John Waters says that by the time he was in high school, he had “already written things that caused trouble.” As a summer camp counselor-in-training, he wrote a short story that had “lots of gore,” about a killer at a family reunion, and read passages to the kids every night. “The parents complained!” he says. A Baltimore native, Waters started making films with his Dreamland crew—a group of locals and childhood friends that included Harris Glenn Milstead (better known as Divine), Mink Stole, Edith Massey, and Pat Moran—in the 1960s. Since his first movie, Hag in a Black Leather Jacket, he’s gleefully challenged the idea of good taste: His characters literally eat shit and get raped by lobsters. At 78, Waters is producing work—which now includes a novel, nonfiction, live shows, and photography—that’s as delightfully perverse as ever. He’s still ending nights at Club Charles, the seedy Baltimore bar he’s frequented for decades. “It’s the coolest place to go to, no matter what kind of person you want to meet,” he says. “As long as they’re not normal.”
Waters in his parents’ kitchen in 1961, at age 15.
Patricia Waters, courtesy of John Waters
Waters grew up in Lutherville, Maryland, a small suburb of Baltimore. He attended a Catholic high school that “discouraged every interest I ever had.” While he always wanted to be a writer, “I didn’t read a lot when I was young because we had to read these horrible books about Benjamin Franklin. I wanted to read Hot Rod and books about juvenile delinquents.” Around age 16, he started hanging out in downtown Baltimore to “meet the beatniks and the gay people. The police would stop us and say, ‘You can’t do this. This isn’t Greenwich Village.’ ”
Patricia Waters, courtesy of John Waters
In 1966, Waters was kicked out of New York University during a marijuana bust. He moved back to his parents’ house and, later that year, shot his second short film, Roman Candles. The experimental movie, which marked Milstead’s film debut as Divine, collaged disparate scenes, from drag queens on motorcycles to a priest drinking beer. Waters posed for pictures outside his parents’ home (above) before the film’s premiere at a Baltimore church. “It was all the downtown bohemia, the crazy hippies, lunatics, and gay people,” he says. Afterward, “I’m sure we went somewhere and smoked pot, because that’s what we all did then.”
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Waters debuted his signature mustache while making Multiple Maniacs (1970), his second feature film. Sique Stole, the elder sister of Mink, told Waters to “put a little pencil on it.” Every single day since, he’s used a Maybelline black velvet eye and brow pencil to fill it in. “I want a Maybelline ad! I don’t know why they won’t hire me.”
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The 1975 premiere of Female Trouble, in which Divine plays a teen mom turned roving criminal, was held at “an uptown art cinema—a failing one.” Despite the severe blizzard that hit New York that day, the premiere was crowded. The film’s distributor “gave us a limo there, but not home!”
For the 1981 Baltimore premiere of Polyester (above), Waters’s parents joined him and Divine.
Unknown photographer, courtesy of John Waters
For the 1981 premiere of Polyester (above), Waters’s parents joined him and Divine. While his previous films were rated X or NC-17, Polyester “was R-rated, so they could take a sigh of relief.” At the premiere, “every photographer wanted a shot of them with the most shocking-looking people because my parents looked kind of like George and Barbara Bush.”
When Waters visited Manhattan in the 1970s and ’80s, he frequented clubs and bars like Max’s Kansas City, Pyramid, CBGB, and Area. Through that scene, he became friends with Debbie Harry. For Polyester—which stars Divine as a housewife and Tab Hunter as her lover—Waters enlisted Harry, her Blondie bandmate Chris Stein, and composer Michael Kamen to write three original songs. Harry and Stein persuaded Bill Murray, whom Waters had never met, to sing one. “He does it seriously, like a bad Douglas Sirk film track, which is why it’s funny.”
In 1988, Waters released Hairspray, a musical comedy starring Divine, Ricki Lake, Sonny Bono, and Debbie Harry that became a mainstream hit and his only PG-rated film. The Baltimore premiere (above), held at the Senator Theater, “was one of the happiest nights of my life,” says Waters. “You could tell it was going to be a giant hit. It was a magical night right before everything just exploded badly.” A week after Hairspray opened, Divine died suddenly of a heart attack, at 42. “We had just toured the whole country doing press. Every news show had me and Divine laughing, and then they cut to me carrying his coffin.”
William S. Burroughs “was very important in my life. He’s the one who called me the Pope of Trash.” Between 1974 and 1982, Burroughs lived in “the bunker,” a former YMCA locker room on the Lower East Side. When Waters visited, “he had a single cot and was reading a paperback version of Guyana Massacre. He served us warm vodka in peanut butter jars and passed a joint.”
“I never went to Studio 54. I hated it because I hate disco. I was a punk,” says Waters. One of his favorite places in Manhattan was the Mudd Club, which was “hardcore.” Edith Massey, cult-famous for her performance as “the Egg Lady” in Pink Flamingos, and pictured above with Waters in the club, “was a terrible drunk—she got mean. I was always a nice drunk.” Her pirate garb was her “trying to be trendy.”
At Hairspray’s New York premiere, Waters signed autographs for a mass of fans that included Keith Haring (above, wearing glasses). “To be honest, I didn’t know that was Keith,” says Waters. “I knew his work, but I don’t think it registered that he was him. He was just with other fans when we got out of the limo to sign stuff.”
John Waters, Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder
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Cry-Baby was Waters’s perverse take on a ’50s teen rom-com, starring Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder, at the Baltimore premiere. The film was shot in Baltimore, where “they leave you alone—there’s no paparazzi.” Waters and the actors often hung out at Club Charles. “The cast was so crazy that when people would see them coming, they would run. They wouldn’t ask for an autograph. They were scared!”
John Waters and Patty Hearst at the Film Independent Spirit Awards in 2001.
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