18 Time February 28/March 7, 2022
release of the year: his debut novel,
Liar mouth, for which he’s planning a
live book tour, COVID willing. From
there, it’s a marathon of hosting gigs,
charity events, his annual fan confab
Camp John Waters in September, and
a couple dozen performances of his
show A John Waters Christmas.
“People say, ‘Why don’t you re-
tire?’ ” 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 some-
thing 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 ma-
lignant narcissists crowding the public
square, as constant altercations break
out between a repressive far right and
a radical-chic far left.
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 in-
tentions are always playful and good-
natured. Waters likes to poke fun at
what he still calls “political correct-
ness,” not because he’s joined the self-
serious war on wokeness, 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 re-
lieved themselves in the halls of Con-
gress? “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 Mar-
sha Sprinkle and a doting accomplice
as they grift their way up the East
Coast. “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 toConvenTional wisdom holds ThaT 2021’s
much anticipated hot vax summer never hap-
pened, but John Waters knows different. Cin-
ema’s Pope of Trash rents a home in Cape Cod’s
queer party destination Provincetown every
summer, and last year “it was like the movie The
Swarm, but with gay people,” Waters laughs. Al-
though the season marked the filmmaker, au-
thor, and cultural icon’s 57th in Ptown, the con-
vergence was like nothing he had seen before.
“I hid,” he says—writing in the mornings and
spending afternoons on the beach.
A self-described “filth elder” who spent his
20s making movies transgressive enough to
send his parents’ generation into conniptions,
the 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 hunkered down and worked through the
pandemic. In fact, he tells me over a video chat
from an art studio in his hometown of Baltimore,
he’s 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 and press into his hands at events, he
has ostensibly logged on to promote his guest
appearance in the fourth season of Prime Vid-
eo’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (premiering
Feb. 18). The man behind Hairspray and Cry-
Baby makes an apt addition to a midcentury
showbiz comedy, and Waters had a ball shoot-
ing 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 Holly-
wood, 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
made himself a cheat sheet.
Just two months in, Waters is already booked
solid for 2022. In March, he has an art show
opening in Baltimore. He’ll celebrate his birth-
day 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
At 75, cult filmmaker,
author, and “filth elder”
John Waters is having the
busiest year of his life
BY JUDY BERMAN
Grave matterDear JohnCanon fodder