 60 years, as he spent the night in the clink as a fundraiser for the Provincetown Film Festival. Four people from all over the country paid a significant amount of money to have dinner and spend the night with Waters in the old police station on Shank Painter Road, each being afforded their own cell. This is the latest Waters initiative to help the film festival, which in the past has included dinners at the Dick Dock, the waste water treatment plant, and the dump, with the latter receiving coverage from Vanity Fair. It all seems a fitting event considering the state of the world where everything is turned on its head. And true to form, very much keeping inside the Waters universe, a second pink flamingo was spotted on Cape Cod this week. What the hell is going on?
If anyone can make sense of our times, it’s Waters. Much like Andy Warhol, Waters’ work has proven to be prophetic. The undisputed Pope of Trash featured a world of depravity in films that have largely come to be the mainstream. In Pink Flamingos Babs Johnson competed to be the filthiest person alive living in a rundown trailer outside of Phoenix, Maryland. But now with that behavior she could be a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. Lauren Boebert is basically Princess Coo-Coo in Desperate Living and she’s about to be re-elected to Congress, as it seems the hand-job in the theater somehow helped her. And judging from the crowd, the Republican National Convention looked like it took place in Mortville rather than Milwaukee.
The actual filthiest people alive have taken over a major American political party while Waters has become so respectable that in his words he could “puke.” Waters will explain it all and more at Provincetown Town Hall this Thursday evening with Devil’s Advocate, a spoken-word show in which he puts out a call to take back the sexual revolution from “the self-righteousness of the left and the intolerance of the right” as he takes on the role of outrageous contrarian, clacking the heads of the two censoring cultural forces together to get everyone in line, as somehow Waters has become downright middle-of-the-road in today’s culture wars.
“I’m out there asking the questions in life you aren’t supposed to ask,” says Waters. “I’ve been doing it all my life.”
As he crosses his legs and finishes his point there’s a flash of hot pink as his socks are revealed. The humidity and haze hang over the harbor outside his East End spot on the water, in an apartment adorned with art and artifacts that make it a veritable Waters museum. On top of the book shelf is his homemade cardboard sign that says “Longnook,” which he uses to hitchhike to Truro to his favorite beach, which is closed due to a collapsing cliff, another sign of a disruption to normality. Two images by photographer Al Kaplan hang above the sofa, one of the dirty feet of several hippies and another of “Provincetownsend,” a ramshackle house built in the West End by gay rights pioneer Prescott Townsend, where Waters lived in the mid-1960s. His coffeetable features books titled Ear Masturbation and Picasso’s Assholes, which features close-ups of anuses in the works by the great Spanish artist. (As it turns out, there were a lot of them.)
In Waters comfy abode all does indeed seem right with the world. Except, the world as it is has done something rare to Waters? It’s shocked him and made him downright nervous. The new generation fascinates and frustrates him, loving them for the rabble-rousing ways, but concerned the focus on the minutiae of outrage and being offended is counter to what should be a counterculture. But he does note that he’s been largely immune from any attempt to cancel him for his body of work, actually quite the contrary, which makes him the perfect person to take to the stage at Town Hall as a modern-day Elmer Gantry preaching for a return to the subversive with humor as a weapon.
“I’ve always made fun of the rules of society, I’ve always done that,” says Waters. “No one gets mad at me. My friends are always asking me, ‘How do you get away with saying that?!’ I say it lovingly. I make fun of myself first. Humor is terrorism and it works. I’m for that kind of terrorism.”
He’s right. He is seemingly protected by a forcefield of shock and schlock. In the early days his films faced censorship and he lost every obscenity trial to which he was subjected. But these days? Lincoln Center held a retrospective of all his films, two of which—Pink Flamingos and Hairspray—have been added to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and has received France’s Order of Arts and Letters, awarded for significant contributions to the enrichment of the French cultural inheritance. And currently, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles has a major exhibit about Waters and his work. He imagined all these venerable institutions watching Pink Flamingos when Crackers says to his mother, “Do my balls, Mama” or the scene with the singing asshole, and deciding it was worthy of the nation’s highest honors. But nevertheless, here we are. He even gets frequent invites from Fox News, and sees a big increase in book sales after every appearance.
“If you can make your enemy laugh or have sex with them you can change minds,” says Waters. “Don’t make them feel stupid. Maybe we should try that.”
John Waters: The Devil’s Advocate is at Provincetown Town Hall, 260 Commercial St., Thursday, July 25 at 7 p.m. Tickets ($50-$135) are available online at payomet.org and at the door day of if not sold out. For more information call 508.487.5400.
