Merry Christmas, Ya Filthy Animals

You wanna know what stressful is? It’s lining up an interview with a personal hero and spending the next several days terrified he’ll think you’re stupid, or worse—boring. So began my harrowing 72 hours after scoring a brief slot with Mr. John Waters, one of the cleverest, funniest and most brilliant creators of our time.

I won’t waste a lot of space talking about Waters’ impressive film resume, from Multiple Maniacs and Female Trouble to Polyester, Pink Flamingos, Hairspray and Serial Mom. I’m not gonna spend a lot of time talking about how hard I loved his books, including Mr. Know-it-All, wherein he looks back over his storied career and life and even drops acid with actress Mink Stole; or his new novel (a first for Waters), Liarmouth about family, murder and trampolines. Instead, I’ll just mention that I still have Ricki Lake shrieking, “Cryyyyyyybaaayyyyeeeeebeeeee!” stuck in my head from the first time I saw Cry-Baby in 1990—which turned me into a lifelong fan.

Why is this important? Well, for some, discovering John Waters was the highest form of validation. Here we have a man who’s made a career out of good bad taste, who all but gave a certain cross-section of people permission to be disgusting little perverts looking for fast thrills, silly jokes and, above all else, unabashed interest in, as Waters says in his season 8 Simpsons appearance, the tragically ludicrous and ludicrously tragic.

And though we normally wouldn’t run a column a month before an event, I wanted to give everyone plenty of advanced notice to get their tickets to A John Waters Christmas. In the meantime, Waters was kind enough to hop on a phone call and talk holidays, Kool cigarettes, the Rocky soundtrack and more. What a relief! This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

SFR: Just to get it out of the way real quick: Lifelong fan. I’m very excited. Thank you so much.

John Waters: Oh, sure. Thank you! I’m glad to be coming to Santa Fe. I don’t know if I’ve done the Christmas show there, have I? I’m not sure.

I’ve seen you here, but not for Christmas.

I know I’ve been there a lot of times, but not for Christmas, so—Santa’s sleigh will be landing.

Why a Christmas tour? Why not Flag Day or Arbor Day?

I do it every year. I have two shows. I have one that’s called The End of the World, and the other one is A John Waters Christmas. I rewrite both of them completely once a year, and I do the End of the World show—other years I have a birthday show, a Valentine’s show, an Easter show; I think I’m pretty soon gonna have a Groundhog Day special—but I do [The End of the World] all year. The Christmas show is more Christmas, obviously, oriented, and I’ve been doing it for many years, I don’t know how many totally. But I always say I feel like a drag queen on Halloween: If it’s Christmas, I’m working.

Is part of that childhood memories? What were your Christmas memories like?

Oh, good. I had a functional family, so our Christmas was good. I mean, weird things happened, like the tree fell over on my grandmother once, and I’ve already exploited that in both my—well, I don’t talk about that in my Christmas show anymore because I’ve talked about it so much, but it was certainly in Female Trouble. Things that I remember that might have been traumatic to other people weren’t to me, and even my grandmother wasn’t injured or anything. I didn’t shove the Christmas tree over on her.

I used to get what I wanted. There’s a picture of me in my family album that I saw; it’s me when I’m about 10 years old, and I’m sitting in front of the Christmas tree opening my two presents. I have a hand puppet on one hand, because I was a puppeteer, and in the other is the album, The Genius of Ray Charles, which I know I asked my parents for. They didn’t know about that album, and it’s really a great album. But that meant I was starting early, and I never changed that much. I always was what I was gonna be, right from really early, and that picture kind of proved it. But my parents went and bought me that album, so it wasn’t like they discouraged it.

What kind of Christmas things did they have? Some of my mom’s stuff still haunts me to this day—did they have weird Christmas stuff?

They didn’t have weird stuff. My parents were not weird at all. The only thing weird they did do...when I was young, it was not considered bad to smoke, and when you were 16, you got what was called ‘smoking permission,’ and my parents smoked, and I remember they would give me sometimes in my stocking a carton of Kools.

Y’know, that today would be child abuse. The only thing in life I regret is smoking. And I write down every day, I’m working on it right now, I haven’t had a cigarette in 7,251 days. It’s the only thing I regret. But at the same time, they had ads like, ‘Doctors say smoke menthols when you have a cold!’ Like that’s good for you?! I wish I had taken a picture of it, because it would be a great Christmas card.

You’re re-writing this holiday show, every year. Have the holidays seeped into your unconscious?

You know, every time I get a Google alert saying my Christmas special...you know, tickets went on sale, it’s like, ‘Oh, my!’ I just finished writing it today, this morning, and I will start to learn it. I have a little over two weeks to learn a 70-minute monologue, which is my anti-Alzheimers exercise, because I don’t use any notes. Opening night is always the scariest because you don’t know exactly how long it is or what you’re going to remember. I always forget something every night in each city, but if I remembered it all, it would be too long.

Speaking of these cities, I know you’re doing 20 dates this year, so the travel—are you going to just keep doing this?

Well, the travel is...you know, I’m in first class, I mean, it’s not horrible. How people dress on airplanes is horrible. I almost get arrested for that, because I want to give out little cards that say ‘Nice outfit.’ I just can’t believe what some people wear. Why are they nude on an airline? I don’t get it.

What’s the best gift you ever got for Christmas?

I would say the cashmere blanket that I think Divine might have stolen and she gave me, that I still have on my bed. It’s been repaired many times. It’s like a throw blanket. But Christmas presents to me are...the best ones to me are the ones that can cost a nickel—some weird book somebody found in a thrift shop with some weird sex title or some funny title like Clitty, Clitty Bang-Bang; that’s the name of a book someone found me. I’m sure it cost a nickel, but at the same time, it’s priceless.

What’s the worst gift you ever got?

We used to have a Christmas party, and for a couple years, each person selected a name to give a gift to, and you had to give them a gift they’d hate the most, which was really fun and you should try it, because it makes for a good party. And I got the soundtrack to all the Rocky films. I opened the window and threw them out. People laughed, but I then thought how terrible, I lived in a high rise—somebody could have, on Christmas Eve, been walking down the street and be killed by a flying soundtrack from Rocky. That would be a sad way to go.

Was it vinyl?

Yeah.

Do you have any advice for somebody shopping for someone they hate?

Yeah, give ‘em a gift card. It means you spent no time at all shopping for them and think they’re stupid.

I hear you generally have a Christmas party every year, but you cannot bring a friend?

No, you sometimes can, it depends. You certainly can’t give [the invite] to someone else, it’s non-transferable. Some people are allowed to bring a guest. My favorite was the Vanity Fair party. They used to say, ‘No matter who you are, we’re not interested in who you’re fucking if they’re not famous—they can’t come,’ which I always thought was very funny. I would get invited to the Vanity Fair party, which was a very, very hard invite to get, and I had to go by myself. So one time I’m walking the red carpet, and I see Pamela Anderson by herself, and she says, ‘Will you walk the red carpet with me? I need credibility.’ I said, ‘If I’m your credibility, we’re in real trouble,” but we did enter the Vanity Fair party together. It was good! It was great!

I’m wondering if, as a filmmaker, you have a favorite Christmas film?

I always say the same one, it’s called Christmas Evil, and it’s really a good one. It’s about some man who’s overweight and he looks in the mirror when he has shaving cream on and thinks, ‘I’m Santa Claus,’ and starts spying on children and climbing on roofs and acting like a crazy person.

Do you ever wish you had made a Christmas film?

Oh, Female Trouble is included in a lot of lists because the opening scene is Christmas morning, so...and I wrote a children’s Christmas movie that, who knows, might get made.

I understand you’ve said about Twitter, “Why give away all your best material for free?”

Yeah! I don’t understand it! If I’m giving away every joke from my show, who’s gonna pay me? Who’s gonna come see it?! I’ll never be on Twitter. I write books, that’s how I make my living; my comments and my thoughts on everything. I don’t give away stuff. I wouldn’t have anything left, any material. I’m not on Facebook because I’m not interested in what you had for lunch! It’s not like I’m a luddite, I’m on the computer all day long. But the social media thing I’m not on. That’s lazy friendship. You don’t have to get your hair done, you don’t have to call anybody or make an appointment to go out. It’s a lazy friendship.

I have one more for you, sir, and then I’ll let you go: What’s your problem?

I don’t think I really have any problems. I’ve turned my problems into a career. In Female Trouble, the song is, ‘She’s got lots of problems...’ I don’t know that I have any problems, I think I accept pretty much everything about myself. I’m 76 years old, I have more jobs than I could ever need, so things are great. I just want to thank all the fans for letting me get away with this for 50 years. They gave me the best present ever.

I think we have to thank you. Finding you has been meaningful for so many of us. One of my traditions is watching Cry-Baby.

Amy Locane is in prison. It’s a terrible story, look it up. For her to go back? She’s not saying she shouldn’t have gone to jail the first time, drunken driving is a terrible thing, but then when they made her go back again and serve more? I don’t get it. So anyway, please, Mr. Jailer, that’s what I want for Christmas—let Amy Locane go free.

A John Waters Christmas: 8 pm Monday, Dec. 12. $35-$65. Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W San Francisco St., (505) 988-1234