Remember the first time you saw John Waters in Baltimore? Maybe he was picking up a drink at some Charles Village watering hole, or walking down the street, or catching a film at the Charles or that other local bastion of quality cinema, the Earle? How about the second time? The third time? No matter how many times I see John Waters and pretend to be jaded, I still can't get over my undying adoration for the man.
And I know, because they've told me so, that students, faculty and middle-aged MSE librarians alike would be delighted to see the American underground film icon spontaneously stroll through campus one day. If Waters decided to set up a tent and film a movie here, as Ron Howard did at Princeton not long ago, there is no doubt that scores of camera-friendly students and staffers would file up in long queues to be extras in the next John Waters feature film production.
But 30 years ago, when students, faculty, and middle-aged librarians saw John Waters strolling through campus, they probably would have called the police. In fact, in at least one now-infamous scenario, they did call the police.
The charge was "conspiracy to commit indecent exposure," and the movie was Mondo Trasho, featuring the tightknit members of Waters' serial Dreamland cast including Mary Vivian Pierce, Mink Stole and the chubby transvestite Divine. The incident happened along Wyman Park, on a road behind Gilman Hall that Waters now claims has been altered so much so that it no longer looks like the place he shot his scene back then. Waters was filming a portion of the movie in which Divine, driving a '59 Eldorado convertible, is about to pick up a hitchhiker. Unfortunately for some staid grad students nearby, that hitchhiker was naked, so HopCops were called. The ravishingly dressed Divine and her nude companion were somehow able to escape from the police in their bright red convertible, but charges eventually caught up to the filmmaker when the vehicle was returned to the lot.
Waters never asked permission to shoot at Johns Hopkins because he was afraid that if he asked, that they wouldn't let him. Abiding by the underground cinema technique of "shoot first, run away later," the Mondo Trasho incident was Waters' first brush, but not his last, with the Hopkins institutions.
For another example of Waters' guerrilla film tactics applied to Hopkins, check out 1977's Desperate Living, which was made just before Psychiatry Professor Paul McHugh helped shut down the Hopkins Hospital's controversial center for sex-change surgery.
It's a different world now, as John Waters will gleefully tell you, and it's been a long time since a panicking Divine anonymously called up the Hopkins Hospital emergency line, during the filming of Pink Flamingos, to ask about the consequences of eating dog shit.
Anticipating Waters' more formal appearance at the university next Wednesday, April 17, I recently spoke to the filmmaker about Baltimore, Todd Solondz, exploitation, Herschell Gordon Lewis's new film, Catholicism, and a lot of other interesting topics that unfortunately did not get recorded properly on tape. Waters was kind enough to let me tack on the following few glib questions so I could still publish something. After all, he lost a really great interview once too - with Pia Zadora!
News-Letter: Can we talk about Harford Rd. a little bit?
John Waters: Well, Harford Rd. to me is the new area I want to make my next movie about, because all my favorite blue-collar neighborhoods I've done; I've done Hampden in Pecker, I did Highlandtown in Hairspray. So I think that Harford Rd. is kind of an undiscovered great part of Baltimore. I've always liked it. I like the bars on Harford Rd., I like the people, I like the houses. It's really the next area I need John Waters movies to descend on.
N-L: When I think of Harford Rd., I think of a lot of gray, Methodist-type churches.
JW: Well, I think of great biker bars and policemen bars. There's quite a social life on Harford Rd. And on one side it's really the gay women's neighborhood, Lauraville. It's sort of now the lesbian aorta. It used to be Abell Avenue in Waverly, and now it is Lauraville.
N-L: Why Lauraville?
JW: That's where they all moved! I don't know. I like lesbians; I'm not one. [Laughter] So I don't know.
N-L: I was actually just on Druid Hill the other day, and I guess you're not supposed to go there at night. The police kind of stopped us there. They let us go with a warning, but they're like: there's a lot of lesbians that hang out here, watch out!
JW: Well, they were just being homophobic, probably. But really there used to be, and I have no idea if there is anymore, a really kind of scary, gay fuck place. I never went there, but I heard about it. Where cars would go, and people would have sex in the middle of night. I can't imagine that these days, but it's probably a good place for drug deals too I would think. I personally wouldn't go for a stroll in Druid Hill Park at midnight, although I lived across from Druid Hill Park in the Temple Gardens Apartments for 17 years and never had anything bad happen.
N-L: You said your new movie has to do with sex addicts?
JW: Yes, the head injury sufferers who after their concussion experience a carnal lust that they cannot control. But it goes back and forth, so they get hit in the head and become a sex addict, and then they're not one. So it's: Oh! I just fucked the whole neighborhood. Oh my God, I'm back to normal: What do I do?
N-L: You said you're doing observation. What exactly do you do?
JW: It's always been a neighborhood that I've gone to for years. I go to Harford Rd. bars a lot. So basically, it seeps in and then after 10 years you sort of think of it as characters living there and stuff. But when I'm writing the movie, I do the location scout. I know where every one of the characters in this movie lives. The people that live in the houses don't know it yet [Laughter] that I've been outside of their houses, and all sorts of ludicrous things going on. When they're inside, they're just living their normal life. And I'm outside in the car making notes. And people get uptight, they think I'm an insurance inspector. [Laughter] Or a plain clothesman. And so I try to be subtle. That's why I have very plain cars, so people don't notice.
N-L: Your films seem to be primarily about depicting white Baltimore.
JW: Well, certainly Hairspray was about integration, and it certainly had a lot of black characters in it. But I don't think I could make a comedy about black life, 'cause I'm not black. I think I wouldn't make a Jewish comedy, because I'm not Jewish. I think you can only make fun of things that you are and that you know. I'm not saying a black person can't write a really good white comedy or a white person can't write a really good black comedy. I couldn't. I have black characters in all my movies. But I guess extreme white people, in a way, is what my movies are about. But certainly in Hairspray we had so many black characters that we got a special deal with Screen Actor's Guild at the time. What's it called, like affirmative action or something.
N-L: What's a typical spring day like for John Waters?
JW: Like today?
N-L: Yeah.
JW: Well, usually in the morning I always have to get my thinking cap up. I get up at 6:30 a.m. every day. I read six newspapers, and I start work at eight o'clock. I have to get my thinking cap on and think somethin' up. And with the many different projects I'm working on, I get dumber as the day goes along, so I have to work early. I could never write something at night. I usually write till about 11 o'clock, and then I have a big meeting with my assistant and we plan everything for the day. And then I'm on the phone for about six hours every day for all of the different projects I'm involved in: movies, TV, art world, journalism. I'm firmly believe that you can never have too many careers. So I'm a workaholic Monday through Friday. And if I'm in New York, where I live too, I do the same thing. I just talk with my assistant on the phone all the time. I always write in the morning. That's when I think it all up, and in the afternoon I try to sell it. I try to make it real, whatever I had thought up in the morning. My job, every day, is to get up at eight o'clock and think up fucked-up things. That's my job. And people say, how can he be so disciplined? How can he do everything? Cause I can go to work in my underpants! I'm my own boss. Otherwise you have to go get a job and have someone else tell you what to do.
N-L: So you keep up with a lot of other movies too?
JW: Yeah I go to see everything. I go to movies all the time. I go out in Baltimore only on Friday nights. I'm like a coal miner. Friday night: look out. I never go out on school nights. I have to write.
N-L: You said how much you liked Larry Clark's Bully. What's so great about that movie?
JW: Well I thought Bully was just funny, sexy, weird, based on a true crime story and Larry Clark, I think, is a director that really pushes it. In this you have the "crotch cam" shot, where in the middle of the scene, for no apparent reason, the camera zooms up a girl's skirt. I found that a new camera style, a new hauteur signature - "the crotch cam.
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